Unit 6: Human communities and environment

I. Orientation: The Population–Environment–Development Nexus

Human communities are not external observers of ecosystems but components of them; this unit treats the environment as a socio-ecological system in which demographic pressure, cultural value systems, statutory regulation and popular protest interact. The analytical spine is the IPAT identity (Ehrlich and Holdren, 1971), which separates numbers from behaviour and technology.

I = P × A × T
I = environmental impact (e.g. tonnes CO₂/yr)
P = population size (persons)
A = affluence (consumption per person, e.g. GDP/capita)
T = technology (impact per unit of consumption)

• Defining assumption — impact is multiplicative: A small population with high A and dirty T (USA, ~15 t CO₂/capita) can exceed a large population with low A (India, ~2 t CO₂/capita).
• Carrying capacity (K): The maximum population an environment can sustain indefinitely; human K is elastic because technology shifts it, which is why logistic models fit human growth poorly.
• Doubling time: t_d = 70 / r, where r = annual growth rate in per cent. At India's ~0.9% growth, t_d ≈ 78 years.
• Common-property principle: Forests, grazing land and water are frequently held in common; degradation follows the breakdown of community regulation, not commonality itself.
• Convention used throughout: "Environment" includes the cultural and legal institutions governing resource use, so ethics, law and movements are treated as environmental variables.

II. Human Population Growth

A. Definition and growth pattern

Population growth is the net change from births, deaths and migration, expressed as r = (b − d) + (i − e).

• The J-curve: Global population took until 1804 to reach 1 billion, 123 years for the second, and 12 years for the eighth (November 2022). India crossed China in 2023 at roughly 1.43 billion.
• Demographic transition: Stage I high birth/high death (pre-industrial); Stage II death rate falls, growth explodes; Stage III birth rate falls; Stage IV low/low. India is in late Stage III — TFR 2.0 (NFHS-5, 2019–21), just below replacement level 2.1.
• Population momentum: Growth continues for decades after TFR reaches replacement because a large cohort of women is still entering reproductive age.

B. Impacts on environment

Growth converts into impact chiefly through land conversion and per-capita resource draw.

• Land and forest: Cropland expansion and fuelwood demand drive deforestation; India's per-capita forest area is ~0.06 ha against a world average of ~0.6 ha.
• Water: Per-capita availability fell from ~5,177 m³ (1951) to under 1,500 m³ — the "water-stressed" threshold. Punjab and Haryana show water-table declines of 0.5–1 m/yr from tubewell irrigation.
• Soil and food: Shrinking landholdings force intensification — fertiliser-driven eutrophication, salinisation of ~6.7 Mha in India.
• Waste and urbanisation: Urban India generates ~1.5 lakh tonnes/day of municipal solid waste; unmanaged dumping produces leachate and methane.
• Biodiversity: Habitat fragmentation is the dominant extinction driver; the Western Ghats retain about 6% of their original primary vegetation.

C. Impacts on human health and welfare

Environmental degradation returns to the population as a disease and welfare burden.

• Air pollution: PM₂.₅ exposure is linked to ~1.6–1.7 million deaths annually in India; causes COPD, ischaemic heart disease, low birth weight.
• Water-borne disease: Diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid and hepatitis A from faecal contamination; fluorosis (>1.5 mg/L F⁻) and arsenicosis (>0.01 mg/L As) in Gangetic Bengal and Bihar.
• Indoor air pollution: Biomass chulha smoke exposes women and infants to CO and benzo(a)pyrene — the rationale for the LPG-substitution programme.
• Welfare dilution: Rapid growth raises the dependency ratio and thins per-capita spending on schooling, sanitation and health.
• Zoonoses: Encroachment into forest edges increases spillover risk (Kyasanur Forest Disease in Karnataka, Nipah in Kerala).

D. Policy response and its limits

• Instruments: National Population Policy 2000 (target: replacement TFR by 2010), female literacy and age-at-marriage as the strongest correlates of fertility decline.
• Limitation: Coercive approaches (the 1975–77 sterilisation drive) discredited family planning for a generation; Kerala's TFR of 1.8 was achieved through literacy and health, not compulsion.

III. Values, Awareness and Community Practice

A. Environmental ethics

Environmental ethics asks who or what holds moral standing, and therefore what humans owe to non-human nature.

1. Anthropocentrism: Nature has instrumental value only; conservation is justified by human benefit (resource economics, ecosystem services).
2. Non-anthropocentrism: Nature has intrinsic value.
   • Biocentrism: Every living organism has a good of its own (Paul Taylor).
   • Ecocentrism: Aldo Leopold's land ethic — "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community."
   • Deep ecology: Arne Naess (1973) — a "long-range deep" questioning of consumption itself, versus "shallow" pollution-control ecology.
   • Ecofeminism: Vandana Shiva links the domination of nature to the domination of women, drawing on Chipko.
   • Operative principles: Intergenerational equity, the polluter-pays principle and the precautionary principle — all three adopted into Indian jurisprudence.

B. Public awareness

Awareness converts ethical positions into public pressure, and is legally mandated in India.

• Judicial mandate: In M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1991) the Supreme Court directed compulsory environmental education at all levels, later implemented through UGC's core module.
• Institutional channels: ENVIS information network; National Environment Awareness Campaign (from 1986); National Green Corps eco-clubs (2001); World Environment Day, 5 June.
• Statutory participation: The public hearing stage of the EIA Notification (1994, revised 2006) gives affected people a formal voice on project clearance.
• Right to information: RTI 2005 makes clearance documents and monitoring data obtainable, which is how most compliance failures are exposed.

C. Cultural practices for environmental conservation

Indian conservation long predates statute, operating through sanctity and taboo.

• Sacred groves: Forest patches with a total felling taboo — kavu (Kerala), devrai (Maharashtra), sarna (Jharkhand), law kyntang (Meghalaya), orans (Rajasthan); an estimated 13,000+ documented, acting as refugia for relict species.
• Sacred species and totems: Peepal (Ficus religiosa), tulsi, banyan; the blackbuck and the langur protected as vahanas.
• Traditional water harvesting: johad (Rajasthan), khadin, kul (Himachal), ahar-pyne (Bihar), zabo (Nagaland) — decentralised and maintained by village labour.
• Limitation: Sanctions weaken when land tenure changes; groves shrink once village councils lose control to revenue departments.

D. Tribal populations and environmental conservation

Scheduled Tribes are 8.6% of India's population (104 million, 2011 Census; 705 groups, 75 PVTGs) and live disproportionately in forest and mineral-rich tracts.

• Subsistence adaptation: Jhum (shifting cultivation) is sustainable at fallow cycles of 15–20 years; degradation follows the compression of cycles to 3–5 years under land pressure.
• Knowledge base: Ethnomedicinal and NTFP knowledge (mahua, tendu, sal seed) underpins bioprospecting and benefit-sharing claims under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
• Displacement burden: Tribals form a disproportionate share of those displaced by dams and mines relative to their population share.
• Legal recognition: The Forest Rights Act, 2006 vests individual and community forest rights and gives gram sabhas authority over community forest resources — the basis of the Dongria Kondh gram sabhas' rejection of Vedanta's Niyamgiri bauxite mine (2013).

IV. Environmental Laws in India

A. Constitutional foundation

The 42nd Amendment (1976) inserted environmental duties into the Constitution.

• Article 48A (Directive Principle): The State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment and safeguard forests and wildlife.
• Article 51A(g) (Fundamental Duty): Duty of every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment.
• Article 21: Read to include the right to a wholesome environment (Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, 1991), making environmental harm actionable as a fundamental-rights violation.

B. Environmental laws in India

• Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Schedules of species by protection level; provides for national parks, sanctuaries and the hunting ban.
• Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974: Created the CPCB and SPCBs; consent-to-establish and consent-to-operate regime for effluent discharge.
• Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980: Bars de-reservation or non-forest use of forest land without prior Central Government approval.
• Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981: Extends the Board system to emissions; empowers declaration of air pollution control areas.
• Environment (Protection) Act, 1986: Umbrella legislation passed after Bhopal (1984); enables notifications on standards, hazardous substances and EIA.
• Later instruments: Biological Diversity Act, 2002; Forest Rights Act, 2006; National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, creating a specialised bench with appellate jurisdiction over clearances.

C. Enforcement gaps

• Capacity: SPCBs are understaffed and depend on consent fees from the industries they regulate.
• Sanction design: Criminal penalties requiring proof of intent are rarely secured; the NGT's environmental compensation orders have proved more usable.
• Judicial substitution: Public interest litigation has effectively driven policy (CNG conversion in Delhi, 1998–2002) where the executive did not act.

V. Environmental Movements

A. Common structure

Indian environmentalism is largely an "environmentalism of the poor" — struggles over subsistence access rather than amenity or wilderness, typically led by forest-dependent or riverine communities and using Gandhian non-violent methods.

B. Bishnois of Rajasthan

• Origin: Sect founded by Guru Jambheshwar (Jambhoji) in 1485 in western Rajasthan; bish-noi = twenty-nine tenets, several of which prohibit felling green trees and killing animals.
• Khejarli massacre (1730): Amrita Devi and 362 others were killed clasping khejri (Prosopis cineraria) trees against woodcutters sent by Maharaja Abhay Singh of Jodhpur; the ruler then banned felling and hunting in Bishnoi villages.
• Ecological outcome: Bishnoi tracts retain blackbuck and chinkara populations at densities absent from surrounding Thar landscapes.

C. Chipko movement

• Trigger (1973): Refusal of ash trees to the Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh at Mandal, Chamoli district, while an allotment was made to a sports-goods firm; villagers embraced the trees — chipko, "to stick".
• Reni (26 March 1974): With the men decoyed away, Gaura Devi led village women to block felling above the Alaknanda — the movement's defining episode.
• Two strands: 1. Chandi Prasad Bhatt sought local forest-based livelihood and village industry; 2. Sunderlal Bahuguna demanded preservation, arguing "ecology is permanent economy".
• Outcome: A 15-year ban on green felling above 1,000 m in the Uttarakhand Himalaya (1980).

D. Appiko movement

• Onset (1983): Salkani village, Sirsi taluk, Uttara Kannada, Karnataka; appiko is Kannada for "hug", consciously modelled on Chipko.
• Grievance: Clear-felling of natural evergreen forest for plywood and polyfibre industry, and its replacement by eucalyptus monoculture.
• Leadership and outcome: Panduranga Hegde; felling in the Western Ghats forests of the district was halted, with a shift to afforestation and fuel-efficient stoves.

E. Jungle bachao andolan

• Setting (1980s): Singhbhum, then Bihar and now Jharkhand.
• Issue: Government plans to replace natural sal forest with commercial teak — dubbed the "greed game political populism" — which would have destroyed tribal NTFP livelihoods.
• Significance: An explicitly tribal assertion of customary forest rights, spreading to Odisha and Bihar; a precursor to the community-rights logic of the FRA, 2006.

F. Silent valley movement

• Project: The Kerala State Electricity Board's 120 MW hydroelectric scheme on the Kunthipuzha, which would have submerged tropical evergreen rainforest in Palakkad district.
• Opposition: Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad's scientific campaign; the poet Sugathakumari's "Marathinu Stuthi" became its anthem; the lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus) served as flagship species.
• Outcome: After the M.G.K. Menon committee review, the project was abandoned; the area was declared a National Park in 1984 and formally inaugurated in 1985.
• Significance: The first Indian movement where biodiversity value, not livelihood loss, defeated a project.

G. Narmada Bachao Andolan

• Object: The Sardar Sarovar Project and the wider Narmada Valley scheme of some 30 large dams; submergence across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra displacing over 200,000 people, largely adivasi.
• Leadership and method: Medha Patkar and Baba Amte; satyagraha, hunger strikes and the jal samarpan pledge to drown rather than move.
• Milestones: The Morse Committee independent review (1991) found resettlement and environmental compliance inadequate; the World Bank withdrew in 1993; the Supreme Court permitted construction to resume in 2000 with height raised in stages conditional on rehabilitation.
• Legacy: Established rehabilitation-before-submergence as the central test of large-dam legit