Environment and Sustainable Development

1. The environment, its functions and the supply-demand reversal

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What the environment is and what it does

• Environment: Class 11, Environment and Sustainable Development defines it as "the total planetary inheritance and the totality of all resources". It includes all the biotic and abiotic factors that act on each other.
• Biotic and abiotic components:
• Biotic means living: birds, animals, plants, forests, fisheries.
• Abiotic means non-living: air, water, land, rocks, sunlight.

• Studying the environment means studying how the two interact.

• Functions of the environment. There are four: 1. It supplies resources, both renewable and non-renewable. 2. It assimilates waste, which means it absorbs and breaks down what we throw away. 3. It sustains life by providing genetic diversity and biodiversity. 4. It gives aesthetic services such as scenery.

• Renewable resources can be used without running out because supply keeps regenerating. Examples: trees in forests, fish in the ocean. Class 10, Development adds that even these can be overused. Groundwater is renewable, but using more than rain recharges is overuse.

• Non-renewable resources run out as we extract and use them. Example: fossil fuels.
• Class 10, Development says the stock is fixed. New discoveries add to it, but it will still run out over time.

Reserves, depletion and pricing

Class 10, Development gives this crude-oil table (Table 1.7):

Region	Reserves, 2017 (bn barrels)	Years reserves will last
Middle East	836	70
USA	69	10.5
World	1,732	47

• Reserves-to-production life = known reserves ÷ current annual output. This is the number of years reserves last at today's extraction rate.

• Worked example: world output ≈ 1,732 ÷ 47 ≈ 37 bn barrels a year. The chapter rounds the answer to "only 50 years more".

• Lessons from the table:

• India imports most of its oil, so rising oil prices burden everyone.

• Countries with low reserves, such as the USA, try to secure oil through military or economic power.

• Hotelling rule (Hotelling, 1931): for the best extraction path, the net price of a non-renewable resource (price minus extraction cost) should rise at the rate of interest. Oil left in the ground must "earn" as much as money in the bank.

Limits and crisis

• Carrying capacity is the limit within which the environment keeps working. Two conditions must hold:
• resource extraction ≤ rate of regeneration

• waste generated ≤ assimilating capacity

• Absorptive capacity is the environment's ability to absorb degradation.

• Environmental crisis: when these limits are breached, the environment fails at its third function, sustaining life.
• The drivers of the crisis:
• rising population in developing countries

• affluent consumption and production in developed countries

• Resource depletion means intensive extraction exhausts resources, so money must go into exploration and new technology.

• Environmental degradation means environmental quality declines through pollution, deforestation and soil erosion.

Why the crisis is recent: the supply-demand reversal

• Supply-demand reversal of environmental resources:
• Before industrialisation: demand for environmental resources was below supply. Pollution stayed within absorptive capacity, and extraction was slower than regeneration.

• After the population explosion and the Industrial Revolution: demand went beyond regeneration, and supply shrank through overuse and misuse. This trend continues today.

• Consequences listed by NCERT:

• Rivers and aquifers are polluted or dried up, making water an economic good. The 1992 Dublin Statement says water has value in its competing uses and must be priced and managed as a scarce good.
• Exhausted resources force heavy spending on research and exploration.
• Health costs rise. NCERT says ~70% of India's water is polluted, which increases respiratory and water-borne disease.

• Global problems such as warming and ozone loss add to government spending commitments.

• Opportunity cost of environmental damage: the value of what society must give up because of damage. That includes money diverted to new resources, health spending and global commitments. NCERT concludes this cost is "high".

• Two framing lines from Class 10, Development:
• "We have not inherited the world from our forefathers — we have borrowed it from our children."
• "The Earth has enough resources to meet the needs of all but not enough to satisfy the greed of even one person."

2. Global environmental issues: global warming, greenhouse gases and ozone depletion

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Global warming

• Global warming is the gradual rise in the average temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. It is caused by human-made increases in greenhouse gases.
• Greenhouse gases trap heat. The main ones are CO2, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and F-gases (HFCs, PFCs, SF6).
• Causes listed in NCERT Box 7.1:
• burning coal and petroleum
• deforestation, which adds CO2
• methane from animal waste

• more cattle production, which drives deforestation, methane and fossil-fuel use

• Impacts listed in NCERT Box 7.1:

• polar ice melt, sea-level rise and coastal flooding
• disrupted drinking water where it depends on snow-melt
• species extinction as ecological niches disappear
• more frequent tropical storms

• more tropical disease

• Outdated figures:

• (NCERT: CO2 +31% and CH4 +149% above 1750 levels; +0.6°C in the last century. Now: CO2 is about 50% above pre-industrial and methane more than 150% above.)
• IPCC AR6 (2021-23): warming was ~1.1°C in 2011-20 compared with 1850-1900.

• WMO: 2024 was the first calendar year above 1.5°C, at about 1.55°C (verify current).

• Carbon budget: the total CO2 that can still be emitted while keeping warming under a set limit.

• AR6: ~500 GtCO2 from 2020 for a 50% chance of staying at 1.5°C.
• At ~40 GtCO2 a year, it is now much smaller (verify current).

• Developed countries used most of the historical budget. This is the equity root of CBDR (Section 10).

• NCERT mentions the Kyoto conference (1997), which asked industrialised nations to cut emissions. Details are in Section 10.

Ozone depletion

• Ozone depletion is the loss of ozone in the stratosphere. It is caused by high levels of chlorine and bromine compounds.
• Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) come from refrigerator and AC coolants and from aerosol propellants.
• Halons (bromofluorocarbons) come from fire extinguishers.

• Carbon tetrachloride and methyl chloroform (trichloroethane) also deplete ozone.

• Effects: more UV radiation (mainly UV-B) reaches the earth.

• It causes skin cancer in humans.
• It lowers phytoplankton output, which hurts aquatic food chains.

• It affects the growth of land plants.

• NCERT records a ~5% fall in the ozone layer between 1979 and 1990.

The ozone regime

Step	Year	What it did
Vienna Convention	1985	Framework for cooperation
Montreal Protocol	1987	Phases out ODS (CFCs, halons, CCl4, methyl chloroform); universal ratification
Multilateral Fund	1990	Pays developing countries' costs of phasing out ODS
Kigali Amendment	2016	Phases down HFCs

• HFCs replaced CFCs. They do not harm ozone, but they are potent greenhouse gases.
• India's HFC path: freeze in 2028, then cut 85% by 2047.
• India Cooling Action Plan (2019): a 20-year plan to reduce cooling demand and refrigerant use.
• UNEP/WMO 2023 assessment: Antarctic ozone is projected to recover to 1980 levels around 2066 (verify).
• Montreal is called the most successful environmental treaty. Developing countries got delayed timelines and money, which is CBDR in practice.

3. State of India's environment: the dichotomy and the five priority issues

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Endowment vs pressure

• Rich endowment, according to NCERT:
• Deccan black soil suits cotton, so textile industries cluster there.
• The Indo-Gangetic plains are among the world's most fertile and densely populated regions.

• India has ~8% of world iron-ore reserves, plus coal, natural gas, bauxite, copper, chromite, lignite, manganese, zinc and uranium.

• Pressure: India holds ~17-18% of world population (NCERT: 17%) and ~20% of world livestock. This sits on 2.4% of world land (NCERT rounds it to 2.5%).

• Poverty-induced degradation and pollution from affluence: India faces two threats at the same time.
• The poor overuse land, forests and fuelwood to survive.

• Affluence and fast industrialisation create pollution.

• The five priority issues: 1. land degradation 2. biodiversity loss 3. air pollution, especially vehicular pollution in cities 4. management of fresh water 5. solid waste management

Land degradation

• Land degradation is a decline in land quality. NCERT lists 12 causes: 1. loss of vegetation through deforestation (clearing forests for farms, fuelwood, mining and industry, which also releases stored carbon) 2. unsustainable extraction of fuelwood and fodder 3. shifting cultivation 4. encroachment into forest land 5. forest fires and overgrazing 6. lack of soil conservation 7. improper crop rotation 8. heavy use of agro-chemicals 9. poor planning and management of irrigation 10. groundwater extraction beyond recharge 11. open access resources, which anyone can use without limits and which are therefore overused (tragedy of the commons; the economics is in market-structures-competition) 12. poverty of farm-dependent people

• Data:

• Per capita forest land is 0.06 ha against 0.47 ha needed. As a result, ~15 million m³ is felled beyond the permissible limit.
• Soil erosion is about 5.3 bn tonnes a year, which washes away 5.8-8.4 million tonnes of nutrients a year (GoI).

• (NCERT inconsistency: its N 0.8 + P 1.8 + K 26.3 Mt adds up to ~29 Mt. Use the GoI range.)

• ISRO Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas (2021): ~97.85 mha, about 29.7% of India's area, was degraded in 2018-19.

• India's pledge at UNCCD COP14 (New Delhi, 2019) is to restore 26 mha by 2030.
• ISFR 2023: forest and tree cover is ~25.17% of geographical area (verify).

Biodiversity loss

• Biodiversity loss is the decline in genetic and species diversity.
• India is megadiverse:
• It has ~7-8% of recorded species.

• It has 4 of the world's 36 hotspots: Himalaya, Indo-Burma, Western Ghats-Sri Lanka and Sundaland (Nicobar).

• Laws and targets:

• Biological Diversity Act 2002, amended in 2023.
• Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022): protect 30% of land and sea by 2030 ("30x30").

Air pollution

• Air pollution is contamination of air by gases and particulates from vehicles, industry, thermal plants and biomass burning.
• Vehicles are ground-level sources, so they hit the public hardest.
• Motor vehicles grew from ~3 lakh in 1951 to 35 crore in 2022.

• Two-wheelers and cars made up ~85% of registered vehicles.

• Industrial pollution comes from factory emissions and effluents.

• India is among the ten most industrialised nations.
• CPCB lists 17 categories of highly polluting industries.

• NCERT gives the Damodar valley as an "ecological disaster".

• Other sources: thermal plants and stubble burning.

• Policy response:
• National AQI (2014)
• GRAP (2017)
• NCAP 2019: 131 non-attainment cities; target of up to 40% PM10 cut by 2025-26 against 2017-18 (verify current)

• CAQM Act 2021 for the NCR

• Health and GDP cost: Lancet Planetary Health (estimates for 2019) put the toll at ~1.67 million deaths and ~1.4% of GDP lost (verify).

Box 7.4: Pollution Control Boards

• CPCB was set up in 1974 under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act. It got air powers under the Air Act 1981.
• States set up their own SPCBs.
• What the boards do:
• set standards for sewage, trade effluents and emissions
• give technical help to government and sponsor research
• run mass-awareness campaigns
• prepare manuals and codes
• inspect every industry through district officials
• provide background air-quality data for siting industries and town planning
• monitor water quality in 125 rivers (with tributaries) plus wells, lakes, creeks, ponds, tanks, drains and canals

Water

• Water pollution comes from sewage, industrial effluents and farm chemicals. Class 8, Factors of Production cites Tamil Nadu leather units polluting rivers and soil.
• Groundwater overuse means pumping faster than rain recharges. Class 10, Development says:
• ~300 districts saw water levels fall more than 4 m in 20 years.
• One-third of the country overuses groundwater now, and 60% could within 25 years.

• Hotspots: Punjab, western UP, hard-rock plateaus of central and south India, some coasts and fast-growing cities.

• CGWB (2024): the stage of extraction is ~60% (verify). The Atal Bhujal Yojana (2020) funds community groundwater management.

• Virtual water is the water used to make a product. When India exports rice and sugarcane, it effectively exports scarce water.

Solid waste

• Solid waste management is the handling and disposal of solid waste.
• SWM Rules 2016 apply.

• Single-use plastics were banned from 1 July 2022.

• Fly ash is residue from thermal plants. It pollutes water and land unless it is used, for example in bricks and cement.

• EPR and e-waste are covered in Section 9.
• NCERT's exercise: a truck driver paid ₹10,000 for emitting black soot. This previews the polluter pays idea.

4. Forests, people and projects: movements, clearances and legal principles

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People vs projects

• Chipko and Appiko movements: people hugged trees to stop commercial felling.
• Chipko (Garhwal Himalaya): Mandal 1973; Reni 1974 under Gaura Devi. Leaders were Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna.
• Appiko ("to hug" in Kannada; NCERT Box 7.3):
  • It began on 8 September 1983 in Salkani forest.
  • 160 men, women and children hugged the trees and kept a six-week vigil.
  • They left only when officials promised scientific felling under the working plan.
  • It saved 12,000 trees and spread to nearby districts within months.
  • (NCERT error: it calls Sirsi a "district". Sirsi is a taluk of Uttara Kannada district.)

• Appiko's demands:

  • consult locals when trees are marked
  • no felling within 100 m of a water source
  • no felling on slopes of 30° or more

• The paper mill in Uttara Kannada wiped out bamboo within 12 years. The soil washed away and left bare laterite, and rivulets dried up.

• NCERT's open question: a paper mill employs 10,000 workers and a plywood unit employs 800. Is that acceptable if a million people lose their daily needs?
• Development-induced displacement is the forced loss of land, homes and livelihoods to dams, mines and industry.
• Class 10, Development: industrialists want big dams for power, while displaced tribals may prefer small check dams or tanks.
• What is development for one person may be destructive for another.
• Example: Sardar Sarovar and the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
• The legal answer is the RFCTLARR Act 2013, which requires social impact assessment and rehabilitation and resettlement.

Regulating diversion and damage

• Environmental impact assessment (EIA) checks a project's likely environmental and social impacts before approval.
• It comes under the EP Act 1986, through notifications in 1994 and 2006.
• Category A projects are cleared by MoEFCC. Category B projects are cleared by the State EIA Authority (SEIAA).
• Stages: screening → scoping → public consultation → appraisal.

• The Draft EIA 2020 was criticised for allowing post-facto clearance.

• Compensatory afforestation: when forest land is diverted, the user must raise forest on equal non-forest or degraded land.

• Net present value of forests (NPV): the money value of ecosystem services lost when forest is diverted. It is charged in addition to the afforestation cost.
• It comes from the SC's T.N. Godavarman case.
• The money goes to CAMPA under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016.

• The 1980 Forest (Conservation) Act was amended in 2023 and renamed the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam.

• Green credit is a tradable unit for voluntary green actions such as planting trees or conserving water.

• Green Credit Rules were notified in October 2023, with ICFRE as administrator.

• It covers plantations on degraded forest land and was launched globally at COP28.

• Biodiversity offset: conservation action that compensates for unavoidable biodiversity loss from a project.

• Biodiversity credits: tradable units for measured biodiversity gains, used to finance conservation.
• REDD+ rewards developing countries for cutting emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and for conserving and enhancing forest carbon.

• Warsaw Framework 2013; India's National REDD+ Strategy 2018.

• Nature-based solutions protect or restore ecosystems to tackle problems such as climate change. Examples: MISHTI for mangroves and Amrit Dharohar for wetlands, both 2023.

Legal principles

• Polluter pays principle (Rio Principle 16): the polluter bears the cost of preventing and fixing pollution.
• Precautionary principle (Rio Principle 15): lack of full scientific certainty is no excuse to delay measures against serious or irreversible harm.
• Both were read into Indian law:
• Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum (1996)

• Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action (1996)

• NGT Act 2010, s.20, requires the tribunal to apply them.

5. Sustainable development: definitions, rules, SDGs and the growth debate

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Meaning

• Sustainable development is "development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".
• Source: WCED/Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future (1987).

• (NCERT error: Class 11 attributes the definition to UNCED. UNCED was the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It popularised the idea through Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration, the UNFCCC and the CBD.)

• Antecedents:

• the Stockholm Conference (1972)
• Limits to Growth (1972)

• Class 10's warning from scientists "since the second half of the twentieth century"

• NCERT's two catch phrases:

• "Needs" is tied to distribution. It means meeting the basic needs of all, especially the poor majority. That requires redistributing resources, so it is a moral issue.

• "Future generations" means intergenerational equity. We should leave a stock of "quality of life" assets no smaller than what we inherited.

• Edward Barbier's definition: raise the material standard of living of the poor at the grassroots.

• It can be measured in income, real income, education, health care, sanitation and water supply.

• It aims to cut absolute poverty through lasting, secure livelihoods.

• Three compatibility conditions. Development must be compatible with: 1. conservation of natural assets 2. preservation of the regenerative capacity of ecosystems 3. no added costs or risks for future generations

• Herman Daly's five rules: 1. Keep population within carrying capacity. Daly calls this the Plimsoll line of the economy, after a ship's load-limit mark. 2. Make technology input-efficient, not input-consuming. 3. Extract renewables no faster than they regenerate. 4. Deplete non-renewables no faster than renewable substitutes are created. 5. Correct the inefficiencies caused by pollution.

• Weak and strong sustainability:

• Weak (Solow-Hartwick): man-made capital can replace natural capital, so invest resource rents.

• Strong: critical natural capital, such as the ozone layer or aquifers, must be preserved.

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Agenda 2030 was adopted in September 2015.

• It has 17 goals, 169 targets and ~231 unique indicators.
• It replaced the 8 MDGs (2000-15).
• India tracks progress through NITI Aayog's SDG India Index (since 2018; latest score, verify) and MoSPI's National Indicator Framework.

Growth vs environment

• Environmental Kuznets curve: an inverted U (Grossman-Krueger, 1991). Degradation rises with early growth and falls after some income threshold.

• The evidence is stronger for local pollutants such as SO2 and much weaker for CO2 and biodiversity.

• Pollution haven hypothesis: dirty industry moves to countries with laxer rules. This partly explains why rich countries' curves bend down.

• Environmental decoupling: breaking the link between GDP and environmental pressure.
• Relative decoupling: emissions grow slower than GDP.

• Absolute decoupling: emissions fall while GDP rises.

• Rebound effect (Jevons paradox; see economic-thought): efficiency lowers the effective cost of using something, so consumption rises. That eats up part or all of the savings.

• Green growth (OECD, World Bank; Union Budget 2023-24 "Green Growth" priority): growth decoupled from emissions and damage.
• Green economy (UNEP 2011): low-carbon, resource-efficient and socially inclusive.
• Critiques:
• Degrowth: scale down production and consumption in rich countries. Developing countries object that they still need growth.
• Doughnut economics (Kate Raworth): stay between a social foundation of basic needs and an ecological ceiling.

• Planetary boundaries (Rockström, 2009): nine Earth-system limits. Six were crossed by 2023 and seven per the 2025 Planetary Health Check (verify).

• Indian touchstones:

• Gandhi's need-vs-greed line
• Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (on the NCERT reading list)

• Mission LiFE (2022)

• NCERT's closing line: sustainable development is a "paradigm shift" in development thinking that ensures non-declining welfare for all.

6. Valuing and measuring nature: natural capital, ecosystem services and green accounting

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Valuation

• Natural capital is the stock of soil, water, air, forests, minerals and biodiversity. It yields flows of goods and services.
• Ecosystem services are the benefits people get from ecosystems. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) groups them in four:

Type	Example
Provisioning	food, timber, water
Regulating	climate, flood control, pollination
Cultural	recreation, spiritual value
Supporting	soil formation, nutrient cycling

• TEEB and the Dasgupta Review (2021) develop the economics.
• Total economic value = use values (direct + indirect + option) + non-use values (existence + bequest).
• Option value is a use value: you keep the choice to use it later.

• Existence value is the value of knowing something exists. Bequest value is the value of leaving it to heirs.

• Ways to value what markets don't price:

• Contingent valuation (stated preference): surveys ask people their willingness to pay or accept.
• Hedonic pricing (revealed preference): clean air's value is inferred from house prices.

• The travel-cost method infers a park's value from what visitors spend to get there.

• Payment for ecosystem services (PES) pays landowners or communities to manage land for services such as watershed protection or carbon storage.

• Example: Costa Rica's PSA scheme (1997).

• India's fiscal analogue: the 15th Finance Commission gives 10% weight to forest and ecology in tax devolution (mechanics in fiscal-federalism).

• The same logic sets the NPV of forests (Section 4).

Measurement

• Green accounting deducts resource depletion and degradation from national income ("green GDP").
• Standards: UN SEEA Central Framework (2012, the first international standard) and SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (2021).

• India: MoSPI's annual EnviStats India publishes natural-resource accounts. The Partha Dasgupta Committee (2013) proposed a green national accounts framework.

• Adjusted net savings (World Bank "genuine savings"):

• ANS = net national saving + education spending − energy depletion − mineral depletion − net forest depletion − CO2 damage − particulate damage

• Negative ANS means the country is running down its total wealth, so growth is unsustainable.

• Footprints:

• Ecological footprint: the productive land and water, in global hectares, needed to supply a population and absorb its waste. It is compared with biocapacity (Global Footprint Network).
• Earth Overshoot Day: the date each year when humanity's demand exceeds what Earth regenerates that year. It fell on ~24 July in 2025 (verify).
• Carbon footprint: total GHG emissions of a person, firm, product or country in CO2-equivalent. India's per capita emissions are ~2 t, against a world average of ~4.7 t and ~14-15 t for the US (verify). This is India's equity argument.
• Water footprint (Hoekstra): total freshwater used for what we consume. Green water is rain, blue is surface and groundwater, and grey is the water needed to dilute pollution.

• Embodied carbon: emissions released in making and transporting a product, such as steel or cement. It is the basis of CBAM (Section 11).

• Environmental Performance Index: published every two years by Yale and Columbia. It ranks countries on climate, environmental health and ecosystem vitality.

• India ranked 176 of 180 in 2024 (verify).
• India contests the method, for example its weight on per capita emissions and projected 2050 emissions.

7. Strategies I: clean energy for villages, cities and remote areas

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Why switch

• Thermal plants emit CO2 and produce fly ash that pollutes water and land.
• Large hydro floods forests and disturbs natural river flow.
• Non-conventional sources of energy such as wind, sun and small streams reduce these harms.
• (NCERT error: the chapter calls wind and solar "conventional" sources. Read "non-conventional".)

The options

• Wind power: turbines in high-wind areas generate electricity.
• The initial cost is high, but running costs are low and pollution is minimal. NCERT says the benefits "absorb" the high cost.

• Drawbacks: land use, noise and bird deaths.

• Solar photovoltaic power: PV cells turn sunlight into electricity.

• It is pollution-free and ideal for remote areas where the grid is impossible or costly.

• International Solar Alliance: India leads it. It was launched with France at COP21 Paris (30 Nov 2015). The framework agreement came into force in December 2017, and HQ is in Gurugram. Its vision is "One Sun One World One Grid".

• Mini-hydel plants: small turbines on perennial mountain streams.

• They cause no change in land use and meet local demand.
• Because power is used locally, there is no need for large transmission lines and no transmission loss.

• MNRE counts hydro up to 25 MW as small hydro.

• Schemes:

• PM-KUSUM (2019): solar pumps for farmers.
• PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana (Feb 2024): rooftop solar for 1 crore households with up to 300 free units a month (verify progress).

Household and urban fuels

• The rural cooking problem:
• Burning wood, dung cakes and biomass causes deforestation and loss of green cover.
• It wastes cattle dung that could be fertiliser.

• It causes indoor air pollution.

• LPG as clean fuel: subsidised LPG cuts household pollution and energy waste.

• PM Ujjwala Yojana (2016) gave free connections. PAHAL (2015) pays the LPG subsidy by DBT.

• The weak spot is low refill usage.

• Biogas (gobar gas): cattle dung is digested without air to produce methane-rich gas.

• The leftover slurry is a very good organic fertiliser and soil conditioner.
• NCERT: plants were given through easy loans and subsidy.

• GOBARdhan (2018) and SATAT (2018) scale this up to compressed biogas.

• Compressed natural gas (CNG):

• The SC ordered it for Delhi's public transport in 1998 in M.C. Mehta. Delhi switched in the early 2000s.

• NCERT says the air "has become cleaner", and many cities followed.

• Road space rationing: Delhi's odd-even scheme (first January 2016) lets odd or even registration numbers drive on alternate days. Delhi also uses solar street lighting.

• Energy poverty is the lack of affordable, reliable electricity and clean cooking fuel.
• SDG 7 targets it.
• Saubhagya (2017) electrified households.
• NFHS-5 (2019-21) found ~59% of households used clean cooking fuel (verify).

8. Strategies II: traditional knowledge and sustainable agriculture

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NCERT's strategies

• Traditional knowledge: Indians were "a component of the environment and not its controller".
• Traditional farming, healthcare, housing and transport were environment-friendly.
• India has ~15,000 medicinal plant species, and ~8,000 are in regular use in Ayurveda, Unani, Tibetan and folk systems.
• Herbal cosmetics show the revival. They have few side effects and need no heavy chemical processing.

• TKDL (2001) protects this knowledge from biopiracy. The turmeric (1997) and neem patents were revoked.

• Biocomposting:

• Five decades of chemical fertilisers damaged land, contaminated groundwater and raised irrigation demand.

• Farmers are returning to compost made from organic waste. In some areas cattle are kept mainly for their dung.

• Vermicomposting: earthworms turn organic waste into compost faster than normal composting. Civic bodies also benefit because less waste needs disposal.

• Biopest control:
• The Green Revolution's pesticide use contaminated food, soil, water bodies and groundwater, and even milk, meat and fish.

• Remedies:

  • neem-based pesticides
  • mixed cropping and crop rotation
  • natural predators: snakes eat rats and mice; owls and peacocks eat vermin; lizards eat insects

• Integrated pest management (IPM): combines biological, cultural, mechanical and need-based chemical control. It has been national policy since 1985.

Beyond NCERT

• Organic farming is a whole-farm system that restores ecological balance and replaces costly chemicals with local organic inputs. Yields are lower at first.
• Organic food is grown without synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or hormones. It is usually certified and sells at a price premium.
• PKVY (2015) supports clusters. Sikkim became the first fully organic state in January 2016.

• Certification and farm economics are in rural-diversification-allied.

• Natural farming is chemical-free and uses cow-based on-farm inputs and natural processes.

• Zero budget natural farming (Subhash Palekar) has four pillars:
  • jeevamrutha (microbial culture)
  • beejamrutha (seed treatment)
  • acchadana (mulching)
  • whapasa (soil aeration)
• Scale-up: BPKP (2020-21), Andhra Pradesh's APCNF, and the National Mission on Natural Farming (Nov 2024; ~₹2,481 crore, verify).

• The debate: yield losses in the first years, food-security risk, and whether costs are really "zero".

• Resource-conserving practices:

• Conservation agriculture has three principles: minimum soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop diversification.
• Zero tillage sows directly into unploughed soil with the residue left in place. The Happy Seeder does this and so avoids stubble burning.
• Direct seeded rice sows seed directly instead of transplanting seedlings. It saves water and labour and cuts methane.
• System of rice intensification (Madagascar, 1980s) uses young seedlings, wide spacing and intermittent irrigation. It needs less water and seed.

• Regenerative agriculture restores soil and biodiversity through cover crops, reduced tillage, rotations and managed grazing.

• Agroforestry combines trees with crops or livestock, which raises income, soil health and carbon storage. India's National Agroforestry Policy (2014) was the world's first.

• Climate-smart agriculture (FAO) aims at productivity, resilience and lower emissions together. India's versions are NICRA (ICAR, 2011) and NMSA.
• Carbon farming stores carbon in soil and trees, which can earn carbon credits (Section 11).

9. Sustainable production: CSR, circular economy, disclosure and green finance

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Producers' responsibilities (Class 8, Factors of Production)

• The harm from production:
• Tamil Nadu leather factories provide jobs but pollute rivers and soil.

• Old phones that are not recycled leak lead and mercury into soil and water.

• The response: reduce waste, avoid pollution, recycle industrial wastewater before release, and use recycled products as inputs.

• Duties to workers:
• fair pay and safe conditions
• skill development and training

• workplace rights: no discrimination, health care, paid leave

• CSR: Companies Act 2013 s.135, effective 1 April 2014, requires 2% of average net profits of the preceding three years. Schedule VII includes environmental sustainability.

• (NCERT imprecise: the mandate applies only above thresholds: net worth ≥ ₹500 crore, turnover ≥ ₹1,000 crore or net profit ≥ ₹5 crore. Mechanics are in factors-of-production.)

From linear to circular

• Linear economy: take → make → use → dispose.
• Circular economy: design out waste by keeping materials in use through reduce, reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycle.
• Recycling reuses waste as input. One tonne of recycled paper saves 17 trees and uses ~70% less energy and water.
• E-waste is discarded electronics that leak toxins when dumped. India is the third-largest generator after China and the US (verify).
• Extended producer responsibility (EPR) makes producers collect and recycle their products at end of life:
• plastics: 2016 rules, 2022 guidelines with tradable EPR certificates
• e-waste: E-Waste Management Rules 2022

• batteries and tyres: 2022

• Urban mining recovers metals from e-waste and other urban waste.

• Right to repair gives consumers access to parts, tools and manuals. The DoCA Right to Repair Portal was launched in 2022.
• Porter hypothesis: well-designed regulation spurs innovation and competitiveness. It is the opposite of the pollution-haven fear.
• Sustainable infrastructure uses cleaner energy and eco-friendly materials and is inclusive of children, the elderly and the disabled (details in infrastructure).
• Sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12; Mission LiFE) minimises resources, toxics and waste across a product's life.

Disclosure and finance

• SEBI's BRSR (Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report) is mandatory for the top 1,000 listed firms from FY 2022-23. BRSR Core adds third-party assurance.
• Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (GHG Protocol):
• Scope 1 is direct, e.g. a firm's own boilers.
• Scope 2 comes from purchased electricity and heat.

• Scope 3 covers the rest of the value chain.

• Greenwashing is claiming to be greener than you are. Greenhushing is deliberately under-reporting green goals to avoid scrutiny.

• CCPA Guidelines on greenwashing and misleading environmental claims (2024) and the Ecomark Rules (2024) apply.

• Enforcement is in consumer-protection.

• Green finance is money directed to green projects:

• sovereign green bonds: framework November 2022, first issue January 2023
• SEBI green debt securities

• RBI green deposit framework (2023)

• Sustainability-linked bonds: the coupon rises or falls depending on whether sustainability targets are met. The proceeds can be used for anything.

• Green taxonomy defines which activities count as green, which guides investment and curbs greenwashing.
• EU Taxonomy (2020).

• India's climate-finance taxonomy was announced in Budget 2024-25, and a draft followed in 2025 (verify status).

• Transition finance funds hard-to-abate sectors such as steel and cement while they decarbonise. It is not limited to already-green activities.

• Climate-related financial risk:
• Physical risk comes from extreme weather.
• Transition risk comes from policy, technology and market shifts.
• RBI joined the NGFS in 2021 and issued a draft disclosure framework in 2024 (verify final).

10. The global climate regime and climate finance

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From Rio to Paris

Instrument	Key points
UNFCCC 1992 (in force 1994)	Annex I (developed) vs non-Annex I split; CBDR-RC, Art. 3.1
Kyoto Protocol 1997 (in force 2005)	Binding targets for Annex I only: average 5.2% below 1990 in 2008-12; CDM, JI and emissions trading; Doha Amendment (2012) added a second period, 2013-20
Paris Agreement 2015 (in force 2016)	Well below 2°C, pursue 1.5°C; bottom-up NDCs every 5 years; Global Stocktake (first at COP28, 2023); Art. 6 markets, Art. 8 loss and damage, Art. 9 finance

• Common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR): all countries share the duty, but developed countries bear more because of their historical emissions and greater capacity.
• Nationally determined contributions (NDCs): each country's own climate pledge under Paris, updated every five years.
• India's updated NDC (August 2022):
• Cut carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) 45% below 2005 levels by 2030.
• Reach ~50% of installed power capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030, with technology transfer and low-cost finance including the GCF.
• Create an extra forest carbon sink of 2.5-3 GtCO2e.

• Promote LiFE.

• Panchamrit (COP26, Glasgow 2021): 1. 500 GW non-fossil capacity by 2030 2. 50% of energy requirements from renewables by 2030 3. cut 1 bn t of projected emissions by 2030 4. 45% intensity cut 5. net zero by 2070

• LT-LEDS was submitted in November 2022.

• Progress: non-fossil capacity crossed ~50% in 2025. Emissions intensity fell ~36% between 2005 and 2020 (first BTR, 2024). The 2035 NDC status is pending (verify current).
• Key targets defined:
• Net zero: all GHG emissions balanced by removals. India's target year is 2070.
• Carbon neutrality: net CO2 is zero.

• Carbon negative: removals exceed emissions. Bhutan and Suriname are examples.

• Domestic architecture: NAPCC (2008) with 8 missions (solar, energy efficiency, sustainable habitat, water, Himalayan ecosystem, Green India, sustainable agriculture, strategic knowledge), plus state action plans.

Climate finance and loss and damage

• Climate finance is public, private and alternative money for mitigation and adaptation.
• The $100 bn/yr goal was set at Copenhagen (2009). The OECD says it was reportedly met only in 2022.
• New collective quantified goal (NCQG) (COP29, Baku 2024):
• at least $300 bn/yr by 2035, led by developed countries
• sits within a $1.3 trillion "Baku to Belém" ambition

• India called it inadequate and objected to its adoption

• Institutions: GCF, GEF, Adaptation Fund; India's NAFCC (2015).

• Adaptation finance pays for resilience, such as flood defences and drought-tolerant crops. The Glasgow pledge is to double it by 2025 from 2019 levels.
• Loss and damage is harm beyond what adaptation can prevent, such as a submerged island or a lost harvest.
• Warsaw International Mechanism (2013) → fund agreed at COP27 (2022) → operationalised at COP28 (2023).
• The World Bank is interim host.

• Pledges of a few hundred million dollars are tiny against needs.

• Debates:

• grants vs loans, since loans add to poor countries' debt
• private mobilisation
• the push to widen donors to China and Gulf states
• whether CBDR survives Paris's "everyone submits NDCs" model

11. Pricing pollution: carbon taxes, cap-and-trade and carbon markets

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Theory and instruments

• Pollution is an externality: a cost the polluter does not pay.
• Internalisation of externalities makes polluters bear the full social cost. There are three routes:
• Pigouvian tax, equal to marginal damage (see taxation)
• tradable permits

• Coasean bargaining, where property rights are clear (see market-structures-competition)

• Carbon pricing puts a price on emissions:

	Carbon tax	Cap-and-trade
Fixes	Price	Quantity (the cap)
Uncertain	How much emissions fall	Permit price
Plus	Revenue to recycle	Market finds least-cost cuts
Example	Sweden	EU ETS 2005; China national ETS 2021

• Cap-and-trade: the regulator caps total emissions and issues tradable allowances. Firms that can cut emissions cheaply sell their spare permits.
• Social cost of carbon: the present value of damage from one more tonne of CO2. It is the benchmark price. The US EPA's 2023 estimate was ~$190/t, later withdrawn (verify current).
• Internal carbon price: a notional price firms use to screen their own investments.
• Green tax: a tax on harmful goods or activities.
• India's implicit carbon prices: the Clean Energy Cess on coal (₹50/t in 2010, ₹400/t by 2016) was subsumed into the GST compensation cess in 2017. The current treatment after the 2025 GST changes needs verifying.

• Fuel excise, the green tax on old vehicles, and Delhi's environment compensation charge on trucks.

• Fossil fuel subsidies lower fossil costs and act as a negative carbon price.

• India's reforms: petrol decontrolled in 2010, diesel in 2014, LPG subsidy moved to DBT.
• The IMF separates explicit subsidies (below-cost pricing) from implicit ones (unpriced damage).

Carbon markets

• A carbon market is where credits or allowances are bought and sold.
• Carbon credit: 1 tonne of CO2e reduced, avoided or removed.
• Carbon offset: buying credits to cancel out one's own emissions.

• Its integrity depends on four tests:

  • additionality: the cut would not have happened anyway
  • permanence
  • no leakage
  • no double counting

• Compliance carbon market: created by law. Covered entities must surrender allowances or credits.

• Voluntary carbon market: buyers offset by choice. Standards include Verra, Gold Standard and ICVCM's Core Carbon Principles. Some REDD+ credits faced integrity scandals.
• Lineage:
• Clean development mechanism (Kyoto): developed countries funded projects in developing countries and earned CERs. India was the second-largest host after China.
• Internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) under Paris Art. 6.2 are country-to-country transfers with "corresponding adjustments" so a cut isn't counted twice. India notified its list of eligible activities in 2023.

• Art. 6.4 created the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM). Its rules were finalised at COP29.

• India's path:

• PAT scheme (2012), which trades ESCerts for energy saving
• RECs
• Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act 2022

• Carbon Credit Trading Scheme 2023:

  • BEE is administrator, Grid-India is registry and CERC regulates trading.
  • Its compliance mechanism sets GHG-intensity targets for obligated sectors (notified sectors, verify).
  • Its offset mechanism lets others earn credits voluntarily.

• Carbon leakage is when production shifts to countries with laxer rules, cancelling out cuts made elsewhere.

• EU CBAM is a charge on the embodied carbon of imports:
• transitional phase from October 2023, definitive from 2026
• covers steel, aluminium, cement, fertiliser, electricity and hydrogen

• India calls it unilateral and against CBDR (trade-law detail in international-trade-policy)

• Trap: a green credit (Section 4) is not a carbon credit.

12. The energy transition and a just transition

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Pathway and technologies

• Energy transition: a structural shift from fossil fuels to renewables, nuclear and green hydrogen.
• Energy trilemma: balancing security, affordability and sustainability at the same time.
• Energy intensity is energy used per unit of GDP. It has been falling in India, helped by the Energy Conservation Act 2001 and BEE.
• Coal phase-down: India secured "phase-down", not "phase-out", of unabated coal at COP26.
• Hydrogen by colour:

Type	Made from	CO2
Grey hydrogen	natural gas or other fossil fuels	released
Blue hydrogen	natural gas	captured and stored
Green hydrogen	electrolysis of water using renewable power	near zero; India's standard (2023) is ≤ 2 kg CO2e per kg H2

• Green ammonia is made with green hydrogen. It can be used as fertiliser feedstock, shipping fuel or a hydrogen carrier.
• Hydrogen economy: hydrogen as a major fuel, industrial input and energy store.

• National Green Hydrogen Mission (January 2023): 5 MMT/yr by 2030, with SIGHT incentives for electrolysers and production.

• Green premium: the extra cost of the clean option over the fossil one. It is the main barrier.

• Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS): capturing CO2 for use or underground storage in hard-to-abate sectors (NITI Aayog report, 2022).
• Critical minerals are essential for clean energy and security, and their supply is at risk.
• India listed 30 in 2023, including lithium, cobalt and rare earths.

• Supporting moves: MMDR Amendment 2023, KABIL for overseas assets, National Critical Mineral Mission (2025, verify) and the Minerals Security Partnership.

• Resource nationalism: governments tighten control through export bans or higher royalties. Examples:

• China's gallium, germanium and rare-earth export controls
• Indonesia's nickel ore export ban

Justice and stranded assets

• Stranded assets are coal plants and reserves that lose value early because of climate policy or cheaper renewables.

• India's coal fleet is young, so the risk falls on banks and PSUs (links to climate-related financial risk, Section 9).

• Just transition means the move to low carbon must protect fossil-dependent workers, districts and states.

• The most exposed states are Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.
• At stake are coal royalties, District Mineral Foundation funds and railways' coal-freight revenue.
• Frameworks: ILO guidelines (2015) and the COP27 Just Transition Work Programme.

• JETPs are deals under which rich countries fund coal exits: South Africa (2021), Indonesia and Vietnam (2022).

• India's equity arguments:

• low per capita emissions
• the need for development space
• wariness of JETP-style conditions on its coal policy

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Exam angles

Prelims — high-yield facts and traps

• The four functions of the environment: supply resources, assimilate waste, sustain life (biodiversity), aesthetic services.
• Carrying capacity means extraction ≤ regeneration and waste ≤ assimilation. Absorptive capacity is the ability to absorb degradation.
• Renewable: trees, fish, water. Non-renewable: petroleum, coal, iron ore. Groundwater is renewable but can be overused.
• India's five priority issues: land degradation, biodiversity loss, vehicular air pollution, fresh water, solid waste. The 12 causes of land degradation include open access and poverty.
• CPCB was set up in 1974 under the Water Act, with air powers under the Air Act 1981. It lists 17 categories of highly polluting industries and monitors 125 rivers.
• Appiko: Karnataka, Salkani forest, 8 Sept 1983, 12,000 trees. Chipko: Garhwal, 1973. "Sirsi district" is FALSE; Sirsi is a taluk.
• "UNCED (1992) first gave the sustainable-development definition" is FALSE. The definition comes from the Brundtland/WCED report Our Common Future (1987).
• Barbier's definition is centred on the poor. Daly has five rules and the "Plimsoll line". SDGs: 17 goals, 169 targets, 2015-2030.
• Treaty pairings: Vienna 1985 and Montreal 1987 cover ODS. Kigali 2016 covers HFCs.
• "HFCs deplete ozone" is FALSE. HFCs are GHGs.
• UNFCCC 1992 · Kyoto 1997 (CDM, JI, ET) · Warsaw 2013 (REDD+, WIM) · Paris 2015 (Art. 6/8/9) · Glasgow 2021 (coal phase-down, Panchamrit) · Sharm el-Sheikh 2022 (L&D fund) · Baku 2024 (NCQG $300 bn).
• "India's NDC cuts absolute emissions by 45%" is FALSE. The 45% cut is in emissions intensity, against 2005.
• The 50% non-fossil target is installed capacity, not generation, and it is conditional on finance. Net zero is 2070. ISA was launched with France in 2015, HQ Gurugram.
• One carbon credit = 1 tCO2e. CCTS is run by BEE, Green Credit by ICFRE, and a green credit ≠ a carbon credit.
• PAT → ESCerts. Art. 6.2 → ITMOs. Art. 6.4 → PACM.
• CBAM covers steel, aluminium, cement, fertiliser, electricity and hydrogen.
• Concept pairs:
• the EKC is an inverted U
• the Porter hypothesis vs the pollution haven hypothesis
• rebound = Jevons paradox
• weak vs strong sustainability

• option value is a use value; existence and bequest are non-use values

• ANS = net national saving + education − depletion (energy, mineral, forest) − CO2 and PM damage.

• Scope 1 is direct, Scope 2 is purchased energy, Scope 3 is the value chain.
• Hydrogen: grey is fossil with no capture, blue is fossil with CCS, green is electrolysis on renewables. India's green threshold is ≤2 kg CO2e/kg H2.
• Agriculture:
• ZBNF pillars: jeevamrutha, beejamrutha, acchadana, whapasa
• SRI (transplanted, wide spacing) vs DSR (no transplanting)
• conservation agriculture's three principles
• India's agroforestry policy (2014) was the world's first
• neem is a biopesticide
• Sikkim became the first organic state in 2016

Mains — GS-III themes

1. Growth vs environment: is India's degradation driven by poverty or by affluence? Use EKC and decoupling evidence, and weigh "grow first, clean later" against leapfrogging.
2. Opportunity cost of damage: put a price on air pollution (deaths, GDP loss), groundwater depletion and land degradation, and argue for green accounting and ANS alongside GDP.
3. Command-and-control vs market instruments: polluter pays and enforcement gaps at PCBs and the NGT; carbon tax vs cap-and-trade for India; CCTS design; integrity of offsets; whether EPR works.
4. Climate justice: CBDR vs universal NDCs; the adequacy of the NCQG and the loss-and-damage fund; CBAM as green protectionism; the per capita emissions argument.
5. Energy transition trade-offs: coal dependence and stranded assets; critical-mineral imports and China risk; green hydrogen's green premium; grid integration of renewables; energy poverty; just transition for coal states.
6. Sustainable agriculture: natural farming vs food security; groundwater-hungry paddy and virtual-water exports; stubble burning; barriers to DSR, SRI and zero tillage.
7. People and projects: displacement and consent (Narmada, RFCTLARR); EIA dilution; the quality of compensatory afforestation and the NPV logic; Chipko and Appiko as models of participatory conservation.
8. Corporate responsibility: CSR vs ESG disclosure (BRSR); greenwashing rules; the green taxonomy and mobilising private green capital.

Current-affairs hooks

• UNFCCC COPs (COP30 Belém 2025, NDC 3.0 and India's 2035 NDC, COP31 — verify), the IPCC AR7 cycle, the UNEP Emissions Gap Report, the WMO State of the Global Climate and the Global Stocktake.
• Economic Survey climate and energy chapters, and Budget green announcements: green growth, the climate-finance taxonomy, critical minerals, nuclear/SMRs, rooftop solar, green hydrogen.
• CCTS target notifications and first trades; the start of EU CBAM's definitive phase in 2026 and India's response; Article 6 bilateral deals.
• RBI climate-risk disclosure and stress tests; sovereign green bond auctions; SEBI BRSR and ESG-rating rules; CCPA greenwashing actions.
• Data and index releases: ISFR (every two years), the CGWB groundwater assessment, NCAP and Swachh Vayu Survekshan rankings, the SDG India Index, EPI, Earth Overshoot Day, and the ozone assessment (World Ozone Day, 16 September).
• Seasonal triggers: Delhi-NCR winter smog and stubble burning (GRAP), heatwaves, glacial lake outburst floods, and monsoon extremes as loss-and-damage cases.