Climbing emissions and Global warming: a threat to the

sustainable economic development.

What is a sustainable economy?: Standard or conventional economics

of growth and development is inherently and essentially a structural

transformation process that incorporates all material and human resources

as a form of national capital whilst less concerned of draining natural

resources and environmental issues. The new economics of sustainable

development differs in definition and analysis and respectfully incorporates

the latter, more important factors, as a form of national capital, defined as

the values of the existing stock of natural resources such as forests,

fisheries, water, mineral deposits and environment in general.

Both these macro Economic theories, however, conceptualize ‘Growth’ as

sin-qua non. The strategies to accomplish growth in economics-of

sustainable development’ and the way how growth itself is conceived

governs the way how we are going to achieve a durable eco friendly-

economic system, an increased GDP and prominently a sustainable

development. A growth that takes necessary custodianship of

environmental issues and is utmost sensitive towards the use of scarce

natural resources is sustainable in quintessence. Environmental concerns

like ecological exploitation, knowledge-less agricultural practices,

deforestation, uncontrolled emissions of green house gases and global

warming that now holds a rigid grip needs new technological avenues to be

sought and implemented.

The Sustainability Concern:

Norwegian prime minister and director WHO, G.H Brundtland exemplify

sustainable development as ‘meeting the needs of the present without

compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs’.

The notion to project an economy for sustainable development came in ’92

during a UN conference on environment and development (UNCED),

popularly known as Earth summit, held at Brazil. Out of its five significant

conclusions, Agenda 21 proposes global initiatives and policies on

sustainable development in social, economic and practical context for the

21st century. It elegantly summarizes objectives, various conditions and

ways to achieve sustainable developments but sadly missed out relevant

issues of environmental ethics and implementation details of such ethical

decisions. Should we continue to chop off forests and land to supplement

urbanization and industrialization? What environmental obligations we

need to hold in context of using fossil fuel powered vehicles and green-

house-emission industrial processes? What moral we owe to species that

are near-extinct and whether we need to check our energy and food

consumption for the sake of future generation are some of the eco-centric

views we need to follow and that are missed in the Agenda, partially or

completely.

Global Warming has become a challenge: Climate change has

become one of the major global environmental challenges facing humanity

today with implications for food production, natural ecosystems, freshwater

supply, health, etc. The earth’s climate system has demonstrably changed

on both global and regional scales since the pre-industrial era. Evidences

shows that most of the warming (of 0.1 degree Celsius per decade) observed

over the last 50 years, is attributable to human activities. The

intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the global

mean temperature may increase between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius by

2100. This unprecedented increase is expected to have severe impacts on

the global hydrological system, ecosystems, sea level, crop production and

related processes. The impact would be particularly severe in the tropical

areas, which mainly consist of developing countries, including India.

Causes: Prime cause as explicitly endorsed by the national science

academics of G8 nations in 2005 include emissions of astronomical

volumes of green house gases like CO2, Methane etc released by burning of
fossil fuels, land clearing and agriculture and other human activities.

Emission of such greenhouse gases is one of the major sources of pollution

in the world. Table below shows the 2007 emissions statistics of different

countries with India standing on 4th position. US continue to be at the top of

the list despite several prolonged measures to stabilize the industrial

emission rate.

CO2 Emission by top 10 nations

Rank Nation ('000 M.T. of CO2)

1 United States Of America 1580175
2 China (Mainland) 1131175
3 Russian Federation 407593
4 India 347577
5 Japan 336142
6 Germany 219776
7 Canada 154392
8 United Kingdom 152460
9 Republic Of Korea 124455
10 Italy (Including San Marino) 121608
Source: NASSCOM Survey 2007.

Implication: The rise in global temperature tend to bring disastrous

changes such as producing new patterns and extremes of drought and

rainfall, unsettling of food productions, adversely affecting ecosystem and

biodiversity, etc. Ozone depletion is another consequence of our lack of

environmental concerns, perhaps more perilous than global warming and

acid rains.
Sustainability how far?: The current phenomenon to achieve

sustainability, as visioned by numerous conferences world wide, seems to

virtually house a cold war between the emission statistics of the developing

countries and those with of developed. Clearly, the consumption of the

latter is more and so forth their emission rates. However, as seen in various

surveys, emissions rate in the developing countries also seems to climbing

as industrialization rapids and their government plans to boosts their

economies respectively. Poor efficiency products, quest to rapidify progress

are amongst other factors that cause a growth rate of emissions in

developing countries to rise unexpectedly.

Our obligations towards sustainability: In the face of above

concerns, there a few things that we need to understand on a broad

spectrum. Firstly, that we can not afford to neglect environmental issues in

face of economic development or poverty alleviation, rather, environmental

pressures are themselves related to socio-economic issues like population,

literacy and awareness. This relation needs to be exploited to achieve

sustainability in its truest sense. Secondly, the economic activities must be

conducted using environment conserving and resource saving technologies.

Managing environment though better urban designs, improvement in

transportation infrastructures and creative use of information technologies

needs to be considered seriously. Thirdly, policies for environmental

governance should include priorities of law enforcement, providing

economic incentives, maximum people’s participation, institutional reforms

and innovative use of technical know-how.

It is pity that we have forgotten that the environment we have inherited was

sustainable but our activities and carelessness towards it, the carelessness

that’s now returning to us in a disastrous shape have put it as a subject of

grave concern globally, despairing thousands of environmentalist and

biologists.

Of course, it’s a difficult but an obligatory goal, for the world to accomplish

sustainability but, as pointed out in the preambles of every conference or

convention we have seen on environmental issues so far, with a firm

determination of the government, private sector, NGOs, and people, and

we’ll definitely achieve an economy that’s based on the principles of

sustainable development in its truest sense and vitality.