UNIT-2

1.1.1. Renewable & Non-renewable Energy Sources

(EVS-38-1)
1) Renewable Sources of Energy: Some of the commonly used renewable sources of energy are as follows:
i) Solar Power: Solar power is referred to the energy obtained from sunlight which is inexhaustible in nature and is
free from pollution. Since solar energy emits no carbon and other such pollutants, therefore, it can be used as a
substitute for fossil fuels and other energy sources. This type of renewable sources of energy can also be used in
the electricity generation. Being one of the most cost-effective means of energy, solar power can be utilised for
development of third world economies.
ii) Wind Power: Another most common renewable source of energy available on earth is wind which is used to rotate
the turbines in the windmills to produce power. When wind energy is converted into more powerful energy which can
be utilised for doing some work is known as wind power.
iii) Geothermal Power: The word ‘Geothermal’ is derived from the Greek word ‘geo’ meaning ‘earth’ and
‘therme’ meaning ‘heat’. This type of renewable sources of energy is obtained from the heating sources present
inside the earth in form of hot springs, geysers, temperatures of hot molten magma, etc.
iv) Hydro Power: Hydraulic power or hydro power is obtained from the force produced from flowing water. This
type of renewable sources of energy is used for converting the kinetic energy obtained from flowing water into
electrical energy that is further used for other purposes. In past days when electricity was not developed, at that
time hydro power was used in irrigational activities, operating machineries like watermills, sawmills, textile
machines, domestic lifts, dock cranes, etc.
v) Tidal Power: Tidal power is obtained from the force generated by waves in the sea and ocean in form of high
tides or low tides. Tidal power is a form of Hydro power which is used to convert the force or energy generated
from tides for more useful purposes such as generation of electricity. It generates electricity with the process of
converting energy obtained from ebb, and flow of tides in the large water bodies.
vi) Biomass Power: The term biomass can be referred to all the materials that originate from the process of
photosynthesis in the form of as dead or dried plants, marine algae, biodegradable organic wastes from industrial
units (sugar mills and breweries), straw, corn cobs, husks, roots, sawdust, animal wastes, etc. Approximately half
of the world’s population uses biomass as one of the major sources of energy in doing the domestic activities.
Advantages of Renewable Sources of Energy
i) Renewable sources of energy are renewable and easily regenerated. This is unlike fossil fuels which are
perishable once used.
ii) Renewable source of energy such as solar produce clean energy that does not pollute the environment. This is
because no burning is required during usage of the energy.
iii) Maintenance cost needed to install and use the renewable energy is relatively cheap. Solar energy can be trapped
easily and used for domestic needs.
Disadvantages of Renewable Sources of Energy
i) Every set of energy has its own drawbacks once introduced to the ecology. Some of these limitations include.
ii) Difficult to produce the energy quantity that is equivalent to that produced by non-renewable fuels.
iii) Technology required to trap renewable energy is costly. Setting of dams requires high initial capital to construct
and maintain.
2) Non-Renewable Sources of Energy: Some of the examples of non-renewable energy resources are as follows:
i) Fossil Fuels: The process of formation of fossil fuels takes place when the dead and decayed plants, animal or
other organic matter buried inside the earth are compressed and heated for years. Burial of such organic matter
may be caused due to earthquake, landslides, tsunami, etc. There are mainly three types of fossil fuels which are
as follows:
a) Solid fossil fuel such as coal.
b) Liquid fossil fuel such as petroleum and diesel.
c) Gaseous fossil fuel such as LPG and CNG.
ii) Nuclear Energy: Nuclear power uses sustained nuclear fission process in order to produce heat that is used for
doing some work such as generating electricity. It is the alternative source of power which uses nuclear fission of
uranium to produce large amount of heat, which is further used to operate the turbines through which electricity
is produced. Such type of energy is used in Nuclear Ships and Submarines, and Nuclear Electric Plants for
heating and steaming purposes (under controlled use of nuclear energy). Various experimentations with fusion
 energy are being conducted by the scientists for future development; however, any fruitful results have not been
derived yet.
There have been many cases of nuclear accidents in past that have negatively influenced the environment and
human population at large. Some of the examples of such accidents are K-19 reactor accident (1961), the K-27
reactor accident (1968), the Three Mile Island accident (1979), K-431 reactor accident (1985), Chernobyl disaster
(1986), and Fukushima I nuclear accidents (2011).
Advantages of Non-Renewable Sources of Energy
i) Some such as natural gas burns without any soot hence less environmental pollution.
ii) Most non-renewable sources of energy are easy to transport from one area to another.
iii) Cost of producing nonrenewable energy is low since they are naturally available. Furthermore they are cheap to
transform from one form of energy to another.
Disadvantages of Non-Renewable Sources of Energy
i) Produce harmful greenhouse gases which contribute global warming. Coal once burnt produces carbon dioxide
harmful to the environment.
ii) Once they are depleted they cannot be replaced making them expensive to obtain.

1.1.2. Growing Energy Needs

(EVS-33-2)
The need for energy is continuously increasing, and hence, it has become a matter of concern for the industrial players
and financial units that deal and control the amount of capital required for obtaining different sources of energy.
Reasons for Growing Energy Needs
1) Industrialisation: With increasing number of businesses and factories, the need for energy for operating such
businesses and factories has also increased. Industrial sectors are highly dependent on the use of electricity and fuels
(petroleum, oil, natural gas, coal, etc.) for their operation and functioning.
2) Increasing Wealth in Emerging Markets: With the rise financial standards of an economy, the need for energy
consumption also increases in a way that now more consumers demand for cars, refrigerators, air-conditioners, etc.
Such products consume high electrical energy for its operation.
3) Globalisation: With the advent of globalisation, newer and better quality products are available in the markets. This
has increased the worldwide demand for products and services that require large amount of energy. The international
expansion of businesses has provided an access the energy resources which were till now out of reach.
4) Increasing Population: One of the biggest reasons behind the growing needs of energy is the ever increasing
population which continuously increases the demand for energy such as fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural
gas), electricity, etc.

1.1.3. Biodiversity Patterns

(EVS-31-4)
The patterns of biodiversity and the main factors determining species richness has also increased with the need to
understand how biodiversity might change under different scenarios of global climate change, as well as to inform
conservation and sustainable resource use efforts.

Understanding species richness patterns represents one of the most fundamental problems in ecology. Most research in
this area has focused on spatial gradients of species richness, with a smaller area of emphasis dedicated to understanding
the temporal dynamics of richness. These Patterns are as follows:
1) Spatial Patterns: A major goal of ecology is explaining why some regions have more species than others. One
approach to this problem is spatial, which includes predicting and evaluating patterns of variation in species richness
among local communities distributed across a geographical region. Spatial patterns of richness are among the best-
known and most-studied patterns in ecology including the latitudinal gradient of species richness, the species–area
relationship, elevational richness gradients, the relationships between productivity or habitat heterogeneity and
richness, and the relationship between local species richness and that of the regional pool. Studying these patterns has
provided information about the maintenance of diversity at large spatial scales, the importance of immigration and
extinction in regulating richness and the role of the abiotic template and biotic interactions in niche partitioning and
species’ turnover.
2) Temporal Patterns: Temporal patterns of biodiversity are essential for forecasting future change in community
structure and ecosystem function. Studies of temporal variation in richness within a local community represent a
complementary approach for explaining geographical patterns of richness. While richness dynamics are a traditional
focus of palaeontology, the temporal patterns of richness on ecological time scales have received much less attention
than their spatial analogues. Four sources of data can be used for temporal inference: temporally replicated sampling,
 chronosequences, legacy or historical records and palaeobiological assemblages. Temporal data differ from spatial
data in at least three crucial characteristics.
i) First, temporal data are directional, which creates an asymmetry in the relationship among data points: the past
can influence the future, but not the reverse.
ii) Second, time is uni-dimensional, whereas space has three dimensions. In this respect, strictly temporal patterns
are simpler to analyse than spatial patterns.
iii) Third, temporal domains are often unbounded because, in principle, the beginning and end of a time series is
arbitrary. However, there are several potential ‘natural’ boundaries to time series, including colonization of new
space, adaptive radiations, the annihilation of a community (e.g. continental glaciation or mass extinction), sharp
transitions into alternative states and the present day.

1.1.4. Biodiversity Hotspots

(EVS-31-4)
A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region with a significant reservoir of biodiversity that is under threat from
humans. The hotspot concept targets region where the threat is greatest to the greatest number of species and allows
conservationists to focus cost-effective efforts there. Currently, 35 biodiversity hotspots have been identified, most of
which occur in tropical forests. They represent just 2.3% of Earth’s land surface, but between them they contain around
50% of the world’s endemic plant species and 42% of all terrestrial vertebrates. 5 Overall, Hotspots have lost around 86%
of their original habitat and additionally are considered to be significantly threatened by extinctions induced by climate
change.
1.1.4.1. Global Biodiversity Hotspots: World
1) Africa: A total of 8 Hotspots in African continent hold a diversity of plant and animal life, many of which are found
nowhere else on Earth.
2) Asia-Pacific: Composed of large land areas as well as islands dotting the Pacific seas, these 14 Hotspots represent
important biodiversity.
3) Europe and Central Asia: From the Mediterranean Basin to the Mountains of Central Asia, these four Hotspots are
unique in their diversity.
4) North and Central America: North and Central America play host to thousands of acres of important habitat.
5) South America: From Brazil’s Cerrado to the Tropical Andes, South America has some of the richest and most
diverse life on Earth.

Life on Earth faces a crisis of historical and planetary proportions. Unsustainable consumption in many northern
countries and crushing poverty in the tropics are destroying wild nature. Biodiversity is besieged. Extinction is the gravest
aspect of the biodiversity crisis: it is irreversible. While extinction is a natural process, human impacts have elevated the
rate of extinction by at least a thousand, possibly several thousand, times the natural rate. Mass extinctions of this
magnitude have only occurred five times in the history of our planet; the last brought the end of the dinosaur age. In a
world where conservation budgets are insufficient given the number of species threatened with extinction, identifying
conservation priorities is crucial. The biodiversity hotspots hold especially high numbers of endemic species, yet their
combined area of remaining habitat covers only 2.3% of the Earth’s land surface. Each hotspot faces extreme threats and
has already lost at least 70% of its original natural vegetation. Over 50% of the world’s plant species and 42% of all
terrestrial vertebrate species are endemic to the 35 biodiversity hotspots.

World’s 35 Biodiversity Hotspots

1) Africa:
i) Cape Floristic Region
ii) Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa
iii) Eastern Afromontane
iv) Guinean Forests of West Africa
v) Horn of Africa
vi) Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands
vii) Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany
viii) Succulent Karoo
2) Asia-Pacific:
i) East Melanesian Islands
ii) Himalaya
iii) Indo-Burma
iv) Japan
v) Mountains of Southwest China
vi) New Caledonia
 vii) New Zealand
viii) Philippines
ix) Polynesia-micronesia
x) Southwest Australia
xi) Forests of Eastern Australia (new)
xii) Sundaland
xiii) Wallacea
xiv) Western Ghats and Sri Lanka
3) Europe and Central Asia:
i) Caucasus
ii) Irano-Anatolian
iii) Mediterranean Basin
iv) Mountains of Central Asia
4) North and Central America:
i) California Floristic Province
ii) Caribbean Islands
iii) Madreoan Pine-Oak Woodlands
iv) Mesoamerica.
5) South America:
i) Atlantic Forest
ii) Cerrado
iii) Chilean Winter Rainfall-Valdivian Forests
iv) Tumbes-Choco-Magdalena
v) Tropical Andes.
1.1.4.2. Global Biodiversity Hotspots: Asia-Pacific
1) East Melanesian Islands: Once largely intact, the 1,600 East Melanesian Islands are now a hotspot due, sadly, to
accelerating levels of habitat loss.
2) Himalaya: The Himalaya Hotspot is home to the world’s highest mountains, including Mt. Everest.
3) Indo-Burma: Encompassing more than 2 million km² of tropical Asia, Indo-Burma is still revealing its biological
treasures.
4) Japan: The islands that make up the Japanese Archipelago stretch from the humid subtropics in the south to the
boreal zone in the north, resulting in a wide variety of climates and ecosystems.
5) Mountains of Southwest China: With dramatic variations in climate and topography, the Mountains of Southwest China
support a wide array of habitats including the most endemic-rich temperate flora in the world.
6) New Caledonia: An island the size of New Jersey in the South Pacific Ocean, New Caledonia is the home of no less
than five endemic plant families.
7) New Zealand: A mountainous archipelago once dominated by temperate rainforests, New Zealand harbors
extraordinary levels of endemic species.
8) Philippines: More than 7,100 islands fall within the borders of the Philippines hotspot, identified as one of the world’s
biologically richest countries.
9) Polynesia-Micronesia: Comprising 4,500 islands stretched across the southern Pacific Ocean, the Polynesia-
Micronesia hotspot is the epicenter of the current global extinction crisis.
10) Southwest Australia: The forest, woodlands, shrublands, and heath of Southwest Australia are characterized by high
endemism among plants and reptiles.
11) Forests of Eastern Australia: Forests of East Australia Hotspot consists of a discontinuous coastal stretch along the
Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales, extending inland and further west, although it includes the New
England Tablelands and the Great Dividing Range. This region contains more than 1500 endemic vascular plants.
12) Sundaland: The spectacular flora and fauna of the Sundaland Hotspot are succumbing to the explosive growth of
industrial forestry in these islands.
13) Wallacea: The flora and fauna of Wallacea are so varied that every island in this hotspot needs secure protected areas
to preserve the region’s biodiversity.
14) Western Ghats and Sri Lanka: Faced with tremendous population pressure, the forests of the Western Ghats and
Sri Lanka have been dramatically impacted by the demands for timber and agricultural land.
1.1.4.3. Biodiversity Hot-spots in India
Among the 35 hotspots of the worlds, four are located in India extending into neighbouring countries the Indo-Burma
region, the Eastern Himalayas, Western Ghats/Sri Lanka and the Sundalands. These areas are particularly rich in floral
wealth and endemism, not only in flowering plants, but also in reptiles, amphibians swallow tailed butterflies, and some
mammals.
1) The Western Ghats and Sri Lanka: The Western Ghats are a chain of hills that run along the western edge of
peninsular India. Their proximity to the ocean and through orographic effect, they receive high rainfall. These regions
have moist deciduous forest and rain forest. The region shows high species diversity as well as high levels of
endemism. Nearly 77% of the amphibians and 62% of the reptile species found here are found nowhere else.
The area is extraordinarily rich in biodiversity. Although the total area is less than 6 percent of the land area of India,
the Western Ghats contains more than 30 percent of all plant, fish, bird, and mammal species found in India. Like
other hotspots, the Western Ghats has a high proportion of endemic species. The region also has a spectacular
assemblage of large mammals and is home to several nationally significant wildlife sanctuaries, tiger reserves, and
national parks. The Western Ghats contains numerous medicinal plants and important genetic resources such as the
wild relatives of grains (rice, barley, Eleucine coracana), fruits (mango, garcinias, banana, jackfruit), and spices
(black pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg).

In addition to rich biodiversity, the Western Ghats is home to diverse social, religious, and linguistic groups. The high
cultural diversity of rituals, customs, and lifestyles has led to the establishment of several religious institutions that
strongly influence public opinion and the political decision-making process. Conservation challenges lie in engaging
these heterogeneous social groups and involving them in community efforts aimed at biodiversity conservation and
consolidation of fragmented habitats in the hotspot.

2) The Eastern Himalayas: The Northeast India, (22-30 degree N and 89-97 degree E) spread over 2,62,379 sq.km.,
represents the transition zone between the Indian, Indo-Malayan and Indo-Chinese bio-geographic regions and a
meeting place of the Himalayan Mountains and Peninsular India. The region is made up of eight states: Arunachal
Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura and is endowed with a wide range of
physiography and eco-climatic conditions.

The Eastern Himalayas region, with diverse climatic conditions and complex topography, has different types of
forest and vegetation. Broadly, vegetation types in the EH can be categorised into tropical, sub-tropical, warm
temperate, cool temperate, sub-alpine and alpine types. It has nearly 163 globally threatened species including
the One-horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), the Wild Asian Water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis (Arnee)) and
in all 45 mammals, 50 birds, 17 reptiles, 12 amphibians, 3 invertebrate and 36 plant species The Relict
Dragonfly (Epiophlebia laidlawi) is an endangered species found here with the only other species in the genus
being found in Japan. The region is also home to the Himalayan Newt (Tylototriton verrucosus), the only
salamander species found within Indian limits. There are an estimated 10,000 species of plants in the Himalayas,
of which one-third are endemic and found nowhere else in the world.

3) Indo-Burma: The Indo-Burma region encompasses several countries. It is spread out from Eastern Bangladesh to
Malaysia and includes North-Eastern India south of Brahmaputra river, Myanmar, the southern part of China’s
Yunnan province, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. The Indo-Burma region is
spread over 2 million sq. km of tropical Asia.

Much of Indo-Burma is characterised by distinct seasonal weather patterns. During the northern winter months,
dry, cool winds blow from the stable continental Asian high-pressure system, resulting in a dry period under
clear skies across much of the south, centre, and west of the hotspot (the dry, northeast monsoon). As the
continental system weakens in spring, the wind direction reverses and air masses forming the southwest
monsoon pick up moisture from the seas to the southwest and bring abundant rains as they rise over the hills and
mountains. A wide diversity of ecosystems is represented in this hotspot, including mixed wet evergreen, dry
evergreen, deciduous, and montane forests. In addition, a wide variety of distinctive localised vegetation
formations occur in Indo-Burma, including lowland floodplain swamps, mangroves, and seasonally inundated
grasslands.

4) Sundaland Hotspot: The Sundaland hotspot covers the western half of the Indo-Malayan archipelago, an arc of
some 17,000 equatorial islands, and is dominated by two of the largest islands in the world: Borneo (725,000 km²)
and Sumatra (427,300 km²). More than a million years ago, the islands of Sundaland were connected to mainland
Asia. As sea levels changed during the Pleistocene, this connection periodically disappeared, eventually leading to
the current isolation of the islands. The topography of the hotspot ranges from the hilly and mountainous regions of
Sumatra and Borneo, where Mt. Kinabalu rises to 4,101 m, to the fertile volcanic soils of Java and Bali, the former
dominated by 23 active volcanoes. Granite and limestone mountains rising to 2,189 m are the backbone of the Malay
Peninsula.

The spectacular flora and fauna of the Sundaland hotspot are succumbing to the explosive growth of industrial
forestry in these islands and to the international animal trade that claims tigers, monkeys, and turtle species for food
and medicine in other countries. Populations of the orangutan, found only in this hotspot, are in dramatic decline.
Some of the last refuges of two Southeast Asia rhino species are also found on the islands of Java and Sumatra. Like
 many tropical areas, the forests are being cleared for commercial uses. Rubber, oil palm, and pulp production are
three of the most detrimental forces facing biodiversity in the Sundaland Hotspot.

1.1.5. Ecosystem and Biodiversity Services

(EVS-31-4)
Ecosystem services are sets of environmental properties deriving from ecosystem structures and processes which are
arranged from an anthropocentric point of view. They describe those products and outcomes from complex ecological
interrelations which are useful and necessary for human well-being. Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain
from ecosystems, and thus they can be used to represent the environmental interrelations between the three sectors of
sustainability. From an economic viewpoint they can be understood as “flows of value to human societies as a result of
the state and quantity of the natural capital”.
According to Costanza et al., Ecosystem goods (such as food) and services (such as waste assimilation) represent the
benefits human populations derive, directly or indirectly, from ecosystem functions.
According to Boyd and Banzhaf, (Final) Ecosystem services are components of nature, directly enjoyed, consumed, or
used to yield human well-being.
According to Fisher and Turner, Ecosystem services are aspects of ecosystem utilised (actively or passively) to
produce human well-being.

Biodiversity includes diversity within and among species, ecosystems. Changes in biodiversity can influence supply of
ecosystem services. Biodiversity, as with ecosystem services, must be protected and sustainably managed.

Types of Ecosystem Services

As in all recent classifications, three groups of services are distinguished:
1) Regulating Services: These are the benefits people obtain due to the regulation of natural processes and the control
or modification of biotic and abiotic factors. Being hardly visible and comparably difficult to understand, these
services are not widely acknowledged by the society. This undervaluation displays an enormous error – as all
produced goods or enjoyed structures depend on the healthy coordination of ecological controls and feed backs, the
regulations in ecological systems are the very basic requirements for any ecosystem service. Therefore – in the
opposite with the public recognition – they have to be listed at first due to their enormous significance.
2) Provisioning Services: It comprises all material outputs from ecosystem processes that are used use for human
nutrition, processing and energy use. These products can be traded and consumed or used directly, thus they are the
desired ‘end-products’ of nature providing clearly visible benefits to society. Provisioning services can be divided
into the sub-categories of food, materials and energy.
3) Cultural Ecosystem Services: These are the intangible benefits people obtain from ecosystems in form of non-
material spiritual, religious, inspirational and educational experience. These services provide benefits for human
recreation and mental and physical health, experience by tourism, aesthetic appreciation and inspiration for culture,
art and design, spiritual experience and sense of place.

Policies for Sustainable Use of Ecosystem Services

As sustainable use of ecosystem services cannot be achieved in a day, various policies and activities will be required.
These can be classified into six categories, namely, institutions and governance, economics und incentives, social and
behavioural responses, technological responses, knowledge and cognitive responses, and the design of an effective
decision-making process. Generally, these will be separated into two approaches:
1) Economic Approach: Economic activities such as land development, resource extraction, and international trade will
degrade ecosystem services directly, and support for unsustainable economic activities including taxes and subsidies
will be indirect factors for ecosystem degradation. In order to halt the unsustainable use of ecosystem services, it will be
necessary to build economic structures in which sustainable use of ecosystem services will provide greater economic
efficiency than unsustainable use thereof. In doing so, changes in economic systems, including the creation of incentives
and the elimination of the subsidies encouraging ecosystem degradation, will be needed.
2) Social Approach: A social approach to the sustainable use of ecosystem services covers a wide range of issues from
enhancement of governance to improvement in communication and multi-stakeholder participation. Here, four issues
will be introduced, namely conclusion of multi-lateral environmental treaties, designation of protected areas,
community involvement, and utilisation of traditional knowledge.