By

Dr. Rajwant Kaur

 Environner - French word means “to surround”

 All the external circumstances or conditions (both living

and non-living), that surround an organism or a group
of organisms

 Two types:
◦ Natural environment e.g. forests, river, oceans, mountains etc.

◦ Man-made/Built environment e.g. city, buildings, road, etc.

 Non-living/abiotic
◦ Air
◦ Water
◦ Land

 Living/biotic
◦ all living organisms
 Non-living/abiotic
◦ Atmosphere
◦ Hydrosphere
◦ Lithosphere

 Living/biotic
◦ Biosphere (all living
organisms on earth)
Distribution of water on Earth
Earth’s Internal
Structure
Life exists on Earth because of the environmental conditions of
Earth.

 Water (the hydrosphere)- covers 3/4th of our planet surface,

highly essential for all living organisms

 Air (the atmosphere)- provide essential gases, Oxygen (O 2) and

Carbon dioxide (CO2) for living organisms

 Land (the lithosphere)- provide soil that develops from rocks

and provides support and minerals for plants.

 Sunlight- essential for photosynthesis, which supports almost all

life forms on Earth

 Temperature- is habitable
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvxftt
fjqpo
 Life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago.

 Human species appeared about 100,000 years ago in Africa.

 Overtime, human population has expanded throughout Earth and

is still increasing at very fast rate.

 For every smallest to largest product needed by humans for their

survival, growth, and technological progress, they depend on
natural environment.
 The increasing human population and its activities, are
consuming natural resources at very fast rates, and are
polluting the environment with wastes, thereby degrading
Earth environment.

 The degrading environment in turn threatens survival of

present and future human generations as well as of other
biological species on Earth.

 To sustain life on Earth, it is imperative to sustain its life-

support system i.e. its natural environment.
The ability to meet current human economic and social needs without
compromising the ability of the environment to support future generations
 5th June 1972- UN Conference on the Human Environment
(UNCHE), held in Stockholm, Sweden.
-World Environment Day declared
 1987- World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCED) released a ground breaking report, “Our Common
Future” (also called Brundtland report)
◦ Defined sustainable development as
◦ “Economic development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs”
 1992- UN Conference on Environment and
Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (also known
as Earth Summit).
 Representatives from most of the world’s countries met
and examined environmental problems that are
international in scope.
 They adopted Agenda 21, an action plan of sustainable
development, in which future economic development ,
particularly in developing countries will be done with
environmental protection, the 21st century.
 2000- representatives from 189 countries met at the UN

Millennium Summit and committed their countries to a

global partnership with goals known as Millennium

Development Goals

 2002- World Summit on Sustainable Development, WSSD or

Earth Summit 2002 took place in Johannesburg, South

Africa.

 2012- United Nations Conference on Sustainable

Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio 2012, or Earth

Summit 2012. It was a 20-year follow-up to the

1992 UNCED.
 2015- UN Sustainable Development Summit held in New
York

◦ Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable

Development

◦ Has 17 goals to be accomplished by 2030

 It has 3 dimensions that
are interconnected:
◦ Environmental
 Aims to resilience of Earth’s
environmental system
◦ Economics
 Aims to maximize income
while maintaining constant or
increasing stock of capital
◦ Social equality
 Aims to bring social equality in
distribution of environmental
benefits
 Inter-generational
 Intra-generational
 Is the interdisciplinary study of human relationships with its environment.
 Focuses on – Identifying, Understanding, and solving problems that we as a
society have generated.
 It involves –
◦ study of the natural environment and its processes
◦ Study of the environmental problems caused by human population like Global
warming, Climate Change, Acid rain, Ozone depletion etc.
◦ Finding solutions to the environmental problems

 For this, it combines information from various disciplines.

 Environmental Studies is a broader discipline.
 It includes not only the study of physical, chemical, and
biological aspects of the environment but also the social,
economic, cultural, and even political aspects of environment.
So, it does deals with science disciplines but at the level
understandable to even non-science background students.
 This course was initiated in curricula of the undergraduate
students in order to inculcated environmental concern amoung
the youth by Supreme Court in 1991, upon PIL filed by Mr.
M.C.Mehta, who is popularly known as “One Man Environ-Legal
Brigade”
 Physical Sciences: help to understand physico-chemical aspects of environment

 Life Sciences: Biological aspects

 Mathematics, statistics, and computer science: tools for ecomodelling, and

resource management

 Education: to spread public awareness

 Economics, sociology, and mass communication: to deal with socio-economic

aspects related to developmental activities.

 Engineering: to deal with control of environmental pollution, waste management,

waste treatment, understanding natural calamities etc.

 Political science & Environmental Laws: for judicious management and

protection of the environment, and to solve environmental issues at global level.

 So, knowledge from multiple disciplines helps to undertake three objectives of

environmental studies.
• The subject is receiving considerable attention across
the world.
• Increased pollution is creating tremendous demand
of pollution control technology/equipments e.g. fuel-
saving engines, pollution control equipments,
sewage, and industrial effluent – treatment plants,
bioremedial plants, renewable energy sources like
solar panels etc.
 It has many job opportunities like
◦ Research and development requiring environmental scientists, & environmental
engineers
◦ Green Advocacy,
◦ Green marketing.
◦ Environmental auditors and manager
◦ Green media
◦ Environmental consultancy
◦ Environmental Teachers
◦ Natural resource conervators
◦ Forest officers

➢ NGOs: An Environmentalist along with coworkers can register a society

and form a Non-governmental Organization to deal with various
environmental problems e.g. Chintan- an e-waste management NGO.
➢ Hence, the dimensions of environmental studies are increasing every
year as government and people are becoming more aware about
importance of environment.