Doing damage to the environment has consequences.

This is kind of like the mod pollution of realms where your actions to an environment have consequences.

I understand the mod itself is not very vanilla, so alternatively the consequences will be in 4 levels.

Level 0. Normal Minecraft.

Level 1. Any player built structure will have increased spawn rates of hostile mobs nearby. Can be reverted back to level 0

Level 2. All trees and plants being cut down or destroyed will decrease spawn rates of friendly mobs and plants take about 5 minutes longer to grow. Can be reverted back to level 1 and 0

Level 3. Complete loss of grass and dirt blocks on the surface is the most severe. You don't want to be in an area at level 3. The following effects are no more friendly mobs spawn, only hostile mobs spawn. Rain now causes poison damage to players, the player now gains a blindness effect when entering and finally plants no longer grow. Cant be reverted back any level.

You can revert back a level by reversing what you did to gain the level. Except level 3. Once an area reaches level 3. The damage is irreversible and cannot be reverted back a level.

Now onto implementing in game I'm not sure how exactly coding wise this is possible. However an idea could be is this affects individual chunks. It could also be tied to difficulty like it can only be activated if on say hard difficulty. So that its not forced onto players but still is an option for players.