Men's Interactions with the Environment

Men are an important part of the bio-tic component of the environment and simultaneously they are an important factor of the environment. Thus, men play important roles in the natural environmental system in different capacities such as biological, social, economic, and technological. All the natural functions of human beings such as birth, growth, health, and deaths are affected and determined by natural environment in the same manner as the cases of other organisms. However, men being most developed and advanced animal both physically and mentally and technologically, is capable of making substantial changes in natural environment so as to make it suitable for his own living.

The role of most primitive biological or physical in the functions natural environmental system was fundamentally that of user of environmental resources and thus they played the role of a factor of the environment but as the skill and technology of men developed with cultural development their roles towards natural environment also changed progressively such as from user through modifier and changer to destroy of the environment.

The technology of men has drastically changed the men-environment relationship from prehistoric period to the present most advanced industrial period. The industrial and scientific revolutions have led to rapid change in our environment. However, all the technology from the most primitive to the most advanced causes some changes in environment. Modern technology men, intoxicated by highly advanced technology and materialistic viewpoints, have changed and are changing the environment for their stake to such an extent that even the very existence of human beings is threatened.

If we look the historical progression of men-environment relationships it become clear natural relationship between men and natural environment during prehistoric period has changed to hostile relationship between technological men and the environment at present. This substantial change and shift in the nature and magnitude of men' interactions with the natural environment has given birth to numerous environmental problems of serious consequences because the change effected by men in the environment have become un-adjustable by the in-built self-regulatory mechanism of the natural environmental system. The study of changing relationships between men and environment in historical perspective may help in demonstrating the increasing adverse impacts of human activities on the environment. Hunting and food gathering, domestication and pastoralism, domestication and agriculture and science technology and industrialization are the changing steps of men and environmental relationship.