Enviromental Issues Part 2Water resourcesThe largest threat facing the people of India is inadequate or lack of access to vital fresh water resources. As India's industries get bigger so will the amount of water they require and the amounts are already beginning to spiral. As an example I use the Coca cola factory which was accused for years of messing up an entire eco system. By simply diverting all the water to their factory, millions of people went without. The company are also accused of causing huge droughts and contamination to a massive area by exploiting an excessive amount of ground water and then replacing it with toxic discharge. Of course, Coca Cola is a big famous company and that is why this came to news but I have no doubt that there are a million examples of similar things happening all over India.
The rivers are on the front line of pollution in India. Millions of people depend on them for their livelihoods but they are slowly being polluted and destroyed by sewage, chemicals and other agricultural and industrial waste. These are some of the most polluted rivers in the world but little seems to be to stem the incessant destruction. DeforestationThe quite rapid story if India's deforestation is rather depressing. It is predicted that almost 5.3 Million hectares of forest have been destroyed since the independence. Most of it being chopped down for housing, industrialisation and river projects. It is estimated that the number of Mangrove Forests have more than halved in the last 20 years.The government soon recognised the importance that these forests hold for the conservation of soil and put forward a range of polices trying to curb the destruction; of course, nothing has really changed and thousands of acres are destroyed every year with nothing in the way of 'replacement'. Poor management and abuse of power are again the increasingly sad cause behind the mass deforestation of India, some call it greed. Protected areas are largely declassified so that commercial activities can take place but new areas are not reclassified. Poaching is another factor, people actually coming in and steeling trees and one of the final blows to the forest of India who already seem to have lost the battle is the invasion of foreign tree species such as Eucalyptus etc. The Environmental issues in India are huge. Whether it's the rapidly dropping water tables, mass deforestation, land degradation or river contamination, India has it all and on a massive scale. Air PollutionOn 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 up to 200 times the amount of sulphur out European diesel has. Of course, the biggest problems are in the big cities where there are huge concentrations of these vehicles. On the positive side, the government appears to have noticed this massive problem and the associated health risks for its people and is slowly but surely taking steps. The first of which was in 2001 when it ruled that its entire public transport system, excluding the trains, be converted from diesel to compressed gas (CPG). Electric rickshaws are being designed and will be subsidised by the government but the supposed ban on the cycle rikshaws in Delhi will require a huge increase on the reliance of other methods of transport, mainly those with engines. In this case it seems, one step forward two steps!It also appeared that the excessive pollution was having an adverse effect on the Taj Mahal. After a court ruling all transport in the area was shut down shortly followed by the closure of all industrial factories in the area. The air pollution in the big cities is rising to such an extent that it is now 2.3 higher than the amount recommended by WHO (world health organisation. Plastics and other wasteI have already touched on the massive problem of waste disposal but I intend to go into it more here. It seems that some areas are simply fed up with the lack of Government intervention and are using there initiatives. As an example I use some of the towns and villages in Kerala who are seeing a return to the old paper bags from plastic ones.As I am sure you know, plastic isn't in any urgency to degrade but the people of India don't seem to recognise this as they throw every unwanted item onto the floor wherever they are. Of course, the victims of this are the future generations and the animals. The holy cows that are so integral to Indian life are slowly being killed from the huge amount of plastic bags they consume that eventually rap around their insides.
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