Environment is defined as the total planetary inheritance and the totality of all resources biotic and abiotic. Biotic resources include all living elements such as birds, animals and plants, forests, fisheries, etc. Abiotic elements include air, water, land, etc. Two main problems related to environment:

1. Threat to poverty-induced environmental degradation.
2. Threat of pollution from affluence and a rapidly growing industrial sector.

Main functions of environment.The environment performs four vital functions:

1. It supplies renewable resources (which can be used without fearing their depletion or exhaustion, e.g.. trees in the forest) and non-renewable resources (which get exhausted with extraction and use, e.g., ‘fossil fuel’).
2. It assimilates wastes, i.e., the wastes generated are within the assimilating capacity of the environment.
3. It sustains life by providing genetic and bio diversity. This implies that the resource extraction is not above the rate of regeneration of the resource.
4. It provides aesthetic services like scenery etc.