The effective management of land and water resources will drastically reduce the human miseries. Explain.

Land and water resources are potentially useful to meet the essential needs of human beings. Issues: Some of the southern states of India have been continuously suffering from the mismanagement of these resources. As a result, the agricultural system, adequate availability of drinking water, and a natural balance of ecosystems are getting affected.

Causes:

• Soil and crop management failure
• Deforestation and Urbanization
• Uncertainty of monsoon and drought
• Groundwater depletion
• Over-exploitation of vegetation for domestic needs

Excitant: The problem of climate change added fuel to it and is responsible for worsening the condition.

Solution & Implementation: The effective management of these resources has now become essential to lessen the human miseries.

Land resources:

• The proper method of agricultural production and crop management ensuring land fertility and food security.
• Keeping a suitable balance between agricultural needs and industrial needs. No industrial activity should be encouraged in arable lands.
• Protection of soils from erosion, salinization, and other factors responsible for degradation.
• The practice of Contour plowing to reduce the impact of soil erosion, storms, and landslides on the crops.
• Providing crop management education to the tenants.
• Adoption of more modernized technology.
• More approach towards afforestation

Water resources:

• Practicing water harvesting and water recycling of wastewater through a treatment plant.
• Storing rainwater following the Brazil and Tamil Nadu model.
• Adoption of modern irrigation technique. Increasing dependency on well & tubewell rather than wasting groundwater for irrigation purposes.
• Preventing water contamination from domestic and industrial waste.

Considering all the methods and ensuring proper ecological balance by effective management of land and water resources, the problem of human miseries could be alleviated.

Topics: GS-IV: Ethics and Human Interface