Environmental sustainability

We come across the term sustainability very often. The term ” sustainable”, it means to sustain own it’s own over indefinite time. Every individual or organization aims to achieve that. We would try to understand how the natural environment is able to sustain over millions of years. The same ways could be replicated to make the sustainable societies. After having a close look at the natural environment. We see that environment is following some basic principles for maintaining the sustainability. Sustainability is the ability of the environment to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely. Environment consists of plants, animals, microbes, soil, water and air. The four basic principles of environmental sustainability are as follows:
I) Reliance on solar energy: Solar energy is considered as the indefinite source of energy. All the ecosystems on the earth are deriving it’s energy from it in one way or the other. So for the sustainability there must be some indefinite source of energy which would keep on providing energy for different biochemical processes. The greenplants have got the ability to capture solar energy. It is this solar energy which is transferred between trophic levels of a foodchain in an ecosystem.
II) Biodiversity: Biodiversity constitutes all the living organisms that are present on the earth and also includes variety of ecosystems on which they are found. These living organisms occupy different trophic levels in a food chain. Plants are occupying primary trophic level, capturing the solar energy and storing it into their tissues by the process called photosynthesis. This energy trapped by plants is taken up by the herbivores, which eat the plants or their products. The herbivores occupy secondary trophic level. The energy of the herbivores is being transferred to carnivores, when the latter eat them for food. The rich biodiversity has helped in adopting to the changing environmental conditions over long periods of time
III) Population control: The earth has got carrying capacity for the living organisms, beyond which it can’t sustain the living beings. The over population of the species is checked by resource limitation, predators, disasters etc. The over population of the species would degrade the natural ecosystems. Therefore reducing the productivity of the ecosystems to such an extent that the species would die of starvation. Hence population control is a must for the sustainability of the environment.
IV) Nutrient cycling: All living beings die after some time. These living beings contain different important mineral elements in them like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus etc. They are essential for the growth and development of living beings. With the death of the plants and animals, these mineral elements would become immobile. Thanks to the decomposers that these mineral elements are released back into the soil. From the soil, these are taken up by the plants. From plants these move into the animals. This cyclic movement of mineral substances from soil to plants to animals and then again to the soil through the decomposition of plants and animals is called nutrient cycling. This nutrient cycling is an important step towards achieving the environmental sustainability. Nutrient cycling makes sure that the nutrient elements keep on moving between biotic and abiotic components of the environment.
One could see the wastes produced in natural environment by way of death of plants and animals are again used by the plants. The first lesson from the nature is that there must be recycling of limited resources, which in this case are nutrient elements. If cycling of nutrients doesn’t occur. The transfer of energy flow would stop in an ecosystem which is essential for the survival of all living beings. Nutrient elements are exhaustie, there cycling is a must. The cycling of exhaustible resources is must. The second lesson from the nature for sustainability is that there must be continuous input of energy. Some amount of energy is being lost after every transfer. The source of the energy being sun which is inexhaustible. It energy would be dissipated into the environment to some extent. Cycling of energy is not possible as it goes against the laws of thermodynamics. The third lesson learnt is there must not be excessive population growth. It would also imply that over utilzation of resources should be prevented. The fourth lesson is conservation of biodiversity is must to adopt the changing Environmental conditions. It also implies that there must be a backup plan for everything to survive the changes. These principles must be applied to the societies to make them sustainable societies.
(The author is a freelancer. Views are his own)
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