Almost anything of any importance in India and in the lives of its people has its roots and consequences in some form or another of ecological security. A very large part of the daily existence of some three out of four of our fellow citizens directly depends, on a day-to-day basis, on the processes of nature and the products they make possible. For the rest of us, even those living in the largest cities, the impacts may be more indirect, but there are numerous and they can be pervasive. All of us face them, no less than the villagers do, in our daily lives: from how much clean water we have to drink or how much dust there is in the air we breathe to the numbers of villagers that crowd our urban slums — eco-refugees from a rapidly degenerating resource base — to the price we pay for onions.
 
The changing climate has come to be recognised as one of the major sources of vulnerability mediated through the environment. As global temperatures rise, rainfall patterns change, extreme events increase in frequency and magnitude, and the sea level rises, more and more lives and livelihoods will become disrupted. A few may well find more opportunities (such as growing crops in dry areas that are becoming more humid or in less cold winters) but for most, the changes resulting from changing climate will not be welcomed as an improvement.

Diverse groups are affected differently by the deterioration in the health of the environment. Geographically, of course, different nations will face different outcomes, physically, economically and socially. Within each nation, there will be groups that suffer the most and others that actually benefit from the changes. In India as also the rest of South Asia, we can expect to see some of the worst impacts anywhere.

Farmers, used for millennia to certain environmental conditions, will have to adjust to completely new ones. Given the radical changes that have already taken place in agricultural practices over the past few decades, additional adjustments may not at first be thought of as being very difficult, but large-scale changes and redistribution of wealth and income, which can be expected to take place, could become major sources of social and economic breakdown.

Similarly, much of the ‘informal sector’, which accounts for the bulk of the non-farm jobs in the country, is at the mercy of the elements in one way of another. Many of these will have their regular means of livelihood diminished or eliminated by the changes taking place in the physical environment.

The segment of society that is likely to be affected the most deeply is women, some three billion of them, in all regions, in all economic strata and in all kinds of habitats. Among these, the worst affected will surely be the two billion or so low-income women in the third world. Some one billion of them live in rural communities and the rest in the already squalid, insanitary slums of exploding cities. In their every day lives, already encumbered heavily by the need to fetch water, gather fuel, protect families from diseases, maintain a livable shelter, they will have to invest even more heavily into the daily chores of survival and subsistence.

Ecological security is, by its very nature, a holistic concept. However, the devil lies in the detail. And so, of course, do the angels. If we are to establish a secure ecological foundation for our economy, we must get to the root causes and deal with the fundamental barriers to achieving it. It is crucial to keep in mind the whole picture and also to understand the little elements, the pixels, that come together to make it what it is.

We now need to adopt radically new ways to deal with our future, new technologies, new systems of managing our resources, new institutions of governance. If we are to get these approaches right and be able to cope with the changes taking place, then those affected the most – the women, the farmers, the marginalised – must be integrally involved in designing them. q

               Back to Contents