Sustainable living has always been an integral part of India's tradition and culture. It has been integrated with our long-lasting traditions and practices, customs, art and crafts, festivals, food, beliefs, rituals and folklore.
Entire natural world be in harmony’ which is reflected in the famous phrase in Sanskrit ‘Vasudhaiv kutumbakam’ that means “the entire earth is one family”. The phrase is mentioned in ‘Mahaupanishad’,
The only thing we get from outside is energy which we receive from the Sun. Even this energy is processed by living organisms and various physical and chemical processes on the earth before we make use of it.
The management of natural resources requires a long-term perspective so that these will last for the generations to come and will not merely be exploited to the hilt for short-term gains. This anagement should also ensure equitable distribution of resources so that all, and not just a handful of rich and powerful people, benefit from the development of these resources.
Forests are ‘biodiversity hotspots’. One measure of the biodiversity of an area is the number of species found there. However, the range of different life forms (bacteria, fungi, ferns, flowering plants, nematodes, insects, birds, reptiles and so on) found, is also important.
Water is a basic necessity for all terrestrial forms of life. However, human intervention also changes the availability of water in various regions.
Rains in India are largely due to the monsoons. This means that most of the rain falls in a few months of the year. Despite nature's monsoon bounty, failure to sustain water availability underground has resulted largely from the loss of vegetation cover, diversion for high water demanding crops, and pollution from industrial effluents and urban wastes. Irrigation methods like dams, tanks and canals have been used in various parts of India since ancient times.
There is no equitable distribution of water, thus people close to the source grow water intensive crops like sugarcane and rice while people farther downstream do not get any water. The woes of these people who have been promised benefits which never arrived are added to the discontentment among the people who have been displaced by the building of the dam and its canal network.
Water harvesting is an age-old concept in India. Khadins, tanks and nadis in Rajasthan, bandharas and tals in Maharashtra, bundhis in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, aharsand pynes in Bihar, kulhs in Himachal Pradesh, ponds in the Kandi belt of Jammu region, and eris (tanks) in Tamil Nadu, surangams in Kerala, and kattas in Karnataka are some of the ancient water harvesting, including water conveyance, structures still in use today (see Fig. 16.4 for an example). Water harvesting techniques are highly locale specific and the benefits are also localised. Giving people control over their local water resources ensures that mismanagement and over-exploitation of these resources is reduced/removed.
Coal and petroleum were formed from the degradation of bio-mass millions of years ago and hence these are resources that will be exhausted in the future no matter how carefully we use them. And then we would need to look for alternative sources of energy.
It is estimated that our known petroleum resources will last us for about forty years and the coal resources will last for another two hundred years.
The management of coal and petroleum also addresses the efficiency of our machines. Fuel is most commonly used in internal combustion engines for transportation and recent research in this field concentrates on ensuring complete combustion in these engines in order to increase efficiency and also reduce air pollution.