Losses and alternatives measures towards environmental degradation in rural area of Haryana

Abstract

In India, the globally accepted threats caused by environmental degradation are soil degradation and desertification, pollution, droughts, floods and water scarcity. The study was conducted in two districts of Haryana state namely, Hisar and Kaithal and a total number of one hundred twenty women were selected and interviewed with the help of well structured schedule. The study revealed that majority of the women were of middle age group (36-50 years), educated up to higher education, belonged to nuclear family with 4 members, performed government, private jobs and self employment. Very serious losses due to environment degradation were air pollutant effect on human health, animals and plants (1.47), deeper level of ground water table leads to irrigation scarcity (1.35), quality deterioration of crop produce and fertilizers cause toxicity in food products (1.23), lost of biodiversity and tropical forest, extinction of plant and animal species (0.41) as per their ‘Z’ score. Least smoky trees should be planted and used, Baval, Neem, Pipal, Bargad, Shisham, Aam, Jamun (94.16%), Installing chimneys to rent smoke from indoor stoves (90.83%) Storage and disposal of farm wastes properly (79.16%), Campaigning for healthy environment (74.16%), enhancing the area under agro and social forestry (69.16), empowerment of women for different development programs (66.66%) were found very effective among the women to making the environment healthy. To reach the results the aggregate total score was calculated to each alternative measure separately, and on the basis of calculated total score, a weighted mean score were obtained which were ranked according to the maximum or minimum mean scores for assessing the effectiveness of alternative measure.