Work in two columns — first the action, then the intervention that answers it. A useful answer names things you can actually point to on the way to school.
| Action that blocks restoration | Why Nature cannot recover from it on its own | Intervention |
|---|---|---|
| Untreated sewage and industrial effluent let into a drain, nallah or river | The waste cannot decay into food for any lifeform; the cycle is broken and the water turns poisonous (page 7) | Treat effluent before discharge; enforce the standards; revive the water body and check its quality every month |
| Plastic waste and packaging thrown into open ground or drains | It does not decompose, blocks drains, and stops rain from soaking in | Segregate waste, reduce single-use plastic, compost the wet fraction, recycle the dry |
| Concreting every open surface — courtyards, footpaths, playgrounds | Rain runs off instead of recharging groundwater; the water table keeps falling | Rooftop rainwater harvesting; recharge pits; permeable paving; restore ponds and tanks |
| Over-pumping borewells for irrigation, or leaving taps and pipes leaking | Extraction outruns recharge and the deficit builds up year on year (page 12) | Drip and sprinkler irrigation; crops matched to the local rainfall; repair leaks; reuse treated water |
| Felling trees for construction; clearing a grove | Habitat, shade, soil binding and water filtering all go at once | Plant native species — the chapter is specific that planting the types originally growing there restores the ecosystem (page 5) |
| Burning crop residue and garbage | Organic matter that should have returned to the soil goes into the air as pollution | Compost or mulch the residue; use it as fodder or for biogas |
| Heavy or repeated use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides | Soil degrades; the chemicals dissolve into groundwater (pages 12–13) | Cow dung and natural fertilisers, mulching, multi-cropping, natural pest repellents such as neem |
| Sand mining from a river bed; building on a floodplain or wetland | The river loses its ability to hold and clean water, and to refill the aquifer | Regulate mining; keep floodplains free of construction; protect wetlands |
Sample answer: ‘In my neighbourhood the drain behind the market carries untreated waste water into the canal, the vacant plot is used to dump and burn plastic, and every courtyard on our street has been cemented. As a result, the canal water is black and has no fish, the smoke reaches our classrooms, and our handpump now has to be pumped much longer than it did three years ago. Three interventions we proposed to the ward office are: a covered composting pit and separate dry-waste collection for the market, recharge pits at the four street corners, and a row of neem, peepal and jamun saplings along the canal bank, with each class in our school responsible for watering ten of them for two years.'