The environment we are in
Indians have long admired China’s growth from afar, envying the highways, mass transit systems, airports and entire new metropolises that they manage to build in the time it takes us to get a few flyovers going.
However, China’s growth does point to many untapped possibilities. In terms of the environment, China has done little more than follow the carbon-intensive growth pattern of the West, one that India has also referred. The consequences of this in a population-heavy country is already apparent in China, since they are ahead of us in the development curve: its cities suffer massive air pollution, such that the sun frequently disappears behind the smog; an entire village vanishes under sludge; the country is facing intense water shortages, and has seen development projects like the Three Gorges Dam turn into environmental catastrophes.
India - another populous country - ought to take our lessons from this. Besides an ‘environment-inclusive’ approach to growth brings with it both advantage and opportunity. Its undeniable that putting a cost on the environment would have short-term negative effects on the economy, since we would be pricing something that was once free. When policy makers talk about pricing the environment, they usually mean pricing carbon, since carbon is present in the entire cycle - air, water (which absorbs carbon), soil (which can both absorb carbon, and release it when degraded), forests (which absorb carbon in their growth phase). With carbon prices to consider, industries would have to budget for their factory emissions, for any pollutants that contaminate water, and degrade land and forests. This would bring down revenues and profits, and slow industry growth.
But in the longer term, I believe the benefits to GDP growth would be immense, simply because we would be using all of our resources more efficiently. Waste would be managed better, and whole industries will emerge around waste management, recycling and alternative energy use.
Besides, we are already paying for polluting our natural resources - except the cost is being disproportionately paid by the people who have lived closest to nature - the poor, the forest tribals, the farmers. Our farmers struggle with droughts and floods, and falling groundwater tables as well as degraded soil are bringing down harvest yields and income. Declining forests have hurt the livelihoods of the villages and tribes that depend on them. When common water sources are contaminated, its a select few who are able to pay for access to clean water. Pricing the environment would mean sharing the burden of such pollution more equitably. It would be a shift to a fairer economy, and one with greater accountability.
Tags: Carbon footprint, development, Environment, India's cities
February 19th, 2009 at 8:25 am
The planet can be viewed as a closed system. And everything that we consume has to come from nature. If I increase my daily intake of tea, some forest is being cleared somewhere. Other than just pricing environmental costs, there should be a conscious effort to move to a more steady-state economy, rather than one just focused on growth (read increasing consumerism). An ecosystem should be dynamic but overall in balance.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Even though I consider the whole Environmental debate is valid I doubt whether it is possible for us, in a short term, can alter the course where it is heading to. In the past 4 or 5 centuries what has been done, I am doubtful whether we can modify the course in couple of decades. Also I have a big question mark on whether we can or we are destined to maintain the so called “overall balance”. Because the moment we start thinking we should maintain we should know the complete data on that. What I think alternatively we should do is stop doing further damage and stay away from nature as much as posible.
Coming to the point of discussion of this blog post I agree that India should take a leaf out of China’s book and have an “inclusive approach” but that doesnt leave that we haven’t done any damage. We too have our share.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Including carbon credits into our lifestyle and commerce today will encourage us to follow a more sustainable path. The choices we will make in our daily life will be so much more cleaner knowing there is a cost associated with an environmentally harmful choice. It would be ideal if individuals were allocated carbon currency by city governments they can spend and earn.
February 28th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Indians need more awareness on going green. Government should take necessary action in creating this awareness, even though we see a lot of NGO campaigns around, only very few create an impact, the reason behind this is, people who are running those campaigns are behind sponsors and their branding over shadows the entire goal. Government should lessen the permission rules and other legal formalities for such campaigns and should tighten the rules for industry establishment and maintenance. Like Special Economic Zones(SEZ), Gov should introduce a concept of Special Ecology Zones, corporates/industries who opt for that should be given more economic privileges than what is given in SEZs, but from ecological perspective the industries should follow certain regulations like no-plastics inside the zone, recycle, reuse, re-invent methodologies etc. By introducing such tools we can really bring down the carbon level.
February 28th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
[...] Special Ecological Zones arose in my mind when I was reading Nandan Nilekani’s post on ‘the environment we are in‘. The world is badly suffering from economic recession, experts say it mite last for another [...]
March 17th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
In China, because things are centralized and (apparently) very well executed the State seems to have a good history of project management, planning and coordination. So one tends to give attempts such as the one in this link (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/business/worldbusiness/17compete.html) a decent probability of success.
What is the possible equivalent of coordination in India — Suppose one wants to do this in bits independent of the Govt. Suppose one wants to train people — say youths who constitute the ‘lumpen’ elements used by politicians — I was wondering how we can go about discussing learning and identifying meaningful areas in which we want to train people (so it becomes useful in some job that has scope locally or globally) Training will incur costs so shd ideally be done only when there is a reasonable chance of employing the trainees…
Isnt there a coordination issue to be addressed or would the invisible hand of the market work the magic — seems unlikely.
May 26th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
The dilemma with countries like India and China is:
” Whether to save a dying man, or a dying tree ”
Great economic developement for uplifing millions from poverty will certainly have heavy environmental price.