RURAL ENVIRONMENT Runa Sarkar and Bhaskar Chakrabarti
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226 India Infrastructure Report 2007 9 RURAL ENVIRONMENT Runa Sarkar and Bhaskar Chakrabarti INTRODUCTION technological solutions to pre-empt environmental degrada- tion, restore, and rejuvenate the degraded environment are Rural environment represents the framework of regulations, discussed further on in the chapter. institutions, and practices in villages defining parameters for the sustainable use of environmental resources while ensuring security of livelihood and a reasonable quality of life. While STATUS OF THE RURAL ENVIRONMENT the scope of environmental infrastructure is often narrowed The ecosystem within which all rural activities are conducted down to the provision of suitable water supply, sewerage, and encompasses the air we breathe, the waterbodies surrounding sanitation systems (Hahn, 2000 and Nunan and Satterthwaite, us, and the land we walk on. Unfettered human activity can 2001), it has within its purview (a) acquisition, protection, compromise the ability of the environment to support our kind, and maintenance of open spaces, (b) clean up and restoration a condition usually referred to as environmental degradation of degraded lands, (c) integration of existing wildlife or habitat and detrimental to our future. India supports approximately resources, (d) sustainable approaches to controlling flooding 16 per cent of the world population and 20 per cent of its and drainage, (e) developing river corridors and coastal areas, livestock on 2.5 per cent of its geographical area, making its and (f) forest management. Rejuvenation of natural resources environment a highly stressed and vulnerable system. The through activation of watersheds, renewal of wastelands along pressure on land has led to soil erosion, waterlogging, salinity, with enhancement of farm productivity, is a component of nutrient depletion, lowering of the groundwater table, and environmental infrastructure that is attaining increasing soil pollution—largely a consequence of thoughtless human importance as expanding anthropogenic activity stresses natural intervention. The extent of land degradation, the loss in capacity resources beyond their natural regeneration capability. The of our major water reservoirs and the decline in water level issues related to clean water supply, sanitation, and treatment in wells in the past few years is alarming (Tables A9.1, A9.2, of waste water have already been dealt with in Chapter 8. We and A9.3). Soil erosion from overgrazing, and intensive focus here on natural resources, common properties, and cultivation and soil degradation from excessive use of rejuvenation of rural environment. agricultural chemicals, have wide-ranging implications. Here we take stock of the rural environment and propose Agricultural activities that cause land degradation include institutional mechanisms to keep the juggernaut of socio- shifting cultivation without adequate fallow periods, absence economic development rolling without impediments. We of soil conservation measures, cultivation of fragile lands, present a snapshot of the current rural environment demon- unbalanced fertilizer use, faulty planning or management of strating the phenomena through which irreversible degradation irrigation. Improper agricultural practices are usually observed of the environment has resulted. We examine the veracity of under constraints of saturation of good lands and population the widely held position that poor social and economic pressure leading to cultivation of ‘too shallow’ or ‘too steep’ conditions of villagers compel them to overly exploit the soils and ploughing of fallow land before it has recovered its environment, leading to a vicious circle of degradation of fertility. Overgrazing and over-extraction of green fodder lead natural resources perpetuating poverty. Possible policy and to forest degradation through decreased vegetative regeneration, Rural Environment 227 compaction of soil, and reduced infiltration and vulnerability global hectares1 per capita per year, which can be used to shape to erosion. Annual environmental costs for India in 1995 environmental policies. Because of the complexities involved were estimated at US$ 9.7 billion, of which surface water in determining an eco-footprint, very little analysis has been pollution, land degradation and deforestation contributed 84 undertaken at the rural scale globally (Ryan, 2004), although per cent (Maria, 2003). country eco-footprints are estimated and published annually Deforestation with shifting agriculture, over-exploitation by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF, 2004). The global eco- for fuel wood and timber collection, and mining activities footprint, based on 2001 data was 13.5 billion global hectares, are also causes of serious concern. Deforestation causes which exceeds the global bio-capacity by 21 per cent, or 0.4 degradation when the land is steeply sloping, or has shallow global hectares per person. Although India’s eco-footprint over or easily erode-able soils, and when clearance is not followed the last forty years is almost constant at around 1 global hectare by good management. Over-cutting of vegetation to obtain per person (compared to the global average of 1.8), available timber, fuel wood and other products is frequent in semi-arid bio-capacity per person has fallen as its population has almost environments, where fuel wood shortages are severe. Overgrazing doubled. The consumption patterns of the large middle class, causes a decrease in vegetation cover which is a primary cause residing mainly in urban areas will shape its eco-footprint in of erosion. According to the data provided by the National the years to come and it is here that the rural areas have a role Remote Sensing Agency and Forest Survey of India based on to play in holding the footprint down to reasonable levels by satellite imagery, 80 Mha of 142 Mha of land under cultivation engaging in sustainable farming practices. It must also be noted is substantially degraded and about 40 Mha of 75 Mha of that the footprint is a very human-centric concept, talking land under the forest department has a canopy density cover about hectares of land to be set aside for humans without any less than 40 per cent (Gadgil, 1993). consideration for other species. Perhaps the most widely recognized environmental problem is the pollution of water resources by industrial Impact on Human Health discharge, household waste, sewage, and agricultural chemicals. Water scarcity induced by mounting population Globally, among the biggest dangers from farming is the density and growing economic activity in the face of fixed continuous exposure to and the unsafe use of chemicals resources, depleting water tables, and silting of reservoirs has necessary for agriculture. In India, however, the danger to led to rapid decline in the quality of life in rural India. Existing human health from such environment and pollution related irrigated areas are displaying serious water-stressed situations, causes are not given their due importance as accidents from as both reservoirs and groundwater sources continue to farm machinery, with a fatality rate of 22 per 100,000 farmers get depleted. Consequently, the agricultural output from (Srinivas, 2006). Fatality apart, chronic exposure to air and irrigated areas also seems to be more vulnerable to weather waterborne chemicals can have adverse health effects, which shocks than earlier. The problem is compounded by the sometimes, can be difficult to measure because of problems fact that provision of cheap power encourages farmers to use in isolating individual chemical effects. While certain cause excessive water. While this problem is widely acknowledged, and effect relationships are not easy to identify, cumulative a holistic policy framework to address the problem effectively effects are likely to be most critical. Cancer risk could be is missing. high from nitrate, metals, as well as pesticides; other problems India’s biodiversity is gradually narrowing. Maintaining like adverse hormonal functions, liver damage could also viable populations of species—whether plant or animal—is take place, as summarized in Table 9.1. Moreover, toxic crucial in biodiversity conservation requiring the protection chemicals and pesticides in air, water, and earth enter body of important ecosystems, habitats, and the ecological processes tissues and breast milk, through which they are passed on of which they are a part. The loss of biodiversity in shrinking to infants. forests as well as in threatened marine and wetland ecosystems For example, the impact of spraying endrin and endosulfan has strong adverse impacts in store (Box 9.1). on cashew plantations in the 1970s to combat pests in the Kasargod district of Kerala has been so persistent that in one Ecological Footprint village alone, 156 cases of health disorders were recorded from 123 households between 1990 and 2001. These included 49 Ecological footprint analysis is an accounting tool that estimates cancer cases and 23 mental retardation cases among several others. the resource consumption and waste assimilation requirement Moreover, endosulfan residues, several times the minimum of a defined human population or economy, in terms of a permissible limit, were found in water, milk, vegetable, and corresponding land area (Rees and Wackernagel, 1996 and Pandey et al. 2006). Such an analysis encompasses many human 1A global hectare is a hectare whose biological productivity equals needs and aggregates them into a single figure, expressed in the global average.