Cause of environmental degradation causes are as follows:
• cutting down trees
• soil erosion
• Excessive use of ground or surface water
• loss of biodiversity
• Global warming

Drought creates a large-scale scarcity of water for every kind of activity such as agricultural operations including lack of moisture in the soil to grow crops, thereby affecting production and causing crop failure, scarcity of food, fodder, employment and causes starvation. Thus it affects human lives in various ways.

Rainwater harvesting is a technique used for collecting, storing and using rainwater for drinking water supply, landscape irrigation, and other uses. The rainwater is collected from various hard surfaces such as rooftops and/or other types of man-made structures above ground with hard surfaces.
This ancient practice is currently growing in popularity throughout our communities due to interest in reducing the consumption of potable water and the inherent qualities of rainwater.
Rainwater Harvesting Advantages
Some advantages of rainwater harvesting are as follows:
• It makes use of a natural resource and reduces flooding, stormwater run-off, soil erosion and contamination of surface water with pesticides, sediments, metals, and fertilizers.
• It reduces the need for imported water.
• It is an excellent source of water for landscape irrigation, with no chemicals such as fluoride and chlorine, and no dissolved salts and minerals from the soil.
• Home systems can be relatively simple to install and operate and may reduce your water bill.
• It promotes both water and energy conservation.
• No filtration system is required for landscape irrigation.
• It inculcates a culture of water conservation.

Drought is a slow onset disaster, thus giving us time to cope with it in the following ways:
• Through preparedness and response, the drought-affected societies certainly can reduce its intensity.
• People have to take effective steps which must be sustained for a long period of time.
• Such involvement should be from a cross-section of people such as community, Panchayat representatives, volunteers, government functionaries, teachers, and students.
PeopLe must have Long-term drought mitigation strategies such as:
• Construction of community-based rainwater harvesting structures.
• Promoting watershed programmes.
• Increasing forest cover through plantations.
• Adopting the drought-resistant variety of paddy and other crops.
• Using alternative crops in drought conditions.
• Capacity building of communities in Drought Management and introducing livelihood options besides agriculture and animal husbandry which are water intensive.
• Encouraging crop and seed insurance schemes.
• Students can also play a key role in many ways like conserve water through preventing wastage and misuse of water, recycling of water etc.

We can conserve water by preventing wastage and misuse of water through the following ways:
• Recycling of water by using wastewater of washing machines for cleaning home or washing cars and directing water from the wash area to the fields or garden.
• Harvest rainwater at home and in schools.
• Plant trees (afforestation)
Use traditional methods such as
Guhls In the Western and Central Himalayas, 1 to 15 km long traditional diversion channels also known as guhls were built to draw water from hill streams or springs. They carried 15 to 100 liters discharge of water per second. Bamboo Pipes In Meghalaya, bamboo pipes function like a drip irrigation system. These pipes are used to tap spring water for irrigation purposes, which reduces to 20-80 drops per minute at the site of the plant.
Ahar-Pyne Ahars are rectangular catchment basins and pines are channels which fetch the water flowing from the seasonal streams. This system of irrigation is found mainly in South Bihar.
Kunds The structure of kunds is shaped like a bowl with a lid. This method belongs to Thar desert where kunds are covered underground tanks with an artificially prepared catchment area to improve run-off.
Surangam A tunnel dug through a laterite hillock is known as surangam. People collect water which seeps out from the tunnel. It is found in Malabar area.