Unscientific mining poses a serious threat to environment, resulting in reduction of agriculture and forest cover, erosion of soil at a greater scale, pollution of air, water and land and reduction in biodiversity, said noted environmentalist Sudhi Ranjan here.
Addressing a seminar on ' Impact of Industrialisation and Mining Activities on Agriculture and Food Security ' on the occasion of the World Environment Day, jointly organised by MASS , Association of Electronic Media and Citizen's Action Forum, Ranjan told that the limited natural resources of the State should be judiciously used both for agriculture and industrial growth. However, priority must be given on agriculture production on which the food security of the country rests, he said.
Ranjan told that all efforts should be made to avoid allocation of double cropped agricultural land and minimization of R&R requirement. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one in every seven persons in the world goes to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 years die daily from hunger. Given this enormous imbalance in lifestyles and the resultant devastating effects on the human society, this year’s UN theme, ‘Think. Eat.
Save’, encourages all of us to become more aware of the environmental impact of industrilasation on agriculture and food security, said MASS chairman SB Mishra.
Climate change has made the agrarian communities living in Odisha its worst victims. The change in the time and amount of rain during the cropping seasons has badly hit the agriculture making in an unviable livelihood option. As a result, the communities’ vulnerability to livelihood loss and food insecurity has increased and youth of the communities are now forced to migrate as labourers. Deforestation and unplanned industrialisation in the name of development has largely impacted the tropical climate across the State, he asserted.
On the other hand, many intellectuals and policy makers opined that in a poor State like Odisha, industrialisation has played a major role for development. Realising the basic problems, many industrial houses are also coming forward to promote agriculture, forest and water sources in there periphery area.Among others, the meeting was addressed by Prof Bishnu Mohan, journalist Bijay Mishra, Muktikanta Mishra and EB Dash.