Waste and Pollution

All human activities- domestic, agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial, have a few broad features in common. They draw on material and energy resources, produce an object or service of value and reject the balance material and energy- in a degraded form. Often, the degraded material and energy, such as scrap, dirty water and low temperature gasses are not usable any more. They must be thrown away. And more mechanised/automated the activity, more is the energy/material wasted.

Thus, all human activities produce waste. The waste is thrown into air, into water bodies or onto land; in short, into our environment, upsetting its material and energy balance and diminishing the overall usefulness of natural resources. Orderliness or structure of the environment gets degraded and disorderliness or entropy increases. This state of the environment is called pollution. One may, therefore, say that every human activity causes pollution.

Fortunately, the environment is dynamic, not static. In-built processes within the environment system keep restoring its balance. But for that to happen one has to wait with patience, for days in some cases and for hundreds of years in the other difficult cases (such as plastic waste, detergents and ozone depleting substances). These self-correcting (or self-cleaning, as some would say) processes are working at a gigantic and global scale, though at somewhat slow pace.
Some of the natural processes which help clean the environment are:

· Atmospheric air getting dissolved in small quantities in sea, river, lake and rain drops,
· Green leaves absorbing Carbon dioxide gas and emitting Oxygen gas through photosynthesis,
· Breaking down of complex organic molecules into simpler molecules by certain bacteria,
· Oxidation of organic compounds into carbon dioxide and water with or without the help of bacteria,
· Absorption of chemicals and toxins by plant life, and
· Processes of the water cycle which carry large quantities of impurities into the sea- the sea acting as a huge sink.

There surely are other such processes, which are not mentioned here, or are not yet known to/ understood by our scientists. But we know that the self-cleaning capacity of the environment, in terms of tons of pollutants cleaned per year, is limited. We also know that the rate of waste generation in large parts of the world, specially the developed (and many developing) countries, has already exceeded the limiting values. Add to this the fact the human beings have unlimited greed for more goods and services.

Hence, production of waste and environmental degradation will go on unchecked, unless we change our behaviour and use natural resources with care and consideration. This change also needs to be reflected in political will and action of governments.

Save Tiger

December 10, 2010
Save Tiger

The conference at St. Petersburg, (Nov 22, 2010), once again focuses world attention on the sad state of our environment.

Only a few days back there was report of another tiger death in Sariska reserve forest. We saw several reports of tiger deaths/poaching in the recent months. The news invariably causes uproar in the media, followed by familiar statements by powerful people. Then there are long spells of silence and inaction till the next report appears again. It has become routine now.
I think we are not able to get a grip on the problem because we have got it all wrong.
Mr Nasiruddin Shah, who anchored the TV serial Turning Point some years back, powerfully explained the logic behind ‘save tiger’. If tigers are there it shows our fauna and flora are healthy, our forests are healthy and, in turn, our environment is healthy. Simplistic, but true and easy to understand. So, the purpose is to keep our environment pristine and healthy, and the tiger is the marker for that.

But every time there is news of any threat to or death of tigers in India, the discourse is always about the animal. It is all about the poaching mafia, business and trade in tiger skin and other banned items, corruption in forest and conservation bureaucracy, tiger census, tiger poisoning, human encroachment on reserve forest, etc. The total health of environment and forest is generally not in focus.

I think fast environmental degradation, which affects the tiger habitat as well, is the crux of the problem. Our forests have become much poorer. They suffer from all round deficit. Be it water, biodiversity, green cover, human population co-habiting the forest, flora and fauna or food chain, each has become impoverished. That is why tigers are threatened, their population is dwindling and their deaths, which are a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself, are a cause of serious worry.
This is too obvious a fact for the officials, the politicians, the media and the experts not to know. What therefore worries me is why these are never discussed and addressed. Is it because both tiger poaching and conservation are big money and conserving the forest wealth is not?

Much heat is generated about the man-animal conflict and relocation/rehabilitation of forest-dwellers to save tiger. I think human beings co-habiting the forest are as much a part of the forest eco system as water, trees and other animals living there. If they are choosing to indulge in a life threatening business of tiger poaching for livelihood or greed rather than simpler and more traditional alternatives, the society must sit up and do something about it- urgently. Removing forest dwellers to villages and cities is as good a solution as removing the tigers to zoos. Man-animal conflict is as natural as animal-animal conflict. It is an integral part of the eco system and nature’s food chain. It is part of human evolution through survival of the fittest.

If tiger deaths are a symptom of a life-threatening problem for mankind, then the forest dweller is our frontline solder in the fight against getting extinct. He should not be removed. He should be supported with all might to fight the wealth deficit in our forests.