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CHIPKO MOVEMENT
♤ It is a social-ecological movement that practised the Gandhian methods of satyagraha and non-violent
resistance, through the act of hugging trees to protect them from falling.
♤ The modern Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand, with growing awareness towards rapid deforestation.
♤ The landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, acted to prevent the cutting of trees and reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department.
♤ Their actions inspired hundreds of such actions at the grassroots level throughout the region.
♤ By the 1980s the movement had spread throughout India and led to formulation of people-sensitive forest policies, which put a stop to the open felling of trees in regions as far reaching as Vindhyas and the Western Ghats.
♤ The first recorded event of Chipko however, took place in village Khejarli, Jodhpur district, in 1730 AD, when 363 Bishnois, led by Amrita Devi sacrificed their lives while protecting green Khejri trees, considered sacred by the community, by hugging them, and braved the axes of loggers sent by the local ruler, today it is seen an inspiration and a precursor for Chipko movement of Garhwal.
APPIKO MOVEMENT
♤ Appiko movement was a revolutionary movement based on environmental conservation in India.
♤ The Chipko movement in Uttarakhand in the Himalayas inspired the villagers of the district of Karnataka province in southern India to launch a similar movement to save their forests.
♤ In September 1983, men, women and children of Sal-kani “hugged the trees” in Kalase forest. (The local term for “hugging” in Kannada is appiko.)
♤ Appiko movement gave birth to a new awareness all over southern India.
International Standards and Environment
♤ The ISO 14000 environmental management standards exist to help organizations
♤ Minimize how their operations (processes etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land)
♤ Comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements,
♤ Continually improve in the above.
♤ ISO 14000 is similar to ISO 9000 quality management in that both pertain to the process of how a product is produced, rather than to the product itself.
♤ As with ISO 9000, certification is performed by third-party organizations rather than being awarded by ISO directly.
♤ The ISO 19011 audit standard applies when auditing for both 9000 and 14000 compliance at once.
♤ List of ISO 14000 series standards
♤ ISO 14001 Environmental management systems—Re-quirements with guidance for use
♤ ISO 14004 Environmental management systems— General guidelines on principles, systems and support techniques
♤ ISO 14015 Environmental assessment of sites and organizations
♤ ISO 14020 series (14020 to 14025) Environmental labels and declarations
♤ ISO 14030 discusses post production environmental assessment
♤ ISO 14031 Environmental performance evaluation— Guidelines
♤ ISO 14040 series (14040 to 14049), Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, discusses pre-production planning and environment goal setting.
♤ ISO 14050 terms and definitions.
♤ ISO 14062 discusses making improvements to environmental impact goals.
♤ ISO 14063 Environmental communication —Guidelines and examples
♤ ISO 14064 Measuring, quantifying, and reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions.
♤ ISO 19011 which specifies one audit protocol
The National Wastelands Development Board (NWDB)
♤ The National Wastelands Development Board (NWDB) was set up under the Ministry of Environment & Forests in 1985 with the objective of
♤ to increase tree and other green cover on wastelands,
♤ to prevent good land from becoming wasteland, and
♤ to formulate within the overall nodal policy, perspective plans and programmes for the management and development of the wastelands in the country.
♤ In 1992, the Board was transferred to the Ministry of Rural Development, putting under a New Department of Wastelands Development under the charge of a Minister of State.
Bioassay
♤ Bioassay is a test in which organisms are used to detect the presence or the effects of any other physical factor, chemical factor, or any other type of ecological disturbance.
♤ Bioassays are very common in pollution studies. Bioassays can be conducted by using any type of organisms. However, the fish and insect bioassays are very common.
♤ The aim is to find out either lethal concentration or effective concentration causing mortality or other effects.
♤ Ultimately they are to be used for determination of safe concentration of a chemical or maximum acceptable toxicant concentration (MATC).
♤ The organism is exposed to different concentrations of a toxicant for a definite period and mortality, behavioral change or other signals of distress are noted periodically.
♤ Out of three types, static bioassay test is designed, where the organisms are exposed to the same toxicant solution for the whole experimental period. The other two are, renewal bioassay and flow-through bioassays.
Flagship species
♤ A flagship species is a species chosen to represent an environmental cause, such as an ecosystem in need of conservation. These species are chosen for their vulnerability, attractiveness or distinctiveness in order to engender support and acknowledgement from the public at large. Thus, the concept of a flagship species holds that, by giving publicity to a few key species, the support given to those species will successfully leverage conservation of entire ecosystems are all species contained therein.
♤ Example: Indian tiger, African elephant, giant panda of China, mountain gorilla of Central Africa, orangutan of Southeast Asia and the leatherback sea turtle.
Keystone species
♤ Keystone species is a species whose addition to or loss from an ecosystem leads to major changes in abundance or occurrence of at least one other species. Certain species in an ecosystem is considered more important in determining the presence of many other species in that ecosystem.
♤ All top predators (Tiger, Lion, Crocodile, Elephant) are considered as keystone species because it regulates all other animals’ population indirectly. Hence top predators are given much consideration in conservation.
♤ Key stone species deserves special attention from the conservation point of view. Conservation of keystone species encourages conservation of all other relevant species associated with this.
♤ If keystone species is lost, it will result in the degradation of whole ecosystem. For example certain plant species (ebony tree, Indian-laurel) exclusively depends upon bats for its pollination. If the bat population is reduced then regeneration of particular plants becomes more difficult. This changes the vegetation structure which adversely influence on the dependant animals.
Indicator species
♤ Indicator species is a species whose presence indicates the presence of a set of other species and whose absence indicates the lack of that entire set of species.
♤ An indicator species is any biological species that defines a trait or characteristic of the environment. For example, a species may delineate an ecoregion or indicate an environmental condition such as a disease outbreak, pollution, species competition or climate change. Indicator species can be among the most
sensitive species in a region, and sometimes act as an early warning to monitoring biologists.
♤ Many indicator species of the ocean systems are fish, invertebrates, periphyton, macrophytes and specific species of ocean birds (like the Atlantic Puffin). Amphibian indicates chemicals, global warming and air pollution. Lichens are indicators of air quality and are sensitive to sulfur dioxide.
Foundation species
♤ Foundation species is a dominant primary producer in an ecosystem both in terms of abundance and influence. Example: kelp in kelp forests and corals in coral reefs.
Charismatic megafauna
♤ These are large animal species with widespread popular appeal that environmental activists use to achieve conservation goals well beyond just those species. Examples include the Giant Panda, the Bengal Tiger, and the Blue Whale.
Umbrella species
♤ Umbrella species is a wide-ranging species whose requirements include those of many other species. The protection of umbrella species automatically extends protection to other species. These are species selected for making conservation related decisions, typically because protecting these species indirectly protects the many other species that make up the ecological community of its habitat.
GLOSSARY
♤ Warm-blooded is a term to describe animal species which have a relatively higher blood temperature, and maintain thermal homeostasis primarily through internal metabolic processes. Examples: Mammals and birds.
♤ Cold-blooded is a term often used to refer to animals that do not use their metabolism to maintain body temperature. Examples: reptiles, insects, arachnids, amphibians and fish
♤ Aestivation is a state of animal dormancy, characterized by inactivity and a lowered metabolic rate that is entered in response to high temperatures and arid conditions. It takes place during times of heat and dryness, the hot dry season, which is often but not necessarily the summer months. Invertebrate and vertebrate animals are known to enter this state to avoid damage from high temperatures and the risk of desiccation. Both terrestrial and aquatic animals undergo aestivation.
♤ Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernating animals conserve food, especially during winter when food supplies are limited, tapping energy reserves, body fat, at a slow rate. It is the animal’s slowed metabolic rate which leads to a reduction in body temperature and not the other way around.
♤ Reforestation Is the restocking of existing forests and woodlands which have been depleted
♤ Afforestation is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees in an area where there was no forest
♤ Deforestation Is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a non
forest use.
♤ Forest cover is the presence of trees on lands more than one hectare in area with a tree canopy of more than 10 percent, irrespective of ownership and legal status.
♤ Tree cover comprises the tree patches outside forest area and exclusive of forest cover that has less than a minimum map-able area of one hectare.
♤ Agroforestry Is an integrated approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and livestock. It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems.
♤ Habitat fragmentation is the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism’s preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation.
♤ Habitat destruction - The process in which natural habitat is rendered functionally unable to support the species present. In this process, the organisms which previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing biodiversity
♤ Habitat conservation is a land management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore, habitat areas for wild plants and animals, especially conservation reliant species, and prevent their extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range
♤ Oligotrophic Lake is a lake with low primary productivity, the result of low nutrient content. These lakes have low algal production, and consequently, often have very clear waters, with high drinking-water quality
♤ Eutrophic lake is a lake has high primary productivity due to excessive nutrients and is subject to algal blooms resulting in poor water quality. The bottom waters of such bodies are commonly deficient in oxygen, ranging from hypoxic to anoxic.
♤ Mesotrophic lakes is a lake with an intermediate level of productivity, greater than oligotrophic lakes, but less than eutrophic lakes. These lakes are commonly clear water lakes and ponds with beds of submerged aquatic plants and medium levels of nutrients
♤ Mull soil is one characterised by large soil animals (especially plentiful earthworms), incorporation of organic matter through the topsoil and active bacterial decomposition.
♤ Mor soil is on the other hand characterised by smaller soil animals, the buildup of a litter layer on top and decomposition mainly led by fungi
♤ Calcifuge is a plant that does not tolerate alkaline soil.
♤ Calcicole or Calciphyte is a plant that does not tolerate acidic soil.
♤ Ecotopes are the smallest ecologically-distinct landscape features in a landscape mapping and classification system. As such, they represent relatively homogeneous, spatially-explicit landscape functional units that are useful for stratifying landscapes into ecologically distinct features for the measurement and mapping of landscape structure, function and change.
♤ Ecozones delineate large areas of the Earth’s surface within which organisms have been evolving in relative isolation over long periods of time, separated from one another by geographic features, such as oceans, broad deserts, or high mountain ranges, that constitute barriers to migration
♤ Productivity or production refers to the rate of generation of biomass in an ecosystem.
♤ Photoheterotrophs are heterotrophic organisms that use light for energy, but cannot use carbon dioxide as their sole carbon source. Consequently, they use organic compounds from the environment to satisfy their carbon requirements. They use compounds such as carbohydrates, fatty acids and alcohols as their organic food
♤ Chemotrophs are organisms that obtain energy by the oxidation of electron donors in their environments
♤ Phototrophs are the organisms (usually plants) that carry out photosynthesis to acquire energy. They use the energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into organic materials to be utilized in cellular functions such as biosynthesis and respiration.
♤ Hemotrophs are organisms that obtain energy by the oxidation of electron donors in their environments
♤ Lithotroph is an organism that uses an inorganic substrate to obtain reducing equivalents for use in biosynthesis or energy conservation via aerobic or anaerobic respiration
♤ Lithophiles are micro-organisms that can live within the pore interstices of sedimentary and even igneous rocks to depths of several kilometers.
♤ Organotroph is an organism that obtains hydrogen or electrons from organic substrates
♤ Mixotroph is a microorganism that can use a mix of different sources of energy and carbon.
♤ Photic zone or Euphotic zone is the depth of the water in a lake or ocean that is exposed to sufficient sunlight for photosynthesis to occur.
♤ Biological pump is the sum of a suite of biologically-mediated processes that transport carbon from the surface euphotic zone to the ocean’s interior.
♤ Standing crop is the quantity or total weight or energy content of the organisms which are in a particular location at a particular time.
♤ Endolith is an organism that lives inside rock, coral, animal shells, or in the pores between mineral grains of a rock.
♤ Detritivores are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus (decomposing organic matter). By doing so, they contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles. They should be distinguished from other decomposers, such as many species of bacteria, fungi and protists, unable to ingest discrete lumps of matter, instead live by absorbing and metabolising on a molecular scale. However, the terms detritivore and decomposer are often used interchangeably
♤ Carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities
available in the environment
♤ Brackish water is water that has more salinity than fresh water, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing of seawater with fresh water.
♤ Gene pool is the complete set of unique alleles in a species or population
♤ Genetic erosion is a process whereby an already limited gene pool of an endangered species of plant or animal diminishes even more when individuals from the surviving population die off without getting a chance to meet and breed with others in their endangered low population.
♤ Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are (bacteria, viruses, or toxins), and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form.
♤ Bioleaching is the extraction of specific metals from their ores through the use of living organisms. This is much cleaner than the traditional heap leaching using cyanide. Bioleaching is one of several applications within bio hydrometallurgy and several methods are used to recover copper, zinc, lead, arsenic, antimony, nickel, molybdenum, gold, silver, and cobalt.
♤ Biochemical oxygen demand or B.O.D. is the amount of dissolved oxygen needed by aerobic biological organisms in a body of water to break down organic material present in a given water sample at certain temperature over a specific time period.
♤ Microclimate is a local atmospheric zone where the climate differs from the surrounding area. The term may refer to areas as small as a few square feet or as large as many square miles.
♤ Biopiracy is the theft of genetic materials especially plants and other biological materials by the patent process. Biopiracy is a situation where indigenous knowledge of nature, originating with indigenous people, is exploited for commercial gain without permission from and with no compensation to the indigenous people themselves.
♤ BioWeb is the connotation for a network of web-enabled biological devices (e.g. trees, plants, and flowers) which extends an internet of things to the Internet of Living Things of natural sensory devices. The BioWeb devices give insights to real-time ecological data and feedback to changes in the environment
♤ Biomass is the amount of living or organic matter present in an organism. Biomass pyramids show how much biomass is present in the organisms at each tropic level, while productivity pyramids show the production or turnover in biomass.
♤ Ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet’s ecological capacity to regenerate
♤ Algal bloom is a rapid increase or accumulation in the population of algae in an aquatic system. Algal blooms may occur in freshwater as well as marine environments.
♤ Carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent. A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts, the primary footprint and the secondary footprint.
♤ The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation (e.g. car and plane). We have direct control of these.
♤ The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use - those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown. To put it very simply - the more we buy the more emissions will be caused on our behalf.
♤ Carbon diet refers to reducing the impact on climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (principally CO2) production, without lowering their standard of living
♤ Greenhouse debt or carbon debt is the measure to which an individual person, incorporated association, business enterprise, government instrumentality or geographic community exceeds its permitted greenhouse footprint and contributes greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and climate change
♤ Biocapacity is the capacity of an area to provide resources and absorb wastes. When the area’s ecological footprint exceeds its biocapacity, unsustainability occurs.
♤ Global hectare is a measurement of biocapacity of the entire earth - one global hectare is a measurement of the average biocapacity of all hectare measurements of any biologically productive areas on the planet.
♤ Carbon credit and carbon markets are a component of national and international attempts to mitigate the growth in concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs). One carbon credit is equal to one metric tonne of carbon dioxide, or in some markets, carbon dioxide equivalent gases. Carbon trading is an application of an emissions trading approach.
♤ Oil spill is a release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term often refers to marine oil spills, where oil is released into the ocean or coastal waters
♤ Gene banks help preserve genetic material, be it plant or animal. In plants, this could be by freezing cuts from the plant, or stocking the seeds. In animals, this is the freezing of sperm and eggs in zoological freezers until further need.
♤ Biobank is a cryogenic storage facility used to archive biological samples for use in research and experiments
♤ Xerosere is a plant succession which is limited by water availability. It includes the different stages in a xerarch succession. Xerarch succession of ecological communities originated in extremely dry situation such as sand deserts, sand dunes, salt deserts, rock deserts etc
♤ Earth Hour is a global event organized by WWF and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.
♤ Bioprospecting is an umbrella term describing the discovery of new and useful biological samples and mechanisms, typically in less-developed countries, either with or without the help of indigenous
knowledge, and with or without compensation. In this way, bioprospecting includes biopiracy and also includes the search for previously unknown compounds in organisms that have never been used in traditional medicine.
♤ Poaching is the illegal taking of wild plants or animals contrary to local and international conservation and wildlife management laws. Violations of hunting laws and regulations are normally punishable by law and, collectively, such violations are known as poaching.
♤ Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law.
♤ Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative.
♤ Wild crafting is the practice of harvesting plants from their natural, or “wild” habitat, for food or medicinal purposes. It applies to uncultivated plants wherever they may be found, and is not necessarily limited to wilderness areas. Ethical considerations are often involved, such as protecting endangered species.
♤ Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth’s biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction.
♤ Extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species.
♤ Holocene extinction refers to the extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch (since around 10,000 BC
♤ Wildlife corridor or Green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities (such as roads, development, or logging). This allows an exchange of individuals between populations, which may help prevent the negative effects of inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity (via genetic drift) that often occur within isolated populations.
♤ Biolink zones are a land use category developed for biodiversity conservation and landscape adaptation under changing climates
♤ Zero-emissions vehicle, or ZEV, is a vehicle that emits no tailpipe pollutants from the onboard source of power.
♤ Ocean de-oxygenation is a term that has been suggested to describe the expansion of oxygen minimum zones in the world’s oceans as a consequence of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. Oceanographers and others have discussed what phrase best describes the phenomenon to non-specialists.
♤ Plasticulture refers to the practice of using plastic materials in agricultural applications. The plastic materials themselves are often and broadly referred to as “ag plastics.” Plasticulture ag plastics include soil fumigation film, irrigation drip tape/tubing, nursery pots and silage bags, but the term is most often used to describe all kinds of plastic plant/soil coverings. Such coverings range from plastic mulch film, row coverings, high and low tunnels, to plastic greenhouses.
♤ Nanotoxicology is the study of the toxicity of nanomaterials. Because of quantum size effects and large surface area to volume ratio, nanomaterials have unique properties compared with their larger counterparts.
CLIMATE CHANGE -
♤ “Climate change” means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
♤ “Greenhouse gases” means those gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and re-emit infrared radiation.
♤ “Source” means any process or activity which releases a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
♤ “Reservoir” means a component or components of the climate system where a greenhouse gas or a precursor of a greenhouse gas is stored.
♤ “Sink” means any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.