Abstract
Achieving environmental sustainability has become a key challenge of the current century for all developing and underdeveloped countries, including India. The face of worldwide unprecedented population growth and resultant high demands for food and other resources, unplanned developmental activities and pollution have adverse impact on environmental health and quality. The present chapter aims to unfold the current status, identify future scope and review the challenges of environmental sustainability in West Bengal. To evaluate the current status of environmental sustainability, selected environmental aspects, viz., forest, air, water and land use/land cover, of West Bengal are taken into consideration. Remote sensing images and secondary data have been used for spatial mapping of these four environmental aspects in GIS environment. The study revealed that in West Bengal, only 16% of the total geographical area is under forest cover; air quality is tremendously poor; and 11 districts have per capita water availability less than 1000 m3. The whole scenario of West Bengal does not indicate a healthy and sustainable environment. Therefore, this chapter would be helpful for sustainable planning and uses of land, water, soil and other natural resources to attain environmental sustainability.
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Available in https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal15 (Accessed on 01-06-2023)
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Sahu, A.S., Das Chatterjee, N. (2023). Environmental Sustainability: Status, Scope and Challenges in West Bengal. In: Sahu, A.S., Das Chatterjee, N. (eds) Environmental Management and Sustainability in India. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31399-8_1
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