WASSCE SHS
Development uses the environment. If the environment is ruined, the development does not last.
Natural resources, soil, forests, water, minerals and a stable climate are the base that farming, industry and settlement stand on. Using them can raise incomes, if the use leaves enough for the next season and the next generation. That is the idea of sustainable use. Practices that break it include deforestation, illegal mining, bush burning, pollution of rivers and overfishing. The income from one season of mining can be smaller than the cost of a dead river for many years. You do not need a figure to make that point. You need the link.
Consequences fall on people: lower yields, waterborne disease, floods where trees no longer hold the slopes, and disputes over scarce land. Responses include enforcement of the law, replanting, cleaner methods of production, and livelihoods that do not depend on destroying the resource. A WASSCE answer is expected to connect the environment to development, not only to list dirty habits. "It is bad" is not an effect.
Cause, effect and response are three different demands. Read which one was asked. An effect should name who is harmed or what is lost. A response should be something a person, a district or the state can actually do. Do not invent a percentage of forest lost. The mark is for the mechanism: trees removed, soil exposed, rain washes the soil away, farms fail.
These are practice questions in the style of the paper, with a model answer and a mark scheme. They are not a promise of what your paper will ask.
4 marks
Explain two ways environmental degradation can slow the development of a community. (4 marks)
When forests are cut down, soil is washed away and harvests fall, so incomes fall with them. When rivers are polluted by mining, people spend time and money on illness instead of on work or school.
3 marks
What is sustainable use of a resource? Give one example. (3 marks)
Sustainable use meets present needs without destroying the resource for later. An example is cutting timber and replanting, rather than clearing a forest and leaving bare soil.
2 marks
State two actions a district assembly can take against illegal mining in rivers. (2 marks)
It can enforce the law against mining in river beds, and it can support other work so that young people are not dependent on illegal pits.
More questions on this topic are inside GLearn, marked as you answer, with the reason written out. The first ones need no account.
Practise Social Studies freeUsing a resource so that people today can live from it and people later still can. Replanting trees after logging is sustainable. Clearing a hillside and leaving it bare is not.
Development depends on soil, water, forests and a liveable place. Erosion, polluted rivers and lost farmland cut incomes and raise the cost of illness. The gain from destroying a resource is often smaller than the loss that follows. All WASSCE Social Studies past questions