eChapters

Introduction

India is having very rich sources of inland water bodies in the form of river, lakes and reservoirs. The reservoirs are constructed by impounding the river system. The reservoirs are constructed for effective utilisation of water for irrigation, power generation and flood control. Reservoir fishery in India is also important from socio-economic point of view as it has the potential of providing employment to about two million people, Kaushal and Sharma (2001). Total area under the reservoirs in India is 3:1 million ha and it is expected to double by 2020. This includes 19,000 small reservoirs with a total water surface area of 14,85,557 ha and about 180 medium and 56 large reservoirs of 5,27,541 and 11,40, 268 ha area respectively.

The Maharashtra is endowed with an area of 1,79,430 ha under reservoir and the Maharashtra produces 516 tonnes of fish through reservoirs. The state fisheries corporation was operating in 6,272 ha of reservoirs and marketing the catches.

Introduction

In addition to role of iron oxidation in commercial point of view there are certain implication of iron oxidation on environment. Acid Rock Drainage (ARD) is one of the example of environmental pollution. Coal and various metal ores are enclosed in geological formation of reduced nature. Coal, is often associated with pyrite (FeS₂).When mining activities expose this material to atmospheric oxygen, a combination of auto oxidation and microbial iron and sulfur oxidation produces large amounts of acids. The iron-rich acidic mine drainage kills aquatic life and renders the contaminated stream unsuitable as a water supply or for recreational use.

Introduction

It has been observed that the surface waters are getting polluted due to improper disposal of domestic and industrial wastewaters. Most of the River basins which are major supply of water for human activities are polluted. Even the groundwater in not spared because of the incessant growth of the population in India. In Maharashtra the number of bore wells has been increased to 5 Lakhs from 1 Lakhs from few decades only. Out of total area of Maharashtra, 82% is covered by the basaltic rocks made up of lava. That’s why the quantity of the groundwater is comparatively less than the Indo-gangetic plane.

Groundwater in the north region of the Tapi River is found to be hard, unfit for the human consumption. The residences of district like Buldhana, Jalgaon and Dhule have to use hard water for consumption. Rampant extraction of the groundwater for agriculture might have caused alternation in chemical qualities of the groundwater. It has been also well documented that in Marathwada region, groundwater content higher concentration of fluoride and total Hardness.

Fluorine the most electro-negative element is of great interest and importance to human health because of its curative and harmful effects. Fluorides are released by various natural sources and anthropogenic activities into the aquatic environment (that is surface as well as groundwater). Fluoride can enter the human body through drinking water, food, toothpaste, mouth rinses and other dental products, drugs and fluoride containing salts and hydrofluoric acid. It may cause Fluorosis – a crippling and painful disease such as dental fluorosis, skeletal fluorosis and non-skeletal fluorosis.

Introduction

Lonar Lake, near Lonar town in the Buldhana District, India is not just the source of excitement for the visitors but also for the scientist community. Lonar is the third largest natural salt-water lake in the world, with a diameter of 1800 meter. Fredrickson, et al (1973) found that, about 50000 year back a massive meteor entered into the Earth’s gravitational forces ranging 60 meter long and weighing 2 million ton. It was racing at a speed of 25 kms per second towards the planet earth. When it struck the earth the energy released was equivalent to that released by six-megaton atom bombs. The impact was so severe that rocks from all sides came on the surface and reached the height of 20 meters. This impact left a massive crater 170 meters deep and with 1800 meter in diameter. Today it is natural salt-water lake.

Introduction

The tropical evergreen forests of the Sahyadris or the Malnad region of Karnataka is one of the richest plant areas (“hot spots”) on earth and crucial to the oxygen supply of the world. More than 30,000 varieties of wildlife and plants and over 8,000 said to unique are reported to lie here. Unless reckless deforestation is halted soon, some scientists fear that within the next 100 years this virgin forest could become an arid wilderness.

Agriculture is one of the major age-old occupations of human beings providing food to the people and also supplies raw materials to a number of agro based industries. However the expansion of agricultural fields in the dense woody forest areas has brought about many environmental problems and thereby degraded the quality of environment in ecologically most sensitive areas like Uttar Kannada District. In India, agricultural practices are primarily based on the traditional system of intensive subsistence forming. It is also observed that more and more available area (forest) has been brought under cultivations to feed the population which has been growing at an alarming rate. The agricultural expansion and population growth, in forest areas of Uttar Kannada Districts have degraded the quality of environment.

Industrial revolution took place in England during the period of 1760-1830. Accordingly, the production prior to demand was introduced. Many countries all over the world adopted industrial policies favouring industrial sector to achieve the fast development of the nation. Government of India also contributed its efforts in the same direction and issued the industrial policy of 1948, 1956, 1977 and so on making several financial and non financial facilities available to have substantial growth and development of industries in particular and nation in general.

Under the name of globalization and making the economy internationally competent, India took a revolutionary decision to follow new industrial policy 1991 opening the doors for investment from foreign countries and private sector even. In addition to this economic reforms have been adopted and advocated for the sake of national development. Three ‘D’ programme consisting of devaluation, decontrol and disinvestment, were also put on the national agenda, to achieve the set targets.

Since the last decade discussion regarding ecology is being heard. A campaign with a great planning has launched by holding seminar conferences and meets. The ecological problem became a matter of tremendous panic and anxiety. Not only in India but also in entire world this problem is being discussed through all school, colleges and universities on international scale all over world, since it became universal issue now a days. The word ecology was not known to the people 20 years ago, never the less it became familiar even among the villages today. The people in villages are making thorough study of the subject. The experts of ecology from all over the world have been surprised to learn the exhaustive study of the same done by the Indian scholars. We have instituted a separate ministry to look after the environmental problems. The activities injurious to environment are prohibited. An act is there to restrict antienvironmental deeds what made scientists all over the world to take this matter so seriously. Does it mean that the very existence of mankind has been jeopardized by it Let us see what our ancient literature say about the ecology and pollution.

Introduction

The natural hazards like floods, cyclones, droughts, landslides and earthquakes are not rare or unusual phenomenon. India is among the world’s most disaster prone areas and a large part of the country is exposed to such natural hazards, which often turn into disasters causing significant disruption of socio-economic life of communities leading to loss of life and property. It would not be considered as a disaster unless it resulted in actual damage to human life or property. According to data accumulated over past 25 years, natural disasters in Asia accounts for about 40% of the world’s total disasters while the death toll ratio is about 50% and the number of people affected is about 90%. The latter figure is about 2.2 times the ratio of number of occurrences in Asia. The figures vary widely over the decades, a result that can be attributed to a few particularly terrible disasters. Such as the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake in China, which killed about 250,000, and a series of severe cyclones that hit Bangladesh in 1970 with a death toll of about 500,000. The death toll resulting from wind and flood disasters jumped by an order of magnitude in the 1990s. But this sudden increase affected Asia’s ratio to the world total by about 15 percentage points because there was a worldwide surge in this type of disaster. Clearly, there is an extreme concentration of victims of such disasters in Asia, Another substantial increase is clear in the value of damage caused by typhoons and cyclones; it is now running at 10 times the level of the 1980s. Again, however, the ratio has remained almost unchanged, at about 40%, because hurricanes in Central and North America account for more than 50% of the world total (51.2%, 58.5%, and 54.4% in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s,respectively). It is sadly worth noting that there has been conspicuous growth in the absolute value of damage in both Asia and the Americas.

Introduction

Disaster is defined as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses, which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources (ISDR 2002).

Disaster in Global context - The impact of natural disasters in terms of human and economic losses has risen in recent years, society in general has become more vulnerable to natural disasters. Those usually most affected by natural and other disasters are the poor and socially disadvantaged groups in developing countries as they are least equipped to cope with them (IFRC 2001).

Introduction

Natural Disasters are inevitable, and Indian subcontinent is prone to all type of Natural Disaster either it is flood, drought, cyclone, earthquakes, tsunami or forest fires etc. Disasters can be classified in several ways. A possible sub-division of disaster is: (i) Natural Disasters; (ii) Human made disasters; (iii) Human induced disasters. Another sub-division is related to the main controlling factors leading to a disaster. These may be meteorological, geomorphological/geological, ecological, technological, global environmental and extra terrestrial. Another useful distinction that can be made between disasters is regarding their duration of impact and the time of forewarning. Some disaster strikes within a short period with devastating outcomes; others have a slow onset period with equally or more serious repercussions. According to the available statistics 60% of the total area of Indian subcontinent is venerable to seismic activity of varying intensities, 16% of the country’s total area is drought prone. In India 68% of total sown area of the country is drought prone. Coastal areas of India is exposed to tropical cyclones, tsunami in recent years and among all the disaster occur in the country, River floods are the most frequent and often the most devastating.

Introduction

Disasters are the natural and man made extreme events which exceeds the tolerable magnitude of any event, where adjustment is difficult. These events are catastrophic and results in the loss of life and property on a huge scale. These abnormal events form the headlines to the newspapers and media a world and national level.

These processes are beneficial to the human beings because they form the earth and habitable planet for the evolution of life. However, these processes within a short time limit forms, hazardous and such activities adversely affect the human beings and human related activities on a very large scale.

Amongst the three important types of disasters viz. natural, anthropogenic and technological, the first and the foremost natural disaster mainly includes the geological atmospheric and other related natural types viz. floods, earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis etc.

Introduction

Earthquakes are the most destructive among all the natural hazards. Most of the time, they occur without any warning, which makes them most feared and unpredictable natural phenomena. Globally, on an average two earthquakes of magnitude 8 are known to occur every year. Some of the countries like Japan, China and United States have suffered several damaging earthquakes in the past. India has also experienced a number of high intensity earthquakes in the recent past and more than 650 earthquakes of magnitude >5.0 have been reported in India since 1890. Sixty-nine earthquakes in Delaware (U.S.A.) have been documented or suspected since 1871. Refer to Baxter (2000) for more details about the DGS Seismic Network and for documentation of earthquakes. In the 1930s Charles Richter developed a magnitude scale (Richter scale) which was an objective way of discriminating between large and small shocks using the seismic wave amplitude recorded by seismographs (Richter, 1958).

Introduction

The state of Maharashtra now again reels under the scarcity of water. Geologically, major part of the state is covered by Deccan basaltic flows. This basaltic terrain, as such, has been labelled notorious as far as the availability of groundwater is concerned. Uncertain availability of groundwater in the terrain is due to heterogeneity in the nature of piles of basaltic flows which adversely affects the geohydrological characters of the rocks.

The area understudy is unfortunately, a part of basaltic terrain in which no storage structures like major dams or medium projects have been constructed across the existing rivers. Consequently, the irrigation in the area and domestic needs of the people solely depend on whatever water is available in the existing dug wells. The wells do not suffice the need of the people because the percolation of water in the wells is not adequate in major part.

Introduction

On 26^th December 2004, the Indian coastline experienced the most devastating tsunami in recorded history. The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake of magnitude Mw 9.3 at 3.316ºN, 95.854°E off the coast of Sumatra in the Indonesian Archipelago at 06:29 hrs making it the most powerful in the world in the last 40 years. In recent years increasing the vulnerability to natural disasters of developing countries is a major reason for concern. The potential loss of human lives and property due to natural hazards is very high in the urban areas of these countries. The Information obtained from conventional tsunami hazard maps does not always provide sufficient data for users .needs. The difficulty in presenting more significant information on tsunami hazard maps in conventional paper format is due to the limited available physical space of that format. Printing more information on such paper maps tends to confuse rather than provide more needed information to users. Furthermore, these kinds of maps provide little opportunity for users to ask for additional information, to determine the relationships between different kinds of information and important quantitative analyses. Furthermore, Tsunami hazards have important temporal attributes. Presenting these attributes on the map; e.g. the sequence of volcanic eruptions in a region or the frequency of tsumani in a particular area during a particular period of time is very difficult.

Introduction

The Rispana river is a order of stream forming a tributary of Ganga. Its watershed covers an area of approximately 53.6 Km in the northern part of Dehradun city lies between 78^º30’ to 78^º15⁰’ longitude and 30^º15’ to 30^º 30’ latitude in top sheet No is 1/3. The area is covered in IRS - IC Pan of 13 Jan 1998 and LISS-III of 7 March 1997.

The Doon Valley is enriched with numerous seasonal and perennial streams. Which forms the lifetime or the inhabitants . The Rispana river is the part of the Ganga system of Drainage of the valley. The river originates from the Mussoorie hills, which are full of natural springs. The droplets from the springs collect and form numerous streamlets and these streamlets are joined to be these and they form the famous Shekhar Falls (north of Shahanshai Ashram about 5 Km away). Then the Rispana flows along Rajpur road over the Doon Gravels and then river passes through the tiny hamlets Nalapani, Raipur, Chanderroad, Defence colony, Amwala, Tapowan, Dandadhoran Adohiwala, Dalanwala, Gujram, Ajabpur and finally its contribute the water to the suswa River which intern joins the Ganga.

Introduction

The Himalayan Moutains that is relatively a younger formation and geologically a very complex occupies most of the Arunachal Pradesh. The mountain terrain covers an area of about 86000 sq. km with elevation ranging from 400 to 6000 m above mean sea level (Satapathy and Dutta 1999). The wet tropical and sub-tropical climate which prevails in most part of the Arunachal Pradesh, there is usual phenomenon of erosion and land degradation by the action of water. It is estimated by the application of USLE for Arunachal Pradesh that the total amount of about 669.35 million tones of soil is eroded annually with an average rate of 90.7 tonnes /ha/year (Singh, 1999).

Arunachal Pradesh falls under upper Brahamaputra river system constituted by 10 major river basins. They are Tawang, Kameng, Dikrong, Subansiri, Siang, Sesseri, Dibang-Tellu, and Tirap-Tiso. In Arunachal Pradesh, Dikrong river is named after joining of two main rivers Pachin and Para . In the catchments of Dikrong river light textured unstable soils with the prevalent practice of Jhum Cultivation makes the entire catchments susceptible to erosion. In every monsoon the river Dilrong carries tremendous amount of silt, gravel, small boulder and causes flood in some parts of the catchments susceptible to erosion. Singh (1999) observed that loss rate through Dikrong River was 100.98 tones/ha/year. This indicates serious threat to soil resources and there is need for urgent treatment for sediment control in Dikrong river bash.

1.1 General

Access to energy is a crucial enabling condition for achieving sustainable development. Prudent energy policies and research can play an important role in steering both industrialized and developing countries onto more sustainable energy development paths. Specifically, they can strengthen the three pillars of sustainable development: the economy, by boosting productivity, social welfare, by improving living standards and enhancing safety and security, and the environment, by reducing indoor and outdoor pollution and remediating environmental degradation.

1.2 Energy and it’s Requirement

Energy in any form is necessary to meet many of our requirements. It’s varying definitions shows the importance of energy in our life.

2.1 Introduction

Energy is one of the main input for rural development and economic development. The greater part of the world population lives at low standard and a quarter of the population or about 1.5 billion, have an extremely low standard of life. Energy is one of the essential requirement of the quality of life the people. The industrial development or even large scale food production, water supply, textile manufactures & construction of building and other recreation items are not possible without adequate supply of energy. Therefore, one of the most important tasks is to provide adequate, reliable, convenient and efficient supply of energy, if quality of life of the people is to be raised from its present level of grinding poverty. Table 2.1 project the global primary energy supply in six scenarios i.e A1 - its strong emphasis on oil and natural gas use. A2 - which is coal-intensive. A3 - which emphasises the roles of natural gas, new renewables and nuclear in averting serious problems from emissions. B - Middle course. C1- with its emphasis on energy efficiency improvements, new renewables (especially solar in the longer run), but with nuclear power phased out by 2100 because unable to satisfy its critics and C2 - where nuclear power plays an expanding role.

3.1 Introduction

There is now latest national thinking going on to conserve the known sources of energy such as firewood, cow dung, agricultural waste, kerosene, oil etc. i.e. by limiting their conventional uses and to propagate the use of non conventional energy especially in the rural area. The large scale indiscriminate use of non commercial fuels fully in the rural areas are not only providing to be inefficient but also inadequate to cope with the growing rural energy demand caused by growing population and growing consciousness among rural people for a better way of life. Planned input of energy are, therefore urgently require to protect the environment and to cope with raising rural energy demand. In order to assess the widening gap between the supply and demand of commercial energy and indiscriminate use of non commercial fuels in rural areas, there is a need for various types of statistical or quantified information to be collected and analyzed in an objective manner and presented suitability so as to serve as a sound basis for taking policy decision to make an optimum utilization of commercial energy in a balanced manner. This will require conducting of survey in areas to be covered.

The statistical data may be collected by complete enumeration or by a sample survey. The earlier method is very cumbersome, time consuming, cost ineffective and requires an intensive development of manpower, if domains of study is quite large. Complete enumeration and sample surveys presuppose the existence of a certain minimum of facilities such as funds, professional personnel for planning the survey methodology and supervision of field operations, sufficiently qualified enumerators, sampling frames, machine tabulation equipment, transport and communication facilities etc. These facilities or combinations there of do not always exist to the extent needed for a complete enumeration survey. As such, sample survey is preferred to complete enumeration for ethic type of studies giving due importance to sampling error.

In the integrated energy planning, there is an objective to find out the present consumption pattern of energy for different end uses, shortages being experienced and people’s reaction to using alternate sources of energy is also enumerated.

The survey methods determine – incident, distribution and the interrelation among sociological variable and psychological variable. The sociological variable s consists of age, education, income and attitude, behavior, motivation, belief and knowledge about the problem.

4.1 Introduction

The energy census survey has become the basis for planning & implementation of the village development based on conventional and non conventional sources which are appropriate to the local needs. The continuous and widespread use of non commercial sources of energy in the rural area is resulting in the large scale destruction of the environment. While the rural people get non conventional fuels at almost zero private cost, the social cost for meeting their energy needs has been increasing over the year. Hence the non conventional fuels acquired a special significance in the energy context.

The rural energy problem is multi dimensional & needs to be tackled through a multi dimensional integrated approach which would include augmentation of energy supply resources, technology transfer for optimum & productive use of resources, R & D inputs in particular for developing low cost energy options for the rural poor, education & training for rural users, linkage with various rural development programmes including village & small scale industries programme and adequate institutional & financial support. The multi dimensional approach for making a village self sufficient in energy planning is illustrated in Fig.4.1.