The rapidly growing population and economic development are leading to theenvironmental degradation in India through the uncontrolled growth of urbanization and industrialisation, expansion and massive intensification of agriculture, and the destruction of forests.
One of the biggest problems the plaguing mother nature is the problem of pollution. Man is just one of millions of life forms existing on the earth, albeit a very intelligent one. But this does not entitle him to interfere in nature's law of ecological balance. He is as much dependent upon other living forms as they are on hire. When man or anyone else introduces something extraneous in the natural cycle which positively harms life and creates imbalance, it is known as pollution. Since man is the only life form who has been able to understand nature to some extent, he is the only one in position to cause pollution and unfortunately, he has been doing it at his own free will.
Our country faces one more problem i.e. noise pollution. Loud horns during traffic chaos, screaming loudspeakers at different occasions and blasting crackers that almost make one deaf are killing the peaceful silence. Use of silencers, abiding by proper traffic regulations and checking excessive use of public speaker systems can help in reducing noise-pollution.
This is the time of implement the steps for environmental Protection. It has been rightly said that there is something in this world money can’t buy, such as beautiful scenery and fresh air.
Environmental Issues in India
BACK Major Issues Water Pollution Air Pollution Conservation Noise and Land Pollution
MAJOR ISSUES
One of the primary causes of environmental degradation in a country could be attributed to rapid growth of population, which adversely affects the natural resources and environment. The three basic demographic factors of andimmigration(population moving into a country produces higher population). produce changes in population size, composition, distribution and these changes raise a number of important questions of cause and effect.
Population growth and economic development are contributing to many serious environmental calamities in India. These include heavy pressure on land, land degradation, forests, habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity. Changing consumption pattern has led to rising demand for energy. The final outcomes of this are air pollution, global barming, climate change, water scarcity and water pollution.
Environmental issues in india include various natural hazards, particularly cyclons and annual monsoon floods, population growth, increasing individual consumption, industrialization, infrastructural development, poor agricultural practices, and resource maldistribution have led to substantial human transformation of India's natural environment.
WATER POLLUTION
Main article: Water supply and sanitation in India Out of India's 3,119 towns and cities, just 209 have partial treatment facilities, and only 8 have full wastewater treatment facalities (WHO 1992). 114 cities dump untreated sewage and partially cremated bodies directly into the Ganges River. Downstream, the untreated water is used for drinking, bathing, and washing. This situation is typical of many rivers in India as well as other developing countries.
Open defecation is widespread even in urban areas of India.
More than 400 million people live along the Ganges River. An estimated 2,00,000 persons ritually bathe daily in the river, which is considered holy by Indians.
Ganga
Millions depend on the polluted Ganges river.
Main article : Pollution of Ganga- The Economist on December 11,2008
To know why 1,000 Indian children die of diarrhoeal sickness every day, take a wary stroll along the Ganges in Varanasi. As it enters the city, Hinduism's sacred river contains 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters, 120 times more than is considered safe for bathing. Four miles downstream, with inputs from 24 gusing sewers and 60,000 pilgrim-bathers, the concentration is 3,000 times over the safety limit. In places, the Ganges becomes black and septic. Corpses, of semi-cremated adults or enshrouded babies, drift slowly by.
NewsWeekdescribes Delhi's sacred Yamuna River as "a putrid ribbon of black slude" where fecal bacteria is 10,ooo over safety limits despite a 15-year program to address the problem.cholera epidemics are not unknown
Top
AIR POLLUTION
Indian cities are polluted by vehicles and industry emissions. Road dust due to vehicles also contributing up to 33% of air plllution. In cities like Bangalore, around 50% of children suffer from asthama. India has emission standard of Bharat Stage II (Euro II) for vehicles since 2005
One of the biggest causes of air pollution in India is from the transport system. Hundreds of millions of old diesel engines continuously burning away diesel which has anything between 150 to 190 times the amount of sulphur out European diesel has.
Environmental pollution is a global problem and the whole humanity is worried as to control it. Each nation is trying its best to reduce the polluting factors to save the human life. With the new advanced research analyses, through satellites, man has been able to find the causes of possible depletion of the Ozone layer and its consequent effects. They talk about pollution through excessive refrigeration, fuel burning, industrial pllution and other such factors, but nobody has been able to imagine about the pollution being caused by the dead bodies when consigned for cremation in non-scientific manner. We cry about the problem but no problem can be solved unless you provide an alternate or solution to it. The four areas identified for pollution namely Air, Water, Earth and Space, have been well researched and discovered. The visible areas to the human eye - Earth and Water, catch easily the attension but the attention but the other two areas of Air and Space, which are invisible to the common eyesight, are under constant study, vigil and remedial efforts.
Top
NOISE AND LAND POLLUTION
The Supreme Court of India gave a significant verdict on noise pollution in 2005.
Unnecessary honking of vehicles makes for a high decibel purposes and by temples and mosques make for noise pollution in residantial areas.
Land pollution in India is due to pesticides and fertilizers as well as corosion
Top
CONSERVATION
Main article : Wildlife in India
India, lying within the Indomalaya ecozone, hosts significant biodiversity; it is home to 7.6% of all mammalian, 12.6% of avian, 6.2% of reptilian, and 6.0% of flowring plant species.
Now the world's rarest monkey, the golden langur.
Top
BACK
Pollution
ANCIENT CULTURES
The forging of metals appears to be a key turning point in the creation of significant air pollution levels. Core samples of glaciers in Greenland indicate increases in air pollution associated with Greek, Roman and Chienese metal production.
OFFICIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The number of vehicles running on the road, all kinds of vehicles like-e the auto rickshaw, car, lorry, van and motorbike, are the ma-in cause of pollution of air in towns and cities. Villages winch are less crowded than a town are lucky to escape from pollution of toxic gases.
MODERN AWARENESS
Everyone wants to buy a car as car loan is available easily for persons with fixed income. Tourist cars are run in large numb ere these days. The number of vehicles running on the road has increased many times and sometimes there is traffic bottle neck for quite some time. The toxic gas that is let out from them is dangerous to the health of the people. Nowadays the gas emission test is conducted for every car so that the emission of gas by the vehicles is limited.
FORMS OF POLLUTION
Despite this measure to control the emission of gas the danger of pollution of the atom sphere by the toxic gas of the speeding vehicles on the road has not been completely eliminated. There is many other cause s for the pollution of the atmosphere.
POLLUTANTS
Pollute one of our environment occurs in many ways. The rivers are polluted by the effluents from the factories on their banks. The highly poisonous effluents and drainage water mix with the rivers and make them polluted. The Ganges, considered as very sacred, is highly polluted. Burning corpses are let into it and drainage water mixes with it in many places.
EFFECTS
The Calvary and the Kampala rivers in Karnataka are said to contain metallic chemicals and people who bathe in them develop skin diseases. If drinking water is polluted by the toxic wastes it is highly dangerous to health. Sometimes drainage water mixes with the drinking water and it causes great harm to the people.
PERSPECTIVES
The emission of various kinds of gases in the air by the chemical factories is another kind of pollution. The gases mix with the air and when people who reside near the factories breathe them they develop chest diseases. The textile mills, the chemical factories and various types of vehicles emit into the air fumes of sculpture and some acids. Fossil-fuel based industries pollute the atmosphere. The environmentalists say that the air of the cities is highly polluted.
NIISE
Loud noises also pollute the air and affect our ear drums. The noise caused by the blaring television sets, the radios, the aeroplanes and the helicopters are also a kind of pollution of the air.
GREENHOUSE GASES AND GLOBAL WARMING
The increase of carbon dioxide in the air is the result of the thoughtless felling of trees. It is foreseen by the scientists that the temperature of the world will raise by at least five degrees centigrade in the future. The forest cover plays a major role in causing rainfall. Because of the increase of the gaseous compounds like hydrogen, chloride and fluoride, the ozone layer in the atmosphere gets depleted. As a result of the depletion of the ozone layer the world will become hotter and hotter.
TOP
BACK
GLOBAL WARMING
Global warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. Since the early 20th century, Earth's mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and scientists are more than 90% certain that it is primarily caused by increasing concentrations ofgreenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These findings are recognized by the national science academies of all major industrialized nations.Climate model projections were summarized in the 2007Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They indicated that during the 21st century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 2.9 °C (2 to 5.2 °F) for their lowest emissions scenario and 2.4 to 6.4 °C (4.3 to 11.5 °F) for their highest. The ranges of these estimates arise from the use of models with differing sensitivity to greenhouse gas concentrations.
(According to AR4) warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. The effects of an increase in global temperature include a rise in sea levelsand a change in the amount and pattern of precipitation, as well a probable expansion of subtropical deserts. Warming is expected to be strongest in the Arctic and would be associated with the continuing retreat of glaciers,permafrost and sea ice. Other likely effects of the warming include a more frequent occurrence of extreme-weatherevents including heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfall, ocean acidification and species extinctions due to shifting temperature regimes. Effects significant to humans include the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the loss of habitat from inundation.
Proposed policy responses to global warming includemitigation by emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, and possible future geoengineering. Most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),whose ultimate objective is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic (i.e., human-induced) climate change.Parties to the UNFCCC have adopted a range of policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:10:9 and to assist in adaptation to global warming.[16]:13[19]:10[20][21] Parties to the UNFCCC have agreed that deep cuts in emissions are required,[22] and that future global warming should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level.[22][B] Reports published in 2011 by the United Nations Environment Programme[23] and the International Energy Agency[24]suggest that efforts as of the early 21st century to reduce emissions may be inadequate to meet the UNFCCC's 2 °C target.
Temperature ChangesGreenhouse gasesEnvironmentalFeedback
Temperature Changes
Main article : Temperature record
Two millennia of mean surface temperatures according to different reconstructions from climate proxies, each smoothed on a decadal scale, with the instrumental temperature record overlaid in black.
TOP
Greenhouse Gases
The greenhouse effect is the process by which absorption andemission of infrared radiation by gases in the atmospherewarm a planet's lower atmosphere and surface. It was proposed by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.Naturally occurring amounts of greenhouse gases have a mean warming effect of about 33 °C (59 °F).[49][C] The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; andozone (O3), which causes 3–7%.[50][51][52] Clouds also affect the radiation balance through cloud forcings similar to greenhouse gases.Human activity since the Industrial Revolution has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs andnitrous oxide. The concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 36% and 148% respectively since 1750.[53] These levels are much higher than at any time during the last 800,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores.[54][55][56][57] Less direct geological evidence indicates that CO2 values higher than this were last seen about 20 million years ago.[58]Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of the increase in CO2 from human activity over the past 20 years. The rest of this increase is caused mostly by changes in land-use, particularlydeforestation. TOP
Environment
Main article : Effect of global warming and Regional effects of global warming
BACK
ENERGY CONSERVATION
Energy Conservation is the practice of decreasing the quantity of energy used. It may be achieved through efficient energy use, in which case energy use is decreased while achieving a similar outcome, or by reduced consumption of energy services. Energy conservation may result in increase of financial capital, environmental value, national security, personal security, and human comfort. Individuals and organisations that are direct consumers of energy may want to conserve energy in order to reduce energy costs and promote economic security. Industrial and commercial users may want to increase efficiency and thus maximize profit.Electical energy conservation is an important element of energy policy. Energy conservation reduces the energy consumption and energy demand per capita and thus offsets some of the growth in energy supply needed to keep up with population growth. This reduces the rise in energy costs, and can reduce the need for new power plants, and energy imports. The reduced energy demand can provide more flexibility in choosing the most preferred methods of energy production.
By reducing emmisions, energy conservation is an important part of lessening climate change. Energy conservation facilitates the replacement of non - renewable resources with renewable energy. Energy consevation is often the most economical solution to energy shortages, and is a more environmentally benign alternative to increased energy production.
Energy conservation by CountryIndia
Bareau of energy efficiency is an Indian govermental apex organisation created in 2002 responsible for promoting energy efficiency and conservation.Japan
Since the 1973 energy crisis, energy conservation has been a serious issue in Japan. While the Energy Conservation Center promotes energy efficiency in every aspect, private entities are implementing the efficient use of energy to industries.New zealand
In New zealand the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority is responsible for promoting energy efficiency and conservation.United kingdom
Main article : Energy use and conservation in the United KingdomEnergy conservation in the United kingdom has been receiving increased attention over recent years. Key factors behind this are the Government's commitment to reducing carbon emissions, the projected 'energy gap' in UK electricity generation, and the increasing reliance on imports to meet national energy needs. Domestic housing and road transport are currently the two biggest problem areas.
The UK government has jointly founded the Energy saving Trust to promote energy conservation at a consumer, business and community level since 1993.
United States
Main article : Energy conservation in the United statesThe United states is currently the largest single consumer of energy. The U.S. Department of Energy categories national energy use in four broad sectors : transportation, residential, commercial and industrial. Energy usage in transportation and residential sectors (about half of U.S. energy consumption is largely controlled by individual domestic consumers. commercial and industrial energy expenditures are determined by businesses entities and other facility managers. National energy policy has a significant effect on energy usage across all four sectors.
TOP
BACK
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is a Summit in which developed and developing contries meet on climate change.All the counties gathered to find solution so as to save the climate changes so that we all can have a healthy environment for our coming generations.
India and China are trying to harmonise the positions of their countries on climate Changed. Premier Wen Jiabao called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to work toghether at the Copenhagen confrence to present a more unified picture against the develoved countries taking position that could push theses two countries into taking legally binding emmisin cuts.