Any Human Activity or Development in Ecosystems Is Inherently Unsustainable to What Extent Do You Agree with This View

‘Any human activity or development in ecosystems is inherently unsustainable’

To what extent do you agree with this view [40 MARKS]

The majority of the time, human activity and developments in ecosystems are fairly unsustainable, but this varies depending on the type of sustainability, i.e. socially sustainable, politically sustainable and environmentally sustainable. Sustainability is the ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance (in environmental cases, such as that of an ecosystem). In fragile environments such as the tropical and tundra biomes, they are very vulnerable to human activity and their entire ecosystem can easily be altered by even the smallest development or human action. A biome is a large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat, e.g. forest or tundra, and are one of the largest forms of ecosystems. Examples of two biomes that I have learnt as case studies as the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania (tropical biome) and Alaska, North America (tundra biome). Both of these biomes have been hugely affected by human activity and developments, for example, in Alaska the extraction and transportation of oil has vastly altered the ecosystem.

The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania is an example of a fragile tropical grassland biome, it relies heavily on the influences of a warm maritime climate for its sustainability. The tropical biome is only located 5 ° North and South of the equator, the ITCZ creates the seasonal rainfall and hot temperatures that are needed to ensure the sustainability of the park and the constant migration patterns of herding animals, such as wildebeest. The soft, laterite soils are also integral to the ecosystem, they can easily be eroded from human activities such as cars from safaris and footpath erosion. It is important to control the number of vehicles and tourists within the park to ensure minimal damage to the park.

The main impact of humans in the Serengeti is the burning of grasses. Grasses are burnt throughout the dry season to remove dead grasses and shock the plants into germinating. This human activity is essential to the sustainability of the tropical biome, as the burnt, dead grasses act as fertilisers for new shoots, creating fresh grazing areas for herding animals, attracting them back to the park. Alternatively, trees that are seeding can become damaged by burning; they have not yet developed the fire resistant bark of the acacia tree and baobab tree, and often die during the burning season. This does create a different, grassier landscape, but this is important to keep fresh grazing for the herding animals to maintain a sustainable grassland ecosystem. The Maasai, an indigenous