Misuse of Natural Resources

Misuse of natural resources refers to excessive use, destructive use or achieving imbalance between resources either individually or in combination. Misuse of resources can also be direct or indirect. Direct misuse refers to such situations where the resource is directly destroyed or overused. But, many times, some resources are indirectly put to misuse.

Lack of knowledge of resource and its significance leads to its misuse. Lack of knowledge about natural resource may be even with educated people or uneducated people.

Different Types of Misuse of Natural Resources

Natural Resource	Types of misuse/ecological problems
I Ecological Resources	Excessive mining
	Loss of forest area (if mines are in forest)
	Displacement of population and their profession
	Loss of agricultural lands (if resource is in cultivated land)
	Dumping of ore or spent ore on surface leading to soil / water pollution
	Risks and health hazards to employees / population
	Directly contributing pollution to water / soil /air in petroleum exploration and processing industry
II Hydro ecological Resources	Excessive, unscientific and uneconomic ground water exploitation
	Exploration of underground water without any regard to its rate of rechange
	Displacement of human settlement during establishment of hydro-projects
	Loss of agricultural / forest area in standing water (in dam construction)
	Unscientific use / overuse of irrigation water leading to loss of fertility, increased pollution of land / water
	Loss of biodiversity
III Atmospheric Resources	Destructive use of atmospheric oxygen to burn carbon sources to produce CO and CO2 which in turn change the composition of air
	Deforestation on one side and polluting the atmosphere by CO2 loading on other side have led to increased CO2 levels in atmosphere
	Ozone coverage is slowly degenerating due to release of chlorine generating gases to atmosphere
IV Edaphic resources	Excessive pressure of population of land has led to intensive cultivation of land, without allowing the soil to have its natural organic process of recuperating biological potentiality
	Addition of chemicals on continuous basis (as fertilizers and pesticides) has destroyed ecological balance in soil
	Indiscriminate irrigation has led to salinity / availability of soil rendering them unfit for cultivation
V Forest resources	Continuous deforestation for commercial and fuel purposes
	Encroachment of forest area for agriculture,mining, industrial purposes
	Loss of forest area for irrigation dams
	Loss of biodiversity due to encouragement /discouragement of specific species of plants
VI Crop resources	Unnatural crosses between species
	Transgenic breeding leading to modification of original characters of plants to destroy natural plant types interfering in natural regeneration process
	Tissue culture aided cloning
VII Aquatic resources	Excessive fishing around the coast
	Loss of biodiversity in aquatic population
	Premature fishing for commercial purpose
	Destruction of herbivorous fishes by carnivorous fishes
VIII Animal resources	Interference in natural breeding by in-vitro fertilization and artificial insemination technique
	Severe damage to community living in animals due to forced solitary rearing
	Hormonal regulation of physiology of animals
	Cloning of animals
IX Wildlife resources	Keeping the animals in captivity to derive entertainment value from them
	Killing the wild animals for pleasure (hunting) or for trading or for food
	Ignoring the ecobalance and biodiversity and failure to preserve them
X Human resources	Discriminating the human beings on sex
	Abuse of children as cheap source of labour
	Bonded labours
XI Microbial resources	Biological wars and its agents like Anthrax

 

Reason for Misuse of Natural Resources

a)Commercial interests like trading in products out of natural resources.

b) Ignorance on necessity to preserve natural resources.

c) Deliberate negligence on destruction of natural resource.

d) Entertainment / recreational / aesthetic interest.

e) Extreme population pressure.

f) Self interest of human beings over the interest to retain natural resources.

g) International trade and commitments.

h) Misuse of legislation.

i) Loop holes of provisions of law.

j) Protracted legal process.

k) Food interest

l) Luxuries required for man.

m) Increased industrial requirement.

n) Improvement of standard of living, GDP, per capita income and purchasing power.

o) Expectations of instantaneous returns.