Environment and natural resources

Environmental Concerns in Global Politics

● Global politics are concerned with a variety of environmental issues such as losing
fertility of agricultural land, depletion of water resources, loss of biodiversity,
deterioration of marine environment, decline in the total amount of ozone in the Earth’s
stratosphere and coastal pollution.
● The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992 which was attended by 170 states, thousands of NGOs and
many multinational corporations.
● The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, had warned that traditional patterns
of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term.
● The Rio Summit produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity,
forestry, and recommended a list of development practices called ‘Agenda 21’ in which
there was a consensus on combining economic growth with ecological responsibility.
This approach to development is commonly known as ‘sustainable development’.

The Protection of Global Commons

● ‘Commons’ are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a
community.For example, a ‘common room’, a ‘community center’, a park or a river.
● There are some regions of the world which are located outside the sovereign jurisdiction
of any one state, and therefore require common governance by the international
community. These are known as global commons. It includes the earth’s atmosphere,
Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space.
● Agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the
1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol are some of the cooperation over the global
commons.
● 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 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides that
the parties should act to protect the climate system “on the basis of equity and in accordance
with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”
● The parties to the Convention agreed that the largest share of historical and current
global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries.
● It was also acknowledged that 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.
● Certain gasses like Carbon dioxide, Methane, Hydro-fluoro carbons etc. are considered at
least partly responsible for global warming - the rise in global temperature which may
have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth.
● The protocol was agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto in Japan, based on principles set out in
UNFCCC.

Common Property Resources

1. Common property represents common property for the group.
2. 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.
3. Through mutual understanding and centuries of practice, many village communities in
India, for example, have defined members’ rights and responsibilities.
4. 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.
5. The institutional arrangement for the actual management of the sacred groves on
state-owned forest land appropriately fits the description of a common property regime.
6. Along the forest belt of South India, sacred groves have been traditionally managed by
village communities.

India’s Stand On Environmental Issues

● India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002.
● India, China and other developing countries were exempt from the requirements of the
Kyoto Protocol because their contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases during
the industrialisation period (that is believed to be causing today’s global warming and
climate change) was not significant.
● However, the critics of the Kyoto Protocol point out that sooner or later, both India and
China, along with other developing countries, will be among the leading contributors to
greenhouse gas emissions.
● At the G-8 meeting in June 2005, India pointed out that the per capita emission rates of
the developing countries are a tiny fraction of those in the developed world.
● Following the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, India is of the view
that the major responsibility of curbing emission rests with the developed countries,
which have accumulated emissions over a long period of time.
 ● India’s international negotiating position relies heavily on principles of historical
responsibility, as enshrined in UNFCCC. This acknowledges that developed countries are
responsible for most historical and current greenhouse gas emissions, and emphasizes
that ‘economic and social development are the first and overriding priorities of the
developing country parties’. So India is wary of recent discussions within UNFCCC about
introducing binding commitments on rapidly industrialising countries (such as Brazil,
China and India) to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. India feels this contravenes
the very spirit of UNFCCC.

The Indian government is already participating in global efforts through a number of

programmes. For example,

1. India’s National Auto-fuel Policy mandates cleaner fuels for vehicles.

2. The Energy Conservation Act, passed in 2001, outlines initiatives to improve energy
efficiency.
3. The Electricity Act of 2003 encourages the use of renewable energy. Recent trends in
importing natural gas and encouraging the adoption of clean coal technologies show
that India has been making real efforts.
4. The government is also keen to launch a National Mission on Biodiesel, using about 11
million hectares of land to produce biodiesel by 2011–2012.
5. India ratified the Paris Climate Agreement on 2 October 2016. And India has one of the
largest renewable energy programmes in the world

Environmental Movements : One Or Many

Environmental movements are led by groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working
in different parts of the world. Some of them work at the international level, but most of them
work at the local level.

1. The forest movements of the South, in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia,
continental Africa and India are faced with enormous pressures. Forest clearing in the
Third World continues at an alarming rate, despite three decades of environmental
activism
2. Philippines, where a vast network of groups and organisations campaigned against the
Western Mining Corporation (WMC), an Australia-based multinational company.
3. Another group of movements are those involved in struggles against mega-dams. In
every country where a mega-dam is being built, one is likely to find an environmental
movement opposing it.
 4. The early 1980s saw the first anti-dam movement launched in the North, namely, the
campaign to save the Franklin River and its surrounding forests in Australia. This was a
wilderness and forest campaign as well as an anti-dam campaign.
5. India has had some of the leading anti-dam, pro-river movements. Narmada Bachao
Andolan is one of the best known of these movements

Resource Geopolitics
● Resource geopolitics is all about who gets what, when, where and how.
● Resources have provided some of the key means and motives of global European power
expansion. They have also been the focus of inter-state rivalry.
● Western geopolitical thinking about resources has been dominated by the relationship
of trade, war and power, at the core of which were overseas resources and maritime
navigation.
Oil is the resource which generates immense wealth, hence it creates political struggles
involving industrialized countries to adopt various methods to ensure steady flows of oil:
1. These include deployment of military processes near exploitation sites and along sea
lanes of communications.
2. The stockpiling of strategic resources.
3. They support multinational companies by making favorable international agreements.
4. The global economy relied on oil as a portable and indispensable fuel, hence, the history
of petroleum is the history of war and struggle.
5. It created conflict between Iraq and Saudi Arabia as Iraq’s known reserves are second
only to Saudi Arabia and since substantial portions of Iraqi territory are yet to be fully
explored, there is a fair chance that actual reserves might be far larger

West Asia, specifically the Gulf region, accounts for about 30 percent of global oil production.
But it has about 64 percent of the planet’s known reserves, and is therefore the only region able
to satisfy any substantial rise in oil demand. Saudi Arabia has a quarter of the world’s total
reserves and is the single largest producer. Iraq’s known reserves are second only to Saudi
Arabia’s. And, since substantial portions of Iraqi territory are yet to be fully explored, there is a
fair chance that actual reserves might be far larger.

Water is a crucial resource to global politics. Explain with examples.Or Explain the water wars
with examples.
Answer. Water is a crucial resource relevant to global politics. Regional variations and increasing
scarcity of fresh water in some parts of the world point to the possibility of disagreements over
shared water resources as a leading source of conflicts in 21st century, which is known as water
wars:
1. Water wars may create violent conflict due to disagreement of countries over sharing rivers
i.e. a typical disagreement is a downstream state’s objection to pollution, excessive irrigation, or
construction of dams which degrade the quality of water available to downstream states.
2. States have used force to seize fresh water resources i.e. 1950, struggle between Israel, Syria
and Jordan and 1960s over attempts by each side to divert water from the Jordan and Yarmuk
rivers.
3. The more recent threats between Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the construction of Dams on
Euphrates river

The indigenous people and their rights

● There are many definitions given for the indigenous people. But the United Nations
provides an exact definition of indigenous people.
● “Population comprises the descendants of people who inhabited the present territory of
a country at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there
from other parts of the world and overcame them.”
● Indigenous people today live more in conformity with their particular social, economic,
and cultural customs and traditions than the institutions of the country of which they
now form a part.
● There are 20 lakh indigenous people of the Cordillera region of the Philippines
● 10 lakh Mapuche people of Chile
● six lakh tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh
● 35 lakh North American natives
● 50,000 Kuna living east of the Panama Canal and
● 10 lakh Small Peoples of the Soviet North.
● Like other social movements, indigenous people speak of their struggles, their agenda
and their rights.The indigenous voices in world politics call for the admission of
indigenous people to the world community as equals.
● Indigenous people occupy areas in Central and South America, Africa, India (where
they are known as Tribals) and Southeast Asia.
● They appeal to governments to come to terms with the continuing existence of
indigenous nations as enduring communities with an identity of their own. ‘Since times
immemorial’ is the phrase used by indigenous people all over the world to refer to their
continued occupancy of the lands from which they originate.
● The World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975. The Council became
subsequently the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN.
● The following problems are faced by such people:
1. They lost their lands which belonged to them only for a long time.

2. The loss of land refers to a loss of an economic resource base.

3. Issues related to the rights of the indigenous communities have also been neglected in
domestic and international politics for long.

What were the outcomes of Rio-Summit?

1. Rio-Summit produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity, forestry and
recommended a list of development practices called Agenda 21.
2. It gave the concept of sustainable development to be combined economic growth with
ecological responsibility.
3. Rio-Summit developed various contentious issues like Commons, Global Commons in global
politics of environment.

What is meant by Global Commons? How are they exploited and polluted?
The areas or regions located outside the jurisdiction of any one state and region, common
governance by international community are Global Commons i.e. Earth atmosphere, Antarctic
Ocean floor and outer space. They are exploited and polluted due to
1. Vague scientific evidences, their lack of consensus on common environmental issues.
2. North-South inequalities and their exploitative activities and competition lack proper
management area out space.
3. Technological and Industrial development have also affected the earth’s atmosphere and
ocean floor.

What is meant by ‘Common but differentiated responsibilities’? How could we implement the
idea?
● Common but differentiated responsibilities mean that the state shall cooperate in the
spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of
the earth’s ecosystem.
● As the states have common but differentiated responsibilities over various contributions
of global environmental degradation.
● The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the
international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies
place on the global environment and of the tech-nological and financial resources they
command.
We could implement the idea with the help of conventions and declarations:
1. The Rio-Summit held in June 1992 produced conventions dealing with climate change,
biodiversity, forestry and recommended a list of developed practices called Agenda 21.
2. The 1992 United Nations Framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) also
emphasised that the parties should act to protect the climate system on the basis of common
but differentiated responsibilities;
3. An international agreement known as Kyoto Protocol set targets for industrialised countries
to cut their greenhouse gas emissions which support global warming.

Issues related to global environmental protection became the priority concern of states since
the 1990s because at global level, the environmental issues drew attentions of various states
at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio-de-Janeiro,
Brazil in June 1992 through Agenda 21:
1. Rio-Summit 1992 dealt with climatic change, biodiversity and forestry.
2. Agenda 21 combined economic growth with ecological responsibilities.
3. The Kyoto Protocol set targets for greenhouse emissions.

The above-mentioned conferences and summits raised the environmental issues at the global
level to take steps by various states to check environmental degradation in a cooperative
manner.

Compromise and accommodation are the two essential policies required by states to save
Planet Earth. Substantiate the statement in the light of the ongoing negotiations between the
North and South on environmental issues.
Answer. Compromise and accommodation are the two essential policies to save Planet Earth by
the states but the states from North and South have different notions towards environmental
issues:
1. The Northern States (Developed) are concerned with ozone depletion and global warming
whereas southern states (Developing) want to address the relationship between economic
development and environmental management.
2. The developed countries of the North want to discuss the environmental issues which stand
equally responsible for ecological conservation.
3. The developing countries of the south feel that much of the ecological degradation in the
world is created by developed countries through their industrial projects.
4. And if developed countries cause more environmental degradation they are supposed to take
more responsibility onwards.
5. The developing counties are under process of industrialization and they should be exempted
from restrictions imposed on developed countries through various conventions like protocol etc.
6. The special needs of developing countries must be taken into consideration in the process of
development, application and interpretation of rules of International Environmental Law.

All the above mentioned provisions were accepted in Earth Summit, 1992 while adopting
common but differentiated responsibilities.

The most serious challenge before the states is pursuing economic development without
causing further damage to the global environment. How could we achieve this? Explain with a
few examples.
The economic development can be achieved even without damaging global environment by
following practices:
1. In June 1992, Earth Summit provided some conservative measures for sustainable growth
without damaging the environment anymore.
2. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 covered Global Commons for mutual economic development.
3. Kyoto protocol cuts greenhouse emissions from industrialised countries to protect the
environment and to develop industries also.
4. Resource Geopolitics allocates and distribute natural resources among
the nation states of the global arena for sustainable development of nations.

Hence, the above mentioned practices protect the global environment and even though the
states are developing we could achieve this challenge only if we follow the provisions and
practices mentioned in all these conferences and summits.

Ques. ‘Some of the most significant responses to the challenge of environmental degradation
have come from the environmental movements’. Justify the statement with special reference
to movements against extraction of earth and against mega- dams

I) Extraction of Earth:
a) The mineral industry’s extraction of earth,its use of chemicals,its pollution of waterways and
land, its displacement of communities continue to invite criticism and resistance in various parts
of the globe.
b) One example is the Philippines where a vast network of groups and organisations campaign
against the Western Mining Corporation ,an Australia based multinational company . Much
opposition to the company in its own country , Australia is based on anti nuclear sentiments
and advocacy for the basic rights of Australian indigenous peoples.
II) Mega- dams:
a)Today,wherever a mega dam is being built in the world, one is likely to find an environmental
movement opposing it. The early 1980s saw the first anti- dam movement launched in the
North, namely, the campaign to save the Franklin river and its surrounding forest in Australia.
b) India has had some of the leading anti-dam, pro- river movements.Narmada Bachao Andolan
is one of these best known movements .