The unfavourable alteration of environment due to human activities is termed as

Concept

Ecological degradation is a decline in environmental quality, natural-resource condition, or an ecosystem’s capacity to support life and provide services. Human pressures such as pollution, deforestation, habitat destruction, and overuse can produce this unfavourable alteration.

Application

The stem asks for the term describing an unfavourable environmental alteration caused by human activities. Among the offered terms, ecological degradation directly denotes that human-driven deterioration.

Contrast

• Ecological disturbance denotes a discrete disruptive event and may have either natural or human causes.

• Catastrophe denotes an exceptionally severe and often sudden disaster, emphasizing magnitude and abruptness.

• Ecological degradation denotes the broader deterioration of environmental quality or ecosystem functioning under human pressures.

• More than one of the above would require at least two offered terms to be independently equivalent to the definition; the other technical terms have different scopes.

• None of the above would apply only if the required term were absent, whereas ecological degradation is present in the offered set.

Cross-check

The final BPSC answer key for code 21/PV/M-2023, Set A, assigns question 126 to the response corresponding to ecological degradation. This later final key supersedes the earlier provisional key.

Therefore, the accepted term is ecological degradation.