Environmental degradation lacks precise definitions of the environment itself and the causes of its degradation. There is agreement on certain fundamental factors such as pollution and wasteful use of natural resources. Urbanisation, due to increasing population and the declining use of labour in agricultural production, is the cause of providing many humans with an environment little better than what would be acceptable to certain animal and insect populations. Early overt catastrophes produced by abuse of the environment are found in the deserts of the Middle East and India where deforestation, to provide more arable and grazing land, followed by over-cropping and over-grazing, produced waste land. Its direct effect was uncontrolled discharge of waste to the environment. Indirectly it led to a rape of natural resources and to a wide reorganisation of society with consequent urbanisation and squalid and close-packed housing.