Supply-demand reversal of environmental resources
Topic: Environment and Sustainable Development · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 7 "Environment and Sustainable Development"
Meaning
This idea explains why the environmental crisis is recent. Before industrialisation, people demanded less from the environment than it could supply. Pollution stayed within what nature could absorb, and extraction was slower than regeneration. After the population explosion and the Industrial Revolution, this reversed. Demand rose beyond what nature could regenerate. At the same time, overuse and misuse shrank the supply. This trend continues today.
Example
Water shows the reversal. Rivers and aquifers were once so plentiful that water was treated as free. Pollution and over-pumping have now dried up or poisoned many of them. NCERT says about 70% of India's water is polluted. So water has become scarce and has to be priced and managed.
Don't confuse with
- Demand and supply in an ordinary market: in a normal market, a shortage pushes the price up, and that curbs use. Most environmental resources have no market price. So the price signal that would stop overuse is missing.
Related concepts
- Environment
- Biotic and abiotic components
- Functions of the environment
- Renewable resources
- Non-renewable resources
- Reserves-to-production life
- Hotelling rule
- Carrying capacity
- Absorptive capacity
- Environmental crisis