Tropospheric Ozone Pollution, Agriculture, and Food Security

Increasing population and unsustainable exploitation of nature and natural resources have made “food security” a burning issue in the 21st century. During the last 50 years, the global population has more than doubled, from 3 billion in 1959 to 6.7 billion in 2009. It is predicted that the human population will reach 8.7 - 11.3 billion by the year 2050. Growth in the global livestock industry has also been continuous over the last two decades. An almost 82% increase in future livestock is expected in developing countries within 2020, due to an expanding requirement for food of animal origin. Hence, the future demand of this increased human and livestock population will put enormous pressure on the agricultural sectors for providing sufficient food and fodder as well as income, employment and other essential ecosystem services. Therefore, a normal approach for any nation / region is to strengthen its agricultural production for meeting future demands and provide food security. Tropospheric ozone (O3), a secondary air pollutant and a major greenhouse gas, has already been recognized as a major component of predicted global climate change. Numerous studies have confirmed the negative impact of O3 on agricultural productivity throughout the world. The present chapter reviews the available literature, and catalogue the impact of this important gas pollutant on modern day agricultural production worldwide.

Airborne Particulate Matter

Airborne particulate matter is considered to be most challenging environmental issues in the world today due to its impact on various atmospheric processes like regional and global climate change, ecosystem, agriculture and most importantly on human health in recent times. Analysis reveals that particulate matter contains various inorganic and organic compounds and biological entities and their secretions and toxic trace metals. The main regions affected are urban centers due to an increasing population, number of diverse industries, fossil fuel driven vehicles and various construction activities. The present chapter deals with the scenario of particulate matter, their sources of generation, size and their impact on human health and environment mainly in urban dwellings.

Assessment of Available Technologies for Hospital Waste Management

Modern hospital practices with galloping growth in medical technology facilitate increase human life span, decrease mortality rate and increase natality rate. Life supporting health services generates potentially hazardous and infectious hospital wastes like pharmaceuticals, cottons, food, paper, plastics, radionuclide, sharps, and anatomical parts etc. These wastes are complex in nature with maximum part of municipal solid waste and small part of biomedical waste (anatomical parts, body parts etc.). Improper conduct and management of hospital waste create several problems and nosocomial diseases to human beings and harms environment. Traditional practices included for management are open burning, mixing waste, liquid discharge and waste disposal without treatment normally. Hence, this issue comes in lime light and several guidelines come to sort out this problem. Thus, challenges associated with traditional hospital waste management techniques and modern techniques for management are assessed in general and association with human society in particular in this chapter.

Human Overpopulation and Water Pollution

The increased human population is threatening the natural water resources by reducing flows and deteriorating quality. High levels contamination of fecal microbes in Indian water resources is one of the worst impact on natural environment. The incomplete sewage treatment in existing STPs is the root cause it, along with disposal of untreated sewage. Fecal microbes even after the secondary treatment demands the further reduction, hence, an alternative method of vertical flow constructed wetland was adopted to examine the efficiency of the system. The study was aimed to primarily to suggest the suitability and comparative performance of wetland species, P. australis and C. indica. Study revealed the importance of fibrous rooting system of C. indica which helps to enhance aerobicity within the system and cause the reduced number of microbes. The additive enhancement of physical mechanism as well as competition among microflora within the wetland system and excretions from roots of C. indica plant might have been the reason of the significant highest removal of microbial indicators.

Harmful Effects of Ecosystem Impairment on Human Health

Growing global population has caused environment degradation through ecosystem impairment and over exploitation. Although, people have made great moves for improving life style, and enjoy a drastically improved quality of life but such improvements have been made at the cost of environment degradation. Climate change will force humans to adjust with changing environment and find ways to deal with short term protection and long term health consequences. The range of potential threats to human health caused by climate change is increasing and at the same time is not clear. So, owing to the potential magnitude and universality of such an issue, we have a moral obligation for developing proper tools and make informed choices that ultimately result in better lives for the humans.

Population and Global Food Security

Global food security is one if the major issues that needs utmost attention of the scientific community in near future. The growing food demand of the society is putting enormous pressure on the resources over which the food supply of the civilization depends. The two major components affecting the global food security are population and global climate change. The rate at which the population of the World is increasing, the food production needs to be doubled to meet the growing requirements. Consequences of global climate change not only reduce the productivity of major staple crops, but also cause destruction of the arable land that can be used for agricultural purposes. The present chapter discusses the effects of population increase and climate change upon food production, which will play a significant role in food security around the globe in near future.

Human Overpopulation and Food Security

World population is rapidly growing and expected to reach in between 8.5 to 12 billion by 2100. More than 75% of the population is expected to inhabit in the African and Asian countries having most of the developing nations. The overpopulation leads to a state of food insecurity that induced the evolution of resource-exhaustive agriculture causing irreparable environmental damages. Now the challenge is to feed more with less environmental damages. Adoption of technologically-sound, traditional knowledge inclusive, socio-economically sensible recommended agricultural practices can be the basis for achieving future dietary demands. However, before wider recommendation, their environmental impact assessment at various sustainability issues is necessitated for a holistic understanding of the future agriculture. The challenges of overpopulation and food security can only be managed by identifying the core areas of research and development under different agricultural sectors. The present chapter will provide a brief dimension on some of these key issues.

Monitoring Changes in Urban Cover Using Landsat Satellite Images and Demographical Information

The monitoring of urban cover is very important for the planner, management, governmental and non-governmental organizations for optimizing the use of urban resources and minimizing the environmental losses. The study here aims at analyzing the changes that occurred in urban green cover over a time span of 1991-2001 using multi-date Landsat satellite images data over the Varanasi district, India and its relation to demographical changes. The Support Vector Machines (SVMs) classifier has been used for image classification. The urbanization indicators such as Land Consumption Ratio (LCR) and Land Absorption Coefficient (LAC) were also used in order to understand the changes in urban cover and population dynamics. All the analysis indicates significant changes in the urban cover values with increasing population at both spatial and temporal scale.

Overpopulation and Its Association with Natural Disasters

With a population of over a billion, India is facing the challenges of overpopulation is making the country prone to natural disasters. focus of this chapter is the Indian Tsunami which occurred on 26th December 2004 in the Cuddalore district of State of Tamil Nadu and caused massive loss of life and devastation of property. From this case study it is evident that the first priority for India is to control its population growth so that the environment is protected from the adverse effects of overexploitation. Next is to establish a warning system which covers both its coasts on the east and west side and can readily alert the inhabitants with regard to a potential tsunami. Community based tsunami education, proper consideration to local culture during recovery and resettlement of communities, addressing basic issue of earthquake safety in buildings and establishment of a buffer zone on coast, all these measures would help in minimizing the impact of tsunami waves.

Giving Waste a Second Chance

Overpopulation is no doubt worldwide concern as it brings different problems to urbanization process as well as environment. Waste is number one side product of overpopulation. Waste generation is ever increasing in both urban and suburban area and has led to many environmental issues. Many of the waste generated have potential to be transformed into value added products. By recycling, reusing and re-purposing these wastes, we are actually reducing the amount of waste produced and at the same time helping to solve waste disposal problem as many of the wastes exhibit strong energy producing potential. Overpopulation may be an issue of its own; nonetheless, it also provides us an army of human power in tackling environmental issues. Population is a valuable asset. The potential of that amount of man power, especially youth, combining with various awareness campaigns and 3R campaigns introduced by government and NGO are important in targeting these problems.