Battle for Resource Use

Natural resources are very important for human kind. The development of a country depends on the fact that how much resources it had & how better technology it posses. Every nation & each individual, everybody wants to make full use of the resources which are available to them. Where as the societies & nations are divided into poor & rich. So there pattern of resource use are also different. To hold & use the resources there is always a tug of war between the poor & the riches. This had created a very complex situation, which is leading towards destruction of environment & hampering of economic growth. But before going much deep into the debate, we should know about that who are poor & who are rich?

In simple worlds, all the population which is unable to fulfill its basic needs is poor. Whereas the rich uses ample of the resources, there life style is luxurious, they used a lot of material in their lifetime & also create a huge amount of waste. The World Bank had given the concept of poverty by defining the poverty line. All the population below the poverty line is assumed as poor. The World Bank definition of the poverty line, for developing countries like India, is U.S $ 1/day/person or U.S $365 per year.

As per the Govt. of India, poverty line for urban areas is Rs 290 per month & for rural areas Rs 276 per month i.e. people in India who earn less than Rs 10 per day. As per the Govt. of India, this amount will be equivalent to 2,200 calories per day, medically enough to prevent death.

Most of the poor of the world are concentrated in the developing & less developed world like India, China, Bangladesh, Kenya, Chad & Nepal; India had a population of 23 crores living below the poverty line according the data of Govt. of India. And if we follow the World Bank measurements, it would be much higher. Where as the developed World have very low poor population & most of its population came under the category of riches.

RESOURCE USE PATTERN OF POOR:-

Poor were always more nearer to the environment. And for their most of the need they depend on the environment, e.g. the vast majority of the rural households meet their daily household needs through biomass or biomass related products, which are mostly collected free from the immediate environment. In short, they live within nothing other than a biomass-based, subsistence economy. Food, fuel, (firewood, cow dung, crop wastes) fodder, fertilizer, (organic manure, forest litter, leaf mulch) building materials (poles. Thatch), herbs and clothing are all biomass products.

In these cases many a times, their resources use pattern leads to deforestation & degradation of forest, e.g. tribal & local peoples in the forest areas of Jharkhand, mostly depend on the firewood for their fuel requirement & in the way they cut down substantial number of trees & in many cases they even cut down the young trees, which gives a scarce look to the forests.

Also the burning of firewood causes a lot of release of harmful gases in the atmosphere. Even the urban poor depend heavily on firewood as a fuel. According to a study 90 % of the cooking fuel in India is firewood, cow dung & crop wastes. This leads to deffoprestation, loss of organic fertilizer & a lot of other problems also.

Similarly, a large number of poor are dependent on agriculture. And the no. of population dependent on agriculture in developing countries is also very high. Due to this grueling population pressure & lack of land resources many a times the poor uses the marginal lands for cultivation, & cultivation on these lands further deteriorate the soil condition. This leads to land degradation, e.g. in Sub-Saharan region the poor farmers make their agricultural practices on the marginal lands, which is making the land more degraded & helping in the fast spread of desert.

In our country also many farmers in the forested areas of Jharkhand, cut down the forest and do cultivation in the marginal lands, which were better suitable for forest ecosystem. This had double impact on environment in the form of deforestation and land degradation.

Poor’s also depends on local crafts for earnings in many parts of our countries. In which they use our natural resources in various ways to earn living, e.g. the basket weavers uses the bamboos, and makes diff. item form it, and sells them in the market for earning money for their survival, the peoples involved in pottery industry, uses the soil for making diff items from it. In these cases, most of the time it didn’t have any impact on the environment.

Mostly the Poor’s hare very simple life style, which does not put any serious impact on environment. But as most of the time they are in large number, so there overall effect increases. But still the ecological foot prints of the Poor’s are quite minimal in comparison with the riches.

And when we talk about the question of resource use of poor & rich one important thing came into mind is the pattern of resource distribution. The resources are quite unevenly distributed among the poor and rich. When we talk about the land, we found that most of the fertile lands came under the hands of rich, whereas the poor have the sub-standard lands & marginal lands, on which further cultivation leads to more land degradation.

Similarly, the Poor’s also don’t get their share in the use of common resources pool. As when we talk about water for irrigation, most of the small ponds and lakes come under the private ownership of rich and also when the issue of water supply form canals came on, the rich share more benefits of that, the poor only got very limited share of these resources.

A good e.g. Regarding control of land resources is South Africa. Where white farmers 50,000 of them, own 70% of farmland, while 7, 00,000 black farmers own 13% of land (17% others).

Similarly, when we talk about energy sector, as due to abundance of coal, south Africa generates 60% of the electricity on the African continent, and sold it at some of the cheapest rates in the world, although less than a third of South Africans have electricity while coal burning power plants pollutes the air which hampers the timber industry and also degrade the high potential agricultural soils.

So the result is clear, the most of the benefits from these industries are enjoyed by riches. Whereas due to result of all this, many blacks go poorly nourished: some, in weak condition, catch diseases and die also.

Similarly, if we look the resource use pattern at the global level, we found that there are two major blocs, the G-7 nations (The group f 7, the big nations of North America, group and Japan) and the G – 77 nations, once 77 but now including some 128 lesser developed nations, often south of the industrial north. Most of the population of G – 7 comes under the category of rich, where as a huge chunk of the population of G – 77 nations came under the category of poor.

So, the case is that, the G – 7 nations held one fifth of the world’s six billion persons & they produce & consume about four fifths of all goods & services. The G-77 nations, with countries with four fifths of the world’s people, produce & consume one fifth.

So, the distribution problem is complex. Earth’s natural resources are unevenly distributed & consumed by the people.

RESOURCE USE BY RICH:-

The ecological foot prints of the rich are quite bigger. They use a lot of natural resources in there day to day life. When we talk about agriculture or food production, we found that the rich have the best agricultural lands available, but in the process of taking more benefit from it, they use a lot of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides & insecticides in their farmlands. This leads to various kind of pollution in the surroundings. Due to rampant use of these chemicals, by the rich large tracts of lands & other resources became polluted & degraded. E.g. during the fall of 1969 some 27,000 acres in South Eastern Michigan, were heavily dusted from the air with aldrin, one of the dangerous of all chlorinated hydrocarbons. Which had leads to degradation of local land, water bodies & wide spread killing of birds & other small creatures.

Similarly, to solve the rich pulp % paper industry of Canada. A large scale DDT spraying was begun in 1953 in Miramichi river to save the forests from the spruce budworm without thinking of its ecological effects. And ultimately this problem had lead to death of large number of fishes & other aquatic animals with high level of water & land pollution.

Again, when we talk about their housing & clothing needs they use a large resources base. The high rise building of the riches in the cities come on the cost of large scale deforestation & other indiscriminately resource use by them. A rich use the resources from all over the world, e.g. the clothes wearied by him came from the cottons grown in the field of Egypt or India, where poor farmers are doing suicide, due to less profit earned by them from cotton, & their crop failure., leathers from India or Italy, where rivers are becoming more & more polluted day by day due to pollution from leather industries in cities like Kanpur, where leather industry is one of the prominent industry, beefs from Central America, which comes on the cost of large scale deforestation & bio-diversity loss.

So the important thing is that they use the resources of others while conserve their own. E.g. more than a quarter of all central American forests have been destroyed since 1960 for cattle ranching: 85% to 95% of the beef produced as a result gone to U.S while domestic consumption of beef in central America has been fallen dramatically which clearly indicates that the Poor’s of Central America had not the access to their own resources, while they are available for the riches of U.S.

In the same manner the Japanese and Western timber industries have been the biggest source of forest destruction in Southeast Asia. This shows that the poor locals even don’t get the forest products for their basic human needs, while at the same time they have been used by the rich of other countries for their luxurious life style.

SO, WHO IS GUILTY?

When we had seen the resource use pattern of poor we found that, the natural resources. i.e. the only mean for their survival. They have no other options for living. Either they use it or face more difficult and harsh conditions.

Where as the riches have plenty of options. They have the alternatives from which they can choose. A rich can use LPG, it can use electricity for cooking or solar cooker, where as a local tribal poor had only the option of firewood for fuel. The rich also gave the science and technology as an excuse by using which they say that their resource use pattern are not putting much strain on natural resources. Yes it is correct, but sciences had also its limits. We cannot solve all our problems by science and technology. New technology came up with some new problems; still with so much high technology the rich nations are still facing the menace of acid rain, problem of waste disposal, problem of ozone depletion and many more. So the solution lies in both science and change in way of consumption.

E.g. the U.S, for instance, has only one-fourth of the population of India but it consumes substantially more fuel wood, iron, and steel and uses much more liters of water and gasoline. Per capita, the U.S residents consume 33 times more aluminum, 183 times more natural gas and 385 times more pulp wood than the Indians. Its per capita emissions of Co2 are 19 times than those of India.

So it is clearly evident that the ecological foot prints of the U.S people are much higher than those of Indians. Whereas, the U.S population mostly comprise of rich and Indians are 80% poor. This could be better understood by this e.g.

A baby born in U.S represents twice the impact on the earth as one born in Sweden,3 times as one born in Italy,13 times as one born in Brazil,45 times as one born in India,140 times as one born in Bangladesh and Kenya,280 times as one born in Chad, Rwanda, Haiti or Nepal.

So, it is clearly; evident that the large poor population is only putting as much strain on the natural resources as the small rich population

So, the rich and poor have very diff. resource use pattern and both of them are creating strain on our natural resource in their own manner. So, the poors should control their population growth where as the rich should always remember the saying of Mahatma Gandhi’s that is: -

“There is a sufficient in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.”

So, while dealing with the difference of resources issues of rich and poor we found that the problems are due to overpopulation, over-consumption, and under distribution. This should be checked. As the nation behaves well only if it treats the natural resource as assets which it must turn over to next generation, which underlies almost every other problem of our national life.