Simply by existing, people have made major impacts on the world's living ecosystems. This summary attempts to list most of these, so that the enormity of the situation can be observed. A century ago, this list would have been quite short, because human use of the planet's resources was much less, and not perceived as damaging. Today, not only can damage be seen or predicted, it can also be felt personally in the form of shortages and hindrance. Little do we realise, however, to what extent we have changed this planet. In reading this compiled summary, please remember that it reflects just a snapshot of today's situation, and that the world's population is still to double in the coming forty years! Also remember that it lists the doom side of developments, and not the positive actions (like conservation) to alleviate these. So far, such remedies have, at best, been able to postpone the inevitable for a few years. (recycling, fuel efficiency, green engineering, crop genetics, etc.)

Not all changes to the planet's ecosystems are perceived as problems. Only those that affect us are, particularly those that affect us now. All our problems are caused by people, for without people there would be no problems. Thus the more people and the more affluent their lifestyle, the more resources they will use and the more numerous and severe our problems will become. Ecological problems grow faster than the rate of population and the growth of the world economy. For instance, a simple compounded growth of 3% per year will double the world's problems in 25 years; growth of 6% in 12 years! It is not surprising then, that the present generation of school children will experience change as never witnessed before and never to be witnessed again, as humanity exhausts some of its most precious resources, while also causing serious trauma to the environment. The summary below has been divided into four sections, for its effect on humans, the atmosphere, the land, and the sea.

In this summary, we have omitted the benefits of humanity's growth and development, such as major improvements to living standards, security, health, education and the availability and quality of food, comfort, recreation and sport, mobility and so on. These are amply experienced by those who have the fortune to be economically secure. But the downsides of these developments, are often not seen because they happen invisibly, unnoticeably, slowly and somewhere else, and they are not advertised. The tremendous progress made in conservation, is not mentioned here, like the cleaning of rivers, progress in recycling, alternative farming methods and so on. On the other hand, the summary presented here reflects only the tip of the iceberg, being very incomplete.

• threats to humans: health, food and water, shelter, recreation, hindrance, social cohesion, wealth.
• threats to atmosphere and water cycle: climate change, sea level rise, atmospheric pollution,
• threats to land and soil: water, exploitation, soil erosion, species diversity,
• threats to the sea: exploitation, soil erosion, habitat loss, nutrient discharge,

Seafriends is a small organisation championing the cause of our seas. Our seas have become the sumps of civilisation, since all water runs down-hill, taking with it all of society's soluble wastes. It is therefore also a good indicator of the damage humans are causing to the natural environment. Not surprisingly, the seas are becoming sicker, everywhere in the world. You may not be directly interested in the sea, but in order to better understand this summary of the world's threats, you may also wish to read from the Seafriends web site:

• soil: our most important resource and most maligned, probably also most needed. How we are losing it fast.
• degradation in the sea: see what it looks like, and what causes it.
• acid oceans: fact or fraud? learn all about ocean chemistry and why scientists have erred.
• understanding global climate and the global warming fraud: learn how it works and make up your mind.
• conservation: resource management, biodiversity, conservation, marine conservation and how we are wrong so often.
• science, technology and human nature: if you think we can save ourselves, think again. Important essay. (35p)
• sitemap: discover the gems of this web site from our extensive and complete site map (11p)

• health:
• weaker genome: by keeping people alive at all cost, while allowing those with genetic defects to breed further, the human genome is weakened. It appears that the underprivileged with low genetic qualities, breed more prolific than those who have been more fortunate, inevitably lowering the genetic quality of humans. Note that the mixing and intermarriage of races counteracts this effect.
• resistance to antibiotics: the widespread and unrestrained use of antibiotics has created many strains of resistant disease organisms. Once infected by these, death almost certainly follows by MDRs= Multiple Drug Resistant bacteria. Incurable strains of tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery, cholera, malaria emerged.
• resistance to chlorine in drinking water: in 1993  400,000 people got sick in Milwaukee from a water-borne protozoon Cryptosporidium which had become resistant to chlorine.
• sick city syndrome: dense populations encourage the rapid spread of diseases. City people are always a bit ill. Inside cocoons of comfort, the air is recycled through air conditioners, and so are disease germs, which are capable of travelling long distances through air ducts. Constant environmental conditions inside shops, malls and offices promote strange illnesses such as legionnaire's disease and many unidentified ones.
• lack of sleep: late night TV, loud traffic, parties, keep people up too late. It affects cheerfulness, induces illness and dulls learning. It also reduces performance and weakens resistance to disease.
• stress: people are hindering each other. More traffic lights. More traffic. More traffic jams. More rules to live by. Quick communication has hastened the pace of life. We do everything faster than 50 years ago, but the human constitution has not evolved for such life.
• noise pollution: Since 1960, noise has increased: cars + 162%, airline +438%, trucks +483%. Helicopter overflights are increasing rapidly. Noise at relatively low levels causes serious stress symptoms to some and hindrance to many. Noise diminishes our sense of civility, numbs compassion, and breeds aggression and hostility. Noise ranks higher than crime and traffic as cause of dissatisfaction. About half of Americans live in areas with noise above recommended levels. The EPA office of Noise Abatement and Control was shut down by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
• sperm count: over the past 50 years, world average sperm count for human males has dropped by 40% and will continue to do so.
• spread of contagious diseases: global warming, warm cities and urban areas keep insects alive that would otherwise not be able to survive the winter. Diseases and pest become established. Intensive travelling around the world spreads pests and diseases. Increasing population densities make outbreaks more frequent and their spreading more rapid. Malnutrition (both fat, thin and wrongly nourished) makes people more susceptible to disease. Chemical pollutants can affect immune response. High levels of nutrients in the atmosphere rained down, make algae grow in pure rainwater, forming breeding pools for mosquitos.
• new diseases: hitherto unknown diseases are popping up everywhere. More people are coming into close contact with infected wild animals when clearing forests, living primitively, or eating bushmeat. Ebola, AIDS, Marburg, Hanta, Machupo, West Nile viruses. Also new livestock diseases such as BSE (mad cow disease). The disease agent of BSE, or CJD (Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease) is a prion, the most primitive of all life forms, which until now, has not been harmful to humans.
• poisons from mining, transport and industry: Mining moves rock and soil to obtain its minerals, but once disturbed, these can easily leach into the biosphere, often accumulating in plants and animals. Poisons belched into the atmosphere by industrial processes, cause respiratory diseases, birth defects (teratogenic) or cancer (carcinogenic), and may affect immune and hormonal systems. They can also cause genetic alterations (mutagenic). Recent findings have found most chemicals to be more toxic than thought before. New chemicals are produced faster than can be tested. Permissible standard for cancer: one death in 1 million lifetime exposures.
• sulphuric acid: produced in the atmosphere from sulphur dioxide emissions from burning coal and oil. It irritates lung tissue, causing excessive amounts of mucus, which can suffocate a patient. London smog of 1952 left 4000 dead at concentrations of 4.5ppm; that of Dec 1962 700 at 3 ppm.
• low-altitude ozone: produced in the atmosphere from nitrous oxides and sunlight. Ozone irritates the throat and lungs, with symptoms that may be mistaken for hay fever, and likely to occur when ozone concentrations exceed 80ppb (0.08ppm).
• lead:  is acutely toxic and causes subtle impairment of children's brain development. It damages nervous system and inhibits mental development.
• mercury, particularly methyl-mercury: the mad-hatter syndrome. Madness, loss of balance, brain damage.
• cadmium: the ouch-ouch syndrome of painful bones and joints.
• copper:
• asbestos: Asbestos was widely used for its resistance to heat. But this finely fibred mineral can lodge itself in the fine tissues of the lungs, causing lung cancer at a much later date.
• insecticides ,etc:
• dioxins:
• formaldehyde from plastics:
• chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT):
• PCBs:
• food & water: humans are already consuming some 40% of the terrestrial supply of all animals, and almost 50% of surface water runoff (1995). Most water is used for agriculture. Then follows industry and finally domestic use. Of domestic use, most is used for sewage, washing and bathing. Of the 6 billion people on Earth, some 1.2 billion people struggle to survive on $1 a day or less. 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.9 billion have inadequate access to sanitation. About 150 million children are malnourished, and more than 10 million children under 5 will die in 2001 alone.
• poisonous rainwater: water collected from rain has become poisonous, particularly in areas of high population densities and industry. Its nutrient component of nitrites, nitrates, sulphur dioxide and sulphates has become poisonous to humans.
• poisonous aquifers and groundwater: particularly in highly productive farming areas, where productivity is achieved by generous applications of fertiliser and agrichemicals for pest control, ground water, aquifers and rivers are becoming more and more polluted. It becomes more difficult to find drinkable water.
• salinated water: as aquifers become overexploited and their levels drop, it allows seawater to penetrate and to take its place.
• river salination: as river water is repeatedly used for irrigation, it becomes saltier and polluted by agrichemicals, and totally unsuitable for drinking, further downstream.
• water cost: everywhere in the world, water is obtained with very expensive means: long canals and pipes, pumping up-hill, distant dams, desalination, etc. The cost of desalinised water is US$ 2-4; that of piped water US$ 0.20 per m3. We've become dependent on fossil fuel, even for our water. Desalinating 100Mm3 of water costs over US$ 100M. Already some 7,500 desalination plants are working worldwide. These prices are based on the low cost of fuel in the 1990s.
• safe water: more than a billion people do not have access to safe water, and their numbers are increasing. Water is unsafe for drinking, when mixed with surface run-off, human or animal excrement, or when it is too muddy.
• food cost: the fertility of croplands is diminishing rapidly, as more and more fertiliser is used, resulting in dearer produce. Rich people will command an ever larger share of the pie, while driving food prices up, to the detriment of those who cannot afford to pay.
• food quality: as more and more fertiliser is used, and food is produced by hydroponics, it becomes less tasty. New varieties are produced for their keeping ability and appearance; not for health and taste.
• poisonous food: harmful and poisonous plankton blooms are now so frequent that in 1998 Canada had 160 shellfish closures each year along its British Columbia coast. Shellfish and fish tainted with poisons can cause diurethic shellfish poisoning (DSP), neurotoxic shellfish poisoning (NSP) and paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). In some countries, humans die each year from these and a similar poison, ciguatera in tropical areas. Harmful algal blooms (HAB) are increasing in both frequency and severity.
• infected food: despite thorough sanitary regulations, food poisoning is on the rise due to people eating out more frequently, and due to stocking densities in feedlot farming. In several countries the dreaded BSE (bovine spongiform encephalitis) has scared people away from eating meat. Other food-transmissible diseases are on the rise too.
• world food demand: will increase by a factor of 3 in the next 50 years, but agricultural production has reached a maximum.
• paving the best soils: settlements developed where living was good, usually where good soils were found. As cities sprawled, all the best fertile lands were paved over, being lost forever, and threatening our source of food. It also affects underlying groundwater and aquifers.
• climate/ atmosphere: more severe weather, more storms, heavier rainfall, more cloud. Air pollution was known in industrial places with dense populations and metal smelters, already 2000 years ago, but it has spread and intensified. Since 1940 various clean air regulations reduced it by at least half, but subsequent use of the motor car has undone all progress. Now it rules in all cities, causing discomfort, disease and untimely death.
• air pollution: In the 20th century, air pollution killed 25-40 million people, roughly equal to the combined kill of World Wars 1 and 2. In the USA 30-60,000 people are killed this way, each year, the same as in Poland or Czechoslovakia, but it mainly affects elderly people.
• ultraviolet radiation: due to industrial gases like CFCs, the protective ozone layer has thinned and will remain so to past 2050. It causes more skin cancers.
• monster rains: rainfall has become heavier almost everywhere in the world. In some cases, a single rain may drop up to two years of rainfall in a single day. Such monster rains destroy lowland infrastructure while killing tens of thousands of people (Bangladesh 1991, Hurricane Andrew 1992, Mississippi 1993, Cyclone Mitch 1998, India Gujarat 1998,  Venezuela 1999, India Orissa 1999), and they are becoming more common (4 times more common than 50 years ago, and economic losses 15 times). As megametropolises swell with large numbers of people (shantytowns), they also put themselves in harm's way, resulting in increasing numbers of casualties. The huge economic losses affect wealth, earnings and debt.
• storms: storm intensity is increasing, as storms become more erratic, accompanied by higher losses.
• droughts: people are killed by famine from droughts and by forest fires. These are increasing alarmingly.
• shelter, cities, buildings, monuments, infrastructure, art:
• cost of real-estate: as space becomes more heavily competed for, its price goes up. The cost of dwellings will be dominated by the cost of the land they are built on.
• expanding cities: urban sprawl makes carbon emission the fastest growing issue. As cities grow, people need to travel longer distances to meet, recreate and work. It also pollutes the air faster than growth, causing respiratory and other illness. Between 1950 and 1990 Chicago's population grew by 38% but its area increased by 124%. While cities sprawl, public transport also becomes less efficient. 300,000 hectares of forest are lost in the United States every year, all of it due to 200 cities spreading out over the land.
• shantytowns: as more and more people become displaced from the countryside, due to failing agriculture and agricultural automation, they come to the cities to find jobs and a means to survive. These people have usually lost everything they possess, and are able to subsist only in densely populated shantytowns. Living in cardboard boxes and deprived of sanitation, life is very unfair to them. The number of people in this condition is rising frightfully.
• decaying neighbourhoods: people who are feeling disenfranchised and marginalised by more successful people, may lose interest in life and the maintenance of their dwellings and neighbourhoods. Slums develop and antisocial behaviour. As the difference between poor and rich grows larger, more people become disenfranchised and more slums develop, and with it more criminality.
• acid rain damage to monuments: Most old buildings were built with limestone, cemented together with limestone cement. Acid rains of sulphuric and nitric acid dissolve both stone and mortar, resulting in irreparable damage. Statues made of marble, a form of limestone, are also susceptible to acid rain. The Acropolis in Athens was damaged more in 25 years than in all 2400 years before. It cost Europe $9 billion per year to replace corroded stone. Other pieces of art like frescos (paintings on wet plaster) are beginning to break up. Arms fall off statues. Marble in London needs to be polished every 4 weeks, due to the etching effect of acid rain. Most of the stone of London's West abbey has been replaced by modern Portland stone at a cost of nearly $15 million. Erosion proceeds at 0.08-0.2mm/yr. Limestone dissolves 70 times faster in typical rain (pH=4) than in  unpolluted rain (pH=5.25). Buildings appear to receive most damage from a few heavy rainstorms. Acid rain also ruins stained glass windows. Since the 1950s, deterioration of medieval glass has accelerated that total loss is feared before the new millennium. Modern glass is less at risk. The carillon of the Dom church in Utrecht (Holland), made of bronze bells, has corroded in 30 years to the effecct that it is now permanently out of tune.
• acid drinking water damaging pipes and valves: even drinking water is now acid enough to dissolve the steel pipes and valves through which it is transported. Corrosion blisters inside pipes reduce their flow dramatically. The cost of upgrading the drinking water infrastructure is crippling.
• libraries: books in city libraries decay twice as fast as those held in country libraries. Acid gases make paper acid, turning the paper brown and brittle, while destroying the paper's cellulose molecules. Leather shows a 'red rot' disease, caused by acid air.
• ozone: low-altitude ozone oxidises almost every kind of material from paper to fabrics and from metal to paint, causing mayhem to museum exhibits.
• recreation:
• clean water disappearing: clean rivers, springs and coasts have become a thing of the past. Most people today can't even remember them.
• beaches disappearing: beaches all over the world are disappearing because of erosion and pollution.
• beach closures: everywhere, the beaches are closed for extended periods in summer, each year. In 2000, the USA suffered over 11,000 beach closures (twice that of 1999), mainly due to stormwater runoff, sewage pipes breaking, sewage discharge, etc. In 2002 over 12,000 beaches were closed due to fecal contamination (USA).
• hindrance: as more and more people vie for a smaller piece of the cake, they will hinder one another more and more, resulting in daily friction, increase in stress levels, etc. In 1950 only 3 cities exceeded 10 million inhabitants; by 1997, their number had risen to 20.
• less parking space: parking becomes dearer and more difficult to find.
• more traffic jams: travelling becomes slower; more of one's time is spent travelling.
• less free time: despite the benefits of fossil fuel, computers and robots, and although the economy will keep providing jobs, more and more of these will be spent on solving new problems. Instead of having more spare time, people will have to work harder.
• social cohesion: Water is more important than any other resource on Earth, and more so as it becomes scarce. Unlike any other resource, it is both important and in places scarce, while very unevenly distributed and often being shared between nations. These are compelling reasons for international conflict. Water shortages also lead to food shortage, poverty and the spread of diseases.
• globalisation: the spread and concentration of globally operating corporations is threatening the social and cultural diversity. Often referred to as 'cocacolonisation' it flattens the diversity in food, cities, homes, transport, music, movies, etc.
• social inequality: the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer. The poor have to suffer the consequences which the rich can afford to avoid.
• unemployment: At least 150 million people are unemployed and 900 million are 'underemployed'-contending with inadequate incomes despite long hours of backbreaking work.
• generation gap: Some 34 percent of the developing world's population is under 15 years of age. The young differ more in their values from their parents than ever before.
• dishonesty: dishonesty will be increasing. For many, dishonesty will become a way of earning a living.
• litigation: as people hinder one another more and more, and the environment is stiffly regulated, litigation will increase, creating wealth for the legal professions, at the expense of others.
• water wars: where water has become scarce, and rivers are shared by several countries, tensions have risen as the demand outpaces supply. One can live without a home but not without water. "Whiskey is for drinking, but water is for fighting over", said Mark Twain. Wars in many places of the world are looming. (Israel, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Thailand, Vietnam, Mauritania, Senegal, Brasil, Argentina ). Two or more countries share some 261 of the world's rivers.  These international water catchments account for about 60 percent of the world's freshwater supply and are home to about 40 percent of the world's people. An analysis of 1,831 international water-related disputes over the last 50 years reveals that two thirds of these encounters were of a cooperative nature while one fourth were hostile.  On 37 recorded occasions, rival countries went beyond verbal antagonism and fired shots, blew up a dam, or undertook some other form of military action. This will increase with time.
• poverty wars: as soils degrade and populations famine, despotic rulers rise and civil wars are fought. (Congo, Nigeria, Afghanistan). large numbers of people are migrating for lack of food or drinking water, and for security of life. In China, over 25 million people migrate due to drought, each year.
• urban wars: wars will be fought with small arms inside cities and amongst innocent bystanders.
• proliferation of weapons: weapons of mass destruction will become available to many, shifting the balance of security, and affecting particularly the secure free world. Small arms, mines and grenades will proliferate too.
• terrorism: terrorism will increase, both in numbers of attack and severity, as the gap between poor and rich widens, and as trade favours the rich countries at the expense of the poor ones.
• ecological collapse: several global ecosystems are teetering on the balance of collapse, including the coastal seas, rivers, forests, croplands and marginal lands. It leads to people shifting, becoming refugees within their countries, and eventually trying to escape their countries.
• drug abuse: the demand for drugs has been increasing steadily and unstoppably, feeding the need for immediate pleasure of people in rich countries. Poor countries, assisted by criminals will find new ways to expand this trade and to invent novel substances. It may lead to drug wars between western governments and drug lords.
• political power shifts: countries with economic strength now hold the balance of power, but this may change. The USA becoming entirely dependent on imports of energy, will succumb to increasing balance of trade deficits. Its agricultural production will reduce, no longer allowing it to trade food for favours. Eventually it may need to import grain for its burgeoning cattle and pig feedlots. Oil producing countries will become wealthy instead.
• refugees and illegal immigrants: people flee their countries in ever large numbers, because of oppression or for environmental reasons like food shortage or for economic systems collapsing. In 1995 the world counted 25 million environmental refugees. Their numbers will increase dramatically as the environment degrades further, while populations keep increasing. Many will leave their countries as boat people in the hope of being accepted into some other country. Illegal trade in migrants becomes rife. High profits are made by immigration 'consultants'.
• wealth: cleaning the environment becomes increasingly costly, as is space, water and food. The environment may become the highest cause of litigation, making life unpleasant and expensive.
• higher cost of living: more is spent on environment, less remains available for wealth or comfort. The environment is rapidly becoming the biggest of all businesses. Spending on mitigating environmental threats is escalating.
• more spending on war: as the West's security diminishes by burgeoning numbers of disenfranchised people elsewhere, the cost of defending freedom will escalate. In 2000 some 780 billion was spent on the military, worldwide.
• running out of financial resources: as the environment supports less and less people (becoming dearer while not producing more), society can no longer afford its current overhead of administrators, scientists, teachers, police, army and so on. A shortage develops in essential professions such as teachers and nurses.
• insurance becomes insolvent: the amount of capital owned by insurance companies becomes inadequate to cover the enormity of the problems. Terrorist attacks, hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, oil spills.

threats to the atmosphere and water cycle

• climate change: warmer climate, more extremes; floods and droughts.
• atmospheric change: exhaust gases from transport and industry, methane from livestock, nitrous oxides and methane from soils, and trace gases play an important role.
• greenhouse gases:
• Carbondioxide CO2: was only 0.029% (290 ppm), rendering the planet 33º C warmer than without it. It has increased to 0.035% (350 ppm) due to human use of fossil fuels. The use of fossil fuel currently accounts for 80 to 85% of the carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere.
• Methane CH4: produced by fossil fuels, livestock, rice fields, soil, mining. Used to be 0.9 ppm, but has increased to 1.7 ppm. It is a potent greenhouse gas.
• Chlorofluorocarbons: from refrigerants, foams, aerosols. It destroys ozone molecules in the troposphere and adds to the greenhouse effect. It used to be zero, but is now 0.003 ppm.
• Nitrous oxide N2O: from deforestation, fertilising, burning biomass. Was 0.285 ppm; is now 0.31 ppm.
• Nitrogen oxides NxO: fossil fuel burning. Causes acid rain and smog. Its concentration is high close to industries and cities.
• Sulphurdioxide SO2: from fossil fuel burning and ore smelting. Produces acid rain and smog. Is more concentrated near cities. It washes out easily from the troposphere (4 days residence time) but concentrates in a narrow band above it at around 20km height.
• Ozone O3: from vehicle exhaust reacting with sunshine. Acts as a greenhouse gas, causing smog. Was 0.01 ppm ad has increased threefold. This ozone is not caused by solar radiation as that found above the troposphere (25-35km high).
• smog and vapour: Major improvements have been made in smog abatement in all cities after the introduction of electricity, natural gas and clean air regulation, but car exhausts have taken over where industries left off. A year-round smog over the Indian Ocean and Asia is blotting out 10 to 15 per cent of the sun's rays, with potentially very major consequences for the atmosphere. (1995 Nobel prize-winner for chemistry, Paul Crutzen). Smog is formed by a confluence of geography, climate, wealth and culture.
• London: In London, coal was burnt for industry, cooking and home heating. Steam vehicles added more. After electrification, most smog disappeared. But sunlight could now interact with vehicle exhaust gases, creating a new health problem. London's effective Underground transit system keeps emissions down. In 1952 a severe smog killed 4000 people. The last serious smog dates from 1968. Now open fires are prohibited and stoking is done on natural gas.
• Europe: smog is a main problem in East Block countries and cities like Katowice and Warsaw in Poland. 30% of the trees in what was once Czechoslovakia, have been damaged by acid. Trees in the Erzgebirge have disappeared and soils are eroding badly. The smogs from industrial areas in Germany have abated, but car exhausts on Autobahns are causing a new threat.
• Los Angeles: was built for the automobile. It even abolished public transport. Located in an area with mild winds and surrounded by mountains, often a thermal inversion layer forms. Smog from the day before may blow back over the city.
• Athens: with an industrial history like that of London, Athens does not have good public transport. The siesta tradition creates four traffic peaks a day with long traffic jams. By 1990 Athen's smog was six times that of LA.
• Others: Mexico City, Calcutta, Beijing, Cairo, Shanghai, Seoul, Dhaka, Lagos, Djakarta, Bombay, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Karachi and so on.
• vapour trails: the clear blue skies of the desert city Las Vegas (USA), every day by 10:00 in the morning, become overcast by the vapour trails of jet liners visiting the city and passing over. Vapour trails diminish incoming solar radation over the most populated areas.
• acid rain: 85% of the lakes in the Adirondack Mountains have been acidified by industry. Acid deposition of sulphates and nitrates has made thousands of lakes in Scandinavia and North America virtually lifeless. Salmon have disappeared from the southernmost rivers in Norway. Acid rain has caused forests to die (waldsterben): it affects leaves directly through its sulphuric acid content, and accumulates in the soil, preventing roots from functioning. The amount of sulphur produced per person (1985): Germany 240kg, Czechoslovakia 201kg. It translates to 35ton per km2 or 350kg/ha, about ten times the fertiliser requirement of agriculture. In the Ukraine, sulphur fallout exceeds 120kg/ha.
• black snow: oily soot in rainwater shows itself as relatively harmless black snow, but  it covers leaves in a tarry soot, preventing them from functioning. Tall chimneys on power plants now belch their pollutants high into the atmosphere, causing problems far afield where they did not exist before. Buildings and monuments become covered, requiring additional maintenance. Lichens (liverworts) disappear.
• destruction of the ozone layer: causes an increase in UVB radiation, causing radiation damage to living tissues of plants and animals, while affecting plankton ecosystems near the surface of the oceans. UVB penetrates up to 5m into the oceans.
• water cycle: conversion from forest to agriculture and urban areas, increases the soil temperature while decreasing soil moisture, causing extreme temperatures, floods and droughts. Rainwater runs off too fast, being lost for pants, while also causing flooding downstream. All major continents are seriously affected. A reduction in the water cycle also promotes more and larger bush fires. Fires in Canada's northern forests, mostly triggered by lightning, are responsible for some 20% of this country's carbon dioxide emissions.
• Argentine: temperature increase of several degrees C; droughts and flooding.
• China: droughts, desertification, loss of over 2000 km2 of cropland each year.
• loss of agricultural output: Climate change will reduce output in the tropics and subtropics. Forty of the world's poorest countries (2 billion people) face losses of more than a quarter of their food production as a result of global warming. They include India, Brazil, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan and other nations with a recent history of famine. Other prominent losers will include Thailand, Nigeria, South Africa and Colombia. 12% of all land is now under permanent cultivation.
• planting forests: Forests will not be planted in productive but in marginal areas. It could increase global temperature because forests absorb more light/heat (than snow/bare land), and could cause more forest burns (in drying areas). A hectare of immature forest can absorb about 75t of carbon each year, despite growing slowly.

land, terrestrial threats

• politics/beliefs:
• communism: "The environmental desolation created by the Communist regimes is a warning for the whole of civilsation" (Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic). In communist countries, bad news about the environment has been censored. Production quotas overrode all other considerations.
• drug use and abuse: the demand for pleasure drugs like cocaine and marijuana encourages farmers in poor countries to clear forests and to overexploit their soils.
• Traditional Eastern Medicine: ancient beliefs in healing powers of rare and weird animals, causes these to disappear from the wild. As their price goes up, it becomes nearly inpossible to protect them from poachers.
• subsidising unsustainable industries: strapped for overseas exchange, many governments subsidise industries beyond their levels of sustainability.
• distant fishing fleets: fish can be found in low densities but over large areas in the open oceans where primary productivity is low. They can be fished with large vessels at the expense of large amounts of fuel. Not sustainable by themselves, they can work with subsidies. It has led to overfishing and overcapacity of fishing fleets.
• logging native forests: native forests take a very long time to recover. They contain hardwoods which are in demand overseas, earning valuable foreign exchange. Governments encourage their exploitation, even when knowing that recovery may take hundreds of years.
• subsidising the cost of water, by public projects: India, California, Arabia, Israel, Tunisia, Nigeria.
• US subsidies to agricultural irrigators amounts to $1250/ha /year.
• water: demand for water is increasing twice as fast as population grows. Water is the most critical issue facing human development. To live decently, each human needs at least 50 litres each day (drinking=5, sanitation=20, bathing=15, cooking=10, total= 18 m3 per year). Agriculture and industry use some 500-1700m3 per year per person. Less than 200m3 is considered 'critical' to life. Since 1950, the global renewable freshwater supply per person has fallen 58% as world population has swelled from 2.5 billion to 6 billion. By 2015, nearly 3 billion people (40 percent of the projected world population) are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilise enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic needs of their citizens.
• rivers: the water of rivers is used repeatedly for irrigation. Some of it evaporates, and the returned water becomes more saline while also more contaminated. Towards the end of their course, rivers often become intolerably salty and polluted. The flow of rivers has become entirely unnatural, controlled by human need for either electricity or irrigation, and marginalising the environment in the process. Freshwater life has become severely endangered.
• irrigation & ground water: Per capita irrigated land is shrinking (nearly 1% annually). About 230Mha is now under irrigation (0.045 ha/ person). Salinated soil is spreading at over 1Mha/year. As more and more artificial lakes are made, less and less rain falls on the land. Industry's use of water produces 50 times more value than that of agriculture, and industry is growing much faster than agriculture. Tourism even more. Food production declines. 1 kg of  wheat requires 1000kg of water. 1 kg of beef requires 50,000 kg water! Half of the world's supply of fresh water is now appropriated by humans. More than half the world's diverted water is wasted through evaporation and infiltration. In 1980 salinisation corroded agriculture on about 25% of its irrigated lands. By 1990, salinisation affected over 10% of all irrigated land. By 1996, more irrigated land was ruined than could be created. Reservoirs and canals spread diseases like malaria, schistosomasis, cholera, typhoid and more. Water tables are falling from the overpumping of groundwater in large portions of China, India, Iran, Mexico, the Middle East, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.  Many major rivers—including the Colorado, Ganges, Indus, Rio Grande, and Yellow—now run dry for portions of the year.
• USA/Mexico:
• The Ogallala aquifer runs beneath 580,000km2 of the Great Plains, feeding 7Mha of irrigated land (America's bread basket) through 74,000 wells, is drawn down by 17km3/year, dropping its water table by almost 1m/year in 1995, and threatening half a million farmers. In places its water table dropped from -230 to -450m! Already over 60% of its volume has disappeared.
• The Rio Grande has become one of the most polluted waterways, containing untreated sewage, pesticides and industrial wastes. Water-related problems have been identified as the primary health concern of people on both sides of the border with Mexico. As it enters Mexico, its salinity has risen to 1500 ppm (the sea is 35000 ppm), totally unsuitable for any use at all.
• The southern states California, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nevada are running out of water, despite careful use of it. Very little water is left for the environment.
• Owens Lake in California, dried up and polluted with salt and biocides, is blowing its saline dust around, polluting the air people breathe. The waters of the Owens Valley had been drained nearly a century earlier, to water Los Angeles and surrounding farmland.
• The Central Valley of California has subsided 10m in 50 years.
• Mexico City has dropped unevenly 7-15m in some places because of overpumping its aquifers, damaging its sewers and infrastructure.
• Europe:
• Middle-East: The level of the Dead Sea has plummeted more than 10m over the last 100 years. The river Jordan has been reduced to little more than a drainage ditch. The Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) is shrinking and threatening to turn saline, being almost undrinkable already. In Gaza overpumping of aquifers is drawing seawater in, rendering them unsuitable. Israel overexploits its aquifers by 15% a year. One quarter of its water comes from the politically disputed West Bank. Most countries near the Arabian Peninsula are fully using all available ground and surface water. Other countries will reach that point in a decade.
• Russia: the water level in the once pristine Lake Baikal, the deepest fresh water lake in the world, is sinking steadily while also its quality deteriorates. The Aral Sea has become the world's greatest man-caused catastrophe by diverting its waters for irrigation since 1956. By 1960, the lake began to shrink by some 50 km3 per year. By 1982, commercial fishing had stopped. With over 28,000 km2 of dried bottom, it became a lifeless stew of salt, pesticide residues and toxic chemicals.
• England: since 1990 the water tables began dropping.
• Africa: the Sahara desert is expanding. Lake Chad is shrinking at nearly 100m a year. Water supplies in the Nile are in peril. The Nubian Aquifer in the Kufra basin has 40 billion m3 water.
• The Nile, largest river in the world, runs through 7 countries and its waters are already fully utilised. The Aswan Dam creating Lake Nasser, has caused major ecological damage downstream, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile valley soils are salinising, the Nile Delta is eroding. The amount of nutrients discharged in the Mediterranean Sea has been reduced considerably, resulting in the collapse of the sardine and shrimp fisheries. Through lack of fresh water, the sea is becoming saltier too, resulting in major ecological change. Improved agriculture with artificial fertilisers has allowed the Egyptian population to double in less than 30 years. Major outbreaks of diseases accompany the disaster.
• Libya's Great Man-Made River transports water from the Nubian sandstone aquifer. A network of thousands of kilometres of pipes pumps water from hundreds of wells, transporting 350 + 700 + 560 + 350 = 2000 Mm3/yr, costing US$34 billion, while delivering water at the cost of 0.25-0.30 US$ per m3. It is rapidly depleting huge, ancient aquifers.
• Asia: Today Asia has approximately 60% of the world's people but only 36% of the world's renewable freshwater.
• India: in Bangladesh the water table is dropping by more than 1m every year.
• China: in millions of ha of northern China, the water table is dropping by 1m a year. Whereas the USA depends for 17% on irrigated agriculture, China depends for 70% on it. China's population grew from 0.5 to 1.2 billion in 1950. China is running out of water where it is needed most: 3/4 of the water is in the south, whereas 3/4 of the farming is in the north. 80% of the rivers contain water unfit for human consumption. Rains fall unpredictably from year to year.
• Almost half the number of cities (300) have run short of water; some 100 seriously.
• In 1996 the largest river, the Yellow River, was dry for one third of the year. In 1997 it failed to reach the sea for 2/3 of the year.
• Industry is able to pay more for scarce water than agriculture.
• drinking water:  More than 3 million people—most of them children—die each year from diarrhea and other illnesses caused by contaminated water. Between 1990 and 2000, an additional 816 million people acquired access to safe drinking water.
• Saudi Arabia desalinates 2.5 million m3 a day! Its aquifers are being overpumped by 5 billion m3 a year, running out in 50 years!
• dams: By 1980 there were over 36,000 large dams in the world. Dams prevent flooding, buffer rains, provide drinking water and allow irrigated intensive agriculture to flourish. But dams affect the ecology of rivers and the hydrology of the land. As the dam lakes are filled with silt, they hold less and less water, while depriving downstream floodlands from fertile mud deposits. Dams in dry countries produce lakes which evaporate with as much as 2m each year, causing substantial water losses (5-20% of a river's water, depending on the number of dams). Since 1950, the number of large dams (those at least 15 meters high) has climbed from 5,000 to 45,000—an average of two new large dams a day for the last half century.
• Egypt: the Aswan High Dam has become an unmitigated disaster. Silt from the Nile river can't pass through, resulting in collapse of down-stream fisheries, erosion of its delta's shore line, and salinisation and degradation of soils. Its irrigation channels have led to an epidemic of the bilharzia disease.
• India: between 1955 and 1985, 13 million ha (the size of Greece) had to be withdrawn from cultivation due to salinisation.
• industrial water: industry is able to pay more for water because it produces more valuable goods than farming. Likewise, tourism is able to pay more, for filling their swimming pools and watering their golf courses. Water is taken from agriculture and sold to industry. Farms dry up. Food becomes scarce and needs to be imported.
• exploitation:
• forestry: During the 1990s, the loss of natural forests was 16.1 million hectares per year, of which 15.2 million occurred in the tropics. The countries with the highest net loss of forest area between 1990 and 2000 were Argentina, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Myanmar, Mexico, Nigeria, the Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Outside tropical countries, 0.9 million hectares of natural forest were lost per year. Exotic  forest plantations increasing at 3.6 million hectares annually. Cutting the forests changes the water cycle, resulting in droughts, which cause forest fires, and so on.
• unsustainable hunting: About 15 primate species are believed to be threatened by the commercial bushmeat trade. The number of chimpanzees in Africa is believed to have declined by 85 percent during the 20th century. Other species threatened by the bushmeat trade include the forest elephant, the water chevrotain (a small hornless deer), six duiker species (ducklike), the leopard and the golden cat.
• farming: fertilisers, erosion,
• intensive farming: hog, poultry and dairy cause nutrient runoff, resulting in river, lake and coastal plankton blooms.
• agrichemicals: the use of agricultural biocides has resulted in the loss of insects and other organisms, while severely disrupting the natural balance.
• illegal crops: cocaine, marijuana. Forests are cleared and the soil is farmed exploitatively for large profits. Soil loss and erosion. South Americas: Andes mounains, Colombia (Cocaine). Papua New Guinea (marijuana).
• aquaculture: freshwater aquaculture in fish ponds has proved successful, while providing food to many, but mariculture at the margins of the sea has had mixed successes. The shrimp cultivation has resulted in large scale destruction of coastal mangrove forests. After a few years of operation, the environment became poisoned by the amounts of artificial food used, and the fishery was abandoned.
• freshwater fishing:
• Chinook salmon: declined by 99% since 1969. Others; steelhead: over 50% of all salmon species under severe threat.
• aquarium trade: colourful species are being harvested from tropical rivers, threatening their existence. Amazon river.
• competition for food:
• soil erosion and loss: due to deforestation and subsequent use for cropping and ranging, particularly in areas with either very low or very high rainfall, soil is lost to deterioration or erosion. Total amount of arable land is about 3% of the Earth's surface. People induce 60-80% of all soil erosion. Eroded soil often takes centuries to find its way to the sea. Soil compaction increases as farm machinery becomes heavier. 2 billion ha now degraded, about a quarter of all cultivated land. UNFAO estimates that erosion alone destroys 0.3-0.5% of the world's cropland every year. (Population grows at 2.2%). Overgrazing is the most pervasive cause of soil degradation, affecting 679 million hectares (35 percent of all degraded land)
• China: in 2001 the largest dust storms ever, reached the USA. It signals a rapid deterioration in the quality of China's rangelands and croplands. In 1994 a law required the government to develop as much new land as was taken by industry. Numbers of cattle and sheep have increased to sustainable levels. Each year 2330 km2 is turning into desert. In 1978 erosion had forced the abandonment of 31% of all arable land.
• Australia: overgrazing caused up to 80% of land degradation.
• drought and desertification: More than 100 countries in all climatic regions on all continents are seriously affected by desertification, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.
• USA: Several parts of the nation, from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast, are suffering from severe, ongoing droughts.
• habitat loss:
• forest: Since 1700, nearly 20 percent of the world's forests and woodlands have disappeared. Large areas of forest are burned during war, in order to flush out guerilla fighters. Chemical defoliants like Agent Orange caused permanent damage to forests in Vietnam. Forests were cleared to build wooden war ships and merchant ships.
• scrubland:
• grassland:
• wetland:
• Florida lost over 3.5 million ha.
• By 1970, the USA had lost roughly 50% of its original coastal wetlands.
• Thailand has lost more than 50% of its mangroves (shrimp mariculture).
• river/lake:
• beach/dune:
• Maryland lost over 50% of dune habitat.
• USA barrier islands: 95% of natural dune habitat lost.
• disturbance: through mining and soil erosion, humans moved 42 billion ton of earth, compared to volcanoes above and under water 44 billion. By 1980, mining moved more rock than natural erosion worldwide.
• damming rivers: most rivers in the world have been dammed several times, disrupting their normal flow and wildlife.
• development: development for housing is particularly destructive along the coast, where dunes and wetlands have all but disappeared.
• disappearing wetlands: wetlands are easy targets for land reclamation. Most wetland habitat has disappeared worldwide.
• roading: roading causes a permanent disruption due to the policy of gradual improvement. Road sides are continually scraped to widen roads, to clear up slips, and so on. In the process, they contribute enormously to the amount of silt reaching rivers and the sea.
• mining: mining creates a profound disturbance to the soil and subsoil. It causes mud to run off into rivers. Minerals, once safely locked underground, now become exposed and poison the environment.
• species diversity:  Extinctions happen about 10,000 times faster than natural replacement by evolution. Natural species represent a living library of options for adapting to local and global environmental changes, on which future generations depend. Humans have already destroyed one quarter of all bird species in the past 2000 years. Extinction now proceeds at the rate of 1,000 and expected to rise to10,000 species per year, or 3-30 per day! Most will be in insects because they comprise 98% of all species. Normal extinction rate is 1 out of 5000 mammals every 200 years, but since 1600, at least 484 animals and 654 plants have gone extinct, most on islands and in lakes. Mammals die out 40x faster, birds 1000x than normal. 1% of all birds and mammals went extinct in the 20th century. Many experts think that 30-50% of all species will go extinct in the 21st century, based on calculations of habitat loss.

(See McNeill 'Something new under the sun')
• loss of endemic species: endemic species are severly threatened by habitat loss, predation by introduced predators, and extraction. (See biodiversity)
• introduced exotic species: wasps, rats, mice, cats, dogs, stoats, goats, pigs, kudzu vine, grasses, weeds, pine trees,
• zebra mussel: Great Lakes USA/Canada, catching a ride in ballast water from the Black Sea. These mussels have successfully smothered all habitats, causing severe hindrance to water inlets and power stations, while disrupting the natural balance.
• USA: in 500 years, more than 30,000 foreign species have been introduced, ranging from valuable crops to harmful pathogens. The impact of invading species has been estimated at US$ 138 billion/yr. The Kudzu vine is spreading rampantly in southren US. Fire ants have invaded agricultural land, resulting in loss of productivity and native species.
• Africa: the introduced Nile Perch into Lake Victoria has extinguished almost all native fish species there (over 200), resulting also in loss of production.
• Islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans: have lost as many as one quarter of the world's bird species through predation by rats, stoats, pigs and dogs.
• inbreeding: the loss of sufficient habitat is causing populations to lose genetic diversity. All large carnivores (tiger, lion, etc) and large herbivores (rhinos, etc) now suffer from a substantial degree of inbreeding, eventually leading to complete extinction.
• chemical pollution: chemical wastes from industry have been dumped in hundreds of thousands of sites, often illegally. The cleanup effort is going much more slowly than anticipated. Chemicals disposed of in sewage systems, poisons sewage and sludge treatment.
• energy: the burning of fossil fuels causes major pollution to the atmosphere, causing acidified lakes and dying forests (waldsterben). Nuclear energy generation has other problems. Acidified lakes surprisingly, look crystal clear and healthy, supporting green carpets of algae but the cycle of decomposition, which provides nutrients for other species, has slowed down. Fish can no longer live there, poisoned by aluminium compounds generated from the soils by acids. Many lakes have lost their ability to neutralise acids naturally.
• transport: rubber, mineral oil and heavy metals are spread all around, washing from the road into rivers and then to the sea.
• mining: By 1980 about 10% of Japanese rice paddies had become unsuitable for human production due to Cadmium poisoning of the soil. Polish Silesia showed unhealthy concentrations of cadmium, mercury, lead and zinc. Canada Ontario: nickel and copper mining killed almost all vegetation down-wind. Lead persists for 300 years in soil.
• industry: PCB, CFC, PAH,
• agriculture: DDT,
• dumping/ incineration of hazardous wastes: USA chemical companies and the military dumped 80-85% of their wastes into nearby pits, ponds and rivers, resulting in cancers and other diseases (Love Canal). 50,000 toxic waste dumps in America.
• toxic trade: poor countries are paid to take the toxic wastes of rich countries, much of the trade is illegal.
• pharmaceutical: thalidomide,
• nutrient discharge:
• harmful algal blooms (HABs): toxic or harmful blooms are increasing in frequence and severity. Many bloom species produce virulent toxins that accumulate or kill outright. Pfiesteria piscicida kills fish. (N Carolina, Maryland, Virginia); causes memory loss.
• pathogen discharge:
• debris pollution:
• nuclear wastes:
• sound pollution:
• light pollution: in many places the night has become so light (due to the light from cities and roads) that it upsets the nocturnal animals. Daytime predators are now able to hunt by night.
• transport:
• road kill: the road has become a major sink for wildlife.
• introduced species: see above.
• disease: diseases are spread by the transport of livestock across the country.
• habitat fragmentation: roads cut through habitats, carving them up into smaller fragments, with insufficient interaction between them. Roads introduce boundary effects, thereby reducing the effective sizes of the fragmented habitats.
• long-term unspecific decline: the cause of decline is unknown. New diseases are emerging, caused by pathogens that may have been harmless in their original setting, but turned nasty when released among previously unexposed hosts. All over the planet, lethal infections are killing off populations of creatures ranging from abalone to kangaroos, from coral to honeybees, and from pilchards to flamingoes.
• humans: see effects on humans above.
• mammals: Rinderpest, a virus brought to Kenya with imported cattle in 1887, killed three-quarters of the native antelope, kudu, wildebeest and other ungulates in southern Africa within ten years. When distemper virus was brought to the North Sea in 1988 by hungry harp seals-driven from the Atlantic by overfishing-it killed three-quarters of the local harbour seals.
• birds: Griffon Vultures (USA). After West Nile virus arrived in New York from Israel last September, the virus also killed ten thousand crows in New York City alone. Migrating birds might now have spread the virus across North America (New Scientist, 8 July, p 4).
• reptiles and amphibians: a fungal disease is killing off amphibians worldwide. The world’s amphibian population is undergoing a die-off of unprecedented proportions, most ikely as a result of a combination of human-caused environmental problems. According to researchers at the World Conservation Union, almost a third of the 5,743 known species of frogs, toads, newts and salamanders on Earth are facing extinction within the next few years.
• diseases: are spreading and increasing in number. Sudden mass mortalities.
• rising sea livels, drowning land: Scientists predict a sea level rise of 1m by the end of the 21st century (1995 estimat), and their estimates have gone up to 4m (2001 estimate). It would drown much productive land, some cities and some enitre countries.
• Maldives: would disappear entirely.

sea, marine threats.

• politics/beliefs:
• Traditional Eastern Medicine: sea horses, pipefishes and sharks are threatened because of their supposed medical properties.
• Western health beliefs: sharks and green-lipped mussels are used to make extracts which are supposed to ward off cancer.
• atmospheric:
• global climate change: the conversion of (cool by day) forests into (warm by day) agricultural land and urbanisation, warms (by day) the atmosphere and causes droughts. Emissions of hothouse gases blanket the atmosphere, causing it to warm up.
• rising sea level: due to the expansion of the water column and the melting of polar and mountain ice caps.
• sinking atolls: atolls were formed by living coral, swept together by storm waves. As a result, they rise just above sea level. As the sea level rises, so do the corals, but can they keep up, while producing enough debris to raise the atolls? Scientists don't believe they can.
• loss of beaches, mangroves and saltmarshes: as the sea level rises, beaches move further inland, as do salt marshes and mangroves. But the land is occupied by people, and there is no room to move. Many will disappear.
• warming seas: seas have an enormous inertia to warming, and heat moves downward only reluctantly. As a consequence, surface waters will warm up much sooner than the deep sea.
• coral reef bleaching: warm water (combined with other stresses) is blamed for coral bleaching and consequential death of corals. As seas warm further, serious disturbance of coral reefs may result, resulting in major ecosystem changes.
• melting tundras: as the permanently frozen soils of the tundras warm up, they start decomposing and could release vast quantities of nutrients and CO2.
• nutrient rain: see nutrient discharge.
• ozone depletion: an increase of the level of ultraviolet radiation could affect the plankton ecosystems close to the ocean surface. One of the main plankton upwellings is along Antarctica, precisely where the ozone hole develops.
• (over) exploitation: The seas have suffered major damage from overfishing, resulting in the collapse of nearly alll major finfisheries. It also caused disruption of social structure among mammal species.
• whaling/sealing: although whaling is by no means as intensive as it once was, and all the great whales enjoy protection, the large species, already hunted to below survival levels, are not recovering. The small minke whale has taken over, being more than eight times more numerous than a century ago.
• Caribbean monk seal: hunted to extinction. Also Steller's sea cow and great Auk
• Hawaiian monk seal:
• elephant seal:
• Hookers sea lion;
• sea otter:
• fishing: At least 80% of commercially important marine species live within 300km off the coast. The USA EEZ contains 20% of the world's fisheries resources! Nearly 70% of fish species are over-fished, fully exploited or depleted. Global catch is being sustained only by increased fishing at lower trophic levels, and a higher subsidy from fossil energy.
• pelagic finfish:
• Peru anchovy fishery lost 7.5 Mt (drop from 9.5 to 1.5 megaton) or 80% of its catch potential due to overfishing. FAO estimated sustainable level at 9.5Mt.
• Driftnet fishing: has been halted in the South Pacific, but is rife in the North Pacific and Atlantic. 'Walls of death' of hundreds of miles catch anything large enough to be ensnared. Designed to catch tuna, they also catch dolphins.
• San Francisco sardine fishery collapsed in 1947
• coastal finfish:
• Canada's West Coast Coho salmon fishery in the Columbia River collapsed by 90% not only because of overfishing, but also because of pollution and habitat destruction (dams). It is now completely protected. Salmon fish farmers, fighting to save their fish from fatal algal blooms, have screened their pens, and pump water from the deep into them. Halibut have disappeared from southern waters. Stocks of lingcod and red snapper have crashed too. Sea urchin harvest declined 90%. Overall fisheries in the Strait of Georgia have declined 50%. Fletcher Challenge's Crofton pulp mill has pollluted a large sea area with dioxins, although closed for 20 years. Seafood, particularly crabs, caught there is poisonous to humans. Abalone stocks are endangered and closed to fishing. The ground fishery on Georges Bank has collapsed and 30% has been closed to let stocks recover.
• USA: Gulf of Maine fishery collapse. Stocks of Pacific ocean perch (Sebastes alutus) have not recovered from 90% decline in the 1960s. Bocacio (Sebastes oaucispinis) are now regarded as critically endangered. Many species of rockfish have been fished to critical levels.
• bottom finfish:
• coral reef fish: nassau groper, jewfish in Carribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic virtually disappeared.
• shellfish:
• oyster: in Chesapeake Bay USA, declined by 95%.
• white abalone: The California abalone fishery (5 species) has collapsed, and the red urchin fishery has become over exploited.
• giant clams (Tridacna gigas): fished to near extinction on most coral reefs: Fiji, Guam, New Caledonia, Northern Marianas and more. It is now a protected species, but protection is nearly impossible to enforce.
• other:
• Florida manatee:
• turtles: return to shore to lay their eggs. Most turtles under threat.
• by-catch/ incidental catch: unwanted catches affect young fish of commercial species and many other species. Dolphins (everywhere), seals, sea lions, small-toothed sawfish (USA), sharks. Entanglement in fishing nets (set nets, pelagic and bottom-set) and longlines. Old fish species are caught at the same rate as target fish, which affects their populations severely. 50-300% of the trawl catch is bycatch.
• ghost-fishing: lost fishing nets, pots and baited lines keep fishing, often for many years, catching mainly old animals, a short-circuit of the food chain.
• shrimping: shrimp are caught by shallow water trawling with fine-meshed nets. All species are caught. Only fast fish escape. A large part (200-400%) is bycatch. Coastal benthos is destroyed.
• aquarium trade: small fish are caught on reefs, with cyanide. The aquarium trade threatens many species, including lower animals like shells, worms and corals.
• marine farming/ mariculture: the sea is used for its water quality, while food is supplied in unnatural quantities. As a result, the seabottom becomes covered in faecal pellets and food remains, threatening the fish stock with disease. Shrimp farming in the tropics has suffered a serious decline because of this. Salmon farms much less so. The farming of oysters, mussels and scallops has met with more success. These are not fed artificially, but filter the plankton from the water. However, they produce faecal pellets and pseudofaeces (the discarded sediment) which can cause problems.
• destructive fishing: in many places, particularly in poor nations, destructive fishing is widely used. Note in this context that many forms of trawling are also destructive: shrimping, scalloping, deep sea trawls, etc.
• blast fishing: using commercial, military or home made explosives. Significant problem to coral reefs in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines.
• poison fishing: fish for the aquarium trade are teased out of their holes and shelters by means of poison. It causes death to sensitive species, and produces a high degree of unwanted 'by-catch'.
• mining: mining the seabed for minerals destroys benthic communities. In the course of mining, many spills occur at various times of the planned process. Unplanned spills occur too.
• competition for food: as people catch more and more effectively, stocks become depleted and other organisms who are not as efficient as people, hunger and die.
• Dolphins stressed: dolphins and toothed whales worldwide are under stress from having to work longer hours and play less.
• soil erosion: the mud from soil erosion is one of the largest threats to the marine environment, in places far exceeding that of exploitation. Often exploitation is blamed for a fish stock collapse, where spoiled water was responsible for spawning, breeding and recruitment failures.
• sediment: sediment smothers water-breathing and filter-feeding organisms. Sediment in the water causes loss of light, so that algae can no longer live at depth. Sediment clogs the gills of water-breathing animals, including phyto and zoo plankton. Fish larvae are sensitive to the quality of the water.
• loss of coral reefs: Most coastal reefs have degraded severely due to run-off from the land. Of a total of 600,000km2 of coral reef, about 10% have been eroded beyond recovery.
• Great Barrier Reef: only recently have scientists acknowledged that the entire barrier reef is under severe threat from the rivers nearby. Between the reef and the mainland (Australia), a sheltered 'lagoon' exists, where deposited mud remains forever. Recently, the rains here have become many times more severe, and with it the mud from rivers. Sediment plumes fan out over the entire reef after a large storm, changing the marine ecosystems, while soiling the bottom. Due to the sheltering nature of reefs, sediments are not easily stirred by waves and washed away by currents. The GBR has lost 60% of all life.
• coastal habitats: mud from rivers stays suspended due to the action of waves, and once settled on the bottom, is suspended again with each period of swell. It causes the loss of algae (due to shading) and filter feeders such as sponges and seasquirts, due to clogging of their pores and gills. Combined with fine algae, mud tenaciously sticks to organisms and substrate, preventing larvae from settling, and killing a wide range of organisms.
• eroding beaches: 70% of the world's sandy beaches are eroding. Beach renourishment costs US$60 million per mile, needs to be redone every 50 years.
• nutrients: see below. As mud interacts with sea water and bottom organisms, it releases the nutrients that were attached to its clay bonds. When subsoil clays erode, the nutrients destined for future forests are lost, causing the release of high concentrations of nutrients.
• habitat loss:
• reclamation: the direct loss of marine habitat, usually in estuaries, by housing development, tourist facilities, causeways. The habitats most affected are saltmarsh and mangrove, and to some extent eelgrass.
• coastal development: port/ marina, dredging/dumping, tourism,
• marine farming: people want their marine farms close to home, and modify the seashore accordingly.
• mangroves:  are threatened for fire wood, being converted into shrimp farms, and infilled for housing and industry, airports, etc. Mangroves often provide the nursery grounds of young benthic and pelagic fish.
• seagrass meadows: are an important habitat and food source for many species.
• Johnson's sea grass: USA
• estuary: estuaries are productive places because of the nutrient runoff from the land, and the repeated inflow of fresh seawater. Inside estuaries the temperature rises by several degrees, which promotes productivity. Phytoplankton responds favourably to estuarine conditions.
• saltmarsh/mangrove: are often feeding grounds for the juveniles of marine species, which are sensitive to pollution.
• USA lost over 50% of original saltmarsh and mangroves.
• tourism:
• seabed/ trawling: trawling causes massive damage to the sea bed. In places, each part of the seabed is trawled 3-10 times a year. Where rocky outcrops are found, the seabed fauna is long-lived and very sensitive to disturbance (sponges, corals, hydroids, bryozoa). Such habitat is found around sea mounts, and where the bottom slopes steeply. As fish becomes harder to catch, trawling effort is going up.
• propeller scouring: the number of recreational motor boats has risen dramatically in the past 40 years. Many marine organisms living close to the surface are affected, particularly those which grow old, like whales. Dolphins are agile and able to dodge fast speed boats, but shags, penguins, stingrays, are often just too slow. In Florida, manatees are killed by propeller hits.
• disruption of family- and social structure: marine creatures live in social structures, as do land animals. The way we fish creates havoc to such structures. Many marine fish mate up for life. The loss of one amounts effectively to the loss of two, when it comes to reproduction. It particularly affects old fish, which are the most prolific and effective spawners.
• species diversity: little is known about biodiversity in the seas.
• loss of endemic species: little is known.
• introduced exotic species: exotic species can travel on the hulls of ships or inside their ballast water. Those that were successful, have created havoc in various places.
• chemical pollution: 10,000 of 65,000 synthetic chemicals are used regularly. Many accumulate in tissues of plants and animals. Some can cause cancer or disrupt endocrine systems. Stunted growth, missing spiness, scale disorientation, jaw deformities, disrupted immune systems, recruitment failure, chromosome abnormalities. Contaminants concentrate (up to 1000 times) in the sea surface layer, where fish larvae also concentrate (foodchain pollution, bioaccumulation).
• energy:
• oil: from ships, transport, pipelines, storage tanks. Oil floats on the surface, where it does most harm. As water moves into and out of estuaries, and up and down with the tides, it leaves an oil slick behind. In this manner, oil can soil an unexpectedly large area. Species living within its reach are all very sensitive.
• smoke: CO2, contaminants, nutrients. See nutrient discharge.
• 40% of Europe's coastal pollution comes from the air.
• transport: cars leave rubber, oil and lead behind on roads and their margins. Rains wash these into the sea.
• industry: PCB, DDT
• waste water:
• contamination of sediment: sediments attract and bind pollutants such as heavy metals.
• smoke:
• agriculture: USA 135,000 tonnes pesticides applied annually, which reaches waterways.
• incineration: under high temperatures, dioxin forms from plastics like PVC. It is  a highly potent poison, which affects animal reproduction and eggs in minute concentrations.
• blackfooted albatros on Midway Atoll USA,
• nutrient discharge: vastly more nutrients reach the sea today than a century ago, from agricultural runoff, industry, refineries and the burning of fossil fuels in energy generation and transport. They reach the sea by river or through the atmosphere. In the sea, the nutrients feed the plankton which blooms excessively, particularly in coastal seas.
• harmful algal blooms (HAB): loss of light, suffocation, toxicity. They are increasing in frequence and severity. Many bloom species produce virulent toxins that accumulate or kill outright.
• Amnesiac Shellfish Poisoning (ASP): Pfiesteria piscicida kills fish. (N Carolina, Maryland, Virginia); causes memory loss in people.
• Paralytic Shelfish Poisoning (PSP): domoic acid poisoned many people in Canada and west coast USA 1987, 1991. Accumulates in various shellfish and crustaceans: razor shells, Dungeness crabs, mussels (NZ), oysters,
• Diurethic Shellfish Poisoning (DSP):
• Scombrotoxins:
• nuisance plankton blooms: not of direct consequece to people. Water may become discoloured or smelly. Beaches are closed.
• Florida: lost over 2200 ha of turtle grass beds.
• poisonous plankton blooms, Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB) :
• monk seals: Hawaii,
• menhaden: ulcerative mycosis
• abalone: withering syndrome, California
• Bluff oysters, mussel culture in New Zealand severely threatened.
• Pfiesteria piscida, cell from hell: predator microbe has 24 life stages, from green plant to predator. Dangerous to humans too: loss of consciousness, memory loss, fatigue, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle contractions, respiratory distress.
• Florida: In 1994 130 manatees died. In 1995 more than 300 endangered manatees killed by a red tide of dinoflagellates. 5% of Florida manatees 1996. In 1999 red tides struck again, causing fish kills and eye and respiratory irritations for beachgoers. In 2002 305 died. In 2003 120 died in 4 months, all from poisonous plankton blooms (PSP suspected).
• Texas: In 1997 a red tide killed millions of fish and sent tourists fleeing with hacking coughs.
• California: in 1998,  400 sea lions died in Monterrey Bay after eating anchovies that had consumed toxic algae.
• New Zealand: in 1993-1997 shellfish fisheries were closed repeatedly. Several people got ill from walking over a beach.
• eutrophication: nutrients create plankton blooms. When organisms die in deeper layers, all oxygen is used up in their decomposition. The environment becomes anoxic and toxic. Eutrophication events are becoming more frequent and more serious (Gulf of Mexico, north-east USA,)
• dead zones: oxygen-lacking and dead-looking zones in the Gulf of Mexico, lasting 8 months each year while covering a million ha (7700sqMi). Thought to be caused by nutrients from the Mississippi River.
• suffocating blooms: many diatoms form strings that can clog the gills of water breathing animals like clams, seasquirts and sponges. Such strings accumulate 'snot' from deceased jellyfish, and form oceanic 'snow', which clogs gills and breathing pores.
• shading blooms: dense plankton blooms which last long enough to reduce the penetration of sunlight, thereby killing submerged vegetation such as eelgrass and  macroalgae.
• pathogen discharge:
• sewage:
• USA: 7000 beach closures/year.
• debris pollution: plastics, fish nets, garbage dumping from ships,
• nuclear wastes:
• noise pollution: ships produce high levels of noise. It can affect the navigation systems of whales, and their ability to catch food. Cetaceans may become deaf over their life span, in the same way humans do. After a working life, most Western people are 15-20dB deaf (6-10 times impaired). Present-day city youths reach that level much earlier in life, due to their exposure to loud music.
• transport: transport of goods and people is intensifying
• ship strikes: large species hit by ships: whales, manatees.
• ballast water: to weigh down empty cargo ships, they take in ballast water. Larvae can the disperse far afield. Yearly about 43 million tonnes of ballast water is dumped into US coastal environments.
• 150 introduced (non-indigenous) species in San Francisco Bay. Chinese clam exceeds 10,000 animals per square metre.
• diseases:
• long-term unspecific decline: the causes are not known, but species are seen in continuous decline. Some decline precipitates suddenly. Reproduction failure is often not noticed until fish stocks suddenly decline from natural causes.
• mammals: Steller sea lion, northern fur seal, harbour seal,
• sea birds: kittiwakes, murres, red-throated loons, 8 species of sea ducklings, spectacled eiders. Numerous Alaskan wildlife species.
• coral reefs: declining and becoming sick everywhere. Florida Keys severely affected. Black band, white band, aspergillus disieases; coral bleaching.
• plankton: Off southern California the abundance of zooplankton -- the food source for most marine life -- has decreased 80% since 1951
• Black Sea: The Black Sea is spiralling into decline as a result of chronic overfishing, high levels of pollution and the devastating impacts of alien species. During the past 20  years around a third of fish stocks have been lost. The Black Sea is bordered by 6 nations, and 4 major rivers flow into it.
• diseases: are spreading and increasing in number. Sudden mass mortalities.
• fibropapilloma disease: turtles Florida & Hawaii, Caribbean. Also leatherback turtles in Florida.
• canine distemper type of virus: skin lesions in bottlenose dolphins US east coast 1987.
• cancer: in 18% of stranded sea lions off California.
• coral diseases:  elliptical star coral Florida Keys,
• eelgrass wasting disease: USA northesast coast, Australia,

soil: see land