Environment and Natural Resources

The chapter asks why environmental and resource issues became central to world politics, compares environmental movements, explains common property and global commons, sets out India's stand, looks at the geopolitics of resources such as oil and water, and ends with the voices of indigenous peoples.

• Links: Chapter 5 (non-traditional security — global warming as a global threat); Chapter 3 (the Indus and Ganga water treaties); Chapter 7 (globalisation and movements against it); Indian Economic Development Chapter 9 (sustainable development); Fundamentals of Physical Geography Chapter 11 (climate change) and India: People and Economy chapters on water and environmental problems — this chapter teaches the politics: who decides, who pays.
• UPSC: GS2 (international agreements and India's interests), GS3 (environment, climate commitments) and GS1 (resources). Prelims has asked on Rio, Agenda 21 and Rio+20 (2008, 2010, 2015, 2016, 2018), Kyoto and its mechanisms (1998, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2016), Paris and NDCs (2016, 2025, 2026), the ozone treaty (2015), the Arctic (2014), OPEC (1986, 2009) and water law (1992); Mains on India's climate diplomacy (2014, 2021, 2022, 2025) and the Arctic (2015, 2018).

• Environment is political: no single government can solve it, and it raises who causes, who pays, who uses.
• Limits to Growth (Club of Rome, 1972) → Brundtland Report (1987) → Rio Earth Summit (June 1992): climate and biodiversity conventions, Agenda 21, sustainable development.
• Global commons (atmosphere, Antarctica, ocean floor, outer space): Antarctic Treaty 1959, Montreal Protocol 1987, Antarctic Environmental Protocol 1991.
• Common but differentiated responsibilities: Rio Declaration and UNFCCC (1992); Kyoto (1997) bound only industrialised countries; India ratified Kyoto in August 2002, Paris on 2 October 2016.
• Common property (sacred groves) is shrinking; environmental movements — forest, mining, anti-dam (Narmada Bachao Andolan) — are diverse, and in India non-violent.
• Resource geopolitics: oil (the Gulf), water (upstream vs downstream); indigenous peoples seek recognition and land — in India, Scheduled Tribes, the largest group displaced by development.

World politics usually means wars, treaties and state power; Chapter 5 widened it to poverty and epidemics. NCERT now adds the environment: cultivable land barely expanding and losing fertility; overgrazed grasslands and over-harvested fisheries; depleted and polluted water bodies; according to the UNDP's Human Development Report 2016, 663 million people in developing countries without safe water and 2.4 billion without sanitation, causing more than three million child deaths a year; natural forests being cut and people displaced; biodiversity lost through habitat destruction; a decline in stratospheric ozone (the ‘ozone hole’); and growing coastal pollution, mostly from land-based activities.

Are these just natural phenomena for geography? No — they are political in two senses. Government action to check degradation has political consequences, and most of these problems cannot be solved by any single government, so they become world politics. More deeply: who causes degradation, who pays, who must act, and who gets to use how much of the Earth's resources are questions of power. Environmental awareness acquired a political character from the 1960s: the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth (1972) dramatised resource depletion against a growing population; agencies such as UNEP began holding conferences and studies. The focus was consolidated at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, June 1992 — the Earth Summit — attended by 170 states, thousands of NGOs and many multinationals. Five years earlier, the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (1987), had warned that traditional growth was unsustainable, especially given the South's demand for further industrialisation.

At Rio, the rich global North pursued a different agenda from the poor global South: the North was concerned with ozone depletion and global warming; the South with the relationship between economic development and environmental management. Rio produced conventions on climate change and biodiversity, principles on forests, and a list of development practices called Agenda 21. There was consensus on combining growth with ecological responsibility — sustainable development — but not on how; some critics said Agenda 21 favoured growth over conservation.

Commons are resources not owned by anyone but shared by a community — a common room, community centre, park or river. Some areas lie outside any state's sovereign jurisdiction and need common governance by the international community: these are res communis humanitatis or global commons — the Earth's atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor and outer space. Cooperation is not easy, though there have been path-breaking agreements: the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol. A basic problem is reaching consensus on vague scientific evidence and time frames; the discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the mid-1980s showed both the opportunity and the dangers. Outer space shows that management of the commons is shaped by North–South inequality: as with the atmosphere and the ocean floor, the crucial issue is technology and industrial development, because the benefits of exploiting space are far from equal, for present or future generations.

The developed North wants to discuss the environment as it stands now and make everyone equally responsible. The developing South argues that most degradation is the product of the North's industrialisation; those who caused more damage must take more responsibility now; and countries still industrialising must not face the same restrictions — so their special needs must be considered in making and applying international environmental law. This argument was accepted in the Rio Declaration (1992) as the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’: states shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership; given their different contributions to degradation they have common but differentiated responsibilities; and developed countries acknowledge their responsibility in view of the pressures their societies place on the environment and the technological and financial resources they command.

The UNFCCC (1992) likewise says parties should protect the climate system ‘on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’. Parties agreed that the largest share of historical and current emissions came from developed countries and that per capita emissions in developing countries were still low. So China, India and other developing countries were exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol — agreed at Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 on UNFCCC principles — which set targets for industrialised countries to cut greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons, partly responsible for global warming.

Common property is property of the group: members have both rights and duties regarding the nature and level of use and the maintenance of a resource. Through mutual understanding and centuries of practice, many Indian village communities defined members' rights and responsibilities. But privatisation, agricultural intensification, population growth and ecosystem degradation have made common property dwindle in size, quality and availability to the poor in much of the world. The management of sacred groves on state-owned forest land fits the description of a common property regime; along South India's forest belt they have traditionally been managed by village communities.

India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002. India, China and other developing countries were exempt because their emissions during the industrialisation period — believed to cause today's warming — were not significant. Critics of Kyoto point out that India and China will soon be among the leading emitters. At the G-8 meeting in June 2005, India pointed out that developing countries' per capita emissions are a tiny fraction of the developed world's; following CBDR, it holds that the major responsibility for curbing emissions rests with developed countries, which accumulated emissions over a long period. India's negotiating position relies on historical responsibility as enshrined in the UNFCCC, which also says economic and social development are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries. India is wary of binding commitments on rapidly industrialising countries such as Brazil, China and India, which it sees as contrary to the UNFCCC's spirit; NCERT cites projections that India's per capita emissions would rise from 0.9 tonnes in 2000 to 1.6 tonnes in 2030 — under half the world average of 3.8 tonnes in 2000.

India also acts: the National Auto-fuel Policy mandates cleaner vehicle fuels; the Energy Conservation Act (2001) promotes efficiency; the Electricity Act (2003) encourages renewable energy; it imports natural gas and adopts clean coal technologies; it planned a National Mission on Biodiesel. India ratified the Paris Agreement on 2 October 2016 and runs one of the world's largest renewable energy programmes. India's 1997 review of the Rio agreements concluded there had been no meaningful progress in transferring new and additional finance and environmentally sound technology on concessional terms to developing countries; India wants developed countries to provide these immediately so that developing countries can meet their UNFCCC commitments. India also wants SAARC countries to adopt a common position so the region's voice carries more weight.

Some of the most significant responses have come from groups of environmentally conscious volunteers, mostly working locally. Environmental movements are among the most vibrant, diverse and powerful social movements; within them new forms of political action are born, and they raise long-term visions of how we should live. Forest movements of the South — in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Africa and India — face enormous pressure: forest clearing continues and the destruction of the last grand forests increased in the last decade. The minerals industry, among the most powerful, is being re-opened to multinationals through liberalisation; its extraction, chemicals, pollution, clearance and displacement provoke resistance — in the Philippines, a network of groups campaigned against the Australian Western Mining Corporation, which also faced opposition at home rooted in anti-nuclear sentiment and Aboriginal rights. Anti-dam movements appear wherever mega-dams are built; increasingly they are pro-river movements for sustainable, equitable river management. The first in the North was the early-1980s campaign to save Australia's Franklin River and its forests; mega-dam building has spurted in the South from Turkey to Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia and China. India has some of the leading anti-dam movements — the Narmada Bachao Andolan is among the best known — and in India the most important shared idea is non-violence.

Resource geopolitics is about who gets what, when, where and how. Resources provided key means and motives for European expansion and inter-state rivalry; Western thinking linked trade, war and power around overseas resources and sea routes — naval timber was a priority from the 17th century, and secure supply of strategic resources, above all oil, was critical in both World Wars. During the Cold War the industrialised North secured supplies by deploying forces near production sites and sea-lanes, stockpiling, propping up friendly governments in producer countries, supporting multinationals and seeking favourable agreements; it worried about Soviet threats to Gulf oil and to strategic minerals in Southern and Central Africa. After the Cold War, supply security still matters for several minerals, especially radioactive ones, but oil remains the most important resource in global strategy. The wealth associated with oil generates struggles to control it — nowhere more than in West Asia and Central Asia. NCERT says the Gulf produces about 30% of the world's oil but holds about 64% of known reserves; Saudi Arabia has a quarter of reserves and is the largest producer; Iraq's reserves are second. The consumers — the US, Europe, Japan and increasingly India and China — are far away.

Water is another crucial resource. Regional variation and growing scarcity of freshwater point to disagreements over shared water as a leading source of conflict in the 21st century; some speak of ‘water wars’. A typical dispute is a downstream (lower riparian) state's objection to pollution, excessive irrigation or dams by an upstream (upper riparian) state. States have used force: Israel, Syria and Jordan clashed in the 1950s and 1960s over diversions from the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers, and more recently Turkey, Syria and Iraq exchanged threats over dams on the Euphrates. Studies show that countries sharing rivers are often involved in military conflicts with each other.

The question of indigenous people brings environment, resources and politics together. The UN defines indigenous populations as descendants of peoples who inhabited a country's present territory when people of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived from elsewhere and overcame them; they live more by their own social, economic and cultural customs than by the institutions of the country of which they are now part. NCERT counts about 30 crore indigenous people worldwide — among them 20 lakh in the Philippines' Cordillera, 10 lakh Mapuche in Chile, 6 lakh tribal people of Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts, 35 lakh North American natives, 50,000 Kuna east of the Panama Canal and 10 lakh ‘Small Peoples’ of the former Soviet North. Indigenous voices call for admission to the world community as equals; they live in Central and South America, Africa, India (where they are called tribals), Southeast Asia and Oceania. They ask governments to accept indigenous nations as enduring communities with their own identity, speak of occupancy ‘since times immemorial’, and share strikingly similar worldviews about land and life. The loss of land, which means loss of an economic base, is the most obvious threat to their survival.

In India, ‘indigenous people’ usually refers to the Scheduled Tribes, nearly 8% of the population. Except for small hunter-gatherer communities, most depend on cultivation; they had free access to land for centuries until British rule subjected their areas to outside forces. They enjoy constitutional protection in political representation but have not got much of the benefits of development; in fact they are the single largest group displaced by development projects since independence. Indigenous rights were neglected in domestic and international politics for long; contacts among indigenous leaders in the 1970s built a shared sense of concern, and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975 — the first of eleven indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status at the UN. Many movements against globalisation (Chapter 7) focus on indigenous rights.

Try each first. Q1–Q3 are also in the self-check.

Numbers

One-liners

• Environment is political: who causes damage, who pays, who acts, who uses how much.
• Rio 1992 consolidated environmental politics and gave us sustainable development and Agenda 21.
• Global commons — atmosphere, Antarctica, ocean floor, outer space — lie outside any state's jurisdiction.
• CBDR: all are responsible, but those who caused more damage and can do more must do more.
• Kyoto bound only industrialised countries; Paris asks every country for its own targets.
• India's stand: historical responsibility, per capita equity, finance and technology — plus action at home.
• Environmental movements are many, diverse and, in India, non-violent.
• Oil, and increasingly water, drive resource geopolitics; indigenous peoples bear much of the cost of development.

Traps to avoid

• Agenda 21 came from Rio 1992, not Johannesburg 2002 (UPSC 2016); Rio+10 was at Johannesburg (UPSC 2008).
• Rio produced conventions on climate change and biodiversity and only non-binding forest principles — no forest convention.
• The UNFCCC was drawn up at Rio 1992, not Stockholm 1972 (UPSC 2010).
• Kyoto came into force in 2005 and deals with greenhouse gases, not ozone; the ozone treaty is the Montreal Protocol (UPSC 2005, 2015).
• The US signed Kyoto but never ratified it — NCERT's ‘did not sign’ needs care.
• Carbon credits come from Kyoto's mechanisms and trade in markets — UNEP does not fix their price (UPSC 2009, 2011).
• Paris was not signed by every UN member and did not commit $1,000 billion a year (UPSC 2016).
• The Arctic Council's members are the eight Arctic states; Japan and the UK are not members (UPSC 2014).
• Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia, has the largest proven oil reserves; the US is the largest producer — NCERT's figures are dated.
• India uses ‘Scheduled Tribes’, not ‘indigenous peoples’, as its legal category.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Rio and its follow-ups: the UNFCCC's origin (2010), Agenda 21 (2016), Rio+10 Johannesburg (2008), Rio+20 (2015) and PAGE (2018), the Club of Rome and the SDGs (2016).
• Climate regime: Kyoto (1998, 2005), the CDM and carbon credits (2008, 2009, 2011), Annex-1 and CERs (2016), carbon markets (2023), Paris (2016), INDCs (2016), Article 6 (2025), the Green Climate Fund (2015), the GEF (2014), India's LT-LEDS (2026), India at COP28 (2025), the ISA (2016).
• Commons and resources: the Montreal Protocol (2015), the Arctic Council (2014), India's Antarctic expedition (1983); OPEC (1986, 2009); riparian law (1992); Chipko (1979).

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS2/GS3 India's climate diplomacy: carbon credits and the CDM vs India's energy needs (2014); COP26 outcomes and India's commitments (2021); the Green Grids Initiative (2021); India's changing climate policy in international fora (2022); Kyoto and greenhouse-gas control (2022); Paris commitments, COP26 and the NDC (2025). Frame: CBDR and historical responsibility → India's per capita case → its commitments with years → critics' view → way forward (finance, technology, domestic action).
• GS1 Arctic: oil discovery in the Arctic (2015) and India's interest in Arctic resources (2018) — resource geopolitics plus environmental risk; distinguish the Arctic (states' jurisdiction, Arctic Council) from the Antarctic (a treaty-governed commons).
• Answer frame: why it is political → the North–South divide → the principle (CBDR) and the agreements (Rio, Kyoto, Paris) with exact years → India's position and actions → local dimension (commons, movements, indigenous rights) → balanced conclusion.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

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