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2. Natural Environment & Global Economy

As highlighted in section 1 without biodiversity planet Earth would be not suitable for human life.

The relation between humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) and the natural environment has been in
constant development since our specie first appear. Technologies and knowledge have made
possible for humans to inhabit all continents on Earth, despite less favourable abiotic conditions
in some areas. Often we see ourselves, human beings, as a different part of the natural
environment, but actually we are part of it, despite our technological evolution. As any other
specie we depend upon the natural environment to provide everything that is essential for our
well-being and economy: food, shelter, water, raw materials, medicine, etc.

Important Milestones on human evolution and contemporary society build-up:

• 4 million years ago – human walk on two legs
• 3,3 to 2,6 million years ago – first human developed tools (stone cores,
hammerstones, and sharp flakes)
• 100.000 years ago - complex symbolic expression, art, and elaborate cultural
diversity
• 12.000 years ago - beginnings of agriculture and the rise of the first civilizations
• 200 years – beginnings of idustrialization
• 100 years – globalization
Smithsonian Institution

Globalization: growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and
populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology,
and flows of investment, people, and information. © 2021 Peterson Institute for
International Economics. All rights reserved.

2.1. Human Dependency of Natural Environment and Resources

Before industrialization human dependence on natural environment was easier to perceived,
since most people would directly make use of raw materials (natural resources) available on the
natural environment, for example: fibres for clothing, wood for energy, stone for buildings, etc.
Some of these raw materials can be found in nature, for example wood on forests, but others
have to be cultivated using natural environment and resources, for example to produce cultivated
food we need to use space, soil, water, etc.

After industrialization, most humans lost contact with the raw materials to a point that is difficult
to name all raw materials used in the production of today’s objects and tools. Globalization even
deepened this gap, since we do not depend now more on local raw materials and also many of
the objects and tools that we buy are not even locally produced. This distancing between humans
and production processes masks our needs in terms of natural environment and natural
resources, and makes more difficult to access our own impact and how to minimize it.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the
views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the

information contained therein.