Natural Resource and Sustainability

Reflections: Module 1 Concepts, Framework and Tools

Submitted to

Submitted by

Prof. Pramod Kumar Singh

Neha Singh

REFLECTIONS BASED ON SESSIONS Session 1 The 1st session was based on the understanding of natural resources and what are the issues that are causing global ecological imbalances. The major issues are population-resource imbalance, disturbance of hydrological cycle, deforestation, and land degradation, lopsided land use, industrial and technological revolution, unhealthy urbanisation and major environmental problems such as climate change, ozone depletion and loss of biodiversity. Due to the imprudent use of natural resources, all product life cycle has been curtailed and we have started using earths resources more and more with increased frequency. Also this has lead to the disturbance in hydrological cycle because the runoff of water has gone faster and precipitation is reduced. Globally only 1 out of 10, 000 parts of water is available for our use. Anthropogenic activities due to the change in life styles have greater impact on the environment because they simply ignore the ill effects of reckless use of earths natural resources which is slowly creeping in and humans are unaware of its drastic results. Session 2 Discussion in this session was based on global ecological imbalances, land degradation, Green house effect, Ozone depletion, and effects of climate change on the world as a whole. Session started with discussion on definition of habitats as It is the natural environment in which an organism lives than discussion went on habitat destruction by human activity mainly for the purpose of harvesting natural resources for industry production and unhealthy urbanization. We looked at land degradation issues and found that still there is ample scope to improve productivity. We looked at implications of unhealthy urbanisation on natural resources. We

should focus on regional urbanization. We discuss about source of water supply to Delhi and cost of transportation. The biodiversity has been studied wherein there was a reference of three levels at which biological variety has been identified. The three varieties are species, ecosystem and genetic diversity. The global ecological imbalances were identified:-

Session 2 basically dealt with the and ecosystem perturbation which cause habitat loss for flora and fauna. Places which are drier like Europe Africa etc. have more land degradation. The ecosystem perturbation is threatening the achievement of development goals. It is caused by unhealthy urbanisation, industrial and technological revolution. I came to know that humans have radically altered the ecosystem in last 75 years. These changes have bought important gains but at a growing cost. The perturbation in ecosystem has brought livelihood threat to the poor and risk of abrupt changes in ecosystem, global warming and unconventional rainfall. We also learned that resilience is the way to bring ecosystem in equilibrium which has the capability of tolerating ecological disturbance and restoring itself. But the hurdle is that resilience of todays ecosystem is much lower than the natural ecosystem which states that the natural ecosystem is usually much more stable than manmade ecosystem. The ecosystems have finite capacity of resilience. The greater the stability of an ecosystem, more are the chances of its survival

Session 3 Session 3 was devoted to presentation on Green concepts and Environmental Movements. Session 4 In session 4 we dealt with climate change, ozone depletion and sustainable development. We also watched a video Letter written in 2070. This video really made me think of the coming generation. Basically it was based on the water crisis facing by our future generation. How people then would be living in shortage of drinking water because our generation didnt care for the environment. And they really dont care. I posted this video on social networking site Facebook but no one bothered to watch this simply because we dont care about the coming years because they think future is so far. But its the high time to ponder over this grave issue. Even in my hostel I see that students waste water and electricity profusely. Just setting

development goals and objectives are not suffice today when global warming is impacting negatively on ecosystem, agriculture and health etc but there is a need to educate the people and make them realize what they are actually doing.

Climate change and its impact observed in the FWS village The village comes under Bilaspur district which is one of the industrial areas of the state at present. Though every industrial project has to be passed by the clearance of the Environment Protection Organization before its establishment yet industries have polluted the environment and the state is affected adversely because large portions of the state population dwells in rural areas and are dependent on natural resources. Since the climate is subtropical therefore it is hot in summers and cold in winters. The villagers expressed that they have felt a rise in temperature even during the winters and are witnessing warmer winters. The climate change has impacted the farmers in such a way that some of them are shifting their plantation methods and moving towards organic farming. Global warming and climate change has its severe ill effects on hill agriculture and apple farmers. In Padyalag village, the climate is not suited for apple production and agriculture is mainly done on subsistence basis, climate change has not impacted adversely to the livelihood of the villagers. But due to the increase in population over a decade has led to the cutting of greens. There uses to be a green belt where there are concrete houses. What I felt that though people are not affected badly yet certain actions should have to be initiated at all levels individual, institutional and national in order to alleviate climate change from severely hindering such economic activities.

Session 5 In session 5, I came to know that other than three dimensions of sustainable development, technology has emerged to be the 4th dimension of it. Technology can give high level of productivity with the help of nanotechnology, biotechnology, precision farming and precision forestry etc. also I learned about governance and conflict resolution frameworks and tools. The climate compatible development talked about the confluence of the 3 constituents parts. The session also helped in sustainable management off resources and the principles of good governance. There was a comparison made between old and the new governance paradigm. I learned as to how to analyze the stakeholders and what the necessary steps for stakeholder

analysis. The case and role play enhanced each individual to play the role of the stakeholder and get into the deeper analysis of the stakeholders from different perspective. Session 6 This session was devoted to the case analysis of Natural Resource Management Conflicts in Kalialkoir, Bangladesh. We presented the problems related to the advent of industrialisation in Kaliakoir from the perspectives of different stakeholders. The case reflected the ambiguous situation related to the problems because industry on one hand has increased the economic growth and employment of the country and on the other hand it has increased pollution which has its adverse effect on other stakeholders. It has jeopardised their livelihood, health etc. I studied the same thing in 2nd lecture that gains are percolated but at a huge cost. Here in the case, people have started making good money but at a cost of their health and surrounded natural resource depletion. Session 8 The session was based on clarifying the picture of learning process approach. It focuses on development programming based on reliance and participatory approaches to respond to diverse community defined needs. The Anand pattern of co-operative is the success case which has taken all the pre-mentioned attributes of development programming. I also learn about the blueprint approach to development program in which evaluative research is done by conducting surveys. It forms the basis of forming a pilot project by which planner makes a project blueprint and it is administered to target population. I also confronted with the problems associated with Indian development programs. They do not draw much attention to build on community skills and values, inadequate attention to deal with social diversity and inadequate investment in the difficult process of building community problem solving capacity. Also I learned about three types of organizations depending upon their difference in responses to errors, three stages of learning process.