Environment and sustainable development

The essentials

The environment is the total planetary inheritance and all resources: biotic factors (living beings) and abiotic factors (air, water, land). It performs four functions: it supplies resources (renewable and non-renewable), it assimilates waste, it sustains life by providing genetic and biodiversity, and it provides aesthetic services such as scenery.

The environment can perform these functions without interruption only as long as demand on it stays within its carrying capacity: resource extraction must stay below the rate of regeneration and waste generation must stay within the absorptive capacity. When these limits are crossed, we face an environmental crisis, as shown by pollution, global warming and ozone depletion.

State of India's environment

• India has rich natural resources: fertile soil, rivers, forests, minerals.
• Major threats: air pollution, water contamination, soil erosion, deforestation, loss of wildlife and land degradation. Pressure has risen from population, industrialisation and urbanisation.
• The Central Pollution Control Board (set up in 1974) monitors and controls pollution.

Sustainable development

• The Brundtland Commission (1987) defined it as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• Strategies: use of non-conventional energy (solar, wind, mini-hydel), LPG and gobar gas in rural areas in place of firewood and dung, CNG in urban public transport, traditional knowledge and practices, bio-composting, bio-pest control.
• Movements such as Chipko (Himalayas) and Appiko (Karnataka) show community efforts to protect forests.

Common mistakes

• Thinking renewable resources can never be exhausted; overuse beyond regeneration exhausts them too.