Environmental problem and sustainability ( Sociology Optional)

Introduction

  • Till the beginning of the 1980s, ecology was not integrated as an essential element of development planning.
  • Anthony Giddens attributes environmental problems to modernization, modern industrial societies and the industrial sectors in the developing countries.

Impact of development on environment

Some of the important factors that cause environmental degradation are:

  • Deforestation
  • Agricultural development
  • Population growth
  • Industrial development
  • Increased urbanization
  • Modern Technology

Environmental degradation can be broadly divided into two categories

1) Extreme Events and Hazards: The events are caused either by natural processes or man-made, which bring immediate changes in the environment and inflict damage and loss to the environment in which we live. It is further divided into:

  • Natural Hazards.g. volcanic eruption, earthquake, submergence, etc.
  • Atmospheric Hazards: cyclones, atmospheric lightening
  • Cumulative Atmospheric Hazards: They are caused due to the accumulation of effects of certain atmospheric phenomena for several years in continuation e.g. floods, drought.

2) Man Induced Hazard:

  • Physical Hazards: eg. landslides, forest fires
  • Chemical Hazards: eg. release of toxic gases, nuclear explosions.
  • Biological Hazards: eg. increase or decrease in the population of a species, explosion of human population. Some biological hazards are not caused by man. E.g. Locusts swarms, epidemics

Impact of environment degradation on society

  • Consequences include increased poverty, overcrowding, famine, food shortages, weather extremes, species loss, acute and chronic medical illnesses, war and human rights abuses, and an increasingly unstable global situation that portends Malthusian chaos and disaster.

Laws, policy and its effect

  • The environmental laws in India are guided by environmental legal principles and focus on the management of specific natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries.

Environment Related Provisions in the Indian Constitution

  • Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV) Article 48A: Protection and improvement of environment and safeguarding of forests and wildlife
  • Fundamental duties (Part IV A) Article 51A

Important environmental laws

  • The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972
  • The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974
  • The Air (prevention and control of pollution) act, 1981
  • The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
  • The energy conservation act, 2001
  • Biological diversity act 2002
  • Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA)
  • The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010
  • Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016

Impact

Economic

  • Environment regulation raises the direct production costs such as pollutant emission tax/charge, pollutant emission license and prices of inputs and transaction costs such as pollution measuring and monitoring and negotiation with government and supplier, which is unfavorable for simple and expanded reproduction.
  • Stricter environmental laws tend to increase innovative environmentally friendly technology

Social

  • Environmental regulations have greatly improved air and water quality, especially in areas that were dirtiest before regulation.
  • Environmental laws protect the health and safety of humans and the environment.
  • Environmental laws that impose regulations without considering their impacts on local communities come with a serious disadvantage: lack of local support.
  • As a result of misguided state policy, project-affected communities have been subject to sudden eviction, lack of information, failure to prepare rehabilitation plans, low compensation, loss of assets and livelihoods, traumatic relocation, destruction of community bonds, discrimination and impoverishment.

Sustainable Development

  • Sustainable development is the idea that human societies must live and meet their needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
  • The “official” definition of sustainable development was developed for the first time in the Brundtland Report in 1987.
  • As per the report Our Common Future, “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
  • Sustainable development contains within it two key concepts:
    • The concept of “needs”, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
    • The idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs”.

Way Forward

  • No more reliance on trickle-down approach.
  • Bottom-up approach and role of local self governments.
  • Government schemes for the vulnerable and effective implementation of these policies.
  • Planned urban development
  • Strict adherence to Nationally Determined Contributions.