Ninety five days in debt

Earth uses a year's supply of resources in nine months

September 27th came and went and yet much was not made of this year’s ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ in India. It was the day the Earth’s inhabitants exhausted their current year’s entitlement of natural resources based on the planet’s capacity to regenerate them during a full year. For the rest of the year the planet lives on borrowed resources — borrowed from future generations. This business of living beyond one’s entitlement began as recently as in the 1970s. In a matter of four decades the Earth’s inhabitants now use up in nine months what they ought to in twelve. Reducing this deficit and repaying this ecological debt ought to engage popular and policy attention more than it has. Unattended, the cumulative overdraft will take the planet to a situation wherein another Earth-like planet would be needed to sustain life on this one. The California-based Global Footprint Network, an international research body that monitors this ecological budget, thinks that point could be reached well before 2050. The consumption of products and resources like water, fish, fossil fuels and such others as well as the destruction of forests that sequester greenhouse gases, which is leading to a mounting eco-debt, has to be curbed. While the United States is the worst global offender, sustaining an unsustainable lifestyle of its people, India’s low per capita consumption, because of the poverty of its millions, means it is not yet drawing down on global resources at unacceptable rates. If the whole world matches the eco-footprint of today’s average Indian, mankind will be able to manage with half of the planet’s bio-capacity.

Given that per capita consumption in developing countries should be expected to go up as incomes rise, it is the rich world that must first tighten its belt and consume less. But in years to come countries like India and China must also learn to live an alternative lifestyle and not imitate the consumption model of the West. The ‘surplus’ they enjoy today will deplete rapidly as incomes rise and lifestyles change. Hence, India has a stake in developing modern technological and scientific options that keep per capita energy consumptions low even as incomes rise. Enhancing the energy efficiency of products and processes, using environmentally safe and easily biodegradable substances, and encouraging recycling of products, notably the packaging material, are among the ways to reduce the eco-overshoot. Awareness generation is, of course, vital. An attempt made in India towards this end by introducing way back in 1991 an eco-labelling scheme, in the form of ‘Ecomark’, that enables consumers to identify eco-friendly products, has however met with little success. Regrettably, hardly a dozen-odd industrial houses have chosen to opt for this mark in two decades. Lack of adequate market response (read consumer preference) for such products is among the major reasons for the failure of this move. Unfortunately, civil society and environment campaigners, who have been taking up several significant public causes for awareness creation, have not yet turned their attention to the critical issue of sustainable living. They should.