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Population growth and its impact on the environment
The adverse effects of population growth on the environment
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Rapid Industrialization and modernization come with its downside. This is evident from the fact that the holy river of Hindus in India, Ganges is losing its sanctity and is under serious threat from exploding population in the last 25 years, lackadaisical attitude of the Government and lax industrial regulations. On a regular basis, nearly 1 billion gallons of untreated sewage waste is drained into the river from over 116 cities, 300 towns and thousands of rural locations situated in the banks of the Ganges. Another 60 million gallons of industrial waste are dumped into the river by numerous industrial plants located along the rivers banks. The amount of wastes have increased alarmingly by more than twice in the last two decades and experts predict further decline in water quality by 100% in next 20 years. It is a strange irony that the Hindus, who form a majority of Indian population, treat the river Ganges as sanctum sanctorium and also believe in dumping ashes of the dead that make the water impure. As a sacramental practice, the Hindus cremate their dead on the banks of the river and release the remains of the bodies, in the hope of purification of human sins and pathway to heaven for their souls.
Besides this, the sacred river is also a dumping ground of unwanted or “”illegitimate infants”, animal carcass, cattle every year which are also associated with religious reasons. Therefore, in this basin of a half-billion souls, exists a dichotomy where in purification and pollution are intertwined in unholy matrimony.
Contamination of the River Ganga and its toxic implication
" According to report by UNICEF on Ganges river water, there will be constant competition over water, between farming families and urban dwellers, enviro...
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...when used for irrigation and harms people who use it as drinking water.
With the tremendous pace of population growth in the cities located on the banks of the Ganges notwithstanding, the infrastructure to control and treat the proportionately increasing wastes has been inefficient and largely a dampener. Nearly four million people as on today use the river watershed for their daily activities; this includes 1.6 million residents of Varanasi where Ganga waters are the densest and largest. “Recent water samples collected in Varanasi revealed fecal coli form counts of about 50,000 bacteria per 100 millilitres of water, 10,000% higher than the government standard for safe river bathing”. These alarming statistics indicate the risk of manifestation of the pollutants in form of a plethora of water borne diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, typhoid and amoebic dysentery
Introduction on Water It covers 70% of our planet, makes up 75% of our body, it is necessary for survival and it is declining at a rapid rate (http://www.sscwd.org). It is water. Unfortunately, clean water is rare, almost 1 billion people in developing countries do not have access to water everyday. “Yet, we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to drink it from little plastic bottles” (The Water Project). Use of earth’s natural resources should be seen as prosperity, although it is taken for granted, every aspect of daily life revolves around the environment, forcing water conservation to be necessary for future on this planet.
Population density is the total number of people per unit of area, usually per square mile. As population density rises to high levels, as it has in today’s cities, the familiar problems of urban living appear, including high rates of crime and homelessness.Interacting with these problems are crises of the physical environment, such as air and water pollution and the growing output of hazardous wastes with the resultant global warming. ” Ten Years from now,India will have an extra 250 million people. In five of the worlds “hot spots” of water d...
Humanity is a part of nature (not apart from it) and everything returns to the earth in the end. In what is my favorite sequence of the film, Baraka takes us to the Ganges River in India. We see the masses gathered at the river bank engaged in various rituals; some bathe, others worship. The Ganges is sacred in Hinduism, a religion centered on the idea of birth and rebirth. A bath in the river is spiritually cleansing, and can even help you escape the endless cycle of birth and rebirth. It is here, in the Ganges, that the story comes full circle. There is life in the river (bathers, worshippers), and there is death (cremations, funeral rituals). Tellingly, Baraka revisits the scenes of religion from the beginning of the film at this point. We see scenes of followers of Abrahamic religions gathered in worship, followed by images of empty temples and mausoleums, and concluded with an image of a single floating candle on the Ganges (a funeral ritual). Religion is not exempt from the cycle of life and death. Of course, death is not the end. There is always rebirth, and the film ends with time-lapsed shots of structures and landscapes imbued with a sense of awe, concluding with an image of the starry night
This is because only a small part of the population, particularly in developing countries, have access to water of acceptable quality. It is estimated that in some countries only 20% of the rural population has water of satisfactory quality. Based on these statistics, it is clear the urgent need for awareness about caring for water use. Almost without realizing it, we are seriously jeopardizing this essential resource, not for us but for our children's children and their generations, aware that in other parts o...
For residents of Banaras, the rituals of death are continued time and time again. Whether they are directly involved or not, funeral practices underpin life in Banaras. The continuity of funeral practices over time means they gain importance, and are seen are imperative to the society. Parry discovers that ‘enquiries about the purpose of this or that rite commonly meet with the terse response that it has been ordained by the scriptures and handed down by ancestors’ (Parry, 1994, p.1). This further reinforces social cohesion during mourning periods. In some way, these funeral practices are comparable to Webb Keane’s theory of the ‘bored schoolboy who has memorised a credo which he recites by rote’ (Keane, 2008, S116). Clearly, it is possible for people to engage in funeral practices without fully understanding, or even believing, in them. If this is the case, then it is especially useful to consider religion as performing a social function. One variety of funeral practice, is performed by the Mahabrahman, the funeral priest. In this practice, the Mahabrahman will eat the ground up bones of the deceased. This process serves as a social function as it is not ‘merely a matter of the Mahabrahman representing the deceased’ there is ‘some kind of identity between them’ (Parry, 1994, p.77). Though the Mahabrahman finds the act disgusting, he will still carry it out, as he recognises the overwhelming importance in the
(2)In Hinduism, a very prominent belief is that, water cleanses all the ailments of human body and it is the symbol of fertility without which human existence becomes impossible. Most of the holy places are located on the banks of the rivers, sea shores and mountain ranges. They have special significance and they are considered sacred. It is the goal of the Hindus to bathe in the waters once in their life time, to be cleansed of their wrong doings .(3)The Hindus have a close and sentimental pious attachment to all the rivers in India. The Narmada is one of the most sacred rivers of the seven holy rivers, originates from the Maikali ranges at Amarkantak in MP and flows between the mountain ranges of Vindhya and Sathpura. Gita Mehta, a post colonial writer, meticulously weaves the stories and connects the lives of the characters to the holy river the Narmada in her book, ’A River Sutra’.’Sutra’ means thread that connects, ’River Sutra’ means river that connects. Throughout the book, one cou...
As mankind begins to feel the need for something to hold on to that they are unable to find in society and their government, they turn to nature and religion, the two things that they rely on to create a sense of hope and relief when there seems to be none. In Baraka, one way that god and nature show their competence is through religious customs, beliefs, and traditions. Shots of people bathing in the Ganges River in India depict the power of the natural world because of the religion of Hinduism’s belief that there is a sacred essence and aura in the water that flows through the river. The Ganges is a representation of higher power because of its divine nature and consideration that God, or Lord Shiva extends into and lives within the river. Millions of Hindus plunge into the waters of the river to wash away their sins and seek repentance in order to cleanse the sins that they believe to have accumulated in past and current lives.
This, however, does not mean that India is solely responsible for certain deadlocks, even though its share of responsibility may be larger than other countries which have their own physical limitations and political apprehensions. As elsewhere in the world, and more particularly in the subcontinent where population explosion continues and environmental degradation worsens, water resources, like energy, are going to be much lower than the increasing demand, even if they are harnessed to the most optimum. Given the depleting resources of water, the issues of human security, and water security as its most crucial part, are going to assume astronomical proportions. The issues of water distribution and management are bringing not only countries of the region, but also states and regions within provinces into conflict since they are not being settled amicably within a grand framework of riparian statutes respecting upstream and downstream rights. What is, however, quite appreciable is that the countries of the subcontinent have made certain remarkable efforts to resolve their differences over water distribution through bilateral agreements.
People don’t appreciated the many advantages that comes with having clean potable water to use, taking it for granted. A lot of clean useful water is wasted by humans all the time that people don’t care about saving water because they have easy access to it. Clean and safe drinkable water resources are getting scarce as the population grows. The world is facing many problems, but the most important needed to survive, is water. Water is getting low in many countries, therefore habitants are suffering the misfortune of not having the reliable source of clean water. Today many countries are having water shortages; meaning rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater are not enough to rely on for supplying water demands. For example, California is facing a drastic water shortage, the natural water resources are not enough to fulfill their water demands. Water shortage affects the agricultural sector, so as a consequence the price for production
The main sources of water in Bhutan are natural spring water, natural rivers/streams and deep groundwater and water quality is reported as first class conditions expect at localized urban areas. Four major river sinks are Amochhu, Wangchhu, Punatsangchhu and Manas. The main activities that cause water pollutions in Bhutan are ongoing development and human actives such as urbanization, rapid growth of population, more hydro electric projects construction and other infrastructure development and industization activities which produce huge amount of waste leading contamination of water bodies in the country degrading quality of safe drinking water of the nation. Human waste and solid waste dumping in the rivers and urbanization waste water.
Have you ever had to walk miles away just to get clean drinking water, or don’t even not have access to clean drinking water? People all over the world, even in North America, don’t have access to clean drinking water or have to walk very far just to drink water. The main areas where this problem is prominent is in third world countries, and this is due to the lack of money and sanitation (Millions Lack Safe Water). Due to this lack of sanitation, water borne diseases can grow and infect people who consume it. Clean water is very important for life, and within this paper I will explain why we need it, how it can affect us, and what it will take to obtain clean water.
Many of these in later years shall need to be addressed as tension rises: Saving and consumption of water Improving drinking water supply Increasing access to clean water supply Decreasing tension between war-ing nation over resources With the population expected to rise 40-50% within the next 50 years, the demand for water in Agricultural needs and Environmental needs will rise as well, creating a more desperate water crisis. Developed countries struggle with managing water consumption. Our high demand in agriculture, industry, and domestic use further complicates this issue. With increasing urbanization and extravagant changes in lifestyle, our use and wasting of water will only increase.
...rectly or indirectly discharged into the River Ganga” (KUMAR 12). In the analysis of the water countless amounts of harmful bacteria were found among them; Salmonella Typhi which causes Typhoid fever in men, B subtilis which can contaminate wounds and, Clostridium perfringens the main bacteria behind gangrene and food poisoning (KUMAR 8).These harmful bacteria have claimed numerous lives and yet the river is still being used for drinking and bathing. . The Ganges is still only one of thousands of other extremely polluted rivers, some of which are here in the United States.
Water scarcity is harmful to human life because when water is poorly managed throughout the world, those who need water are deprived of nutrients they truly need, causing them to die. This eventually affects the global population. Therefore, many experts have proposed several solutions such as the LifeSaver Bottle, TrojanUVPhox treatment system, and Waste Water Recycling. The problem of water scarcity has increasingly spread throughout the world as of yet, The UN reports that within the next half- century up to 7 billion people in 60 countries which is more than the whole present population will face water scarcity (Sawin “Water Scarcity could Overwhelm the Next Generation”). As well, the demand for freshwater has tripled over the past 50 years, and is continuing to rise as a result of population growth and economic development.
Water is an integral part of not only human beings but all other creatures in the world. We use it every day for different purposes such as domestic, agricultural and industrial. Water has always been a prestigious resource. However, the majority of people do not appraise water’s worth since they do not face water scarcity; whereas, in third world countries it is one of the most serious problems. Nearly 2.4 billion people have a lack of water resources in the world, shows the investigation done by the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based non-profit scientific research group. Moreover, every year this number is growing gradually and more people are suffering (Bloomberg News, 2010). There are certain causes which deteriorate current situation. The most influential reasons are global warming, pollution by human-beings and overpopulation. It is known that India is one of the countries which face water scarcity so this essay will consider the possible ways of solutions of water shortage in India.