Environmental Ethics

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

Page 55

The underground water stored as a result of accumulation over thousand of years has been exhausted with in few decades and several areas are now without water. Unless population is controlled there will be a serious crisis of water. Population explosion, has resulted in occupation or encroachment of areas along river banks, sea-shores, steep hill slopes which should have been reserved exclusively for forests and as a result there is heavy loss of life and property by storms, floods, landslides etc.
The recent Tsunami (26-12-04) catastrophy and others like it are as much a result of human choices as of geology and hydrology because of increasing population and consequent rise in consumerism and industralisation resulting in over exploitation of natural resources, encroachment on uninhabitable areas, the sea shores, steep slopes, sesmic zones (susceptible to earthquake), volcano regions etc. The green house effect and global warming and other harmful consequences of population increase and consumerism are redefining climatology, anthropology and even space. Like Tsunami future catastrophes will be far grimmer with many more disasters from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, mud slides, droughts etc. There is sharp increase, in such natural disasters from about 100 per year in early 1960's to 500 per year by early 2000's. More and more people will be pushed into dangerous zones, flood plains, drought ridden deserts, along fault lines (prone to earthquakes) etc. People will suffer more and more if population and consumerism are not checked. The congested cities like Delhi, Istanbul, Tehran and other increasingly dense and shabbily constructed cities are rubble in waiting. It is population explosion that turned the fruitarian mankind to hunters, non vegetarian and fish eaters because after destruction or depletion of food providing trees as a result of expansion of agriculture which is erratic and inconsistent in providing enough food. Fishes are great scavengers of water bodies, lakes, rivers and even seas and maintaining their cleanliness and eco-system. Fishes generally live on detritus through their filtering fins. Fishing has augmented problems of pollution of water bodies.