Class 12 Political Science Chapter 6 Environment and Natural Resources Short Notes

Cultivable area is barely expanding any more, and a substantial portion of existing agricultural
land is losing fertility. Grasslands have been overgrazed and fisheries over-harvested. Water bodies
have suffered extensive depletion and pollution, severely restricting food production. Natural
forests, which help stabilise the climate, moderate water supplies and harbour a majority of the
planet’s biodiversity on land, are being cut down and people are being displaced. The loss of
biodiversity continues due to the destruction of habitat in areas which are rich in species. Ozone in
the stratosphere keeps declining. Coastal pollution too is increasing globally: the open sea is
relatively clean, but the coastal waters are becoming increasingly polluted largely due to
land-based activities.

663 million people in developing countries have no access to safe water. 2.4 billion
have no access to sanitation. The result is the death of more than three million children every
year.

1. If governments take steps to check environmental degradation, these issues have
political consequences, and most of them are such that no single government can address them
fully. They therefore have to become part of ‘world politics’.

2. Four deeper questions: who causes environmental degradation, who pays the price, who is
responsible for taking corrective action, and who gets to use how much of the natural resources of
the Earth. All these raise the issue of who wields how much power.

Environmental concerns have a long history, but awareness of the environmental consequences of
economic growth acquired an increasingly political character from the 1960s onwards. The
Club of Rome, a global think tank, published Limits to Growth in 1972. The
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other international agencies began holding
conferences and promoting detailed studies. The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future,
five years before Rio, warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in
the long term, especially in view of the demands of the South for further industrial development.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also called the Earth
Summit, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, attended by 170 states,
thousands of NGOs and many multinational corporations.

Thousands of people have had to leave their homes as the toxic waters totally destroyed the
fishing industry. The shipping industry and all related activities have collapsed. Rising
concentrations of salt in the soil have caused low crop yields. Numerous studies have been
conducted.

1959 the Antarctic Treaty. 1987 the Montreal Protocol. 1991 the Antarctic
Environmental Protocol.

A major problem underlying all ecological issues relates to the difficulty of achieving consensus
on common environmental agendas on the basis of vague scientific evidence and time frames. In
that sense the discovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic in the mid-1980s revealed the
opportunity as well as the dangers inherent in tackling global environmental problems.

Outer space shows the same thing: its management is thoroughly influenced by North-South
inequalities, and the crucial issue, as with the atmosphere and the ocean floor, is technology and
industrial development, because the benefits of exploitative activities there are far from being
equal either for the present or future generations.

Its life. Limited terrestrial life and a highly productive marine ecosystem: a few plants
such as microscopic algae, fungi and lichen, marine mammals, fish and hordes of birds adapted to
harsh conditions, as well as the krill, which is central to the marine food chain and upon
which other animals are dependent.

Its scientific value. It plays an important role in maintaining climatic
equilibrium, and deep ice cores provide an important source of information about greenhouse gas
concentrations and atmospheric temperatures of hundreds and thousands of years ago.

The two claims. The UK, Argentina, Chile, Norway, France, Australia and New Zealand
have made legal claims to sovereign rights over Antarctic territory. Most other states hold
that the Antarctic is a part of the global commons and not subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of
any state.

The rules. The Antarctic and the Arctic polar regions are subjected to special regional
rules of environmental protection. Since 1959, activities have been limited to scientific
research, fishing and tourism, and even these have not prevented parts of the region from being
degraded by waste as a result of oil spills.

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
agreed that the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has
originated in developed countries, and 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.

A combination of factors, including privatisation, agricultural intensification, population
growth and ecosystem degradation, has caused common property to dwindle in size, quality, and
availability to the poor in much of the world. Through mutual understanding and centuries of
practice, many village communities in India have defined members’ rights and
responsibilities.

What they are. Parcels of uncut forest vegetation in the name of certain deities or
natural or ancestral spirits. Protecting nature for religious reasons is an ancient practice in many
traditional societies.

Why they interest scholars. As a model of community-based resource management they have
lately gained attention in conservation literature. They can be seen as a system that informally
forces traditional communities to harvest natural resources in an ecologically sustained fashion, and
some researchers believe they hold the potential for preserving not only biodiversity and ecological
functions, but also cultural diversity.

Their basis. Deep religious reverence for nature, rather than resource scarcity,
seems to be the basis for the long-standing commitment to preserving these forests. Hindus commonly
worshipped natural objects, including trees and groves, and many temples have originated from sacred
groves.

Where. Along the forest belt of South India, sacred groves have been traditionally
managed by village communities. This arrangement, on state-owned forest land, appropriately fits the
description of a common property regime.

The pressure on them. Expansion and human settlement have slowly encroached on sacred
forests, and in many places their institutional identity is fading with the advent of new national
forest policies. The real management problem arises when legal ownership and operational control
are held by different entities, the state and the community, which vary in their policy norms
and underlying motives.

Kyoto. India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002. India,
China and other developing countries were exempt because their contribution to the emission of
greenhouse gases during the industrialisation period was not significant.

The critics’ reply. 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, 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.

Historical responsibility. India’s international negotiating position relies heavily on
principles of historical responsibility, as enshrined in UNFCCC, and emphasises that ‘economic and
social development are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country parties’.

The objection. India is wary of discussions within UNFCCC about introducing binding
commitments on rapidly industrialising countries such as Brazil, China and India, and feels
this contravenes the very spirit of UNFCCC.

What India asks for. That developed countries take immediate measures to provide
developing countries with financial resources and clean technologies, and that the SAARC
countries adopt a common position on major global environment issues so the region’s voice carries
greater weight.

The 1997 review. A review of the implementation of the Earth Summit agreements was
undertaken by India in 1997. Key conclusion: no meaningful progress with respect to transfer
of new and additional financial resources and environmentally-sound technology on concessional terms
to developing nations.

Some of the most significant responses have come not from the governments but from groups
of environmentally conscious volunteers. Some work at the international level, but most of them
work at the local level. They are amongst the most vibrant, diverse, and powerful social
movements across the globe today, and diversity is their important trait. The chapter
gives “just a few examples” of them rather than a closed list, and the groups below are
those examples.

Resources have provided some of the key means and motives of global European power
expansion and have been the focus of inter-state rivalry. Western thinking was dominated
by the relationship of trade, war and power, at the core of which were overseas resources and
maritime navigation. Since sea power itself rested on access to timber, naval timber supply
became a key priority for major European powers from the 17th century onwards. The critical
importance of an uninterrupted supply of strategic resources, in particular oil, was well established
both during the First World War and the Second World War.

The methods it lists. Deployment of military forces near exploitation sites and along
sea-lanes of communication; stockpiling of strategic resources; efforts to prop up friendly
governments in producing countries; support to multinational companies; and favourable international
agreements.

The fear. Access to supplies might be threatened by the Soviet Union. A particular
concern was Western control of oil in the Gulf and strategic minerals in Southern and
Central Africa.

After the Cold War. The security of supply continues to worry government and business
decisions with regard to several minerals, in particular radioactive materials. However,
oil continues to be the most important resource in global strategy.

Oil. The global economy relied on oil for much of the 20th century as a portable and
indispensable fuel. The immense wealth associated with it generates political struggles to
control it, and the history of petroleum is also the history of war and struggle, nowhere more
obviously than in West Asia and Central Asia. The consumers, the United States, West Europe,
Japan, and increasingly India and China, are located at a considerable distance from the region.
The list of petroleum based products in our lives is endless: the toothbrush, the pacemaker, paints,
inks.

Water. Regional variations and the increasing scarcity of freshwater point to the
possibility of disagreements over shared water resources as a leading source of conflicts in the
21st century. States have used force to protect or seize freshwater resources.

The two examples of violence. Between Israel, Syria, and Jordan in the 1950s and
1960s over attempts by each side to divert water from the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers; and
more recent threats between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq over the construction of dams on the
Euphrates River. A number of studies show that countries which share rivers are involved in
military conflicts with each other.

Where. Central and South America, Africa, India, where they are known as Tribals, and
Southeast Asia. Many present day island states in the Oceania region, including Australia and
New Zealand, were inhabited by the Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian people over the
course of thousands of years.

How they 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.

What they ask. Admission of indigenous people to the world community as equals, and
that governments come to terms with the continuing existence of indigenous nations as enduring
communities with an identity of their own. The phrase they use everywhere in the world for their
continued occupancy of their lands is ‘Since times immemorial’.

Why land is the whole question. Their worldviews, irrespective of geographical location,
are strikingly similar with respect to land and the variety of life systems supported by it.
The loss of land, which also means the loss of an economic resource base, is the most obvious
threat to their survival. The chapter asks: “Can political autonomy be enjoyed without its
attachment to the means of physical survival?”

The description is usually applied to the Scheduled Tribes. With the exception of small
communities of hunters and gatherers, most depend for their subsistence primarily on the
cultivation of land. For centuries, if not millennia, they had free access to as much land as
they could cultivate; it was only after the establishment of the British colonial rule that
areas previously inhabited by them were subjected to outside forces. Although they enjoy a
constitutional protection in political representation, they have not got much of the benefits
of development, and have paid a huge cost for development, being the single largest group
among the people displaced by various developmental projects since independence.

Their international voice. Their rights were neglected in domestic and international
politics for very long. During the 1970s, growing international contacts among indigenous
leaders aroused a sense of common concern and shared experiences. The World Council of Indigenous
Peoples was formed in 1975, and became subsequently the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to
receive consultative status in the UN. Many of the movements against globalisation, discussed in
Chapter 7, have focussed on the rights of the indigenous people.

“Resource geopolitics is all about who gets what, when, where and how.”

On the global commons: “These are known as res communis humanitatis or global commons.”

From the UNFCCC: parties should act “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common
but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”

India’s negotiating position: ‘economic and social development are the first and overriding
priorities of the developing country parties’.

The indigenous claim, used all over the world: ‘Since times immemorial’.

On land and autonomy: “Can political autonomy be enjoyed without its attachment to the means of
physical survival?”

On the movements: “It is significant to note that, in anti-dam and other environmental movements
in India, the most important shared idea is non-violence.”