Lack of Natural Resources

Food, water and sleep are basic needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Singapore is a country that is very dependent on others for many resources. We take water from Malaysia, we take sand from Indonesia, and we import food from many different countries. We even import our semi-skilled workers from Bangladesh. That is the situation of Singapore. Despite the fact that we lack natural resources of any kind, we try means and ways to get those resources from others to survive. And while doing that continue to grow in numbers. This not only drains Earth’s precious resources as the amount of food and electricity needed to fuel Singapore is not a small amount. Below are some graphs of the amount of food imports we take in, and the amount of electricity we consume.

So the increase in people would lead to an increase in consumption. So to provide us with these resources, other countries have to clear away forested areas to make way for agriculture. Here is a diagram of how much rainforests is cleared away to make space for agriculture to create food for countries like Singapore that is unable to sustain on its own. We are indirectly causing the rainforests to be cut down as we have a demand for the food source and they created the supply by clearing away rainforests to create agriculture. This graph shows the amount of primary forest loss from 1990 – 2005.

It is noted that humans do not see how their actions can cause harm to others. They feel that as long as they are not the one who killed the animals, or cut down the trees, they are not harming the environment. However, they are actually the cause as the destruction of nature occurred because of their wants.


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