Indian industry’s wake-up call on environmental sustainability
- From: vijaysn@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:01:10 -0700 (PDT)
Environmentalists have always warned that India is living well beyond
its means. Now Indian industry has released a report saying that India
consumes twice as much natural resources as it possesses. Ashish
Kothari analyses India’s Ecological Footprint: A Business Perspective,
produced by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Global Footprint
Network
India is living well beyond its means. Environmentalists have for
years been warning about this, but in a just-released report, even
industrialists seem to be agreeing. And they have some rather
interesting figures to back them up. Here’s one: India today consumes
or uses twice as much natural resources as it has.
India’s Ecological Footprint: A Business Perspective, produced by the
Global Footprint Network (GFN) and the Confederation of Indian
Industry (CII), reports on assessments of how much pressure India’s
citizens are putting on the earth’s resources, and whether we could
sustain our levels of natural resource use if we had access to only
what is available within our borders. The facts are not pretty:
• India has the world’s 3rd largest ecological footprint (see box on
what this means), after the USA and China.
• Indians are using almost two times the natural resources within the
country that it can sustain (or twice its ‘biocapacity’, see box).
• The capacity of nature to sustain Indians has declined sharply by
almost half, in the last four decades or so.
In the foreword to the report, the Chairman of the CII Green Business
Centre, Jamshyd Godrej, has the following to say: “This report…shows
that India is depleting its ecological assets in support of its
current economic boom and the growth of its population.” Words that
would have sounded like old hat coming from the mouth of an ecological
activist, but which are a major surprise from an industrialist.
Sponsors of the report include, apart from CII, a mix of corporations,
donors, and NGOs: ICICI Bank, Tata Power, ONGC, USAID, Dr Reddy’s
Laboratories, and WWF–India. It was released in mid-October at the
Green Business Summit 2008, organised by CII in New Delhi.
Ecological footprint (EF) and biocapacity: What are they?
Over the last few years ‘ecological footprint’ has become a widely
used measure to figure how much of the earth’s resources are being
used by a person, a community/country, or an activity (see
www.footprintnetwork.org). This takes into account the amount of land
and water area that would be required to produce the resources needed,
and to absorb the wastes that are generated. In such a calculation the
prevalent technologies and management options are considered, not
possible future ones. It is estimated that each person can use upto
about 1.8 global hectares (which is a hectare with a world average
ability to produce resources and absorb wastes) without depleting the
earth’s bioresources. This is by no means a perfect measure of
humanity’s impact on the planet, eg it leaves out activities such as
freshwater use; and significantly, it does not take into account the
resources/space required by other species. But it is a good
approximation, and therefore has gained widespread usage.
A person or community’s EF has to be measured against the capacity of
the land/water area that is being used. This capacity is called
‘biocapacity’.
The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (see www.millenniumassessment.org)
has demonstrated that human beings have overshot the earth’s
biocapacity, using about 25% more than what is available. In other
words, we are already well past what is sustainable, resulting in
severe depletion of various natural resources and of the ecosystems
that sustain us (and all other life forms).
The report has some other interesting observations to make. While
overall the EF of the country is very high, per capita it is still
extremely low, ranking 125th amongst 152 countries. Clearly this is
because its high population lowers the average. But what is surprising
is that the per capita EF has actually fallen over the last half-
century. The report ascribes this to the rapid rise in population, but
also to the reality that “while the standard of living has improved
for some, the majority are making due (sic) with less”.
Other than EF, the study has also looked at India’s water footprint
(WF), or the water usage that is involved not only in direct
consumption for drinking, irrigation, and industries, but also in the
making of products that Indians consume (including those imported from
outside). It appears that we have the highest WF in the world,
accounting for 13% of total global usage, given that we have 17% of
the world’s population. Again, however, the average WF per capita is
lower than that of many other countries. The report does not tell us
whether we are living beyond our hydrological means, but it does point
to the inefficiency of water use in our agriculture, and the fear of
serious crisis if we try to significantly expand crop production
without reducing this inefficiency.
Living beyond one’s biocapacity means one or all of three things:
importing resources/products from other countries, allowing the
progressive degradation of the resource base, or allowing the pile-up
of wastes. All available indications are that India is indulging in
all three. As it tries to protect its forests, for instance, it has
increased its imports of timber from south-east Asia, leading to
deforestation there. Within its own borders, most of its major
waterbodies are badly polluted, or drained out. And its burgeoning
cities can simply not cope with the enormous garbage produced.
Based on the above results and analysis, the report contains a number
of prescriptions for Indian industry, and provides case studies of
some sectors like construction and transport. It promotes the adoption
of ‘wedges’, or combinations of various solutions to reduce the
overall demand for resources by industry. This includes greater energy
and water efficiency through appropriate technologies, and the use of
alternative energy sources. It also points to some more basic
solutions, such as mass transit systems to reduce the dependence on
the individual vehicle.
One of the most surprising recommendations, coming as it does from an
industrial sector that thrives on private consumption, is that “it is
important to combine better fuel economy with measures to reduce the
overall social demand for driving”. Indeed the report even points to
the need for going beyond industry actions to government promotion of
solutions, “community engagement”, and “investing in women”.
Unfortunately a number of the most progressive conclusions and
recommendations remain only teasers in the report. Much more attention
is given to technological solutions than to more fundamental changes
that are needed in the way society treats nature and natural
resources, or indeed in the way some sections of society treat other
sections.
For instance let’s look at one of the conclusions of the report, that
a declining per capita EF over the last few decades points to the fact
that very many people in India are at very low standards of living. It
is increasingly becoming clear that the path of development adopted in
the country over the last few decades, and especially in the current
phase of globalisation, has done little to tackle severe inequities in
access to resources. Indeed it may have made these inequities worse,
especially by dispossessing those most dependent on natural resources
and small land-holdings, and channelising these resources towards the
urban or rich consumer. Large dams, mining, expressways, large
industries, and other such ‘development’ processes have displaced tens
of millions of people, and snatched away resources from many more tens
of millions. Even the modernisation of agriculture in areas like
Punjab and Haryana, has created greater inequities in landholding and
access to resources. Ironically, the world’s biggest environmental
challenge, climate change, also a product of modern ‘development’
processes that benefit the rich and powerful, will most adversely
affect the poor and underprivileged. The blind pursuit of economic
growth has become a cancer on the earth, and calls for a fundamental
shift in human endeavour. This is as true for India as for any other
country. Yet this report does not point to the need for such a shift.
Another crucial issue is consumerism. Per capita figures are notorious
in that they hide inequalities between various sections of the
population. Some months ago Greenpeace India produced a report on
climate change issues in India, showing that a tiny percentage of
India’s population was responsible for an inordinate amount of carbon
emissions, but this was hidden by the fact that a huge number of low-
emission Indians reduced the per capita figures (www.greenpeace.org/
india/press/reports/hiding-behind-the-poor). The same could be said
about any form of consumption: minerals, food, water, industrial
products. As also for polluting outputs, such as solid and liquid
wastes. Only in one part of the GFN/CII report, a figure showing the
various factors that determine whether EF is higher than biocapacity,
do the authors point to the need for “more affluent people” to reduce
consumption so that those living below subsistence level can increase
their consumption. This is actually a crucial aspect, one that usually
gets swept under the carpet in discussions on ecological
sustainability. The report would have done well to bring out policy
and educational measures that are needed to curb the obscene
consumption patterns of India’s richest citizens.
The report is also all too brief on the need to make space for other
species. To do this, each of us needs to take up even less than the
1.8 global hectares that we would be entitled to if only humans were
to be sustained on earth (see box). The implications for this are
significant: for instance (as the report points out), many kinds of
biofuel promotion oriented at reducing fossil fuel uses may be
detrimental to biodiversity. Clear recommendations from this are
however not brought out in the report.
Finally, and on this the report is totally silent, any move towards
sustainability requires much greater empowerment of citizens.
Political governance is a key issue, but again often missing from
environmental debates. As long as centralised government bureaucracies
and private sector corporations remain heavily dominant in the
decision-making process, as is currently the case with India, there
will not be a sufficiently strong push for basic economic and social
changes.
Notwithstanding the few shining exceptions of industries that are
trying to achieve sustainability within their production systems, the
sector as a whole is totally out of sync with ecological and social
needs. So too is the government, judging by its continued emphasis on
dirty energy sources, its vigorous promotion of destructive forms of
‘development’, and its systematic dismantling of environmental
safeguards and standards.
Will the Indian government take the implications of the report
seriously? If trends in the last few years are anything to go by, the
answer is no. A few years ago when a nationwide participatory exercise
to produce a national biodiversity action plan pointed to the fact
that “India’s development model is inherently unsustainable”, the
Ministry of Environment and Forests rejected this contention as being
untenable. All efforts at pointing out the ecological lunacy of
current growth patterns have so far been ignored by the powerful
coterie of World Bank-tutored economists that sits at the helm of
India. Even the threat of climate change has not pushed them towards
any fundamental rethinking.
This will only change if the people most dependent on nature, and
others who care for the earth and all its beings, are empowered to be
part of the decision-making process. Democracy needs to go much deeper
in India for environmental sustainability and social justice to be
achieved.
India’s Ecological Footprint is a wake-up call, and a pleasant
surprise coming from an organisation such as the CII. One only wishes
that the wake-up could have been followed by a better breakfast of
analysis and strategies pointing to the basic changes we so
desperately need.
InfoChange News & Features, October 2008
http://infochangeindia.org/200810237445/Environment/Politics-of-Biodiversity/Indian-industry’s-wake-up-call-on-environmental-sustainability.html
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