8. Summary
and Conclusions
8.0 Summary
Land Use Management Planning (LUMPg) is one of the basic steps for any developmental
activity. Whatever developmental activities are conducted anywhere, these need
some land. Thus land is getting used, disturbed, and in some cases abused even,
and hence land has become a scarce resource, degraded in many parts of the globe.
To combat with the situation, each developer should have clear idea (in ecological
perspective) about where-from the land required for the purpose will come and
after the activity is over, where the land will go.
Effects of land degradation are cumulative. Over and above this, while degraded,
the land looses its basic qualities, specially its greenery supporting capacity.
The global concern on LULC change is clear from Rio-De-Generio conventions on
climatic change and biodiversity, which declaired on principles of forest protection.
The globe is gradually getting its green cover stripped off. Attempts to regenerate
it is being only negligibly accepted by the nature in some regions, India is
one among these.
Inspite of long-old realisation about the need of 33% forest (or green) cover,
and inspite of serious attempts to achieve that, India is far behind the target.
This indicates presence of some unidentified lacuna in the attempts conducted
till date to increase forest/green cover on the land of India.
Mining is one such activity which damages the lands' quality and its green cover
so seriously that it becomes difficult to regenerate these. Plans are formulated
and activities are conducted to regenerate this green cover in MAs, but the
situation has not yet improved effectively. The extent of damage depends upon
various-factors. Thus just consultation of mine plans may not give the information
about the real extent and nature of damage to LULC and LUP in such areas. Hence
a system needs to be developed to assess the LUP change in MAs, the causes and
consequences of these, the extent of damage caused to land and land quality
and to formulate a LUPg system suitable to such situations.
Capacity of a piece of land to support greenery depends upon the physico-chemical
conditions around, and of that very piece of land, which in-turn are controlled
by some natural factors. Only human attempts to green a land can't green it
successfully. This is true for all attempts to develop any LUP on a land. How
for a land will be able to respond to human efforts to develop a new LUP on
it depends upon the land's capability to support that and the nature and extent
of human effort, human supports and human objection to develop that. To say
otherwise, it depends upon various natural factors and the quantity and quality
of human interaction with those and even the quality of life (QoL) of the people
around. Hence, before attempting to develop any LUP on a land, such factors
should be studied, analysed; and plans should be developed according to the
findings. Non-realisation of this fact in some sectors is creating the problem
that, inspite of serious attempts to increase green cover, the effect is not
that discernible in India.
This volume is a comprehensive report of research conducted over MAs for assessing
the extent to which the LUP gets damaged in MAs, and the procedure on how all
above mentioned controlling factors can be given due weightage while formulating
LUMP for any specific one of the MAs.
It was realised that the determinants of LUP which are to be considered are
natural and human conditions.
These will definitely vary from place to place; and there is a huge number of
such factors. To consider all these directly in any planning would be an impracticable
job. Thus an attempt has been made to develop an empirical/ theoretical model
for LUMP. One such has been developed for CMAs which is capable to take into
account the varied conditions which may be present in coal fields of India.
A plan based upon consideration of this empirical LUMPg model can be used as
a guideline for LUPg in CMAs and will thus help improving LUP over the lands
of CMAs and hence its green cover.
This LUMP model has been prepared for CMAs. However, following the same technique,
LUMPg models could be prepared for any such group of MAs or any other group
of areas where any developmental activity bears a chance to disturb the previous
LUP seriously.