Opinion Think local
At one level,concern for the environment shows up in concrete ways: stopping a project which would defile land,water or air; pushing a benign product...
At one level,concern for the environment shows up in concrete ways: stopping a project which would defile land,water or air; pushing a benign product or strategy; meeting food and energy needs in a sustainable manner; lobbying for sustainable outcomes and so on. At another level,it is a business of passion and contestation. The first is straightforward in the choices it presents; the second is more influential for it is for the minds of men. At a more practical level,environmental choices are systemic. There is something missing in the strategy of first polluting and then ameliorating. For the Hague Declaration before Rio,some of us argued that a design of development which is not unsustainable is a better strategy. So you cannot miss the forest for the trees.
Land degradation comes from people plundering nature,water degradation from closing natural drains and not building new ones. We later argued that problems arise when communities are out of sync with resources since holistic answers lie there. In a lot of discussions now we are genuinely missing the larger picture since policy-making at a local area or social scale is at a discount. Having set up legally powerful mechanisms at the project level,we dont really ask why the wrong economic and livelihood decision was made in the first place,until it is too late. So the ore mine has already built the conveyor belt in the forest and we will find a way to live with it. The big failures have been in agro-climatic planning which the Planning Commission underlined in the Eleventh Plan and in fact built projects around it,but it was not done at the field level. Neither did the water strategies work or those of small towns. Its unfair to make too much of these failures,for in everything there are success stories and best practices,but the momentum is not enough for these local stories to succeed.
Meanwhile,there is a refreshing change. India did original thinking in Copenhagen and made its point,which put simply is: this is my problem,I will solve it and dont push me around. Environment Minister Jairam Rameshs opposition to Bt brinjal might be controversial,but on the IPCC he is taking a brave and lonely stand. The first time somebody classified India unfairly in the development literature,it was in a derogatory sense and we were young and very angry. We hit back with facts,but discovered that it mattered only to an extent. The experience continues. They were wrong in saying India would not feed itself and we did so in our own way. Now economist Jeffrey Sachs says
Sahelian Africa should follow Indias food strategy in the 70s. They said we were wrong in our measured approach to liberalisation and globalisation. Ten years after we were growing fast,they finally admitted it. Now we are among the few bouncing out of the global recession.
This column said that the global poverty numbers and reversing Indias relative positions are a no go. Now microeconomist Angus Deaton has demolished that global exercise. There are many more. Jairam Ramesh makes the point that there are obvious errors in some of the IPCCs posturing. But it is a pressure group and,in the main,it was making valid points in a difficult area and creating a new space for contestation. A lot of policy is made in that no-mans land where thinking is done around known facts; there is also the surmise that this will be done by scientists with a larger perspective. Measures suggested for transparency,geographical search for experts and bringing in younger persons are well taken. Ramesh makes it a point to give scientific markers all along. This is important since a lot of the attacks come from conservative think tanks for whom the world never changes. They created and got an opportunity to hit back at the IPCC.
The national and global perspectives seem fun and games. The real problem is that there seem few champions for local solutions. Until then,sustainability will be a merry-go-round in world capitals.
The writer,a former Union minister,is chairman,Institute of Rural Management,Anand
express@expressindia.com
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