Understanding Environmental Problem
02-May-2022
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Maisnam Susmina and Rajendra Kshetri
We celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd of every year to save our mother earth by giving awareness to the people around the globe. Humans do not have the right to threaten the earth for individual purposes or extend human projects. Human Exceptionalism Paradigm (Cotton and Dunlap) refers to an extension of anthropocentric ethics that emerged from the threat of enlightenment and modernity.
In enlightenment, humans have attributed a unique capacity for reasoning that allowed us to master science. We would harness the forces of nature to do things that no other species could. Humans are credited with an advanced capacity to reason and build great machines and technology that would lead us to a new place in an age of exuberance. A New Ecological Paradigm (Cotton and Dunlap) emerged in which people began confronting how to live in harmony on the planet and valuing the worth of other species and ecosystems for their rights. In this light, it is important to understand the Knowledge, Attitude, and Action toward eco-awareness and eco-commitment, the annoyance and concern about the environmental degradation around us.
What can be contributed is understanding the problems of the environment accurately with a realistic approach. The task is to explain the social causes of environmental issues; if social science (Sociology) has anything to offer, it is a deeper and more systematic understanding of the social roots of environmental problems and the processes of social change.
Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, the importance of environmental issues and research related to the natural environment began to be recognized. Intellectuals were horrified by Britain's industrial revolution and the social injustices that came with modernization and urbanization.
The first wave of environmentalism was an initial response to the onset of Industrialization. At the same time, the second wave was an intellectual response with the public support (including environmental movements) starting from a moral and cultural discourse on Industrialization to great lengths, which was manifested through poetic practice and appreciation of nature. Starting from William Woodsworth's "The world is too much with us" to William Blake's "London" although modern-day climate change would have been unknown to Black, they have criticized the world of the First Industrial Revolution for being absorbed in materialistic and distancing itself from nature.
To understand the environmental issues in the domain of Environmental Sociology, it is crucial to understand the different subsets of the problem faced by the society, which is referred to as an ecological problem, and the values and moral perspective that led to this problem from different perspectives. Down from the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (The Brundtland Report), Grundman (1991) has identified eight categories of environmental problems. They include Pollution (air, water), depletion of groundwater, the proliferation of toxic chemicals, proliferation of hazardous waste, erosion, desertification, acidification, and new chemical.
Pollution is one example of ecological problems produced by a multitude of technological activities.
Environmental Pollution surrounds us. According to Goldblatt, "Contemporary forms of environmental degradation present one of the most, if not the most, complex and catastrophic dilemmas of modernity." There is a call for an ethical perspective toward nature.
It has been a vogue to the present time that environmentalist is on the quest to limit and undo any counteract to nature. What can salvage the future in the "Century of the Environment," according to Weizsackar, is the "Earth Politics," which refers to the determination of the law and administration, city planning and agriculture, arts and religion, technology and economy, Intervention for a radical transformation in the contemporary situation by ecological imperative. Ramchandra Guha (2000) opines that environmentalism must be viewed as a social program, a charter of actions that seeks to protect cherished habitats, protest against their degradation and prescribe less destructive technologies and lifestyles.
Consisting of an oval beautiful fertile valley in the center, surrounded by the Hills, an isolated hill girt state in the North-Eastern corner of India along the Indo-Myanmar border with Imphal as the State capital.
(To be contd)