Opinion

The stress that human activities impose on the environment, and the manifestation of damage caused as a result, have come under widespread global attention in recent years. The Rio Summit in 1992 and the subsequent International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo were two major events where the nexus between population changes and the state of the environment was explored within a policy context. Recent literature on this and other related issues has also highlighted the question of the carrying capacity of ecosystems and how this can be threatened by rapid population growth.

In actual fact, population changes are but one of many factors influencing the carrying capacity of the earth and overall environmental quality. The interaction between environmental variables on the one hand and population changes (as well as other economic variables) on the other is a dynamic one. Human societies are not oblivious of the impacts of their actions on the environment, but are often unable to respond appropriately within a time frame that might contain or reverse any damage caused on ecosystems and the stock of natural resources thus affected. There is enough documentary evidence of large scale damage having been caused to the forests of North America and Europe right up to the middle of 19th century arising out of unsustainable exploitation of forestry resources for construction and fuel uses. However, in subsequent decades not only was the rate of exploitation brought under check, but even on the supply side major efforts were made to plant large areas of land with trees, which have proved largely successful.

The CBD family approach meets the challenge of reaching out to every section of the community with each member of the CBD family motivating his/her peers.

The tragedy of the Indian situation defining population-environment issues is that Population growth over the past five decades has been very rapid in relation to previous years, largely as a result of increase in life expectancy.

Institutional solutions have not been implemented by which protection of the environment and management of natural resources would be essentially restored to local communities as a paramount responsibility, rather than through a system of centralized command and control.

Economic policy has not incorporated instruments and measures that would price environmental services rationally to ensure optimal use and avoid over-exploitation of natural resources.

Low income levels do place a constraint on the allocation of resources for environmental protection. As an example, it can be mentioned that the developed countries too addressed the problem of environmental damage effectively only when their incomes reached a much higher level than India can attain even in the next two to three decades.

Notwithstanding the constraints that India faces with the momentum of population growth and consequent pressures on the country's ecosystems, there is much that can and needs to be done to correct the present situation. TERI's major project GREEN India 2047 (Growth with Resource Enhancement of Environment and Nature) essentially attempts to mainstream environmental decision making as an element of economic decision making. This is brought about by estimating the economic value of environmental damage that has taken place in the country in the first fifty years of independence, then projecting the likely damage on a business as usual basis in the next half century and arrive at policies and strategies by which the cumulative damage of the past can be corrected by the year 2047. Some results from the study need to be mentioned to highlight the implications of this work for policy making and for changes in mindsets and value systems. It need hardly be mentioned that between 1947 and 1997, India's population increased from 336 million to almost a billion, but much of the damage and degradation that has taken place in the country's natural resources has occurred on account of institutional weaknesses in our governance structure and a lack of attention to the cost of services that the environment provides in human activities. This applies as much to the pricing of water and the indiscriminate cutting of trees as it does to the use of automobiles in congested areas without paying for the pollution caused. Today, India is losing over 10% GDP on account of environmental costs, as estimated in the GREEN India 2047 study. The country is losing 11-26% of its annual agricultural output on account of soil degradation, and of course, water scarcity in some parts of India has reached crisis proportions.

The time has come for implementing a new development paradigm, which is essential for correcting the damage of the past and avoiding the dangers of the future. The challenge of population change can only be solved through higher literacy levels, better health care and social reform, which eliminates the discrimination seen in different parts of India against the girl child.