Habitat, Ecology and Ekistics: Case Studies of Human-Environment Interactions in India

343 Pages·2021·15.06 MB·English

by  Rukhsana, Anwesha Haldar, Asraful Alam, Lakshminarayan Satpati

Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research
Rukhsana
Anwesha Haldar
Asraful Alam
Lakshminarayan Satpati  Editors
Habitat,
Ecology
and Ekistics
Case Studies of Human-Environment
Interactions in India
Advances in Asian Human-Environmental
Research
Series Editors
Prof. Marcus Nüsser, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Editorial Board
Prof. Eckart Ehlers, University of Bonn, Germany
Prof. Harjit Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Prof. Hermann Kreutzmann, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Prof. Kenneth Hewitt, Waterloo University, Canada
Prof. Urs Wiesmann, University of Bern, Switzerland
Prof. Sarah J. Halvorson, The University of Montana, USA
Dr. Daanish Mustafa, King's College London, UK
Aims and Scope
The series aims at fostering the discussion on the complex relationships between
physical landscapes, natural resources, and their modification by human land use in
various environments of Asia. It is widely acknowledged that human-environment
interactions become increasingly important in area studies and development
research, taking into account regional differences as well as bio-physical,
socioeconomic and cultural particularities.
The book series seeks to explore theoretic and conceptual reflection on dynamic
human-environment systems applying advanced methodology and innovative
research perspectives. The main themes of the series cover urban and rural
landscapes in Asia. Examples include topics such as land and forest degradation,
glaciers in Asia, mountain environments, dams in Asia, medical geography,
vulnerability and mitigation strategies, natural hazards and risk management
concepts, environmental change, impacts studies and consequences for local
communities. The relevant themes of the series are mainly focused on geographical
research perspectives of area studies, however there is scope for interdisciplinary
contributions.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8560
Rukhsana • Anwesha Haldar
Asraful Alam • Lakshminarayan Satpati
Editors
Habitat, Ecology
and Ekistics
Case Studies of Human-Environment
Interactions in India
Editors
Rukhsana Anwesha Haldar
Department of Geography Department of Geography
Aliah University East Calcutta Girls’ College
Kolkata, West Bengal, India West Bengal State University
Kolkata, India
Asraful Alam
Department of Geography Lakshminarayan Satpati
University of Calcutta Department of Geography
Kolkata, West Bengal, India UGC-HRDC, University of Calcutta
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
ISSN 1879-7180 ISSN 1879-7199 (electronic)
Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research
ISBN 978-3-030-49114-7 ISBN 978-3-030-49115-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49115-4
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
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Foreword
The quality of human life in India especially in urban areas of India has appreciably
improved during last few decades but the resultant stress on environment was also
observed far above the permissible limit. The climate change, deteriorating air qual-
ity, pollution of both ground and surface water, unscientific disposal of waste and
loss of biodiversity are issues of concern. The target to contain the trend of tempera-
ture increase within 1.5 °C from 1850 to 2100 seems impossible to achieve. The
Central Pollution Control Board of India has identified 122 non-attainment cities
where air quality deteriorates and becomes unfit for breathing especially during four
winter months (November to February). Unfortunately, the list includes seven cit-
ies/towns of West Bengal. These are Kolkata, Haora, Haldia, Barrackpur, Durgapur,
Raniganj and Asansol. The air quality management seems to be most important
challenge as it affects all including the new born baby to senior most citizen of the
country.Amongst the twelve identified pollutants PM 10 and PM 2.5 attract special
attention. Several actions are being taken to improve the air quality.
The delayed monsoon rainfall along with mid-monsoon breaks often affects the
Kharif cultivation in the Indian Subcontinent. The sea level in the Bay of Bengal is
reportedly rising and Sea Surface Temperature is increasing at a rate far above the
global average. These meteorological events combined together gives rise to devas-
tating geo-climatic hazards, thus affecting the ecosystem, especially in the
Sundarban Delta. The slow subsidence of land along the coast, along with sea level
rise results in encroachment of sea and erosion of the littoral tracts. It seems to be a
paradox of nature that in spite of deposition of 100 billion tonnes of sediment load
carried by the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna system, no large scale building of land
was recorded in the western part of the Delta, while the Meghna estuary in the east,
has grown appreciably during the last two centuries. It may be noted that the aver-
age rate of land subsidence in coastal Bengal is 2.9mm/year and sea level rise being
3.6mm/year, the combined negative change in surface level may be 6.5mm/year
approximately. The littoral tracts of Bengal stands at 2 to 4 m above mean sea level
and the average bench mark of Kolkata is 6 m. So the engulfing of the living city and
the major parts of south Bengal by 2070 within the sea is a myth. But the occasional
high intensity, short duration rainfall and cyclonic storm surge may seasonally sub-
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vi Foreword
merge the city at some pockets and devastate the life and livelihood of the people
living along the coast.
The pollution control in this country was taken into consideration with the intro-
duction of Water Pollution Prevention Act (1974), Air Pollution Prevention Act
(1981) and Environment Protection Act (1986). Earlier in absence of any regulatory
measures our environment had already been impaired. Since mid 1960s India
switched over organic to chemical agriculture. Though food grain production has
increased from 80 million tons to 270 million tons, the indiscriminate application of
chemical fertilizers, pesticides and over exploitation water resources have impaired
our environment. Many rivers are longitudinally disconnected consequent to build-
ing of dams and barrages which do not allow minimum ecological flow in the chan-
nel. The aquatic habitats are thus fragmented. Further, towns, cities and grossly
polluting industries discharging their liquid waste into the rivers resulting lowering
of dissolved oxygen, increasing biochemical oxygen demand and thousands of coli-
form bacteria making the river polluted. The 118 towns/cities developed along the
bank of the Ganga discharge wastewater more than 6000MLD making it unfit for
bathing.
In India, where population growth and urbanisation are happening at a rapid rate,
waste management is considered as one of the topmost challenges. In 2011 the
population of India was 1.21 billion and 31% of this live cities/towns. Only munici-
pal solid waste in India was whopping 1,43,499 tonnes per day in 2014–2015. The
segregation of waste at source and subsequent processing is far from reality.
Therefore increased efforts are required for facing mammoth waste management
problem.
This collection of essays elaborates the challenges of environment management
in this subcontinent. I wholeheartedly endorse this book and congratulate the con-
tributors and the editors for their outstanding efforts.
Kalyan Rudra
Chairman, West Bengal Pollution Control Board
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Preface
This volume focuses on the importance and power of spatial thinking and planning
by applying various statistical methods and geospatial technologies in solving both
past and current problems pertaining to environmental degradation, climate change,
habitat linkages, environmental pollutions, carbon foot print in urban area, land use
pattern, agriculture, hazards and environmental management for sustainable devel-
opment. It consists of a wide range of case studies from various regions of the
developing countries, especially of India, which address to mainstreaming sustain-
able development paradigm into their socio-economy pursuits for improving envi-
ronmental management in a befitting manner.
Presently, our planet Earth is facing several environmental problems, from cli-
mate change and natural disaster to biodiversity loss, with visible effects of environ-
mental degradation, economic slowdown and human distress. Given the fundamental
geographic underpinning of environmental issues, geography and geoinformatics
can be applied in assessing environmental problems and planning for sustainable
development which is largely required by natural as well as social scientists, policy
makers and communities at large.
The contents of this book are divided into three main parts: habitat and environ-
mental issues of human concern; ekistics and ecology of social environment; and
hazards and environmental management for sustainable development. The book has
18 chapters contributed by authors of their respective fields of expertise, each focus-
ing on a specific theme to cover diverse perspectives of geo-environmental
knowledge.
We hope the book will be well accepted by readers interested in contemporary
environmental issues of the developing countries, particularly with regard to case
studies on habitat, ecology and ekistics for environmental sustainability and human
welfare.
Out of the three parts, Part I consists of six chapters and scientifically portrays
the habitat and environmental issues of human concern. The first chapter, entitled
‘An Overview of the Concept of Habitat, Ecology and Ekistics’, contributed by the
editors, deals with the background, historical perspective, present situations,
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viii Preface
importance, methodology, indicators and determinants of human–environment
interactions.
The second chapter, ‘Contemporary Environmental Issues − The Indian
Perspective’, contributed by P. K. Sikdar (Kolkata), is of enormous scholastic inter-
est. This chapter depicts the various dimensions of environmental issues of contem-
porary India.
Tapash Mandal, Jayanta Das, A.T.M. Sakiur Rahman and Piu Saha (India and
Bangladesh) looked into the ‘Rainfall Insight in Bangladesh and India: Climate
Change and Environmental Perspective’ (Chap. 3), which is an important issue in
terms of global climate change. They have attempted to highlight detailed charac-
teristics of rainfall in Bangladesh and India from 1951 to 2015. Rainfall features
like Seasonality Index (SI) and Precipitation Concentration Index (PCI) were esti-
mated to characterize spatial pattern of rainfall using Innovative Trend Analysis
(ITA), Mann-Kendall (MK) and modified Mann-Kendall (mMK) test to detect the
trend in the data and Sen’s slope (Q) estimator to calculate the magnitude of such
changes.
Chapter 4 entitled ‘Habitat Linkages for Asian Elephants in Central India’ by
Abhijitha C.S., G Areendran, Pamposh, Krishna Raj, and Mehebub Sahana (Delhi)
is another important contribution of this book. This study focuses on the fragmenta-
tion and habitat loss as well as encroachments by human beings, which are some of
the few reasons behind the dreadful destruction of these habitats of Asian elephants
in Jharkhand and West Bengal. Securing connectivity between habitat patches is the
only way to prevent their degradation and isolation as these corridors maintain the
movement of different wild species and biodiversity.
Chapter 5 is entitled ‘Environmental Pollution and Municipal Solid Waste
Management in India’, authored by Mithun Ray, Avaya Chandra Mohapatra, Suman
Das, Asraful Alam and Biman Ghosh (Shilong and Kolkata). They discuss the issues
related to municipal solid waste management in India and emphasize on identifica-
tion and generalization of the shortcomings towards sustainable waste management
for a cleaner and healthier urban environment. A comprehensive survey of literature
has been carried out covering studies from every part of the country with special
reference to class I and class II urban centres, which will be very helpful to urban
environmentalists.
The study by Rukhsana and Md Firojuddin Molla (Kolkata) on ‘Assessment of
Carbon Footprint Across Urban Households in Kolkata’ (Chap. 6) is based on quali-
tative and quantitative analysis. This chapter focuses on accounting the amount of
important greenhouses gases emission and carbon footprint at household level in the
KMC area.
Part II combines the description and analysis of five chapters (Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10
and 11) relating to ekistics and ecology of social environment highlighting environ-
ment–human interactions. Teesta Dey (Kolkata) analysed the ‘Contested Urban
Ecology: The Ekistics of Dilapidated Dwellings in Kolkata’. In this (Chap. 7), she
Preface ix
attempted to discuss the spatio-temporal variations in the existence of dilapidated
houses, to provide an overview of the actual structural conditions through
Dilapidation Index, and to critically assess the perspectives of the residents of these
buildings through behavioural analysis. She also tried to identify some possible
reconstruction methods for developing a holistic inner city renewal and redevelop-
ment plan.
The work of Rajat Kumar Paul and Pradip Patra (Kolkata), ‘Spatio-temporal
Transformations of Urban Built-up Areas in West Bengal’ (Chap. 8), addresses the
transformation of urban built-up area and used freely available satellite images from
the USGS and different types of remote sensing indices (RSI) for calculation of,
namely, Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Built-Up and Bareness Index (EBBI), and
Built-up Index (BUI). It continued by focusing on the unplanned growths of built-
up area.
Chapter 9 is the study of ‘Population Pressure and Urban Sprawl in Kolkata
Metropolitan Area’ and was carried out by Rukhsana and Md Hasnine (Kolkata)
based on satellite data. This chapter provides an important method to evaluate the
pace and magnitude of urban sprawl. In this chapter the study had been carried out
in three time spans (1990–2000, 2000–2010 and 2010–2017). They applied ‘weight
of evidence method’ to measure the transition probability of each zone. They also
used Shannon’s entropy and Pearson’s Chi-square methods to evaluate the degree of
sprawl and test of significance.
Somnath Mukherjee and Uma Sankar Malik (Bankura and Santiniketan, respec-
tively) authored ‘Social Ecology and Models of Santals and Kheria Sabars’ (Chap.
10). They emphasized on social ecology to correlate between humans and their
environment and gave attention to social, institutional and cultural contexts of peo-
ple–environment relations while drawing on a problem-based theoretical frame-
work developed for the analysis of complex societal issues.
Moumita Ghosh and Lakshminarayan Satpati’s (Kolkata) study (Chap. 11) of the
cultural heritage of marginalized people attempted to highlight the very specific
subject matter of Gajan-gaan (Gajan songs), which originated in the heart of com-
mon people, and this had been expressing their social, religious and political status,
demonstrating the history of class struggle, social stratification and exploitation of
marginal class by the upper class under contemporary political economic hege-
mony. They established that rich people seldom participated in Gajan; it’s only the
backward sections of the society who participated in it.
Part III of the book comprises seven chapters and exhibits the underlying facts or
ideas relating to hazards and environmental management for sustainable
development.
The contribution of Anwesha Haldar, Samiparna Das, Riyanka Chatterjee and
Lakshminarayan Satpati (Kolkata) in their study on ‘Adaptation Strategies for
Erosion Induced Environmental Vulnerability and Displacement’ (Chap. 12) mainly