Environment and Natural Resources

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Political Science Class XII (Contemporary World Politics), Chapter 6.

Who owns the sky?

Nobody owns the ozone layer, and nobody owns the ice of Antarctica. Yet a factory in one country can thin the ozone over another, and a warming planet floods islands that did not cause it. This is the puzzle of the chapter: when a problem belongs to everyone, who is responsible for fixing it, and who pays? The answer shows up in treaties, in the North versus South divide, and in the exact dates CUET loves to test.

Why did the environment become political?

Environmental issues are no longer left to geographers and naturalists. The planet's life-support systems are under strain, and the symptoms are plain: cultivable land is barely expanding and is losing fertility, grasslands are overgrazed, fisheries are over-harvested, and water is depleted and polluted. Natural forests, which stabilise climate, moderate water supply and shelter most land biodiversity, are being destroyed. The ozone layer in the stratosphere is thinning, which endangers ecosystems and human health. Coastal waters are becoming severely polluted by land-based activities, even though the open sea stays relatively clean.

The human cost is large. According to the UNDP Human Development Report 2016, 663 million people in developing countries lack safe water and 2.4 billion lack sanitation, and more than three million children die each year as a result.

The timeline of environmental politics

Awareness grew from the 1960s. Each step on this ladder built on the one before it.

What happened at Rio, and why did the North and South disagree?

At Rio, the world's priorities split along the North-South divide. The reasons are easy to follow once you think about interests.

The summit still produced conventions on climate change, biodiversity and forestry, and recommended a list of development practices called Agenda 21.

Two views. For the exam: Agenda 21 sets out practices for sustainable development, which the summit endorsed. Another reading: critics, many of them from the South, argued that Agenda 21 favoured economic growth over ecological conservation. Both statements appear in the textbook's account.

The global commons

The global commons are areas outside any single state's sovereign control that need shared governance. The Latin term for the idea, res communis humanitatis, means that they belong to humanity as a whole. There are four.

Cooperation over the commons rests on a few agreements.

Pause and predict: Tropical rainforests are vital to the whole planet's climate. Are they part of the global commons?

Check your answer: No. Rainforests lie inside the territory of particular states, so they come under national sovereignty, however much the world depends on them. The four commons are the atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor and outer space.

Common property is a different idea. A common property resource is owned and managed by a community, whose members share both rights and duties for its use and upkeep. The textbook's Indian example is the sacred grove of the south Indian forest belt, where villages have managed forest patches for centuries under religious sanction.

Common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)

The Rio Declaration of 1992 accepted a key principle: all states share responsibility for protecting the global environment, but developed countries bear a greater share because their industrial growth contributed most to the damage. The UNFCCC of 1992 asked countries to act on the basis of equity and in line with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

On this logic, the Kyoto Protocol (agreed at Kyoto, Japan, in 1997) set greenhouse gas reduction targets only for industrialised countries. China, India and other developing countries were exempt from binding targets. The gases covered include carbon dioxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons.

Two views. For the exam: developing countries argue that developed countries are historically responsible for most emissions and should do more. India, for example, points to its low per capita emissions. Another reading: some developed countries argue that as major developing economies grow, their emissions rise quickly and they too should accept limits. This disagreement is at the heart of climate negotiations.

India's stand

India's position rests on historical responsibility: its emissions are low, and a limit on its per capita emissions would be unfair.

Pause and predict: If CBDR exempts India from binding targets under Kyoto, why did India still ratify the protocol?

Check your answer: The exemption applies to binding emission cuts, not to participation. By ratifying in August 2002, India joined the regime while keeping its argument that developed countries should lead.

Environmental movements

Not every environmental protest is about the same thing. These are the cases the chapter lists.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the first anti-dam movement in the North was the early 1980s campaign to save Australia's Franklin River. In reality: the river is in Tasmania, and the proposed dam was stopped after a High Court of Australia ruling in 1983. The campaign is remembered as a landmark of the environmental movement in the North.

Resource geopolitics

Resource geopolitics asks who gets what, when, where and how. The chapter covers two resources.

Water examples: Israel, Syria and Jordan in the 1950s and 1960s over the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers, and Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates.

Indigenous peoples and their rights

The UN defines indigenous populations as the descendants of peoples who inhabited a country's present territory when people of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there. There are about 30 crore indigenous people worldwide. In India they are identified with the Scheduled Tribes, about 8 per cent of the population.

Their traditional way of life depends on subsistence agriculture, hunting, gathering and fishing, in close contact with forests and water. They have suffered most from the conversion of common land into private property, from mining and dam projects, and from displacement. Their demands are recognition as distinct peoples, secure land rights, protection of customary self-government and a say in global environmental talks. The World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975 and was the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to get consultative status at the UN.

The big idea: environment and justice

All these threads lead to one idea: environmental questions cannot be separated from fairness between countries and within them. The Rio model combines sustainable development, CBDR and respect for common property. India's position combines participation in the global regime (Kyoto in 2002, Paris in 2016), insistence on historical responsibility, and domestic laws such as the Energy Conservation Act 2001 and the Electricity Act 2003.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Security in the Contemporary World treats global warming as a global security threat and mentions the Kyoto Protocol.
• Same theme: International Organisations covers UNEP's parent body, the UN, and other bodies that shape environmental cooperation.
• Next: Globalisation shows how flows of goods and ideas connect the environment to trade and development.
• India link: Politics of Planned Development explains the development choices behind big dams and industrial growth.