Human and Nature relationship

Humans are gradually becoming more aware of the need to move towards a sustainable future with nature. Our well beings and extravagant lifestyles largely depend on the resources provided to us by the environment and without them, we won't be able to survive for long. In order to move towards sustainability, we, humans, need to create a symbiosis relationship, one where we both give and take from nature, rather than persisting with the parasitic relationship we have right now, where we take without giving anything back. So what is sustainability? The fact is, there is no simple definition of the term 'sustainability'; the term changes slightly with each definition depending on the perspective it is written from as well as the values and beliefs held by the writer. The general idea most people have of sustainability involves living with the surrounding environment in a way that will allow both the system and the environment to continue surviving comfortably (Bender, 2013). Another popular definition of sustainability is the capacity or ability of something to maintain itself (“ What is Sustainability?”2008). Both these definitions are different in that one has an anthropic nature and is more specific, while the other could be applied to any living thing; however, it should be noted they both revolve around the maintenance of oneself, though Helen Bender's definition also involves the maintenance of one's surrounding as the quality of humankind's future is dependant on it.

The reality is, humans need nature in order to survive which explains the urgency to establish a sustainable relationship with nature. Everything we have originates from nature which has finite resources and as history shows, without these resources, our civilization, like the Easter Island, will most likely collapse. The Easter Island is arguably an epitome of the impacts of the overexploitation of resources. It is said that the fall of the Easter Island civilization is largely the result of