Chapter 6 — Environment and Natural Resources

The Earth Summit, formally called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992 and was attended by 170 states, thousands of NGOs, and many multinational corporations. It produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity, and forestry, and recommended a list of development practices called Agenda 21. It established a consensus on combining economic growth with ecological responsibility, an approach known as sustainable development, though significant differences between countries were left unresolved.

The principle, accepted in the Rio Declaration at the 1992 Earth Summit, states that all states share the responsibility to conserve and protect the Earth's ecosystem, but developed countries bear greater responsibility because their industrial activities have caused the bulk of historical and current environmental degradation. The Rio Declaration acknowledges that developed countries must lead in sustainable development 'in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technological and financial resources they command.' This principle is also embedded in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Global commons are areas or regions located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any single state and therefore requiring common governance by the international community; they are technically known as res communis humanitatis. The four global commons identified in the chapter are the earth's atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space. Cooperation over them has produced agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol, though achieving consensus remains difficult.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement, agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, that sets binding targets for industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions — gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons that contribute to global warming. China, India, and other developing countries were exempted from the Protocol's requirements because the largest share of historical and current global greenhouse gas emissions originated in developed countries, and per capita emissions in developing countries were still relatively low.

The Brundtland Report, titled Our Common Future, was published in 1987, five years before the Rio Earth Summit. It warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term, especially given the demands of the South for further industrial development. The report's findings shaped the agenda of the 1992 Earth Summit and contributed to the consensus on sustainable development as a guiding principle for combining economic growth with ecological responsibility.

Agenda 21 is a list of development practices recommended at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, aimed at achieving sustainable development by combining economic growth with ecological responsibility. Some critics have pointed out that Agenda 21 was biased in favour of economic growth rather than ensuring ecological conservation. A review of the implementation of the Rio Summit agreements was undertaken by India in 1997, and one key conclusion was that no meaningful progress had been made on the transfer of financial resources and environmentally sound technology to developing nations.

The Club of Rome is a global think tank that published a book in 1972 entitled Limits to Growth. The book dramatised the potential depletion of the Earth's resources against the backdrop of rapidly growing world population. Its publication helped push environmental concerns into international political debate and led to international agencies, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), holding conferences and promoting coordinated responses to environmental problems.

India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002 and ratified the Paris Climate Agreement on 2 October 2016. India's negotiating position relies on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and historical responsibility enshrined in UNFCCC. India argues that the per capita emission rates of developing countries are a tiny fraction of those in the developed world — Indian emissions were predicted to rise from 0.9 to 1.6 tonnes per capita by 2030, still less than half the 2000 world average of 3.8 tonnes. India is wary of binding commitments on rapidly industrialising countries and insists that developed countries must first provide financial resources and clean technologies to developing nations.

Developed countries of the global North want to discuss the environmental issue as it stands and hold everyone equally responsible for ecological conservation. Developing countries of the global South argue that much of the ecological degradation is the product of industrial development undertaken by the developed countries, so the North must take more responsibility for undoing the damage. Southern states are also focused on the relationship between economic development and environmental management, and insist that the special needs of developing countries must be taken into account in international environmental law.

Common property resources are resources not owned by any individual but shared by a community, where members have both rights and duties regarding use and maintenance. In India, many village communities have traditionally managed such resources through mutual understanding and centuries of practice. Sacred groves — parcels of uncut forest vegetation in the name of deities or ancestral spirits along the forest belt of South India — are a notable example; they have been traditionally managed by village communities as a form of common property regime that informally forces communities to harvest natural resources in an ecologically sustained fashion.

Environmental movements are groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working at local and international levels to respond to environmental degradation; they are described as among the most vibrant and powerful social movements globally. The chapter gives several examples: forest movements in the South (Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, continental Africa, and India) fighting against alarming rates of forest clearing; campaigns against the minerals industry and multinational corporations (such as opposition to the Western Mining Corporation in the Philippines); and anti-dam movements, including the campaign to save the Franklin River in Australia and the Narmada Bachao Andolan in India, where the most important shared idea is non-violence.

Resource geopolitics is concerned with who gets what, when, where, and how when it comes to natural resources. Resources have historically provided both the means and motives for global power expansion, interstate rivalry, and war. Oil is the most important resource in global strategy because the global economy relied on it as a portable and indispensable fuel for much of the 20th century. The Gulf region (West Asia) accounts for about 30 per cent of global oil production and holds about 64 per cent of the planet's known reserves; Saudi Arabia alone holds a quarter of world reserves and is the single largest producer.

Regional variations and increasing scarcity of freshwater point to disagreements over shared water resources as a leading source of conflicts in the 21st century, with some commentators referring to the possibility of 'water wars.' Countries that share rivers can disagree over pollution, excessive irrigation, or construction of dams — a typical disagreement is a downstream state's objection to actions by an upstream state that degrade the quality or quantity of available water. The chapter cites historical examples including conflicts between Israel, Syria, and Jordan in the 1950s and 1960s over the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers, and more recent threats between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq over dams on the Euphrates River.

The UN defines indigenous populations as comprising descendants of peoples who inhabited a country's present territory when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived and overcame them, and who today live more in conformity with their own social, economic, and cultural traditions. There are approximately 30 crore indigenous peoples worldwide. They seek admission to the world community as equals, recognition of their continuing existence as communities with an identity of their own, and protection of their land — the loss of which is the most obvious threat to their survival. The World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975 and subsequently became the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN.

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