We start restoring the natural resources that we have destroyed

Restoring India’s natural wealth is not the wild-eyed dream of environmental idealists. It is an economic imperative. Nature provides us with a flow of services on which all economic activities depend critically. TERI carried out a major project, which was completed in 1997 on the eve of celebrations for 50 years of independence, in which a rigorous estimation of the damage and degradation of India’s natural resources in the first 50 years of independence was attempted.

In economic terms, this amounted to over 10% loss of the country’s GDP, including high levels of sickness from air and water pollution. Air pollution, for instance, results in high levels of sickness, which lead to absenteeism and loss of productivity, which can be estimated. To these can be added the cost of medical treatment and health care resulting from the effects of air pollution.

Unfortunately, in this country there are very few organizations, which carry out detailed natural resource accounting. If this was to become a regular feature of our assessment of economic activity, we would find that in actual fact, because of the negative impacts of the production and consumption of some goods and services, we are actually limiting economic progress and welfare. A major question that arises in this context is related to the equity effects of production and consumption in an economic system.

The depletion and degradation of natural resources imposes the worst impacts on the poorest sections of society. One estimate indicates that about 1/3rd of the goods and services used by poor people come directly from services provided by natural resources. These would include food, fodder, fuel, drinking water and material for construction of dwellings and shelters, as is the case typically within tribal societies. Economic policy should target as much the reduction of our natural debt as it does the national debt.

Quite apart from the anomalies in accounting at the macro level, today we are also ignoring serious environmental challenges at the household level. Good quality fuelwood traditionally used for cooking is just not available for poor households not only in rural areas but also in urban slums. The result is that women and children, in particular, spend hours inhaling harmful pollutants in front of cookstoves burning inferior twigs and leaves and even rubber tyres.

A detailed exercise carried out by TERI estimated that around 2.5 million people die in India prematurely annually as a result of air pollution, the bulk of which is the result of indoor air pollution. Yet, we still have no solution that can provide a clean affordable fuel for the poorest people in this country. Subsidies on kerosene only serve those who are engaged in adulteration of other petroleum products. If the same total subsidy was provided to photovoltaic devices, our rural households could within five years get one light bulb each, without smoke and recurring fuel costs.

To some of these down to earth problems affecting human society, we can add the growing threat of climate change which results from an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere, the most important of which is carbon dioxide produced since industrialization began through burning of increasing quantities of fossil fuels.

Climate change is likely to have serious impacts on India through altered precipitation patterns, higher temperatures and heat waves, melting of Himalayan glaciers, adverse effects on health as a result of greater spread of vector borne diseases, and the threat of sea level rise for our islands and coastal areas. The mitigation of climate change requires major efforts at the global level under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its derivative the Kyoto Protocol, but as yet the action taken on the ground by the world collectively is decidedly weak.

One aspect of climate change is the inertia in the system, which will result in impacts of climate change continuing for decades, if not centuries. A country like India, therefore, has no choice but to adapt to climate change. This means that with increasing water scarcity, a more responsive and responsible system of management of this precious resource is required. Our agriculture will also require the development of new species and strains that are drought resistant and salt tolerant to ensure that agricultural yields do not go down.

The threat from climate change to agriculture is a worldwide problem. Lester Brown has recently written that China, which is consuming more and more grain for producing animal protein, despite a decline in agricultural production, would place heavy demands on world foodgrain stocks. All of this could adversely affect food security for the entire human race in future. Climate change can only exacerbate this trend. But let us in this country, at least, restore the natural resources that we have destroyed, or else a heavy price will be paid not only by this generation but also those yet to come.