SOCIAL ISSUES

AND
THE ENVIRONMENT
 From Unsustainable to Sustainable
Development
• Human beings are both causative agents and
victims of the changes that environment goes
through.
• Economic development and the environment are
related.
• The imperative that humanity faces can be
formulated as: “without increased income and
economic development environmental protection
will fail; without environmental protection
economic development will be undermined.
 Sustainable Development
Definitions –

• Environmental care ‘married’ to development.

• Improving the quality of human life while living
within the carrying capacity of supporting
ecosystems.
• Development based on the principle of inter-
generational , inter species and inter group
equity.
• Development that meets the needs the present
without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.
• An environmental handrail to guide
development.
• A change in consumption patterns towards
more benign products, and a shift in investment
patterns towards augmenting environmental
integrity.
Sustainable development - Concept

As a concept, sustainable development

draws upon two intellectual traditions –
- limits nature presents to humans.
- the potential for human material
development.
World Conservation Strategy
• The maintenance of essential ecological
processes.
• The preservation of biodiversity.
• Sustainable use of species and
ecosystems.
Interpretation
• Some people see it as a quest for
harmony between humans and their
environment.
• Some fail to accept that in a finite world
there cannot be unlimited growth.
• Some feel there can be a shift to less
environmentally damaging improvements
in the quality of human life.
• Some hope that science and technology
will allow limits to be stretched.
Mainstream sustainable development
typically urges:
• The maintenance of ecological integrity.
• The integration of environmental care and
development.
• The adoption of an internationalist stance.
• The satisfaction of atleast basic needs for
all.
• Concern for inter-generational, inter-group
and inter-species equity.
• The adoption of long term views.
 A Model for integrating human needs,
ecosystem health and sustainable economic
growth
Urban Problems Related to Energy
• Energy is the key input in the economic
growth and there is a close link between
the availability of energy and the future
growth of nation.
• Power generation and energy
consumption are crucial to economic
development as the major sectors of
economy depend upon the availability of
energy resources.
The main issues regarding the energy
problems in urban areas are:
How to utilize the energy from non-
renewable sources at their maximum
efficiency?
• How to make use of renewable sources of
energy or the alternate energy sources?

The shift to alternate energy sources may be

gradual or it could be accelerated as a
result of concern over the potential
environmental affects of the fossil fuel
burning.
Energy Policy

ENERGY POLICY

FOSSIL FUELS ALTERNATE FUELS

Integrated Energy Management
• Energy supplies and demand are difficult
to predict as technical, economical,
political and social assumptions are
constantly changing.
• There are large variation annual and
regional variations in energy utilization.
Sustainable Energy
• It would provide reliable sources of energy
• It would not cause harm to our global,
regional or local environment.
• It would help ensure that the future
generations inherit a quality environment
and with a fair share of the earth’s
resources.
Water Conservation and Management

• Water is essential for life.

• Water conservation and watershed
management are more economical and
environmentally sound ways to store water
for future use and to prevent flood damage
than building huge dams and reservoirs.
Water Conservation
• Water conservation is the careful use and
protection of water resources and involves
both quantity and quality of water used.
• The objective of water conservation can
be achieved through concrete efforts on
the conservation and utilization of water on
sustainable basis with focus on holistic
planning and sustainable development of
sources of water.
Domestic Conservation
• Repair all leaks quickly.
• Turn off water when not absolutely
needed.
• Use conserving appliances, like low
volume shower heads, efficient
dishwashers and washing machines…
• In arid and semi-arid regions, replace lush
green lawns with decorative rock gardens.
• Use gray water from washing machines to
water vegetation.
• Water lawns and plants in early morning,
late afternoon or at night so as to reduce
evaporation.
• Use drip or sprinkle irrigation and place
water holing mulch around garden plants.
• In arid and semi-arid regions, plant
drought resistant vegetation that needs
less water.
Industrial Conservation
• Using dry cooling systems or cooling
towers that use less water.
• Reuse the cooling water for irrigation or
other purposes.
• Industries and manufacturing units should
curb water withdrawals, wherever possible
by increasing in-plant treatment and
recycling of water or by developing new
equipment and processes that require less
water.
Agricultural Conservation
• Use lined or covered canals that reduce
seepage and evaporation.
• Use improved irrigation techniques, such
as sprinklers or drip irrigation.
• Irrigate fields in the early morning or at
night when evaporation is minimal.
• Adopt better farming techniques, such as
minimum tillage, leaving crop residue on
fields and ground, cover drainage ways,
inter cropping etc.
• Integrate the use of total surface and
ground water so as to have a more
effective use of the total resources.
• In arid and semi-arid regions, encourage
development of crops that require less
water and are drought resistant.
Strategies to Support Water Conservation
• Rain water harvesting
– roof top rain water harvesting.
– revival of traditional water harvesting
structures.
– micro-Catchment water harvesting.
– macro-Catchment water harvesting.
– recharge structures for wells and bore wells.
• Sustainable water utilization
– minimize domestic water consumption.
– Recycle waste water.
– Improved irrigation methods.
• Encourage natural regeneration of
vegetation and supplementing with
artificial regeneration.
• Maintain and improve quality of water.
– collection and treatment of waste water
effluents.
– pollution check.
• Awareness building on water conservation
Rain Water Harvesting
Defined as a method for inducing, collecting,
storing and conserving local surface run-
off for latter use.
Three types of water harvesting is covered
by rain water harvesting:
– water collected from roof tops, courtyards and
similar compacted and treated surfaces is
used for domestic purposes or garden crops,
or for ground water recharge.
– Micro-catchment water harvesting is a method
of collecting surface runoff from a small
catchment area and storing it in the root zone
of an adjacent infiltration basin. The basin is
planted with trees, bushes or with annual
crops.
– Macro-catchment water harvesting also called
harvesting from external catchments, is case
where run-off from hill slope catchments is
conveyed to the cropping area located at hill
foot on flat terrain.
Rain Water Harvesting - Objectives
• To reduce run-off loss.
• To avoid flooding of roads.
• To meet the increasing demands of water.
• To raise the water table by recharging
ground water.
• To reduce ground water contamination.
• To supplement the ground water supplies
during lean seasons.
 Rain Water Harvesting – Methods
• By storing in tanks above or below ground.
• By constructing pits, dug wells, lagoons,
trenches or check dams or small rivulets.
• By recharging the ground water
Before adopting a rain water harvesting
system, the soil characteristics,
topography, rainfall pattern and climatic
conditions should be understood.
Traditional Rain Water Harvesting
• In foot hills water flowing from springs are
collected by embankment type water
storage.
• In Himalayan foot hills people use hollow
bamboos to transport the water of natural
springs.
• Rajasthan is known for its ‘tankas’
(underground tanks) and ‘khadins’
(embankments for harvesting rain water.
Modern Techniques of Rain Water
Harvesting
• In arid and semi-arid regions artificial water
recharging is done by constructing shallow
percolation tanks.
• Ground water flow can be intercepted by
building ground water dams for storing water
under ground. As compared to surface dams,
ground water dams have several advantages
like minimum evaporation loss, reduced chances
of contamination…
Water Shed Management
• The water shed is defined as the land area from
which water drains under gravity to a common
drainage channel.
• Water shed is a delineated area with well
defined topographic boundary and water outlet.
• In the water shed the hydrological conditions are
such that water becomes concentrated within a
particular location like a river or a reservoir, by
which the watershed is drained.
• The water shed comprises complex interactions
of soil, land form, vegetation, land use activities
and water.
• A watershed affects us as it is directly
involved in sustained food production,
water supply for irrigation, power
generation transportation as well as for
influencing sedimentation and erosion,
vegetation growth, floods and droughts.
• Thus, management of watersheds,
treating them as basic functional unit, is
extremely important and the first such
integrated watershed management was
adopted by in 1949 by the Damodar Valley
Corporation.
Watershed Degradation
• The watersheds are degraded due to
uncontrolled, unplanned and unscientific
land use activities.
• Overgrazing, deforestation, mining and
construction activities, industrialization,
shifting cultivation, natural and artificial
fires, soil erosion and ignorance of local
people have been responsible for
degradation of various watersheds.
Watershed Management - Objectives
• To rehabilitate the watershed through proper
land use adopting conservation strategies for
minimizing soil erosion and moisture retention so
as to ensure good productivity of the land for
farmers.
• To manage watershed for beneficial
developmental activities like domestic water
supply, irrigation, hydropower generation…
• To minimize the risk of floods, droughts and land
slides.
• To develop rural areas in the region with clear
plans for improving the economy of the region.
Watershed Management Practices

• Water harvesting.
• Afforestation and agro-forestry.
• Mechanical measures for reducing soil
erosion and run-off losses.
• Scientific mining and quarrying.
• Public participation.
Resettlement Issues
• Displacement problems due to dams.
• Displacement due to mining.
• Displacement due to creation of national
parks.
Rehabilitation Issues
• Tribals are the most affected amongst the
displaced who are already poor.
Displacement further increases their
poverty due to loss of land, home, jobs,
food insecurity…
• Break up of families.
• The tribal are not familiar with market
policies and trends.
• The land acquisition laws ignore the
communal ownership of property, which is
an inbuilt system among tribals.
• Kinship systems, marriages, social and
cultural functions, their folk songs, danc es
and activities vanish with their
displacement.
• Loss of identity and loss of intimate link
between the people and the environment
is the biggest loss. The age long
indigenous knowledge, which has been
inherited and experienced by them about
flora and fauna, their uses etc get lost.
Environmental Ethics

• Human-Centric Thinking – Man is all

powerful and the supreme creature on
earth and man is the master of nature and
can harness it at his will.
• Earth-Centric Thinking – Nature has
provided us with all the resources for
leading a beautiful life and she nourishes
us like a mother, we respect her and
nurture her.
World Views in relation to
Environmental Protection
• Anthropocentric World View
– Man is the planet’s most important species and is in-
charge of the rest of nature.
– Earth has unlimited supply of resources nad it all
belongs to man.
– Economic growth is very good and more the growth,
better it is , because it rises our quality of life and the
potential of economic growth is unlimited.
– A healthy environment depends upon healthy
economy.
– The success of mankind depends upon how good
managers we are for driving benefits for us form
nature.
• Eco-Centric World View
– Nature exist not for human beings alone, but for all
species.
– The earth resources are limited and they do not
belong only to human beings.
– Economic growth is good till it encourages earth
sustaining development and discourages earth
degrading development.
– A healthy economy depends upon healthy
environment.
– The success of mankind depends upon how best we
can cooperate with the rest of nature while trying to
use the resources of nature for our benefit.
Environmental Ethical Guidelines
• You should love and honour the earth
since it has blessed you with life and
governs your survival.
• You should keep each day sacred to earth
and celebrate the turning its seasons.
• You should hold yourself above other
living things and have no right to drive
them to extinction.
• You should be grateful to the plants and
animals which nourish you by giving you
food.
• You should limit your offsprings because too
many people will overburden the earth.
• You should not waste your resources on
destructive weapons.
• You should run after gains at the cost of nature,
rather should strive to restore its damaged
majesty.
• You should not conceal from others the effects
you have caused by your actions on earth.
• You should not steal from future generations
their right to live in a clean and safe planet by
polluting it.
• You should consume the material goods in
moderate amounts so that all may share the
earth’s precious treasure of resources.
Climatic Change
• Climate is average weather of an area.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climatic Changes in 1990 and 1992
published best available evidence about
past climatic changes, the green house
effect and recent changes in global
temperature.
• It is observed that earth’s temperature has
changed considerably during the
geological times.
• Anthropogenic activities upset the delicate
balance that has been established
between various components of
environment.
• Green house gasses are increasing in the
atmosphere resulting in increasing in the
average global temperature.
• This upsets the hydrological cycle, results
in floods and droughts in different regions
of the world, cause sea level rise, changes
in agricultural productivity, famines, death
of humans as well as live stock.
• The global temperature will not remain
uniform everywhere but will fluctuate in
different regions.
• The places at higher latitudes will be
warmed up more during late autumn and
winter than the places in tropics.
• The poles may experience 2-3 times more
warming than the global average where as
warming in the tropics may be only 50%
-100%.
• The increased warming of the poles will reduce
the thermal gradient between the equator and
high latitude regions decreasing the energy
available to the heat engine that drives the
global weather machine.
• This will disturb the global pattern of winds and
ocean currents as well as timing and distribution
of the rainfall.
• By a temperature increase of 1.5-4.5ºC the
global hydrological cycle is estimated to intensify
by 5-10%.
• Disturbed rainfall will result in some areas
becoming wetter and others drier.
• Although rainfall may increase, higher
temperatures will result in more evaporation
leading to annual water deficit in crop fields.
Global Warming
• Troposphere, the lowermost layer of the
atmosphere, traps heat by a natural process due
to the presence of certain gases. This effect is
called as Green House Effect.
• The amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere
depends mostly on the concentration of green
house gases and the length of time they stay in
the atmosphere.
• The major green house gases are CO2, O3, CH4,
N2O, CFCs, water vapors…
• The average global temperature is 15ºC;
in absence of green house gases it would
be -18ºC.
• Heat trapped by green house gases in the
atmosphere keeps planet warm enough to
allow us and other species to exist.
• The two predominant green house gases
are water vapors, which are controlled by
the hydrological cycle, and CO2, which is
controlled by the global carbon cycle
Impacts of Green House effect
• Global Temperature increase
– It is estimated that the earth’s mean temperature will
rise between 1.5 to 5.5 ºC by 2050 if input of green
house gases continues to increase at present rate.
• Rise in sea level
– With increase in global temperature sea water will
expand.
– Heating will melt the polar ice sheets and glaciers
resulting in further rise in sea level.
– Current models indicate that an average increase in
average atmospheric temperature of 3ºC will increase
the sea level by 0.2 -1.5 meter over next 50-100
years.
• Effects on human health
– The global warming will lead to changes in rainfall
pattern in many areas, thereby affecting the
distribution of vector bourne disease like malaria,
filariasis, elephantiasis…
– Warmer temperatures and stagnant water would favor
the breeding of mosquitoes, snails and some insects,
which are known to carry such diseases.
– Higher temperature and humidity will
increase/aggravate respiratory diseases.
• Effects on agricultures
– Soil moisture may decrease and evapo-transpiration
will increase.
– Increase in temperature and humidity will increase
pest growth.
Measures to Check Global Warming
• Cut down the current use of CFCs and fossil fuel.
• Use energy more efficiently.
• Shift to renewable energy resources.
• Increase nuclear power plants for electricity production.
• Shift from coal to methane gas.
• Trap and use methane as a fuel.
• Reduce beef production.
• Adopt sustainable agriculture.
• Stabilize population growth.
• Efficiently remove CO2 from smoke stacks.
• Plant more trees.
• Remove atmospheric CO2 by utilizing photosynthetic
algae.
Acid Rain
• Industrial operation and fossil fuel combustion
liberates various acid forming gases; these
gases in the atmosphere gets oxidized over a
period of time.
• The oxides when undergo hydrolysis forms acid
droplets in the atmosphere and come onto the
earth along with rain water.
• Rain water is turned acidic when pH falls below
5.6
• The strong acids like H2SO4 and HNO3 dissolved
or formed in rain water dissociate and release H+
ions thereby increasing the acidity in rain drops.
Effects of Acid Rain
• It causes deterioration of buildings especially
made of marbles.
• It damages tone statues.
• It damages metals and car finishing.
• Aquatic life especially fish are badly affected
by lake acidification.
• Aquatic animals suffer from toxicity of metals
such as aluminum, mercury, manganese,
zinc and lead which leak from the
surrounding rocks due to acid rain.
• It results in reproductive failure and killing
of fish.
• It damages foliage and weakens trees.
• It makes trees more susceptible to
stresses like cold temperature, drought
etc.
• Many insects and fungi are more tolerant
to acidic conditions and hence they can
attack the susceptible trees and cause
diseases
Control of Acid Rain
• Emission of SO2 and NO2 from industries
and power plants should be reduced by
using pollution control equipments.
• Liming of lakes and soils should be done
to correct the adverse effects of acid rain.
• A coating of protective layers of inert
polymers should be given in the interior of
water pipes fro drinking water.
Ozone Layer Depletion
• Ozone layer filters out harmful ultraviolet radiations from
the sunlight and thus protects various life forms on earth.
• Ozone is a from of oxygen.
• In the stratosphere ozone is being continuously creates
by the absorption of short wavelength UV radiations.
• UV radiations less than 242 nm decompose molecular
oxygen into atomic oxygen by photolytic decomposition.
O2 + hv → O + O
• The atomic oxygen then rapidly reacts with molecular
oxygen to form ozone.
O + O2 + M → O3 + M
M is the third body necessary to carry away the energy
released in the reaction.