Chapter 8 Environment and Natural Resources Class 12 Political Science Notes

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Chapter 8 Environment and Natural Resources Class 12 Political Science Notes

Environmental Concerns in Global Politics

• Global politics are concerned with variety off environmental issues such as losing fertility of agricultural land, depletion of water resources, loss of bio-diversity, deteriorating of marine environment, decline in the total amount of ozone in the Earth’s stratosphere and coastal pollution.

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

• The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, had warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term.

• The Rio Summit produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity, forestry, and recommended a list of development practices called ‘Agenda 21’ in which there was a consensus on combining economic growth with ecological responsibility. This approach to development is commonly known as ‘sustainable development’.

The Protection of Global Commons

• ‘Commons’ are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community.

For example, a ‘common room’, a ‘community centre’, a park or a river. 

• There are some regions of the world which are located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state, and therefore require common governance by the international community. These are known as  global commons. It include the earth’s atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space.

• Agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol are some of the cooperation over the global commons.

• The history of outer space as a global commons shows that the management of these areas is thoroughly influenced by North-South inequalities.

Common but Differentiated Responsibilities

• The Northern countries want everyone to be equally responsible for ecological conservation.

• The developing countries of the South believes that the ecological degradation is the product of industrial development undertaken by the developed countries.

• The Rio Declaration at the Earth Summit in 1992 adopted the principle of common but  differentiated responsibilities. It was accepted that special needs of the developing countries must be taken into account in the development and interpretation of rules of international environmental law.

• The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) also emphasised to protect the climate system on the basis of equity and in accordance with their  common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities.

• The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement setting targets for industrialised countries  to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

• The protocol was agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto in Japan, based on principles set out in UNFCCC.

Common Property Resources

• Common property represents common property for the group. It represents common property for the group but with a rule that members of the group have both rights and duties with respect to the nature, levels of use of a given resource.

• A combination of factors, including privatisation, agricultural intensification, population growth and ecosystem degradation have caused common property to dwindle in size, quality, and availability to the poor in much of the world.

India’s Stand on Environmental Issues

• India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002.

• At the G-8 meeting in 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.

• The Indian government is already participating in global efforts through a number of programmes. India’s National Auto-fuel Policy mandates cleaner fuels for vehicles. The Energy Conservation Act, passed in 2001, outlines initiatives to improve energy efficiency. The Electricity Act of 2003 encourages the use of renewable energy.

• India is also of the view that the SAARC countries should adopt a common position on major global environment issues, so that the region’s voice carries greater weight.

Environmental Movements: One or Many?

• Environmental Movements are led by groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working in different parts of the world. Some of them work at the international level, but most of them work at the local level.

• The forest movements of the South in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Continental  Africa and India are faced enormous pressures.

• Another group of movements are those involved in struggles against mega-dams. In every country where a mega-dam is being built, one is likely to find an environmental movement opposing it.

• The early 1980s saw the first anti-dam movement launched in the North, namely, the campaign to save the Franklin River and its surrounding forests in Australia. India has had  some of the leading anti-dam, pro-river movements. Narmada Bachao Andolan is an example of such type of movements.

Resource Geopolitics

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

• Throughout a cold war, industrialised countries adopted methods to ensure a steady flow of resources by deployment of military forces near exploitation sites and sea-lanes of communications, the stock pulling of strategic resources and efforts to prop up friendly governments.

• A particular concern was Western control of oil in the Gulf and strategic minerals in Southern and Central Africa.

• The global economy relied on oil for much of the 20th century as a portable and indispensable fuel. fuel. The history of petroleum  is the history of war and struggle.

• Water is another important resource relevant to global politics. Regional variations and increasing scaring of fresh water may also lead to conflicts in the world to play politics.

The Indigenous People and their Rights

• The UN defines indigenous populations as peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country at the time when persons of different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world and overcame them.

• Indigenous people today 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.

• Like other social movements, indigenous people speak of their struggles, their agenda and their rights.

• Indigenous people occupy areas in Central and South America, Africa, India (where they are known as Tribals) and Southeast Asia.

• In India, indigenous people applies to the scheduled tribes who constitute nearly 8 per cent of the population of the country.

• The World Council of Indigenous People was formed in 1975 which became first of 11  indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN.