The Effect of Over Exploitation of Natural Resources and Industrialisation
The environment refers to natural things around us which sustain our life, such as the atmosphere of the earth, fresh and healthy air and drinkable water etc.
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To define environment we may say that it is an outer physical and biological system in which man and other organisms exist with many interacting components.
The most recognised among these components include the rocks, minerals, soils and waters, the land and its present and potential vegetation, the animal life and potential for livestock husbandary and the climate etc.
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There is a close interaction among these various components which seem to produce some kind of equilibrium in the scheme of nature which is termed as ecological balance.
This interaction of various components is known as ecosystem. This ecosystem is related with environmental factors. The various living organisms of this environment get heat and energy from the sun to make a closely knit ecocycle.
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Organisms of this ecosystem may generally be divided into three categories:
1. Producers, 2. Consumers, 3. Decomposers.
Producers mostly belong, to the category of plants that make their food by the inorganic substances by themselves in the presence of light.
Consumers particularly include animals including human being, that depend for their food on other organism including plants, and the decomposers come in the category of bacteria and fungus etc. that decompose the organic substances present in dead plants and animals.
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The system is useful to man. A perfect ecological balance cannot be expected in the wake of growing industrialisation as owing to this, pollution of environment becomes inevitable.
The environment has “carrying capacity”, or the amount of pollution or damage an environment can sustain without further degradation.
A lake that is 5 times larger than another one can carry roughly 5 times the pollution load. If the loads of pollution are not minimised or environment upgraded to an extent that it will be able to carry them, the environmental degradation will inevitably worsen.
By the misuse, abuse and uncontrolled use of resources both natural and otherwise have upset the equilibrium between human activity and nature.
Over-exploitation of natural resources in the name of industrialization is posing a great danger to the ecosystem. This danger may be understood in following two ways:
1. Physical Environment. 2. Human Environment.
Physical Environment consists of all constituents of natural origin like physiography-, climate, vegetation, soil, water bodies, wild animals and minerals.
Human Environment consists of all elements having a human touch in their origin. Such elements include all manifestations of human activities.
Of course natural resources cannot be confined to the physical manifestation of nature, it also includes the entire environmental scenario-the carrying capacity of nature, the extent up to which the nature can accommodate.