How do human beings interact with/affect natural resource?
Answer
The pressure on the world’s natural resources from growing populations is likely to dramatically increase. Forecasts from the UN suggest that by 2030, there might be 8.2 billion people on earth, almost five billion of whom will live in cities. The pressures on resources created by one billion urbanites in China by 2030 could be immense and highly unpredictable,while countries in Europe and North America are likely to face new challenges from ageing populations.
Emerging economies like those of China and India aspire to the living standards of the Western world as does the non-industrialized world in general. It is the combination of population increase in the developing world and unsustainable consumption levels in the developed world that poses a stark challenge to sustainability.
Direct and indirect environmental impacts
At a fundamental level energy flow and biogeochemical cycling set an upper limit on the number and mass of organisms in any ecosystem.Human impacts on the Earth are demonstrated through detrimental changes in the global biogeochemical cycles of chemicals that are critical to life, most notably those of water, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.
Global human impact on biodiversity
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is an international synthesis by over 1000 of the world's leading biological scientists that analyses the state of the Earth’s ecosystems. It concludes that human activity is having a significant and escalating impact on the biodiversity of world ecosystems, reducing both their resilience and biocapacity. The report refers to natural systems as humanity's "life-support system", providing essential "ecosystem services". The assessment measures 24 ecosystem services concluding that only four have shown improvement over the last 50 years, 15 are in serious decline, and five are in a precarious condition.
Reference
Wiki "Sustainability"