Environmental Wellness

 

Less expectations of natural resources

Less complexity in the management of nature

= More happiness

Our society’s one of the greatest resources is the untamed nature. We believe that environmental wellness can be secured through preservation of nature. Through preservation, we aim at maintaining the original state of nature. This is contrary to other societies which promote the “conservation” of nature, which aims for the sustainable use of natural resources. History has shown that conservation has still led to the sacrifice of nature for the fulfillment of human desires. This continuing destruction of nature will eventually end up in the destruction of humanity since humans cannot live alone without nature. As a result, we believe preservation, or non-intervention is important to achieve environmental wellness.

This idea of preservation comes from the philosophy of Less is More, which promotes more happiness through less expectations and less complexity. We can achieve harmony with nature by having less expectation on benefits from nature and by having less complexity by not intervening. Humans have been exploiting natural resources out of their desire to take full advantage of nature to fulfill their endless needs and interests. As a result, they have taken the natural resources for granted and their demand for and expectation from it has gotten higher. Because of this ignorance and greed, nature has been destroyed. Furthermore, the ever increasing human developments have added more complexity to the issue and have made the harmony between humans and nature impossible. For example, developments have led to habitat destructions, which have caused a threat to biodiversity. Also, developments have increased pollution levels, which have deteriorated water and air quality. As can be seen, high expectations on nature and its resources lead to more development and intervention, which then causes the destruction of nature as a whole. To solve this problem, the idea of Less is More can be applied here to save nature. Our society creates more happiness by having less expectation and less complexity concerning nature. A measure to implement this idea is preservation.

Preservation of nature is the key to achieving harmony between humans and nature. The value of harmony comes from Taoism, in which our philosophy of Less is More is deeply rooted. Taoism promotes harmony or union with all things and people. It emphasizes the importance of non-intervention to achieve this harmony because human intervention is destructive and thus it is best not to initiate action. Our society believes in this value of non-intervention and in its importance in securing the environmental wellness.

Environmental wellness is defined as two broad objectives: environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Environmental health is more directly related to humans and includes issues such as water and air quality and urban living conditions. On the other hand, ecosystem vitality is more concerned with nature and includes issues such as biodiversity, natural resources, and climate change.

Preservation prevents pollution and disruption and thus leads to better environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Pollution has been the main cause of the deterioration of water and air quality and urban living conditions, which compose one of the factors of environmental wellness, environmental health. Pollution can be reduced with the reduction of man-made developments such as factories and plants, which tend to be the biggest polluters. Human developments have also been the cause of disruption in the ecosystem. Rapid urbanization has been a threat to biodiversity. Fast developments have increased the need for natural resources such as oil and thus have led to its exploitation. Also, the increasing level of carbon dioxide due to developments has heightened the danger of climate change. These have all been due to human intervention in nature. However, by promoting preservation of nature, our society is able to achieve the two objectives of environmental wellness which are environmental health and ecosystem vitality.