Punishments From The Environment Towards Human

        The environments that we used to see have occurred in this world for many centuries ago. Environments are composed of two main parts which are the living and non-living or also known as biotic and abiotic components. Living parts of the environment are animals, plants, bacteria, viruses, fungi and other living organisms. For the non-living parts, they consist of the physical and chemical factors in the environments that affect the ecosystems such as temperature, soil acidity, light, radiation, water and so on. The environments were in a very stable state before however when they are interrupted and exploited by human, the environments have changed and many disasters have occurred. The population of certain living organisms such as panda, Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger and many more are nearing the risk of getting extinct.

            All the components in environments play important role to maintain the environment in stable and balanced state. For example, the sun provides light energy for the human to be able to see colours, source of energy for plants to carry out photosynthesis and more whereas plants will provide oxygen and source of food for the animals as well as human. When the plants died, they will rot and turn into nutrients that help to increase the soil fertility. However, due to human’s ego in going for industry, deforestation, urbanization and so on, the balance within ecosystems has been disturbed. Due to that, many disasters and diseases happened and it showed that the environments are trying to punish human by creating all of these. The environments are trying reminding the responsibilities of human towards the Mother Nature which are taking good care of the environments and not to interrupt the balance of the ecosystems. The Mother Nature is trying to warn and remind us that who is the one that giving order by creating disaster and diseases that bring harms to human.

            One of the examples for the punishment from the environment is the landslide. Landslide is a geological phenomenon which includes a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep failure of slopes and shallow debris flows, which can occur in offshore, coastal and onshore environments. Although the action of gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, there are other contributing factors affecting the original slope stability. Typically, pre-conditional factors build up specific sub-surface conditions that make the area or slope prone to failure, whereas the actual landslide often requires a trigger before being released. The contributing factor is the deforestation by human being. This activity has being carried out by human being for many years as many profits can be earned by cutting down the trees and sold them in the form of timber as raw materials for many commercial products. However, at the same time, the soils loss their support from the roots of the tree and become easily mobilize due to the deforestation and the situation even worse when the area involved is at the slope or small hills. Landslide can bring many effects to human as it can damage the properties, cause injury and even death in addition to affect number of resources such as water supplies, waste disposal system and more.

Figure 1 Landslide in Malaysia

Figure 2 Landslide brings damage to properties such as houses and so on

            Besides that, dengue fever is another example showing that the environments are trying to punish people by causing loss of their life. Dengue fever, also known as breakbone fever, is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash that is similar to measles. In a small proportion of cases the disease develops into the life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever, resulting in bleeding, low levels of blood platelets and blood plasma leakage, or into dengue shock syndrome, where dangerously low blood pressure occurs. Dengue is transmitted by several species of mosquito within the genus Aedes, principally A. aegypti. Recently, the human populations that are having this fever have increased in amount and we can relate it to the human activities such as littering. Littering at anywhere will provide good bedding for the mosquito Aedes to grow as water will accumulate and it is suitable for them to lay egg. This will indirectly increase the population of particular mosquitoes and thus increase the chance for transmission of dengue fever.

Figure 3 Mosquito Aedes as the vector for Dengue virus

Figure 4 The irresponsible acts from human cause the increase of the mosquito Aedes population

            As a conclusion, the Mother Nature is trying to warn and punish us by creating these disasters and diseases to remind us not to leave out our responsibilities toward the environment. We should always remember that we must take good care at whatever we are having either it is naturally created or artificial. Many things can be prevented by having awareness toward the environment. For example, reforestation by human being is done to maintain the forests that we have. By doing this little step, many things can be prevented and many life can be saved.