Breaking down the question
The question is posed as an interrogative claim — has the reduction of green cover driven ecological degradation and, through it, global warming? The command elaborate with illustration asks the candidate to affirm and explain the causal chain and to ground it in concrete examples.
The task is to connect three terms: shrinking forest and vegetation cover, the broader degradation of ecosystems, and the rise in global temperatures. A sociological answer will also locate the drivers of green-cover loss in patterns of development and social transformation.
The note on the crisis of development, displacement and sustainability supplies the analytical frame.
How to approach it
Establish the causal mechanism first: forests act as carbon sinks, so their removal both releases stored carbon and reduces future absorption, raising atmospheric greenhouse gases. Link this to wider ecological degradation — soil erosion, biodiversity loss, disturbed rainfall. Then illustrate with Indian and global examples.
Close by framing green-cover loss as a product of development choices, so that reforestation and sustainable development become the sociological remedy.
Model answer
The reduction of green cover — through deforestation, urban expansion and land-use change — is a central driver of ecological degradation and, in turn, of global warming.
The causal mechanism. Forests and vegetation are the planet's principal carbon sinks: through photosynthesis they absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide and store carbon in biomass and soil. When green cover is cleared, two effects follow. The carbon locked in trees is released through burning and decay, and the biosphere's capacity to absorb future emissions falls. The concentration of greenhouse gases rises, intensifying the warming of the atmosphere.
Wider ecological degradation. Loss of green cover degrades ecosystems along several axes — accelerated soil erosion, disrupted water cycles and rainfall, declining biodiversity and rising local temperatures as tree cover no longer moderates heat. These degradations feed back into climate stress, so the reduction of green cover is both a cause and a symptom of ecological crisis.
Illustrations. The clearing of the Amazon rainforest, often called the earth's lungs, is the paradigmatic case of a carbon sink turned into a carbon source. In India, deforestation in the Himalayan and Western Ghats regions has been linked to landslides, erratic rainfall and biodiversity loss — the concern that animated the Chipko movement and Gadgil's warnings on the Ghats. Rapid urbanisation has stripped cities of green belts, producing urban heat islands of measurably higher temperature.
A sociological reading. Green-cover loss is not natural but social — the outcome of development choices: commercial logging, mining, agricultural expansion and unplanned urban growth. This locates the remedy in sustainable development — afforestation, protected areas, and growth reconciled with ecological limits.
The reduction of green cover has therefore materially aggravated ecological degradation and global warming, and reversing it through conservation and sustainable land use is essential to any response to the climate challenge.
Examiner's perspective
Weak answers assert that deforestation is bad without explaining how it warms the planet, and offer no illustration despite the explicit instruction. The examiner is testing whether the candidate can articulate the carbon-sink mechanism and support it with concrete cases.
Strong answers set out the release-and-absorption logic clearly, connect green-cover loss to broader ecological degradation, and illustrate with named examples such as the Amazon, the Western Ghats or urban heat islands. The best answers, writing within challenges of social transformation, frame deforestation as a social product of development and point to sustainable development as the remedy. Invoking Chipko, Gadgil or Guha signals command of Indian environmental sociology within the ten-mark limit.