• Everyday material objects like school clothes, furniture, and electricity originate from nature and natural resources from around the world.

• The production of objects involves complex networks of producers, distributors, and inputs derived from nature.

• Social relationships with the environment vary over time and place and require systematic analysis to address urgent environmental problems.

• All societies have an ecological basis; ecology refers to the web of physical and biological systems including mountains, rivers, plains, oceans, flora, and fauna.

• Human actions have modified ecology, making it difficult to separate natural and human factors in ecological change.

• Examples include deforestation increasing flood-proneness and climate change from global warming.

• Human-made ecological elements include agricultural farms with soil and water conservation, cultivated plants, domesticated animals, and synthetic inputs, and built environments like cities made from concrete, brick, and glass.

• Social environments emerge from interactions between biophysical ecology and human interventions; nature shapes society and society shapes nature.

• Examples: Indo-Gangetic floodplain supports dense agriculture and complex societies, whereas Rajasthan desert supports pastoralists.

• Capitalist social organization transforms nature, e.g., private automobiles causing air pollution, congestion, and contributing to global warming.

• Social organization shapes human-environment interaction: property relations determine access and control over resources.

• Ownership and control impact division of labor; e.g., women and landless laborers experience resource scarcity more acutely.

• Different relationships with the environment reflect social values, norms, and knowledge systems.

• Capitalist values commodify nature for profit, reducing ecological, spiritual, and aesthetic meanings to economic calculations.

• Socialist values may redistribute land for equality and justice.

• Religious values may protect sacred groves or justify altering the environment.

• Perspectives on environment and society include the nature-nurture debate, e.g., causes of poverty due to innate traits or social disadvantage.

• Social theories and data are shaped by the historical context: ideas of inequality challenged during 18th-century revolutions.

• Colonialism generated knowledge in geology, geography, botany, zoology, forestry, hydraulic engineering to manage natural resources for imperial purposes.

• Environmental management is difficult due to limited knowledge of biophysical processes and increasingly complex human-environment interactions.

• Industrialization has accelerated resource extraction, affecting ecosystems in unprecedented ways.

• Complex technologies and industrial organization require sophisticated management but remain vulnerable to errors and disasters.

• Examples of industrial and technological risks include Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Bhopal gas tragedy, and Mad Cow disease in Europe.

MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS AND RISKS

Resource Depletion

• The urgency and importance of environmental hazards vary by country and context, but several are globally recognized.

• Depletion of non-renewable natural resources is a major environmental problem, including fossil fuels and especially petroleum.

• Water and land destruction is occurring even more rapidly than fossil fuel depletion.

• Groundwater levels are declining sharply, particularly in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh in India.

• Aquifers that took hundreds or thousands of years to accumulate water are being emptied in a few decades due to intensive agriculture, industry, and urban demands.

• Rivers have been dammed and diverted, causing irreversible damage to water basin ecology.

• Many urban water bodies have been filled or built upon, destroying natural drainage systems.

• Topsoil, another critical agricultural resource, is being destroyed through erosion, water-logging, and salinisation, often due to poor environmental management.

• Brick production for construction contributes further to topsoil loss.

• Biodiversity habitats such as forests, grasslands, and wetlands face rapid depletion, mainly from agricultural expansion.

• Despite some reforestation or increased vegetative cover in certain areas, the overall trend is biodiversity loss.

• Habitat shrinking has endangered many species, including unique Indian species.

• Example: Tiger population has declined sharply despite strict laws and large sanctuaries.