Chapter 16:Sustainable Management of Natural Resources

Any object and things in the environment which can be used is called a natural resource

Types of Resources :
(a) Exhaustible :These occur over a very long geological time and present in limited quantity. Minerals and fossil fuels are examples of such resources like fossil fuels e.g. coal petroleum.
(b) Inexhaustible : The resources which present in unlimited quantity can be renewed or reproduced by physical, chemical or mechanical processes are known as inexhaustible For example, solar , air, water

Ganga Pollution : Multi Crore Project came in 1985 to improve the quality of Ganga
a survey was conducted and data was collected for total coliform (a group of bacteria found in human intestine) and acidic water between 1993-1994 which was as below
Dumping of untreated sewage, excreta, and chemicals from industries increases the toxicity of the water.

Reduce, recycle and reuse
the three R’s to save the environment:

Reduce This means that you use less.Eg. save electricity by switching off unnecessary lights and fans.save water by repairing leaky taps. not waste food.

Recycle This means that collect plastic, paper etc. items and recycle these materials to make required things instead of synthesising

Reuse Using things again instead of discarding them.

Sustainable development Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

WHY DO WE NEED TO MANAGE OUR RESOURCES?
i )the human population increasing at a tremendous rate due to improvement in health-care, the demand for all resources is increasing at an exponential rate.
ii)We must ensure use of our natural resources as it is not unlimited and management of such requires long-term planning in order to last generations.
iii)mining causes pollution because of the large amount of slag which is discarded for every tonne of metal extracted

FORESTS AND WILD LIFE
Forests are ‘biodiversity hot spots’. One measure of the biodiversity of an area is the number of species found there
ii)the loss of diversity may lead to a loss of ecological stability

Stakeholders
(i) the people who live in or around forests are dependent on forest produce for various aspects of their life
(ii) the Forest Department of the Government which owns the land and controls the resources from forests.
(iii) the industrialists – from those who use ‘tendu’ leaves to make bidis to the ones with paper mills – who use various forest produce, but are not dependent on the forests in any one area.
(iv) the wild life and nature enthusiasts who want to conserve nature in its pristine form

monocultures
A single type of crop in large field ex teak or eucalyptus
ii) This destroys a large amount of biodiversity in the area.
iii) the varied needs of the local people – leaves for fodder, herbs for medicines, fruits and nuts for food – can no longer be met from such forests

Industries influence
Industries would consider the forest as merely a source of raw material for its factories
ii)And huge interest-groups lobby the government for access to these raw materials at artificially low rates

• The conservationists were initially taken up with large animals like lions, tigers, elephants and rhinoceros
• The local people working traditionally for conservation of forests.
• the Bishnoi community in Rajasthan, for whom conservation of forest and wildlife has been a religious tenet.
• Amrita Devi Bishnoi, who protection of ‘khejri’ trees in Khejrali village near Jodhpur in Rajasthan.

Chipko movement

• The movement originated from an incident in a remote village called Reni in Garhwal, high-up in the Himalayas during the early 1970s.
• There was a dispute between the local villagers and a logging contractor who had been allowed to fell trees in a forest close to the village
• the women of the village reached the forest quickly and clasped the tree trunks thus preventing the workers from felling the trees.
• The Chipko movement quickly spread across communities and media, and forced the government
• Participation of the local people can indeed lead to the efficient management of forests.

WATER FOR ALL

• Water is a basic necessity for all terrestrial forms of life
• regions of water scarcity are closely correlated to the regions of acute poverty
• Despite nature’s monsoon bounty, failure to sustain water availability underground has resulted largely from the loss of vegetation cover, diversion for high water demanding crops, and pollution from industrial effluents and urban wastes.
• Irrigation methods like dams, tanks and canals have been used in various parts of India since ancient times
• Decrease in fresh usable water due to the destruction of water table and disruption in water cycle.
• These mega-projects led to the neglect of the local irrigation methods, and the government
• Regulations on usage of stored water and building tanks, dams, and canals
• the optimum cropping patterns based on the water availability were arrived at on the basis of decades/centuries of experiencety

Dame
Large dams can ensure the storage of adequate water not just for irrigation, but also for generating electricity
Canal systems leading from these dams can transfer large amounts of water great distances.

Criticisms about large dams address three problems in particular –
(i) Social problems because they displace large number of peasants and tribals without adequate compensation or rehabilitation,
(ii) Economic problems because they swallow up huge amounts of public money without the generation of proportionate benefits,
(iii) Environmental problems because they contribute enormously to deforestation and the loss of biological diversity.

Water Harvesting
Watershed management emphasises scientific soil and water conservation in order to increase the biomass production
ii)Watershed management not only increases the production and income of the watershed community
iii)mitigates droughts and floods and increases the life of the downstream dam and reservoirs
iv)Water harvesting is an age-old concept in India. Khadins, tanks and nadis in Rajasthan, bandharas and tals in Maharashtra, bundhis in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, ahars and pynes in Bihar, kulhs in Himachal Pradesh, ponds in the Kandi belt of Jammu region, and eris (tanks) in Tamil Nadu, surangams in Kerala, and kattas in Karnataka are some of the ancient water harvesting,

the water harvesting structures are mainly crescent shaped earthen embankments or low, straight concrete-andrubble “check dams” built across seasonally flooded gullies.
Monsoon rains fill ponds behind the structures. Only the largest structures hold water year round; most dry up six months or less after the monsoons.
Their main purpose, however, is not to hold surface water but to recharge the ground water beneath.
br>Their main purpose, however, is not to hold surface water but to recharge the ground water beneath.

COAL AND PETROLEUM

• Coal and petroleum are non-renewable natural resources.
• Coal and petroleum were formed from the degradation of bio-mass millions of years ago
• Their combustion of coal and petroleum pollutes our environment due to the production of oxides of carbon, sulfur and nitrogen. so, we need to use these resources judiciously
• When these are burnt, the products are carbon dioxide, water, oxides of nitrogen and oxides of sulphur
• And the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going to increase leading to intense global warming