With reference to 'Carrying Capacity of Environment', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. The rate of resource extraction should remain above the rate of resource generation.
2. Gene

Question

With reference to 'Carrying Capacity of Environment', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. The rate of resource extraction should remain above the rate of resource generation.
2. Generation of waste should remain within the absorption capacity of environment.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Only 2. Carrying capacity is always stated as a pair of conditions, one about what we take out of the environment and one about what we put back into it, and this question keeps the second intact while quietly reversing the first. Statement 1 says the rate of resource extraction should remain ABOVE the rate of resource generation. That is the definition of living beyond carrying capacity, not within it. If you harvest a forest, a fishery or an aquifer faster than it renews itself, the stock shrinks year on year until it is gone; the requirement is the exact opposite — extraction must stay at or below the rate of regeneration, so that the resource base is handed on undiminished. The word 'above' is the whole error, and it is a single word in an otherwise textbook sentence. Statement 2 is correct as printed. Every environment has an assimilative or absorptive capacity: a river can break down a certain load of organic waste, soil can process a certain quantity of effluent, the atmosphere can disperse a certain volume of emissions. So long as waste generation stays within that capacity, the environment neutralises it and no pollution problem builds up. Push past it and the waste accumulates, which is what pollution actually is. Note the code layout too, because UPPSC has shuffled it on this paper: (a) is 'Only 2' and (d) is 'Only 1'. Statement 2 alone being correct, the answer is (a).

Why the other options are wrong — (b) This is the option most candidates lose the mark to, because the sentence in statement 1 looks entirely familiar. It uses the right vocabulary — rate of extraction, rate of generation — in the right frame, and a reader skimming for keywords will nod it through. But the inequality runs the wrong way. Sustainability requires extraction to stay at or below regeneration; a system in which extraction stays above regeneration is by definition depleting its resource base. Statement 2 is fine, so accepting both means accepting a reversed inequality on the strength of familiar words.  (c) Over-correction. Having spotted that statement 1 is bent, a candidate may conclude that the whole question is a plant and reject the second statement too. Statement 2 is, however, a straight and standard formulation: waste generation must remain within the absorption capacity of the environment, which is the sink-side half of carrying capacity. Nothing in it is exaggerated or reversed.  (d) Wrong twice over — it accepts the one statement that has been tampered with and rejects the one that is accurate. A candidate reaches this option in one of two ways: by reading statement 1 too quickly and dismissing statement 2 as too obvious to be the intended answer, or by deciding correctly that only one statement is right and then marking the slot where 'Only 1' usually sits without checking that on this paper 'Only 1' has been moved to (d).

Concept: Carrying capacity is the level of use an environment can sustain indefinitely without being degraded, and it has two sides that must both be respected. On the source side, the environment supplies resources — timber, fish, groundwater, soil fertility — and use is sustainable only while the rate of extraction does not exceed the rate at which those resources regenerate. On the sink side, the environment absorbs the residues of economic activity, and use is sustainable only while the rate at which waste is generated does not exceed the environment's assimilative capacity. This twin condition is what links carrying capacity so tightly to the Brundtland Commission's definition of sustainable development, meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs: the resource stock and the absorptive capacity are exactly the inheritance being protected. Crossing the first limit produces resource depletion; crossing the second produces pollution. Most environmental problems can be filed under one of the two.

State PCS 2025 Q134 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q134 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer