Environment and Sustainable Development

Written and reviewed by Devendra Dubey, Mathematics & Commerce faculty at UniDrill (M.Sc. Mathematics, Osmania University · 10 years teaching). Based on NCERT Economics Class XI (Indian Economic Development), Chapter 7.

Can the Earth afford everything we want?

A fish pond refills itself. A coal mine does not. A river can wash away some dirt but not an unlimited amount of factory waste. Every environmental problem in this chapter is a version of one simple question: are we taking from nature, and giving back to it, faster than nature can cope?

The chapter begins with a thought often credited to Mahatma Gandhi: the earth has enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed. Economics turns that thought into numbers.

What the environment is and what it does

The environment is the total planetary inheritance and the totality of all resources. It contains biotic elements (birds, animals, plants, forests, fisheries) and abiotic elements (air, water, land, rocks, sunlight), which constantly influence each other.

The environment does four jobs for us:

Notice that "generating employment" is not on the list. It is a favourite wrong option.

Carrying capacity: the limit that matters

The environment performs all four jobs without a break as long as two conditions hold. Resource extraction must not exceed the rate of regeneration, and the wastes generated must stay within the environment's ability to absorb them. That limit is its carrying capacity. The ability to absorb degradation is its absorptive capacity. When waste exceeds absorptive capacity, the environment cannot recover, and a crisis begins.

$$E \le R \qquad\text{and}\qquad W \le A$$

Here $E$ is the rate of extraction, $R$ the rate of regeneration, $W$ the rate of waste generation and $A$ the absorptive capacity.

Worked example: a pond that is slowly emptied. A pond holds 90 tonnes of fish and regenerates 40 tonnes a year. Fishers take 55 tonnes a year. Is this sustainable, and how long will the stock last?

The common wrong step is to compare extraction with the stock (55 out of 90) and call it safe. What matters is the rate of extraction against the rate of regeneration.

Why the crisis arrived. In early times demand for environmental resources was well below supply, and pollution stayed within absorptive capacity. Population growth and the industrial revolution reversed this: demand began to exceed what the environment could regenerate, and the supply and demand relationship turned upside down.

Global warming is the gradual rise in the temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere, caused by the human-induced increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane since the Industrial Revolution. Since 1750, carbon dioxide has risen by 31% and methane by 149%. The Kyoto Conference in Japan (1997) produced an international agreement under which industrialised countries committed to cut emissions.

Ozone depletion is the thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer by chlorine and bromine compounds. The culprits are chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in coolants and aerosols, and halons, used in fire extinguishers. More ultraviolet radiation reaches the ground and raises the risk of skin cancer. The Montreal Protocol, an agreement to phase out these substances, was the global response.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: global warming is the rise in temperature caused by human-induced greenhouse gases. In reality: the greenhouse effect itself is natural, and without it the Earth would be too cold for life as we know it. The problem is that human activity has strengthened it. Why it matters: a statement saying greenhouse gases are "harmful by nature" would be wrong, because it is the added amount that causes trouble.

Pause and predict: a fishing community takes 55 tonnes a year from a pond that regenerates 40 tonnes a year. A new net lets them take 60 tonnes. Is the problem the net or the rate?

Check your answer: The rate. The net only widens the gap between extraction and regeneration. The pond was already being over-used at 55 tonnes.

India's environment: rich, and under pressure

India is endowed with fertile soil, hundreds of rivers and tributaries, lush forests, a long coastline and large mineral deposits, including nearly 8% of the world's iron ore reserves. The Indo-Gangetic plains and the Deccan black soil are among its major resources.

The chapter describes a dichotomy in India's environmental threat. It faces two kinds of danger at once.

The two have different causes and need different policies, yet both are present in India at the same time.

Five issues are treated as priorities: land degradation, biodiversity loss, air pollution (especially from vehicles in cities), management of fresh water and solid waste management.

Land degradation has many causes: loss of vegetation through deforestation; unsustainable fuel wood and fodder extraction; shifting cultivation; encroachment into forest land; forest fires and overgrazing; failure to adopt soil conservation measures; improper crop rotation; indiscriminate use of agro-chemicals; improper planning of irrigation; extraction of ground water beyond what is recharged; open access resources that nobody owns or manages; and the poverty of agriculture-dependent people.

India's numbers explain why the pressure is heavy. They are tested exactly as written, so learn all of them:

Put the forest numbers together: $0.06 \div 0.47 \approx 0.13$, so India has only about 13% of the per capita forest land it needs.

Air pollution has grown with transport. Motor vehicles increased from about 3 lakh in 1951 to about 35 crore in 2022, and two wheelers and cars make up about 85% of registered vehicles.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) was set up in 1974 to address water and air pollution, and State Pollution Control Boards followed. They investigate, collect data, set standards for effluents and emissions, and the CPCB has identified 17 categories of significantly polluting industries.

Two views. For the exam: India's environmental problems arise both from poverty and from affluence, and both must be named in an answer on the dichotomy. Another reading: economists who study development often stress that the two feed each other, because degraded land and forests deepen the poverty of the people who depend on them, while cutting resource use by the poor alone does not remove the pollution created by high consumption. Neither threat can be ignored in favour of the other.

Sustainable development: growth that lasts

The definition CUET expects, from the Brundtland Commission's report Our Common Future, is:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Three ways of looking at it appear in the chapter:

Herman Daly's five conditions for sustainable development. Learn this as a set of five:

The United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, to be achieved by 2030.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: Brundtland's definition is about meeting the needs of the present without harming the future. In reality: the idea was developed further by economists. Daly's conditions are the practical rules that turn the definition into something that can be checked, because "meeting needs" on its own does not say how much of a resource may be used. Why it matters: in assertion and reason questions, Brundtland gives the aim and Daly gives the limits.

Strategies that put sustainability into practice

The chapter groups India's practical responses into the following.

Pause and predict: a village replaces wood and dung cake with gobar gas plants. Which two harms are reduced?

Check your answer: Deforestation (less wood is cut) and air pollution (smoke from burning wood and dung falls). The leftover slurry from the plant can also be used as manure, so one change does three jobs.

Forests and people. Local communities have sometimes taken the lead in protecting forests. The Appiko movement of 8 September 1983 in the Salkani forest of Sirsi district, Karnataka, took its name from a word meaning "to hug". Villagers hugged trees to stop their felling and saved a large number of trees. It is often paired with the Chipko movement of the Himalayas as an example of community action.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Employment: Growth, Informalisation and Other Issues deals with livelihoods, many of which depend directly on land, forests and water.
• Next: Comparative Development Experiences of India and Its Neighbours sets India's growth path beside China and Pakistan.
• Related: Rural Development links to sustainable farming, and Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation: An Appraisal relates to industrial growth and its pollution load.