ECOLOGY

AND
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
ECOLOGY
 MEANING, INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITION

Ecology (from Greek: οἶκος, "house" or "living relations";

-λογία, "study of") is the interdisciplinary scientific study of
the interactions between organisms and their environment.
Ecology is also the study of ecosystems. Ecosystems describe
the web or network of relations among organisms at different
scales of organization. Since ecology refers to any form of
biodiversity, ecologists research everything from tiny
bacteria's role in nutrient recycling to the effects of tropical
rain forest on the Earth's atmosphere. The discipline of
ecology emerged from the natural sciences in the late 19th
century. Ecology is not synonymous with environment,
environmentalism, or environmental science. Ecology is
closely related to the disciplines of physiology, evolution,
genetics and behavior.

Like many of the natural sciences, a conceptual

understanding of ecology is found in the broader
details of study, including:
•Life processes explaining adaptations
•Distribution and abundance of organisms
•The movement of materials and energy through living
communities
•The successional development of ecosystems, and
•The abundance and distribution of biodiversity in context of
the environment
Ecology is distinguished from natural history, which deals
primarily with the descriptive study of organisms. It is a sub-
discipline of biology, which is the study of life.
There are many practical applications of ecology in
conservation biology, wetland management, natural
resource management (agriculture, forestry , fisheries), city
planning (urban ecology), community health, economics,
basic & applied science and it provides a conceptual
framework for understanding and researching human social
interaction (human ecology)
 LEVELS OF ECOLOGY AND STUDY

Because ecology deals with ever changing ecosystems, both

time and space must be taken into account when describing
ecological phenomena. In regards to time, it can take
thousands of years for ecological processes to mature. The
life-span of a tree, for example, can pass through different
successional or serial stages leading to mature old-growth
forests. The ecological process is extended even further
through time as trees topple over and decay. Ecosystems are
also classified at different spatial scales. The area of an
ecosystem can vary greatly from very tiny to vast. Long-term
ecological studies provide important track records to better
understand ecosystems over space and time. The
International Long Term Ecological Network manages and
exchanges scientific information among research sites. The
longest experiment in existence is the Park Grass Experiment
that started in 1856. Another example includes the Hubbard
Brook study in operation since [Link] is also
complicated by the fact that small scale patterns do not
necessarily explain large scale phenomena, otherwise
captured in the expression 'the sum is greater than the parts'.
These emergent phenomena operate at different
environmental scales of influence, ranging from molecular to
planetary scales, and require different sets of scientific
explanation.
To structure the study of ecology into a manageable
framework of understanding, the biological world is
conceptually organized as a nested hierarchy of organization,
ranging in scale from genes, to cells, to tissues, to organs, to
organisms, to species and up to the level of the biosphere.
Ecosystems are primarily researched at (but not restricted
to) three key levels of organization, including
(1) organisms, (2) populations, and (3) communities.
Biodiversity is simply the contracted short form for biological
diversity. Biodiversity describes all varieties of life from
genes to ecosystems and is a complex subject area as it spans
every level of biological organization. There are many ways to
index, measure, and represent biodiversity. Biodiversity
includes species diversity, ecosystem diversity, genetic
diversity and the complex processes operating at and among
these respective levels. Biodiversity plays an important role
in ecological health as much as it does for human health.
Conservation priorities and management techniques require
different approaches and considerations to address the full
ecological scope of biodiversity. Populations and species
migration, for example, are more sensitive indicators of
ecosystem services that sustain and contribute natural
capital toward the well-being of humanity.[ An understanding
of biodiversity has practical application for ecosystem-based
conservation planners as they make ecologically responsible
decisions in management recommendations to consultant
firms, governments and industry.
 COMMUNITY ECOLOGY

Community ecology examines how interactions among

species and their environment affect the abundance,
distribution and diversity of species within communities.
—Johnson & Stinchcomb

Community ecology is a sub discipline of ecology which

studies the distribution, abundance, demography, and
interactions between coexisting populations. An example of a
study in community ecology might measure primary
production in a wetland in relation to decomposition and
consumption rates. This requires a understanding of the
community connections between plants (i.e., primary
producers) and the decomposers (e.g., fungi and bacteria). or
the analysis of predator-prey dynamics affecting amphibian
biomass.
 FOOD WEBS

Food webs are a type of concept map that illustrate real

ecological pathways, usually starting with solar energy being
used by plants during photosynthesis. As plants grow, they
accumulate carbohydrates and are eaten by grazing
herbivores. Step by step lines or relations are drawn until a
web of life is illustrated. here are different ecological
dimensions that can be mapped to create more complicated
food-webs, including: species composition (type of species),
richness (number of species), biomass (the dry weight of
plants and animals), productivity (rates of conversion of
energy and nutrients into growth), and stability (food-webs
over time). A food-web diagram illustrating species
composition shows how change in one single species can
directly and indirectly influence many others.
Food-chain length is a way of describing food-webs as a
measure of the number of species encountered as energy or
nutrients move from the plants to top predators.
 TROPHIC DYNAMICS

he Greek root of the word troph, τροφή , trophē, means food

or feeding. Functional groups are broadly categorized as
autotrophs (or primary producers), heterotrophs (or
consumers), and detrivores (or decomposers). Heterotrophs
can be further sub-divided into different functional groups,
including: primary consumers (strict herbivores), secondary
consumers (predators that feed exclusively on herbivores)
and tertiary consumers (predators that feed on a mix of
herbivores and predators). Omnivores do not fit neatly into a
functional category because they eat both plant and animal
tissues. It has been suggested, however, that omnivores have
a greater functional influence as predators because relative
to herbivores they are comparatively inefficient at grazing.
The decomposition of dead organic matter, such as leaves
falling on the forest floor, turns into soils that feed plant
production. Collectively, these are the detrivores that
regulate soil formation. Tree roots, fungi, bacteria, worms,
ants, beetles, centipedes, spiders, mammals, birds, reptiles,
amphibians and other less familiar creatures all work to
create the trophic web of life in soil ecosystems. As
organisms feed and migrate through soils they physically
displace materials.
Links in a food-web illustrate direct trophic relations among
species, but there are also indirect effects that can alter the
abundance, distribution, or biomass in the trophic levels. For
example, predators eating herbivores indirectly influence the
control and regulation of primary production in plants.
Although the predators do not eat the plants directly, they
regulate the population of herbibores that are directly linked
to plant trophism. The net effect of direct and indirect relations
is called trophic cascades. Trophic cascades are separated into
species-level cascades, where only a subset of the food-web
dynamic is impacted by a change in population numbers, and
community-level cascades, where a change in population
numbers has a dramatic effect on the entire food-web, such as
the distribution of plant biomass.
 BIOME AND BIOSPHERE

Ecological units of organization are defined through reference

to any magnitude of space and time on the planet.
Communities of organisms, for example, are somewhat
arbitrarily defined, but the processes of life integrate at
different levels and organize into more complex wholes.
Biomes, for example, are a larger unit of organization that
categorize regions of the Earth's ecosystems mainly according
to the structure and composition of [Link]
researchers have applied different methods to define
continental boundaries of biomes dominated by different
functional types of vegetative communities that are limited in
distribution by climate, precipitation, weather and other
environmental variables. Examples of biome names include:
tropical rainforest, Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests,
temperate deciduous forest, taiga, tundra, hot desert, and
polar desert. Other researchers have recently started to
categorize other types of biomes, such as the human and
oceanic microbiomes. To a microbe, the human body is a
habitat and a landscape. The microbiome has been largely
discovered through molecular genetic advances revealing a
hidden richness of microbial diversity on the planet. The
oceanic microbiome plays a significant role in the ecological
biogeochemistry of the planets oceans.
The largest scale of ecological organization is the biosphere.
The biosphere is the total sum of ecosystems on the planet.
Ecological relations regulate the flux of energy, nutrients,
and climate all the way up to the planetary scale. For
example, the dynamic history of the planetary CO2 and O2
composition of the atmosphere has been largely by the
biogenic flux of gases coming from respiration and
photosynthesis with levels fluctuating in time and in relation
to the ecology and evolution of plants and animals. When
sub-component parts are organized into a whole there are
oftentimes emergent properties that describe the nature of
the system. Ecological theory has been used to explain self
emergent regulatory phenomena at the planetary scale. This
is known as the Gaia hypothesis. The Gaia hypothesis is an
example of holism applied in ecological theory. The ecology
of the planet acts as a single regulatory or holistic unit called
Gaia. The Gaia hypothesis states that there is an emergent
feedback loop generated by the metabolism of living
organisms that maintains the temperature of the Earth and
atmospheric conditions within a narrow self-regulating
range of tolerance.
 ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The environment is dynamically interlinked with ecology.

Like the term ecology, environment has different conceptual
meanings and to many these terms also overlap with the
concept of nature. Environment "...includes the physical
world, the social world of human relations and the built
world of human creation."[This section describes the physical
environmental attributes or parameters that are external to
the level of biological organization under investigation,
including abiotic factors such as temperature, radiation, light,
chemistry, climate and geology, and biotic factors, including
genes, cells, organisms, members of the same species
(conspecifics) and other species that share a habitat. The
physical environmental connection means that the laws of
thermodynamics applies to ecology. Armed with an
understanding of metabolic and thermodynamic principles a
complete accounting of energy and material flow can be
traced through an ecosystem.
Environmental and ecological relations are studied through
reference to conceptually manageable and isolated parts.
However, once the effective environmental components are
understood they conceptually link back together as a
holocoenotic system. In other words, the organism and the
environment form a dynamic whole . Change in one
ecological or environmental factor can concurrently affect the
dynamic state of an entire ecosystem.
 ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
 INTRODUCTION, MEANING AND DEFINITION

Economic development is the increase in the standard of

living of a nation's population with sustained growth from a
simple, low-income economy to a modern, high-income
economy. Its scope includes the process and policies by
which a nation improves the economic, political, and social
well-being of its people.
Mansell and Wehn state that development has been
understood since the second World War to involve economic
growth, increases in per capita income, and attainment of a
standard of living equivalent to that of industrialized
countries.
Economy Development can also be considered as a static
theory that documents the state of economy at a certain time.
According to Schumpeter (2003) the changes in this
equilibrium state to document in economic theory can only
be caused by intervening factors coming from the outside.

The University of Iowa's Center for International Finance and

Development states that:
"'Economic development' or 'development' is a term that
economists, politicians, and others have used frequently in
the 20th century. The concept, however, has been in existence
in the West for centuries. Modernization, Westernization, and
especially Industrialization are other terms people have used
when discussing economic development. Although no one is
sure when the concept originated, most people agree that
development is closely bound up with the evolution of
capitalism and the demise of feudalism."
 ECONOMIC GROWTH VS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Economic development refers to social and technological

progress. It implies a change in the way goods and services are
produced, not merely an increase in production achieved using
the old methods of production on a wider scale. Economic
growth implies only an increase in quantitative output; it may
or may not involve development. Economic growth is often
measured by rate of change of gross domestic product (eg.,
percent GDP increase per year.) Gross domestic product is the
aggregate value-added by the economic activity within a
country's borders.
Economic development typically involves improvements in a
variety of indicators such as literacy rates, life expectancy, and
poverty rates. GDP does not take into account important
aspects such as leisure time, environmental quality, freedom,
or social justice; alternative measures of economic wellbeing
have been proposed.
A country's economic development is related to its human
development, which encompasses, among other things, health
and education.
Dependency theorists argue that poor countries have
sometimes experienced economic growth with little or no
economic development; for instance, in cases where they have
functioned mainly as resource-providers to wealthy
industrialized countries. There is an opposing argument,
however, that growth causes development because some of the
increase in income gets spent on human development such as
education and health.
In addition to increasing private incomes, economic growth
also generate additional resources that can be used to
improve social services (such as healthcare, safe drinking
water etc...). By generating additional resources for social
services, unequal income distribution will be limited as such
social services are distributed equally across each
community; benefiting each individual. Thus, increasing
living standards for the public.
MODELS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The 3 building blocks of most growth models are:

[Link] production function,
[Link] saving function
[Link] labor supply function (related to population
growth).
Harrod–Domar model
he Harrod–Domar model delineates a functional economic
relationship in which the growth rate of gross domestic
product (g) depends positively on the national saving ratio
(s) and inversely on the national capital/output ratio (k) so
that it is written as g = s / k. The Harrod–Domar model in the
early postwar times was commonly used by developing
countries in economic planning. With a target growth rate,
and information on the capital output ratio, the required
saving rate can be calculated.

Exogenous growth model

The exogenous growth model (or neoclassical growth model)
of Robert Solow and others places emphasis on the role of
technological change. Unlike the Harrod-Domar model, the
saving rate will only determine the level of income but not
the rate of growth. However, when looking at the growth rate
put forward from the neoclassical growth model, it seems to
suggest that countries with same characteristics and
technology will eventually converge to the same rate of
growth. However, one should know that the knowledge
presented in countries that promotes technological
advancement is not stationary. Meaning that knowledge are
linked to individual and not to the country.
 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF INDIA

Agriculture
India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Yields per unit
area of all crops have grown since 1950, due to the special
emphasis placed on agriculture in the five-year plans and
steady improvements in irrigation, technology, application of
modern agricultural practices and provision of agricultural
credit and subsidies since the green revolution. Main
problems in the agricultural sector, as listed by the World
Bank, are:
•India's large agricultural subsidies are hampering
productivity-enhancing investment.
•Overregulation of agriculture has increased costs, price risks
and uncertainty.
•Government interventions in labor, land, and credit markets.
•Inadequate infrastructure and services.

Industrial output
Indiais fourteenth in the world in factory output.
Manufacturing sector in addition to mining, quarrying,
electricity and gas together account for 27.6% of the GDP and
employ 17% of the total workforce. Economic reforms
introduced after 1991 brought foreign competition, led to
privatisation of certain public sector industries, opened up
sectors hitherto reserved for the public sector and led to an
expansion in the production of fast-moving consumer goods.
Services
India is fifteenth in services output. Service industry employs
23% of the work force and is growing quickly, with a growth
rate of 7.5% in 1991–2000, up from 4.5% in 1951–80. The
growth in the IT sector is attributed to increased specialisation
and availability of a large pool of low cost, highly skilled,
educated and fluent English-speaking workers on the supply
side and on the demand side, has increased demand from
foreign consumers interested in India's service exports or
those looking to outsource their operations. India's IT industry,
despite contributing significantly to its balance of payments,
accounts for only about 1% of the total GDP or 1/50th of the
total services.
The ITES-BPO sector has become a big employment generator
especially amongst young college graduates. Also, Indian IT-
ITES is estimated to have helped create an additional 3 million
job opportunities through indirect and induced employment.
Banking and finance
Since liberalisation, the government has approved significant
banking reforms. While some of these relate to nationalised
banks (like encouraging mergers, reducing government
interference and increasing profitability and
competitiveness), other reforms have opened up the banking
and insurance sectors to private and foreign players.[
Currently, in 2007, banking in India is generally mature in
terms of supply, product range and reach-even, though reach
in rural India still remains a challenge for the private sector
and foreign banks. In terms of quality of assets and capital
adequacy, Indian banks are considered to have clean, strong
and transparent balance sheets relative to other banks in
comparable economies of Asia. The Reserve Bank of India is
an autonomous body, with minimal pressure from the
government. The stated policy of the Bank on the Indian
Rupee is to manage volatility but without any fixed exchange
rate.
Currently, India has 88 scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) —
28 public sector banks (that is with the Government of India
holding a stake), 29 private banks (these do not have
government stake; they may be publicly listed and traded on
stock exchanges) and 31 foreign banks. They have a combined
network of over 53,000 branches and 17,000 ATMs. The
public sector banks hold over 75% of total assets of the
banking industry, with the private and foreign banks holding
18.2% and 6.5% respectively.
 IMPACT OF ECOLOGY ON BUSINESS-
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that

aims to meet human needs while preserving the
environment so that these needs can be met not only in the
present, but also for future generations.
Environmental sustainability is the process of making sure
current processes of interaction with the environment are
pursued with the idea of keeping the environment as
pristine as naturally possible based on ideal-seeking
behavior. The most broadly accepted criterion for corporate
sustainability constitutes a firm’s efficient use of natural
capital. This eco-efficiency is usually calculated as the
economic value added by a firm in relation to its aggregated
ecological impact.
ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT
Economic Environment refers to all those economic factors
which have a bearing on the functioning of a business.
Business depends on the economic environment for all the
needed inputs. It also depends on the economic environment
to sell the finished goods.
[Link] Systems
[Link] Planning
[Link] Parameters
[Link] Policies

1. Economic systems
Household
Firm
Industry
Government

[Link] planning
Economic Planning in India
Planning Commission
National Development council
[Link] Parameters
Gross Domestic Product
Per Capita Income
Population & Economic Development

[Link] Policies
Industrial Policy
Monetary Or Credit Policy
Fiscal Policy
Foreign Trade Policy
 CONCLUSION
RELATION BETWEEN ECOLOGY AND BUSINESS

It is ironical that most of the environmental damage, which is

now a great concern to many people, is primarily a by-product
of manufacturing consumer goods. The securing of raw
materials, the waste and pollution produced by factories and
the disposal of consumer goods at the end of their usual lives
account for a large percentage of the environmental problems
we are facing. We have seen, in recent years, manufacturers of
consumer goods become outwardly very concerned about the
environment. It is only a skin deep concern however. To
“develop” the economy companies are continually trying to
introduce new products and trying to increase their customer
base, by developing the “undeveloped” countries. This
“economic development” is at the cost of the environment.
The raw materials have to come from somewhere, that means
damaging the environment, there has to be more nasty
polluting factories and the products themselves, at the end of
their usual lives, will add to the huge waste disposal problem
faced by the worlds “developed” nations. There can be no
solution to the environmental problem unless the production
and marketing of the unlimited range of consumer products is
nationalized. These products can only be produced by
exploiting valuable natural resources so increasing their
production and protecting the environment simultaneously is
not possible.