Environment and Society — NCERT Solutions

Important forms of pollution-related environmental hazards include:

• Air pollution from industries, vehicles, and burning wood and coal
• Indoor pollution from cooking fires, poor chulhas, and bad ventilation
• Water pollution from sewage, factory effluents, and farm runoff with fertilisers and pesticides
• Noise pollution from loudspeakers, traffic, horns, and construction work
• Industrial pollution from hazardous factory emissions and waste

These can cause illness, death, and damage to the environment.

The major environmental issues linked with resource depletion are:

• Groundwater depletion due to overuse for agriculture, industry, and cities
• Damming and diversion of rivers, which damages water basins
• Filling up of water bodies, destroying natural drainage
• Topsoil loss through erosion, waterlogging, salinisation, and brick production
• Depletion of biodiversity habitats such as forests, grasslands, and wetlands
• Loss of species, including endangered species like the tiger

These show that both water resources and ecosystems are being used up rapidly.

Environmental problems are simultaneously social problems because their causes and effects are shaped by social inequality. Social status and power decide who can protect themselves from pollution, who gets water, land, and other resources, and who suffers most from environmental damage. For example, richer farmers may drill deep tubewells while poorer villagers run dry. Similarly, poor people are often forced to live in polluted or unsafe areas. So environmental issues are tied to class, gender, power, and unequal access to resources.

Social ecology is the view that environmental problems arise from deep-seated social problems. It says that social relations, especially the organisation of property and production, shape how people perceive and use the environment. Different social groups have different interests and therefore different environmental practices. So ecological crises cannot be understood or solved without addressing social inequalities and conflicts.

One environment-related conflict is the displacement of people for dams. In many places, large dams have led to loss of land, forests, and homes for villagers, while benefiting cities, industry, or farmers with better access to water. Another example is urban land conflicts, where slum dwellers are evicted from public land to make way for malls, hotels, roads, and other projects. There are also conflicts over water sharing between farmers, industries, and cities, especially in drought-prone areas. These conflicts happen because environmental resources are limited and different groups compete for them.