Environment and Natural Resources — Class 12 Political Science

This chapter shows why environmental and resource issues have become central to world politics. Problems like shrinking cultivable land, water scarcity, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, the ozone hole and coastal pollution cross national borders and cannot be solved by any one government. Environmental awareness grew politically from the 1960s, with the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth (1972), the Brundtland Report (1987) and especially the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which produced conventions on climate change and biodiversity and the idea of 'sustainable development'. A key divide is between the developed global North and developing global South; the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities', accepted at Rio, holds that developed countries, who caused most degradation, must bear more responsibility, which is why India and China were exempted from the Kyoto Protocol. The chapter discusses the protection of global commons (Antarctica, the atmosphere, ocean floor, outer space), common property resources like India's sacred groves, India's stand on environmental issues, diverse environmental movements (forest, anti-dam such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and mineral-industry struggles), resource geopolitics centred on oil and water, and the rights of indigenous peoples.