Gas Shortages In India Threaten Survival of the Forest


Many small towns in the country of India are accustomed to using natural gas in their daily cooking chores. But, because of the gas shortages happening all over the country, many villagers are being forced to find alternative means of cooking their foods. The main alternative fuel seems to be wood from the nearby forests.

This is especially true in the Himachal Pradesh area. As more and more villagers make use of firewood from the forests, however, the deforestation is putting stress on the surrounding environment in ways that threaten the viability of the ecosphere.

The conventional way that gas reaches teh villagers is through what are called LPG cylinders. LPG is short for liquefied petroleum gas. A problem with these cylinders is that they don’t exactly have a stellar safety record. The main reason is that if incorrectly sotred, LPG is a fire and explosion hazard. In point of fact, a majority of the fires in the country are caused directly or indirectly by the improper storage of unsafe LPG cylinders.

Because of the inherent dangers, the government has stepped up it’s measures to monitor and control the quality of these canisters. While this is obviously a good thing, the attention to quality control has inadvertently exacerbated problem by decreasing the amount of gas that can be delivered to the villagers in time.

And if the LPG cylinders are not available to the villagers on time, they have no alternative other than trekking to the forest for firewood.

Many possible solutions have been proposed. One of the more popular ones is to regulate, by household, the amount of cooking gas that is delivered.

Whatever the solution, the hope is that it comes soon, before the forest areas have been devastated beyond repair.

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