hen a society’s definition of development is considered in a conventional sense, most of them would be tilting towards the need to bring in robust facilities which would make the human lifestyle more comfortable. To do so, the surrounding environment is modified to serve people’s requirements. Resulting in clearing off forests, cutting down trees, or making modifications to the mother nature as deemed necessary by the project planners or resource extractors. But most of them do not seem to take into account that the environment is also a vital component and that is the reason why life over this planet is surviving in the first place.
At present, there is a raging debate going on between developed and developing nations in Global Climate change summits and the targets set over the 2015 Paris agreement. The reason for the debate stems from the fact as to why developed nations are not taking any initiatives to cut down their emissions or change their lifestyles to aim for sustainable development. As well as, why developing nations aren’t being given the comfort to postpone their targets for reaching zero emissions since cutting down on emission would mean aiming to shift to a renewable-energy-based economy.
And this is an expensive request from a developing nation’s perspective as the country would have to revamp the entire economic system by spending huge amounts of money. And in reality, no solution hasn’t been proposed until now and there is a deadlock on how to proceed further as well.
Whereas if one gets to see the same debate from a vantage point of desperation to develop a country’s economy, the governments and industry’s players are viewing that focus on the environment would result in hindering a country’s economic development. To be frank, the research clearly states that environmental damage is the major cause of natural disasters and there is even a lot of evidence to pinpoint that human development can lead to degradation of the environment and deprivation of basic necessities for everyone.
For example, Soviet-era’s project to divert the Aral Sea’s water for irrigation purposes has just shrunk the lake to an extent where it has lost about 85% of its basin area from 60,000 sq.km to less than 10,000 sq.km in 2015. This has turned out to so disastrous that now the lake’s eastern part has the majority of the dried-up seabed and it is now being referred to as Aralkum Desert. In addition to that, a lot of people and especially fishing communities have lost their livelihoods and presently this would for sure lead to a total change in cultural and economic practices of the region.
On the contrary, this doesn’t seem to raise the alarm bells for the policymakers, governments, or industrial players. For instance, in India, there was a proposal last year to weaken the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Rules, 2020 where numerous kinds of projects such as offshore and onshore oil, gas and shale exploration, hydroelectric projects up to 25 MW, irrigation projects between 2,000 and 10,000 hectares of command area, small and medium mineral beneficiation units, etc have relegated to B2 category which in turn excludes numerous projects to be exempted from carrying out the exercise of EIA.
Even there’s an opinion amongst a certain section of people and based on World Values Survey conducted in the year 2014, the insights from India reveal that about half of the respondents are fine with ignoring the environmental impact in order to meet India’s development goals. Even the governments are agreeing to this and they have been taking efforts to speed-up environmental clearances in recent times. To add to it, subsequent governments have been ignoring recommendations of various committee reports. For example, Madhav Gadgil’s report on Western ghats states that road construction and other developmental activities should not be carried out on fragile areas of western ghats. Despite that, the Kerala government has not implemented any of the report’s recommendations and this led to severe landslides and floods in Kerala in 2019 and 2021.
Therefore, these examples are pointing out the fact that governments haven’t been entirely committed to the goal of sustainable development. Hence it is necessary to work with a collaborative mindset wherein a lot of initiatives need to be taken for research and development towards shifting to a carbon-neutral economy. In which, the developed countries should help in facilitating technology transfers, easing patent rights, and work on funding numerous research projects in order to make environmental projects affordable enough for the developing nations. Alongside, there should be indicators to measure countries' or firm’s investments on sustainable technologies. By doing so, the progress can be measured, and accordingly, stringent regulations coupled with incentives can help in pushing for sustainable development where environmental well-being is also given an equal importance in the near future.
References:
Ananthakrishnan, G. (2020, August 2). The Hindu Explains: What are the key changes in the Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2020? The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/the-hindu-explains-what-are-the-key-changes-in-the-environment-impact-assessment-notification-2020/article32249807.ece.
Gupta, J. (2020, December 19). Climate summit in deadlock over pre-2020 action. The Third Pole. https://www.thethirdpole.net/en/climate/climate-summit-deadlocked-over-immediate-action/.
Kaveri, M. (2021, February 13). Development vs environment debate resurfaces after Uttarakhand flash floods. The News Minute. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/development-vs-environment-debate-resurfaces-after-uttarakhand-flash-floods-143211.
Myers, J. (n.d.). This shrinking lake is a stark reminder of the impact we have on the planet. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/aral-sea-lake-water-nature-human-impact/.
Turaga, R. M. R. (2016, April 15). Economic growth vs environmental sustainability. Mint. https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/BPOKLclleRJvSdml46LraI/Economic-growth-vs-environmental-sustainability.html.