Environmental Ethics

Author(s): S M Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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plantations are decimated within 5-10 years and plantations are raised over and over again on the areas of earlier plantations. Hardly 10% of the plantations survive upto rotation age and that too because of special effort and enthusiasm of some good individual forest officers or the samaritan social workers like Anna Hazare. If the tenancy and revenue laws are suitably amended and agro-forestry mentioned above is restored forest cover may be successfully increased free of cost, but it seems unlikely in the prevailing socio-political situation when self interest of vote banks by politicians get priority and preference to national interests.
Agriculture and Population Growth :
The birth of agriculture gave impetus to increase in population which then needed more and more expansion of agriculture which further triggered more and more rapid population growth and the vicious cycle continues till now particularly in predominantly agriculture based societies in developing countries. As a result all available land upto 90% has been brought under agriculture at many places. When no land is available for further expansion there is now fragmentation of land into small holdings. The land holding of say 100 hectares of person with four or five sons gets divided in 20 to 25 hectares for each son. Each son with as many or more sons gets further smaller holding of 4-5 hectare and subsequently less than a hectare. Since the reduced land area is not sufficient to produce sufficient to sustain the divided families, the effort to produce more from smaller and smaller holding results in more intensive agriculture, using more and more chemical fertilisers and water for irrigation. In several villages where there were only one or two tube wells, there are now over 50 and more tube wells. There is so much pressure of population and shortage of land and personal greed that farmers even break open the dams of tanks, allow the precious water to go waste and cultivate the land in the areas of such water bodies. This affects the whole village including the persons who do the mischief. This lowers the water table in the whole area. Wasting of water and destroying the water storage tanks ultimately
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