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Natural Resource and Sustainability

Reflections: Module 1

Concepts, Framework and Tools

Submitted to Submitted by

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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

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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 boughtimportant 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 man-

made 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

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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 beltwhere there are concrete houses. What I felt that though people are not affected badly yet

certain actions should have to be initiated at all levelsindividual, 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 4 th 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

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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.