Natural Resources
1. What This Chapter Covers
Natural resources are present in abundance — but the chapter's opening question is whether we use them properly. It asks you to list the resources in your own locality and then pick one: which is scarce, whether it was abundant earlier, how it became scarce, and what you would do to save it.
The index allots this chapter 10 periods in January and runs it from page 225 to page 245, which makes it the last chapter of the book. Most of it is built from two case studies with real data, both from villages in Telangana.
2. Case I — Two Villages, Five Years Apart (Textbook 10.1)
The book compares Wanaparthy, which had no scarcity of ground water, with Vaddicherla, which did — placing both, in its own text, in Jangaon district.
Wells were counted in both villages. Basic information on well irrigation was collected from every well owner by questionnaire, covering socio-economic aspects, and 25 families from each village were asked to describe how the groundwater situation had changed over five years.
The decisive difference is simple: Vaddicherla has no alternative source of water except wells, while Wanaparthy has a percolation tank.
Percolation tanks are normally earthen dams with masonry structures where water may overflow. The construction material is a mixture of soil, silt, loam, clay, sand and gravel, suitably mixed and laid in layers at the base and sides, then properly compacted to achieve stability.
Otherwise the two villages are almost alike — occupational and cropping patterns, geography, infrastructure — and in both, farmers with small land holdings are in the majority. Wanaparthy has the higher average household income. Cultivation is the main occupation, the well is the primary source of irrigation, and household income depends on the status of groundwater. Rain has not been consistent for some years, yet farmers in both villages prefer growing paddy.
The numbers
| Village | Total area, acres | Area under irrigation, at the start | Wells, at the start | Area under irrigation, after 5 years | Wells, after 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wanaparthy | 4000 | 1000 | 155 | 860 | 95 |
| Vaddicherla | 3000 | 450 | 175 | 315 | 56 |
Over the same five years, population rose by nearly 10 per cent in both villages.
Read the table carefully and the pattern is clear. Vaddicherla started with more wells than Wanaparthy, 175 against 155, but irrigated less than half the area. Five years later Wanaparthy had lost 60 wells and 140 acres; Vaddicherla had lost 119 wells and 135 acres. In proportion, Vaddicherla lost about 68 per cent of its wells against Wanaparthy's 39 per cent.
Because of the scarcity, most open dug wells were converted into bore wells, which reach greater depths and reduce loss of water by surface evaporation. But most open wells have dried up, and the availability of water in the bore wells has gone down too.
Because of varying monsoon behaviour, there is pressure on groundwater. Indiscriminate tapping by too much drilling and construction of deep tube wells and bore wells has resulted in over-exploitation and depletion in certain areas. The average fall of water level in the combined Andhra Pradesh during 1998-2002 was around 3 metres.
What it costs
Water is pumped out with electricity, and farmers with small holdings spend more money per well on pump sets, pipeline connections, maintenance and electricity charges.
| Village | Holding | Depth of bore well, feet | Total cost of well irrigation per acre per year, rupees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wanaparthy | Large | 130 - 200 | 25,000 - 70,000 |
| Wanaparthy | Small | 110 - 180 | 25,000 - 65,000 |
| Vaddicherla | Large | 90 - 300 | 22,000 - 50,000 |
| Vaddicherla | Small | 60 - 200 | 20,000 - 45,000 |
On a per-acre basis the costs are lowest in Wanaparthy, the village with the irrigation facility, and highest in Vaddicherla, the village without it.
What it earns
| Village | Holding | Paddy Kharif | Paddy Rabi | Cotton | Gingelly | Total per acre per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wanaparthy | Large | 8200 | 8700 | 4900 | 3300 | 25,100 |
| Wanaparthy | Small | 7046 | 8490 | 10,889 | 3110 | 29,535 |
| Vaddicherla | Large | 10,698 | 5970 | 4000 | 3595 | 24,263 |
| Vaddicherla | Small | 9128 | 7380 | 3031 | 2650 | 22,189 |
All figures are income per acre in rupees. The single most striking entry is cotton at 10,889 for small holders in Wanaparthy, higher than either paddy season — which is the answer to the book's question about what could replace paddy there.
Crops that grow in less or moderate water include cotton and gingelly. The book asks the obvious question about paddy: although we know it consumes the most water, why do farmers still prefer it?
The intervention
A project of the Centre for World Solidarity, Secunderabad, addressing the sustainability of ground water, intervened to help recharge the drying wells.
They encouraged water sharing among farmers, forming groups of large and small holders who would use the same resource. Farmers were motivated to use micro-irrigation — drip irrigation and sprinklers. Soak pits to tap rainwater optimally were built as community efforts, and these helped recharge dried-up bore wells. Dykes or barriers, nearly 30 cm thick of brick-cement or stone-cement with mud or clay filling, extending down to the compact bedrock, were built in underground streams to tap ground water optimally.
Water for all (10.1.1)
97 per cent of the total water on Earth is salt water in oceans, seas and underground. Only 2.5 to 2.75 per cent is fresh, and of that:
- 1.75 to 2 per cent is frozen in glaciers, ice and snow, which is nearly two-thirds of all available fresh water
- 0.7 to 0.8 per cent is fresh groundwater and soil moisture
- less than 0.01 per cent is surface water in lakes, swamps and rivers
Meagre as it is, used judiciously it will last a long time.
The two villages are matched on almost everything — crops, geography, holdings, infrastructure — which is what makes the comparison usable. One had a recharge structure and one did not, and five years later the well loss differed by nearly thirty percentage points.
3. Case II — Kothapally (Textbook 10.2)
A survey of Kothapally village found that dry land areas were more extensive than irrigated land, literacy was low, labour was scarce, more fertilizers and pesticides were used on small farms, crop yields were low, and there was not even a single water harvesting structure in the village.
The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) educated villagers in large numbers and provided technical support for cost-efficient water storage and soil conservation structures, both community-based and farmer-based. These restored some resources and conserved others so that they might never be depleted — which is what the book means by sustainable management.
Community-based interventions (10.2.1)
Fourteen water storage structures — one earthen and 13 masonry dams — with storage capacity of 300 to 2000 m³ were constructed. 60 mini-percolation pits and field bunding on 38 hectares were completed.
Twenty-eight dry open wells were recharged by building dykes or barriers in nearby canals and retaining rain water in them, and the water collected in the storage structures was used exclusively for recharging groundwater to the dried wells.
Farmer-based interventions (10.2.2)
Individual farmers built canals around fields and constructed landforms useful for water conservation. Misuse of soil, water and nutrients is prevented by broad bed furrows, growing crops that are short in height, and contour farming.
Rectangular bunds were built around 38 hectares of farm land and contour bunds against the slope, so rain water is preserved. Gliricidia, a legume that grows in dry soil, is grown to increase nitrogen levels in the soil and to strengthen the bunds.
Farmers obtained 250 kg more red gram and 50 kg more maize per hectare using broad bed furrows and micro-irrigation. Drip irrigation can reduce water consumption by 70 per cent, but only 2 per cent of cultivable land worldwide is irrigated that way.
Wasteland development (10.2.3)
Dryland waste areas can be developed by planting saplings of useful species along roads, field bunds and canals. Trenches at 10 m intervals with 0.3 m bunds were laid out, custard apple was planted in the trenches with other useful species and Gliricidia on the bunds, and 2500 fruit trees and teak plants were planted.
The state's water budget
According to a 2004 survey the total water available in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh is 3814 thousand million cubic feet (TMC), of which:
| Use | TMC |
|---|---|
| Irrigation | 2268 |
| Domestic use | 21 |
| Industries | 10 |
| Power generation | 1 |
| Total utilised | 2300 |
The amount required by 2025 is 3989 TMC — more than the 3814 TMC available.
Irrigation sources by area covered: ground water 43 per cent, canals 37 per cent, tanks 15 per cent, with the remainder from other sources.
Sri Ram Sagar Project, also known as the Pochampadu Project, is on the Godavari and is "a lifeline for a large part of Telangana", serving the erstwhile Karimnagar, Warangal, Adilabad, Nalgonda and Khammam districts. But most of the water is retained before reaching the state because of dams built on the Godavari in another state.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, a water resource in an area where annual supply drops below 1700 m³ per person is becoming scarce. The FAO has predicted that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.
4. Natural Resources Around Us (Textbook 10.3)
Earth's natural resources include air, water, soil, minerals, fuels, plants and animals, and conservation is the practice of caring for them so all living things can benefit now and in the future.
Resources that can be replaced after use are renewable. Others, such as fossil fuels, cannot be replaced at all — once used up they are gone forever, because their formation takes a long time while consumption happens very quickly. These are non-renewable.
People waste resources routinely: animals are overhunted, forests cleared so that land is exposed to wind and water damage, fertile soil exhausted and lost to erosion through poor farming, fuel supplies depleted, water and air polluted.
The book is honest that conservation conflicts with other genuine needs. A forest area may look like a good place for a farm, for a timber company to harvest, or for a factory or shopping mall. All these needs are valid, but the plants and animals living there are often forgotten.
The benefits of development have to be weighed against the harm to animals forced to find new habitats, the depletion of resources we may want later, and the damage to resources we use today.
When we use the environment in a way that ensures we still have resources for the future, that is sustainable development.
5. Forests (Textbook 10.4)
Every continent except Antarctica has forests. They are habitat for flora and fauna, serve as a lung for the world and a bed of nutrients for new life — and in the urge to extract their products we destroy them indiscriminately.
Each year the Earth loses about 36 million acres of forest to deforestation. It destroys wildlife habitats, increases soil erosion, and releases CO, CO₂ and SO₂ — greenhouse gases — into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
The Bishnois
The book's example of what a conservation movement can be is the Bishnois of Rajasthan. Amrita Devi and her daughters, followed by villagers, clung to the trees in the forest around their village and laid down their lives to save them.
They were protesting against the king's order to collect wood for the construction of his palace, and defending the pledge of peaceful coexistence they had taken — a set of 29 rules to conserve nature's resources that every Bishnoi vows to protect.
It also points to the Chenchu and Gond tribes of Telangana, and how carefully they extract resources from nature and help revive it.
Sustainable forestry
Sustainable methods include harvesting with natural regeneration in mind and avoiding logging techniques such as removing all the high-value or all the large trees from a forest.
Trees are also conserved when consumers recycle forest products. People in China and Mexico reuse much of their wastepaper, including writing paper, wrapping paper and cardboard, and if half the world's paper were recycled, much of the worldwide demand for new paper would be met, saving many trees.
6. Soil (Textbook 10.5)
Soil is vital to food production, and many other conservation efforts — plant conservation, animal conservation — depend on soil conservation.
Poor farming methods such as repeatedly planting the same crop in the same place deplete nutrients, and erosion by water and wind increases when farmers plough up land, especially on hills.
Contour strip cropping is one conservation method: several crops such as corn, wheat and clover are planted in alternating strips across a slope or across the path of the prevailing wind. Different crops, with different root systems and leaves, help prevent erosion.
Selective harvesting also helps: mature commercial trees of a specific diameter are harvested on a rotational cycle, and harvested areas are then closed for a prescribed period before the next cycle, which gives younger trees a chance to reach full commercial potential and lets the forest regenerate naturally.
7. Biodiversity (Textbook 10.6)
Biodiversity is the variety of living things that populate the Earth, and the products and benefits we get from nature rely on it — foods, building materials, medicines, and a clean and healthy landscape.
When a species becomes endangered it is lost to the world forever, and through hunting, pollution and habitat destruction people are speeding up that loss at an alarming rate. We use thousands of plant species for medicines worldwide.
The book makes the point close to home: a lawn in a colony is a pleasant sight, but a lot of plant species are completely destroyed to grow the one type of grass on it, and the grass grown is usually brought from another country. It asks you to watch how a lawn near you is maintained and to find out from the gardener which plants are removed from time to time.
Activity 2. Find out how many types of insect are present in and around your house. Are the same types there in all seasons? Make a chart of insect types, note their occurrence for at least a week in each season, find out when you have the highest variety, and study them in later years to see if any have disappeared.
8. Fossil Fuels (Textbook 10.7)
Fossil fuels — coal, petroleum and natural gas — were produced from the remains of ancient plants and animals.
Besides fuel for vehicles, many everyday products are made from petroleum: plastics, synthetic rubber, fabrics like nylon, medicines, cosmetics, waxes, cleaning products and medical devices.
Consumption of some resources in India, from the book's figure: coal 42 per cent, oil 24 per cent, energy wastes 24 per cent, natural gas 7 per cent, others 2 per cent, nuclear 1 per cent.
Scientists are exploring alternatives — renewable biofuels for cars and trucks, and electricity from sun, wind and water. Everyone can help by purchasing energy-efficient appliances, walking or cycling, and using public transport wherever possible.
Seeds from the Jatropha curcas plant are used to produce biofuel, a crucial part of India's plan to attain energy sustainability. Combined Andhra Pradesh entered a formal agreement with Reliance Industries for Jatropha planting, and the company selected 200 acres at Kakinada to grow it for high-quality biodiesel.
9. Minerals (Textbook 10.8)
Earth's supply of raw mineral resources is in danger, and many located and mapped deposits have been depleted. As the ores for minerals such as aluminium and iron become harder to find and extract their prices rise, which makes tools and machinery more expensive to buy and operate.
Many mining methods, such as mountaintop removal mining, devastate the environment: they destroy soil, plants and animal habitats, and pollute water and air as toxic chemicals leak into the surrounding ecosystem.
Less wasteful mining methods and recycling will help. Car manufacturers in Japan recycle many of the raw materials used in making automobiles, and in the United States nearly one-third of the iron produced comes from recycled automobiles.
10. Conservation and the Four Rs (Textbook 10.9, 10.10)
"The interest in conservation is not a sentimental one but the discovery of a truth well known to our ancient sages. The Indian tradition teaches us that all forms of life — human, animal and plant — are so closely inter-linked that disturbance of one gives rise to imbalance in the other." — Srimati Indira Gandhi, launching the world conservation strategy in India on 6 March 1980
In the 1960s most countries lived within their ecological resources. The latest figure the book gives is that today three-quarters of the human population live in countries which consume more than they can replenish.
Reduce. Using resources without wasting them — repairing leaky taps, avoiding a shower, switching off unnecessary lights and fans.
Reuse. Things we tend to throw away, such as paper and wrapping paper. This saves plants and minimises pollution.
Recycle. Converting waste materials into new materials and objects, as with some metals, glass and paper. The book is careful here: recycling is not always a good option, because recycling plastic is a tricky process and can cause havoc. The chief problem is complexity — there are as many types of plastic as there are uses, each type can only be recycled with its own kind, so plastics must be carefully sorted before processing.
Recover. When trees are cut to build industries or roads, it is important to grow trees in another area, which helps sustain forest cover and the habitats of organisms.
Conservation groups
Governments enact laws defining how land should be used and which areas should be set aside as parks and wildlife preserves, enforce laws protecting the environment from pollution such as requiring factories to install pollution-control devices, and often provide incentives for conserving resources.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an alliance of governments and private groups founded in 1948. It works to protect wildlife and habitats, and in 1980 proposed a world conservation strategy that many governments have used as a model for their own plans. The IUCN also monitors the status of endangered wildlife, threatened national parks and preserves, and other environments around the world.
The chapter's closing position: we need natural resources for development, but not at the cost of loss of habitat for living organisms.
11. The Academic Standards (Textbook page 245)
The last page of the book prints the legend for the AS codes attached to every "Improve your learning" question in all ten chapters.
| Code | Academic standard | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| AS1 | Conceptual understanding | Explaining, citing examples, giving reasons, comparing, writing differences, explaining processes, and developing your own mind maps |
| AS2 | Asking questions and making hypothesis | Asking questions to understand and clarify, participating in discussion, and making hypotheses about experimental results and issues |
| AS3 | Experimentation and field investigation | Doing experiments yourself: arranging materials, noting observations, finding alternative materials, taking precautions, and reporting field investigations |
| AS4 | Information skills and projects | Collecting information by interview, checklist and questionnaire, analysing it systematically, and conducting your own project work |
| AS5 | Communication through drawing and model making | Explaining understanding by drawing and labelling figures, describing parts, making models, and plotting graphs from given or collected data |
| AS6 | Appreciation and aesthetic sense, values | Appreciating human effort and nature, having an aesthetic sense towards nature, and following constitutional values |
| AS7 | Application to daily life, concern to biodiversity | Using scientific concepts to face daily life situations, and showing concern for biodiversity |
Reading this table tells you what each question is actually asking for, which is often not obvious from its wording — an AS3 question wants a procedure, an AS5 question wants a labelled drawing, and an AS1 question wants an explanation rather than a list.
Key words from the chapter
Percolation tank, micro-irrigation, bore wells, sustainable development, biofuels, contour strip farming, dyke management.
12. Summary
Management of resources is essential for their conservation and restoration. Resources are usually local specific, and local people need to have control over them.
People need to be motivated to reduce pressure on the environment by reducing the utilization of resources and reusing some of them.
We must use our resources judiciously, especially fossil fuels, coal and petroleum, since they will ultimately be exhausted.
Interstate and intercountry disputes should not hamper the availability of a resource — a point the book illustrates with the Sri Ram Sagar Project, where water is retained upstream before reaching Telangana.
The two case studies are the chapter's real argument. Wanaparthy and Vaddicherla differ in almost nothing except that one has a percolation tank, and five years of well counts show what that difference is worth. Kothapally began with no water harvesting structure at all, and community and farmer interventions together reversed the decline — which is what sustainable management looks like when it is measured rather than asserted.
