Resources and Development — Notes

A resource is anything in the environment that can satisfy human needs, as long as it is technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally acceptable. Resources are not free gifts of nature: nature, technology and institutions interact, and human activity turns materials into resources.

Four bases of classification

• Origin: biotic (from the biosphere, with life: people, flora and fauna, fisheries, livestock) and abiotic (non-living: rocks, metals).
• Exhaustibility: renewable (renewed by physical, chemical or mechanical processes: solar and wind energy, water, forests, wildlife; some are continuous or flow resources like wind and water) and non-renewable (formed over a very long geological time: minerals, fossil fuels; metals can be recycled, fossil fuels cannot).
• Ownership: individual (fields, houses, orchards, wells), community (village ponds, grazing grounds, burial grounds, parks, playgrounds), national (all minerals, water, forests, wildlife and land within the borders and the territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles; the state can acquire private property for public good) and international (ocean resources beyond 200 nautical miles of the Exclusive Economic Zone, used only with the agreement of international institutions).
• Status of development: potential (found but not used: wind and solar energy in Rajasthan and Gujarat), developed (surveyed, quantity and quality determined, in use), stock (could meet needs but technology is lacking: hydrogen from water) and reserves (a subset of stock usable with existing know-how but kept for the future: water in dams, forests).

Problems of indiscriminate use: depletion of resources for the greed of a few; accumulation of resources in a few hands, dividing society into rich and poor; global ecological crises such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, pollution and land degradation.

Sustainable development: development that does not damage the environment, meeting present needs without compromising the needs of future generations.

Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro (June 1992): more than 100 heads of state met at the first International Earth Summit on environmental protection and socio-economic development. They signed declarations on global climatic change and biological diversity, endorsed the global Forest Principles and adopted Agenda 21.

Agenda 21: a programme for global sustainable development in the 21st century, to fight environmental damage, poverty and disease through global cooperation on common interests, mutual needs and shared responsibilities. A major objective: every local government should draw up its own local Agenda 21.

Milestones in conservation thinking: the Club of Rome (1968) called for systematic conservation; the Brundtland Commission report Our Common Future (1987) brought in the term sustainable development.

India's resources are unevenly distributed: Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are rich in minerals and coal; Arunachal Pradesh has abundant water but lacks infrastructure; Rajasthan has solar and wind energy but lacks water; Ladakh has a rich cultural heritage but lacks water, infrastructure and some vital minerals. So planning is needed at national, state, regional and local levels.

Stages of resource planning

1. Identification and inventory of resources across regions: surveying, mapping, qualitative and quantitative estimation and measurement.
2. Evolving a planning structure with appropriate technology, skills and institutions.
3. Matching resource development plans with overall national development plans.

India has worked at resource planning since the First Five Year Plan. Resources alone do not bring development: technology and institutions are needed too.

Conservation: Gandhiji held that the earth has enough for everyone's needs but not for anyone's greed. He blamed greedy individuals and exploitative modern technology, and preferred production by the masses to mass production.

India's land: plains about 43% (agriculture and industry), mountains about 30% (perennial rivers, tourism, ecology), plateaus about 27% (minerals, fossil fuels, forests).

Land-use categories

1. Forests.
2. Land not available for cultivation: barren and waste land; land put to non-agricultural uses (buildings, roads, railways, industry).
3. Other uncultivated land excluding fallow: permanent pastures and grazing land; land under miscellaneous tree crops and groves; culturable waste land (left uncultivated for more than 5 agricultural years).
4. Fallow lands: current fallow (1 agricultural year or less); other than current fallow (the past 1–5 agricultural years).
5. Net sown area.

Gross cropped area = net sown area + area sown more than once in an agricultural year.

Land use depends on physical factors (relief, climate, soil) and human factors (population density, technology, culture and traditions). Net sown area is over 80% in Punjab and Haryana but under 10% in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Forest area is well below the 33% recommended by the National Forest Policy (1952).

Causes (human):

• Mining → deforestation: Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha.
• Overgrazing: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra.
• Over-irrigation → waterlogging → salinity and alkalinity: Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh.
• Mineral processing (grinding limestone for cement, calcite and soapstone for ceramics) → dust that slows the infiltration of water into the soil.
• Industrial effluents → water and land pollution.

Conservation measures: afforestation and proper management of grazing; planting shelter belts; control of overgrazing; stabilising sand dunes with thorny bushes; proper management of waste lands; control of mining; proper discharge and disposal of industrial effluents and wastes after treatment.

Soil is a vital renewable natural resource: plants grow in it and countless organisms live in it. It takes a very long time to form even a few centimetres. Factors: relief, parent rock, climate, vegetation and other life forms, and time; weathering by temperature changes, running water, wind and glaciers, and the work of decomposers.

• Alluvial: most widespread; northern plains (Indus, Ganga, Brahmaputra), a corridor into Rajasthan and Gujarat, and the deltas of the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri. Sand, silt and clay; coarser near the foothills (duars, chos, terai). Bangar = old alluvium with kankar nodules; Khadar = new, finer and more fertile. Rich in potash, phosphoric acid and lime; sugarcane, paddy, wheat, cereals, pulses. Intensively cultivated and densely populated.
• Black (regur): Deccan trap (basalt lava): plateaus of Maharashtra, Saurashtra, Malwa, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and the Godavari and Krishna valleys. Extremely fine, clayey; holds moisture; rich in calcium carbonate, magnesium, potash and lime; poor in phosphoric content; deep cracks in hot weather (aeration); sticky when wet, so tilled after the first shower or in the pre-monsoon period. Ideal for cotton.
• Red and yellow: on crystalline igneous rocks in low-rainfall parts of the eastern and southern Deccan; Odisha, Chhattisgarh, southern middle Ganga plain, piedmont of the Western Ghats. Red from the diffusion of iron; yellow when hydrated.
• Laterite (Latin later, brick): tropical and subtropical climate with alternate wet and dry seasons; intense leaching by heavy rain; low humus because high temperature destroys decomposers; acidic, poor in nutrients. Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, hilly Odisha and Assam. With manure, fertilisers and conservation: tea and coffee in the southern hills; cashew on red laterite (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala).
• Arid: red to brown, sandy, saline (common salt obtained in places); lacks humus and moisture; kankar in lower horizons restricts infiltration; cultivable with irrigation, as in western Rajasthan.
• Forest: hilly and mountainous areas; loamy and silty on valley sides, coarse on upper slopes; acidic with low humus in the snow-covered Himalayas; fertile on river terraces and alluvial fans.

Soil erosion: the denudation of the soil cover and its washing down. Soil formation and erosion normally balance; human activities (deforestation, overgrazing, construction, mining) and natural forces (wind, glaciers, water) upset the balance.

• Gully erosion: rainwater carves deep channels (gullies) in clayey soil until the land cannot be farmed (bad land); in the Chambal valley such land is known as ravines.
• Sheet erosion: a thin, wide film of water running down a slope strips off the topsoil.
• Wind erosion: strong winds lift and carry away loose, dry soil.
• Defective farming: furrows cut up and down a slope become channels that let water rush down.

Conservation:

• Contour ploughing: ploughing along contour lines slows water flowing down slopes.
• Terrace farming: steps cut into slopes restrict erosion; well developed in the western and central Himalayas.
• Strip cropping: bands of grass between bands of crops stop the wind sweeping across large fields.
• Shelter belts: rows of trees that shelter fields; they have helped stabilise sand dunes and the desert in western India.