ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

Environmental Concerns in Global Politics:

1. Some concerns are: 

(i). Cultivable areas are barely expanding any more, and a substantial portion of existing agricultural land is losing fertility.

(ii). Grasslands have been overgrazed, fisheries overharvested, Water bodies have suffered depletion and pollution, thus severely restricting food production.

(iii). Natural forests, which harbor a majority of the planet’s biodiversity on land, are being cut down and people are being displaced. 

(iv). Ozone holes pose a real danger to ecosystems and human health.

(v). The coastal waters are becoming increasingly polluted which can lead to further deterioration in the quality of marine environment.

2. Most of the above issues are such that no single government can address them fully and they have to become part of ‘world politics.

3. There are questions about, who causes environmental degradation, Who pays the price and who is responsible for taking corrective action.

4. Awareness of the environmental consequences of economic growth acquired an increasingly political character from the 1960s onwards.

5. The Club of Rome, a think tank, published a book in 1972 entitled “Limits to Growth” highlighting the potential depletion of the Earth’s resources.

6. International agencies, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), began holding international conferences and promoting detailed studies to get a more coordinated and effective response to environmental problems.

7. The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term.

8. The focus was firmly consolidated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, called the Earth Summit.

9. There were differences between the first world countries (called global north) and the third world countries (called global south).

10. The Northern states were concerned with ozone depletion and global warming, whereas the Southern states were anxious to address the relationship between economic development and environmental management.

11. The Rio Summit produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity, forestry, and recommended a list of development practices called ‘Agenda 21’

12. There was a consensus on combining economic growth with ecological responsibility, known as ‘sustainable development’. But the problem was how exactly this was to be achieved.

The Protection of Global Common

‘Commons’ are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community. For example: areas or regions of the world which are located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state such as earth’s atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space. There have been many path-breaking agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol. A major problem underlying all ecological issues relates to the difficulty of achieving consensus. The history of outer space as a global commons shows that the management of these areas is thoroughly influenced by North-South inequalities.

Common but Differentiated Responsibilities

The developed countries of the North want everyone to be equally responsible for ecological conservation. The developing countries feel that much of the ecological degradation is the product of industrial development undertaken by the developed countries and they must also take more responsibility for undoing the damage now. The developing countries are in the process of industrialization and they must not be subjected to the same restrictions, which apply to the developed countries. This argument was accepted in the Rio Declaration at the Earth Summit in 1992 and is called the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’. The per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low. China, India, and other developing countries were, therefore, exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement setting targets for industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. The protocol was agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto in Japan, based on principles set out in UNFCCC.

Common Property Resources

Common property represents common property for the group. The underlying norm here is that members of the group have both rights and duties with respect to the nature, levels of use, and the maintenance of a given resource. A combination of factors, including privatization, agricultural intensification, population growth and ecosystem degradation have caused common property to dwindle in size, quality, and availability to the poor in much of the world. For example: the management of the sacred groves on state-owned forest land.

India’s Stand on Environmental Issues

India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002 but it was exempt from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the G-8 meeting in June 2005, India said that the per capita emission rates of the developing countries area tiny fraction of those in the developed world.

India’s international negotiating position relies heavily on principles of historical responsibility, as enshrined in UNFCCC.

It emphasizes that ‘economic and social development are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country parties’.

The Indian government is participating in global efforts through a number of programmes. For example: the Energy Conservation Act, passed in 2001, outlines initiatives to improve energy efficiency and the Electricity Act of 2003 encourages the use of renewable energy.

India ratified the Paris Climate Agreement on 2 October 2016 and it has one of the largest renewable energy programmes in the world.

India says that there is no meaningful progress with respect to transfer of technology and additional financial resources on concessional terms to developing nations as was agreed in the Earth summit.

India is of the view that the SAARC countries should adopt a common position on major global environment issues, so that the region’s voice carries greater weight.

Environmental Movements

Some of the most significant responses to this challenge have come not from the governments but rather from groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working in different parts of the world. These environmental movements raise new ideas and long-term visions of what we should do and what we should not do in our individual and collective lives. Examples are:

(i). Movements against the mineral companies for their pollution of waterways and land, its clearance of native vegetation and its displacement of communities.

(ii). Movements against mega-dams which are pro-river movements for more sustainable and equitable management of river systems and valleys. For example: Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Resource Geopolitics

1. Resources have provided some of the key means and motives of global European power expansion.

2. Since sea power itself rested on access to timber, naval timber supply became a key priority for major European powers from the 17th century onwards.

3. The critical importance of strategic resources such as oil, was well established both during the First World War and the Second World War.

4. During the cold war, developed countries deployed military forces near exploitation sites and along sea lanes of communication, stockpiled strategic resources, made efforts to prop up friendly governments in producing countries, as well as support to multinational companies and favorable international agreements. 

5. A particular concern was Western control of oil in the Gulf and strategic minerals in Southern and Central Africa.

6. The immense wealth associated with oil led to political struggles to control it.

7. Saudi Arabia has the highest oil reserves followed by Iraq.

8. Regional variations and the increasing scarcity of freshwater in some parts of the world point to the possibility of disagreements over shared water resources as a leading source of conflicts in the 21st century. For example a downstream (lower riparian) state’s objection to pollution, excessive irrigation, or the construction of dams by an upstream (upper riparian) state. A number of studies show that countries that share rivers are involved in military conflicts with each other.

The Indigenous Peoples and their Rights

The UN defines indigenous populations as the descendants of peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country, when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world and overcame them. Many of the present day island states in the Oceania region (including Australia and New Zealand), were inhabited by the Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian people over the course of thousands of years. The indigenous voices in world politics call for the admission of indigenous people to the world community as equals. The worldviews of indigenous societies, irrespective of their geographical location, are strikingly similar with respect to land and the variety of life systems supported by it. In India, the description ‘indigenous people’ is usually applied to the Scheduled Tribes who constitute nearly eight per cent of the population of the country. Most indigenous populations in India depend for their subsistence primarily on the cultivation of land. For centuries, they had free access to as much land as they could cultivate. They have not got much of the benefits of development in the country and rather they have paid a huge cost for development since they are displaced by various developmental projects since independence. The World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975 and it became the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN. 

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