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Preserving the environment
 Droughts,
floods and similar afflictions have, said a great environmentalist, either been
“caused or exacerbated by the violence people do to natural areas”. Trees
act as environmental buffers. Our Hindu scriptures have ordained that every man
must in his lifetime plant
at least three trees.
We not only ignore this, but we thoughtlessly fell them.
In his quest for a better life,
man denuded vast tracts of forests, killed animals in their thousands, tore open
the bowels of the earth, built factories that belch poison into the air and the water,
dammed rivers in mountain passes, created artificial lakes, brought several
species of plants and animals to near extinction, and now when in a position to
harness atomic energy, travel into outer space and poised for settlement in some
far-off planet, he is face to face with an ecological disaster that may spell
doom to his survival here on this earth.
He
either preserves the environment
into which he is born or continues to play ducks and drakes with it, endangering
not only other forms of life but also himself. To get lost in the limbo of time
like the dinosaurs of geological yore, or to stay as the supreme creation in
harmony with the world into which he is born - that in a nut-shell is the choice
before the modern man.
Not surprisingly, there is a
new awareness goading him to understand the ramifications by which nature
maintains the balance between the living and the non-living worlds, between one
form of life and another. The tool for this understanding is ecology, the science
of environmental relations of living objects.
Environment
is a very comprehensive term. When we speak of the environment
of a given species, we mean not merely the physical surroundings in which it
lives but all the other communities of plants
and animals amidst which it lives. Not only that. We take into account the size
of the population
of the species in question. Thus, when we make an ecological assessment of a
species, we try to fix its position in the food chain and also whether the
population is reasonably large to sustain itself as between its predators and food
resources.
 Therefore, any plan that is
designed for preserving the environment of any named species will have to draw
up several parameters. One has to obtain answers to questions such as how big is
its population? How does the species stand as a consumer? What is its standing
as an article of consumption? As a consumer, how far does it affect its own
environment making it unsuitable not only for itself but also for others? Will
its habit of life produce an environment congenial for other forms of life? Does
the species possess a built-in mechanism for regulation of its own numbers or is
there an inter-specific arrangement by which the numbers of the species under
study could be regulated?
These and many such other
questions are asked and answers found in order that one may understand how well
a species is fitted to its environment. The human species is as much subject to
the laws of nature as any other, and if ever man achieves harmony with his
environment, it can be done only the basis of answers obtained to so close a
scrutiny as this.
Insofar as the human species is
concerned, there is a saving grace. He is a rational being. That marks him off
from the rest of the living world. He is in a position to pursue a course of
action whereby he will not have to be the victim of a relentless march of
events. He can direct the course of events to suit his own survival. But he must
realise that his survival depends on the survival of other species. He cannot
live all by himself. He cannot live in a biological vacuum. His destiny is
linked with that of the rest of the living world. Let live in order to live
should become the guiding principle for all his actions.
What then should be our
approach to this problem of preservation of the human habitation? First, let us
take the question of his numbers. Since 1650, the human population of the world
has increased nearly eight-fold-from 470 millions to 3,600 millions. In Asia,
the increase is far higher. In India, the increase has been literally crippling.
The causes are many, and the effect is devastating. Our production-targets keep
moving higher and higher, which can only mean that we strain our resources
position beyond bearable limits. We are willing to sacrifice environmental
purity which in the long run is going to prove detrimental to our interests for
short-term gains, to meet our immediate needs.
There is a report that our
state government is planning to divert the sewerage of the city of Madras into
the sea so that the Cooum would not stink, making Madras a better city to live
in. What long-range effects such an action entails needs to be studied in-depth.
Whether in course of time a worse stink would not be carried from the sea into
the city has got to be examined. In what way such a disposal would affect the
marine life, both planktonic and benthic, is to be determined by a systematic
experimental approach. Without such a study I am afraid the plan is fraught with
unforeseen dangers.
 It is not in Madras alone that
the sanitary facilities need to be reorganised. It is the desideratum of the
country, indeed of the world as a whole. The burst in the population of the
country is putting every local body into a helpless situation. The disposal of
the waste produced by our teeming millions is riddled with insurmountable
difficulties. Undoubtedly, our sanitary services need to be modernised.
But the true solution to the
problem lies elsewhere. We have to check our ever-increasing population. There
are too many of us, defiling the environment. In the circumstances we must be
willing to adopt radical measures to make the family planning programme a
greater success. The Government of India woke up to the danger long ago. A
systematic campaign for implementing the family planning programme has been on
now for a little over a decade. It is regrettable that we are nowhere near the
goal, the zero growth rate. Persuasive propaganda, financial incentive are all
good. Additionally, why not the government think of disenfranchising such of the
families as have a greater number of members than stipulated? It will be a bold
step, but our political parties must give a thought to the proposition.
After all, an ever-increasing
human population not only depletes the natural resources far more quickly but it
will also upset the balance that ought to be there among all the members of the
living world. Regulation of the human numbers is the first step that we must
willingly undertake in our efforts to preserve what on the whole would be a
proper environment.
The fearsome consequences of
the human activity arising out of the technological advances that man made are
there for everyone to see. The smoke-belching automobiles and factory chimneys
of our cities have led to the appearance of new phenomena such as covering of
the city sky with smog and the raining of sleet. In our own city of Madras, the
residents of Vallalar Nagar are hard put to keep their houses and what is worse,
their lungs, clean against the incessant rain of dust particles in the months
from May through August, when the high wind of the season blows particle-laden
dust from the power house chimneys of Basin Bridge into the houses and bodies of
men living in that part of the city. Power engineers must wake up to this
problem and find a solution before a large section of the city population
becomes tubercular. As it is, a large number of residents in that area suffers
from acute skin disorders during those months.
The harmful effects of the
factory effluents into the nearby streams are too well known to be recounted.
The wasteful but toxic chemicals that are released into the waters skirting a
tannery or a chemical factory are consumed either directly along with the water
or indirectly by consumption of milk and meat of animals that drink this water
or by consumption of plants watered from such sources resulting in fortuitous
metal poisoning (mercury, lead and strontium)
Departments of Environmental
Studies vested with powers to have a final say in the sanction of a project, be
it irrigation, power or chemical, have to be created at the Centre and in the
states. These must be manned by ecologists who would examine the far-reaching
consequences of the installation of a factory or a power house or execution of a
project. Desirability instead of feasibility should determine whether a project
should be taken up or not.
This kind of approach is
warranted by our past experience. It is said malaria in Haryana and Rajasthan is
the direct result of creation of vast but uncared-for water sheets. The
knock-knee that many residents in the down stream areas of Nagarjuna Dam suffer
from is attributed to the change in the flouride content of water used by them.
Legislative measures that compel all industrial establishments, both private and
public, to devise methods of disposal of their waste products without polluting
air or water are a must. We are already late; let us not to be too late.
Last but not the least, the
green cover of the earth needs to be restored to its 19th century level. How
vandalistic we had been in this regard can be gleaned from the fact that in less
than in quarter century, between 1952 and 1973, we lost four million hectares of
forest.
Large-scale felling of trees
has multiple effects. First, the wind-breaking effect that the presence of trees
exercise is lost. As a result, roaring winds carry off a good deal of surface
soil and vast dust bowls are created. In other words, what was once a fertile
agricultural tract will have been turned fallow.
Second, the cycling of water
would be affected to a degree when the annual rainfall characteristic of the
region will be cut short to an undesirable extent. The importance of trees in
this connection can be understood when we realise that a well-grown tree is a
repository of 10 to 15 thousand gallons of water.
Third, the bird life and animal
life that the trees
support would vanish. In such a situation, desert conditions are created and
not long afterwards, the land that once supported a flourishing agricultural
community will become the home of cacti, rattle-snakes and desert rats.
Therefore, a programme of afforestation together with active tree planting in
urban and rural areas will yield rich dividends in the shape of an environment
vibrant with life.
Dr T M Das of the University of
Calcutta has evaluated a tree as follows: a moderate-sized tree generates Rs
5,000 worth of oxygen every year, converts Rs 20,000 worth of protein, cleanses
the air, which if done artificially would cost Rs 5 lakh and in 50 years, yield
fertiliser valued at Rs 3 lakh. Mr. Dharmaswaran who gave this information
quoting Dr Das, ends up saying, “A tree is just not a tree.” I can only
exclaim, “How true!”
I
cannot do better than end this talk by a quotation from the book ‘Only One
Earth’ by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubois. “In the last 200 years, and with
staggering acceleration in the last 25, the power, extent and depth of man’s
intervention in the natural order seem to presage a revolutionary new epoch in
human history, perhaps the most revolutionary the mind can conceive. Men seem,
on a planetary scale, to be substituting the controlled for the uncontrolled,
the fabricated for the unworked, the planned for the random. And they are doing
so with a speed and depth of intervention unknown in any previous age of human
history.”
We are warned. We ignore the
warning only at our peril.
(A radio talk broadcast
sometime in 1980, in the series, ‘For the Universities’, and reproduced from
‘Tapovan Prasad’. April 1, 1981. P.S. Some of the portions of this article
have been deleted from the script used for the broadcast.)
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