ABSTRACT
Societal challenges are resulting in environmental degradation with anthropogenic activities resulting in large-scale habitat loss and fragmentation. Meanwhile, many human activities and products are polluting the environment with the main pollutants being ocean litter, pesticides and fertilisers, and air pollution. Environmental degradation is impacting biodiversity, which is the diversity of living things at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels. Land-based bird populations are threatened with extinction due to the loss of suitable habitat. Insect species are declining due to habitat loss and land conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation, pollution from pesticides and fertilisers, as well as biological factors including pathogens and introduced species. The contamination of air, water, and soil by various types of pollution is harmful to plant species, potentially leading to loss of species diversity of plants, animals, insects, and fish. Habitat fragmentation of freshwater ecosystems is rapidly increasing with fresh waters experiencing declines in biodiversity far greater than those in the most affected terrestrial ecosystems. Marine species are threatened by a range of pressures including the loss or modification of breeding habitats as well as competition for food from commercial fishing.
