Tag: geography

By 2025, 2 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions. Water scarcity is both a natural and a man-made phenomenon. There is enough freshwater on the planet for seven billion people but it is distributed unevenly and too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed. 

With the increase in population, the increasing need for space is also turning out to be an area of concern. With desperate need for land for agricultural, industrial and most importantly urban needs to contain cities and their growing population, a direct action that we have come to recognize as “Deforestation” occurs. Deforestation in simple term means the felling and clearing of forest cover or tree plantations in order to accommodate agricultural, industrial or urban use. It involves permanent end of forest cover to make that land available for residential, commercial or industrial purpose.

Overexploitation of resources is disturbing environment in many ways. Wasting water has far-reaching consequences, which include the destruction of aquatic environments, lack of agricultural productivity and scarcity of safe drinking water.  Wastage of water leads to water scarcity. Unplanned exploitation of environmental resources has caused a lot of havoc to man and his environment on one hand. Air pollution, pollution of water, dumping of waste etc are some of the results of an unplanned exploitation of environmental resources. Desertification at the global level is the reduction in biodiversity, as it contributes to the destruction of the habitats of animal and vegetal species and micro-organisms.

Most of our energy is derived from non-renewable sources. 80% of the world's commercial energy comes from fossil fuels i.e oil, coal and natural gas. As non-renewable resources, their use is clearly unsustainable. While these resources will still exist in the ground for many years, both the financial and energy costs of bringing them to market will become increasingly prohibitive as their supplies dwindle.

Forests naturally absorb water from rainfall and slowly release the water into the rivers. After deforestation, rainfall flows too quickly to the rivers, stripping the topsoil and causing erosion and flooding to occur. When these floods break the river's banks, further problems arise as the path of the river changes and further soil erosion occurs along the river's new path. Deforestation also makes an area more arid, contributing to droughts.