LETTERS – When we think about urban cities, we would imagine their beauty, how developed they are, the job positions they offer, the endless entertainment provided, and a diverse community living together.
People also often associate moving to cities as a step closer to being successful. It is undeniable that urban areas do give so many chances for us to learn and explore more.
However, how many of us realise how much urbanisation of cities impacts the environment? The cramped population in cities has caused many threats to the environment, which directly affect people’s quality of life.
When most of the population is concentrated in an area, cases of poverty arise as so many compete with each other in order to survive.
Hence, the chances of finding a new job with higher salaries are much slimmer and will create a wide wealth gap between societies. When cases of poverty increase, the economic well-being of the country is also affected.
This has made the first, second and eighth Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include the “No Poverty”, “Zero Hunger”, and “Decent Work and Economic Growth” a lot harder to achieve.
I believe city residents ought to have quality life in all aspects rather than just having good jobs but still struggle survival.
A sociologist, Gideon Sjoberg, said a developed city should have a good environment and nature, provide sufficient supplies of food, and stability in economic and social aspects.
Let us consider how urbanisation leads to environmental hazards. Urbanisation includes taking up more areas to build living spaces or a place that is profitable which is most case point to shopping malls. To do that, deforestation will happen.
Water and air are the two elements impacted the most when deforestation happens. Air pollution will worsen because of the decreasing number of trees to absorb harmful gas and emit oxygen, which will result in high levels of carbon dioxide in the air, worsening climate change.
To make it worse, not only the lives of plants and animals are endangered, the lives of people are also threatened by the disasters that resulted from deforestation. They include soil erosion and flash floods which destroyed homes and taking many lives.
These sad results have created harmful impacts to the efforts made towards reaching the SDG objectives.
For this situation, deforestation will be an obstacle towards reaching the 11th “Sustainable Cities and Communities”, 13th “Climate Action”, 14th “Life below water”, and 15th “Life on Land”.
It is very significant for us to know about this issue, to restore the Earth that benefit every creature in an ecosystem and someday progress towards a safer and more sustainable city living.
Source: Faatihah Abdul Rahim (NST.COM.MY)
