Resources and Development

Kinds of resources, resource planning and Agenda 21, land use and land degradation, the soils of India and ways to conserve soil.

Key ideas

Resources are classed by origin (biotic, abiotic), exhaustibility (renewable, non-renewable), ownership and status of development (potential, developed).
Sustainable development meets present needs without harming future generations; the 1992 Rio Earth Summit adopted Agenda 21 to work for it.
Resource planning means surveying resources, making plans with the right technology, skills and institutions, and fitting them to national plans.
Land degrades through mining, deforestation, overgrazing and over-irrigation, as in Punjab, Haryana and western UP.
Alluvial soil covers the northern plains, black soil (regur) of the Deccan suits cotton, and laterite soil forms where it is hot and very wet.
Contour ploughing, terrace farming, strip cropping and shelter belts check soil erosion.

Relief of India	plains about 43%, mountains 30%, plateaus 27%
Gross cropped area	net sown area + area sown more than once in a year
Khadar and bangar	new, finer, more fertile alluvium; old alluvium with kankar
Forest policy, 1952	33% of the area under forest
Soils and regions	alluvial: northern plains; black: Deccan lava plateau; red and yellow: east and south Deccan; laterite: heavy-rain hills; arid: west Rajasthan

Mixing up khadar (new alluvium) and bangar (old alluvium).
Matching cotton to alluvial soil: it grows best in black soil.
Mixing up strip cropping (grass strips against the wind) and terrace farming (steps cut into slopes).

India is about 27% plateaus and 30% mountains. Suppose a region of 115,000 sq km had the same shares. How many sq km of each would it have?

Working: 27% and 30% of 115,000

Answer: plateaus 31,050, mountains 34,500 sq km