Urban Sprawl And Biodiversity

The topic that I have chosen to address in this unit is urban sprawl’s threat to biodiversity in our world. Urban sprawl is the term used to describe the expansion of developed and inhabited areas into the previously natural landscape, this term is most often associated with areas that are expanding at a rapid pace. Biodiversity is the term used to represent the total variety of life present in a given area. Biodiversity can be used on a global scale or can be localized to represent what is present in any given area. The ethical question posed by pitting urban sprawl vs. biodiversity hinges on what one considers to be in the best long-term interest of the world as a whole. There are a number of perspectives that can affect this consideration.

The first way to address this issue is to address the source of the need for rapidly increasing urban areas; population growth. Data from the Population Research Bureau (2011) shows that the current (and projected future) centers for the most explosive population growth have a significant overlap with the areas of highest poverty and mortality. Through increased support in the areas of healthcare, education and food stability we can accelerate these areas through their current place in the Phases of Demographic Transition (Haub & Gribble, 2011). The goal is to stabilize these localities concerning fertility rates and population growth through increased prosperity and

Due to the nature of where these changes are necessary, it means that foreign investment is necessary. The local governments just do not have the resources necessary to effect the kind of change required. We live in a time when investment in ecological preservation is difficult at best to secure even for domestic activity, let alone foreign activity. Today's political reality is that profit is valued more than the long term health of the world’s ecology. Throughout Asia and South America mining and logging concerns are permitted to strip large areas of irreplaceable rainforest, not in secret, but in the face of publicized opposition, even to the point of forced relocation of indigenous peoples for the benefit of commerce. In North America, oil extraction is accomplished through hydraulic fracturing, a process that has been proven to taint water tables and create areas of seismic instability. In both the cases of the deforestation and hydraulic fracturing, government regulators have ruled in favor of commerce in spite of evidence that both of these activities are incredibly harmful to the