Anna University Chennai 2004 B.E MODEL - Question Paper

11. learn the subsequent passage and ans the ques. that follow it.
The recent buzz word in the continuing debate about the environment is 'sustainable management' - that means using plants and animals for our own benefit, but ensuring that enough are left alive to guarantee the survival of the species. This sounds good, but is it
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practical in reality? In spite of years of scientific research, no-one really knows how much damage human beings are doing to their environment. We know that they are responsible for many issues ranging from global warming to ozone depletion, and there is no doubt that they have a devastating effect on animal and plant life on Earth.
About 50,000 animal and plant species are becoming extinct every year. All species depend in a few way on 1 a different for survival. If you remove 1 species from this complex web of interrelationships, we have little idea of the repercussions on the ecosystem in general.
What makes things more complicated is the fact that unlike global warming - which, if the political will was there, could be decreased by cutting gas emissions - preserving bio-diversity remains a difficult dilemma.
There are also ques. about whether sustainable management is practical as far as protecting areas of great bio-diversity such as the world's tropical forests are concerned. In theory, the principle should be the identical as with elephants; i.e. to cut a number of trees, but not so many as to completely destroy the forest.
Sustainable management of trees requires controls on the number of trees which are cut down as well as investment in replacing them. Most tropical forests exist in poor countries which depend on logging to make money. For most loggers in these countries, making money means cutting down as many trees as possible in the shortest time. The prices of trees remains stable, varying by 4-5% annually, whereas interest rates in most developing countries can create 15% or more in returns. It therefore makes little sense, and certainly no economic sense, to delay tree-felling.
One solution could be to insist that wood comes from sustainably managed forests. In theory, consumers would buy only this wood and force logging companies to go "green" or else out of business. Unfortunately, unrestricted logging is more profitable than wood from sustainably managed forests which would cost up to five times more to control. Consumers would not be prepared to pay the extra sum just to protect the environment.
The sad fact is that there is no practical solution to protecting vegetation and wildlife of tropical forests in the future. It is estimated that these forests contain anything from 50 to 90 per cent of all animals and plant species on Earth. In 1 study of a 5km square area of rain forest in Peru, for example, scientists counted 1,300 species of butterfly and 600 species of bird. In the entire USA only 400 species of butterfly and 700 species of bird have been recorded. Sustainable management represents a gigantic experiment. If this doesn't work, we can't move to a different planet to escape. It's a case of 1 planet, 1 experiment!

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