Environment and Sustainable Development

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: "Environment and Sustainable Development" is Chapter 7 of NCERT's Indian Economic Development (Reprint 2026-27); it was Chapter 9 until the 2023-24 rationalisation, and its text is almost unchanged (one vehicle statistic was moved to 2022). It is the economics book's environment chapter: what the environment does for the economy, why its services are now scarce, the state of India's environment, what sustainable development means, and which strategies would get there. Its vocabulary (carrying capacity, absorptive capacity, the four functions, intergenerational equity, Herman Daly's conditions) is examinable, and its examples (Chipko and Appiko, the pollution control boards, CNG in Delhi, non-conventional energy) feed GS3 and GS1: how climate change will affect India (Mains 2017), the Green Grid Initiative and the International Solar Alliance (2021), environmental NGOs and impact assessment (2024), solid waste (2018), solar costs (2015), carbon credits (2014), electric vehicles (2023), forests and climate (GS1 2020), groundwater in the Ganga valley (GS1 2024), Delhi's air (GS1 2015) and coal mining (GS1 2017). This page follows NCERT's sections in order, quotes its definitions, notes where its own text is loose or out of date, and dates the current record: forest cover, renewable capacity, groundwater, and India's climate targets.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

The environment is an economic resource with four jobs. NCERT defines it as "the total planetary inheritance and the totality of all resources", biotic and abiotic, and gives it "four vital functions": it supplies resources (renewable and non-renewable), it assimilates waste, it sustains life by providing genetic and biodiversity, and it provides aesthetic services. The examinable point is the third: when the first two are overused, "the environment fails to perform its third and vital function of life sustenance and this results in an environmental crisis".

Crisis comes from crossing two limits. The environment works "as long as the demand on these functions is within its carrying capacity": extraction no faster than regeneration, waste no more than the environment can absorb. Its absorptive capacity is "the ability of the environment to absorb degradation". Population growth and affluent consumption have pushed demand past both, producing NCERT's "reversal of supply-demand relationship for environmental quality": once plentiful, environmental services are now scarce, and cleaning up has a cost.

Sustainable development is about the next generation. The definition NCERT quotes asks for development "that meets the need of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their own needs". The two key words, NCERT says, are "needs" (a question of distribution, "and is hence a moral issue") and "future generations" (intergenerational equity). Daly's rules turn the idea into tests: extract renewables no faster than they regenerate, deplete non-renewables no faster than substitutes are created, and correct pollution.

PART 1 — Quick Reference

The Chapter at a Glance

Dates and Numbers (NCERT's figures first; the record named in each row)

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

7.1-7.2 The Environment and Its Functions

"The economic development that we have achieved so far has come at a very heavy price, at the cost of environmental quality." The environment includes "all the biotic and abiotic factors that influence each other": living elements (birds, animals, plants, forests, fisheries) and non-living ones (air, water, land, rocks, sunlight). Renewable resources "can be used without the possibility of the resource becoming depleted or exhausted" (trees, fish); non-renewable ones "get exhausted with extraction and use" (fossil fuel). The four functions and the two capacities are in First Principles and the key-term box.

Today the limits have been crossed "all over the world": population growth in developing countries and "the affluent consumption and production standards of the developed world" have overloaded the first two functions; "many resources have become extinct"; past development "has polluted and dried up rivers and other aquifers making water an economic good"; and spending on research for new resources and on health rises ("seventy per cent of water in India is polluted", NCERT says, without a source or year). Global problems such as warming and ozone depletion add costs, so "the opportunity costs of negative environmental impacts are high".

Box 7.1, global warming. "A gradual increase in the average temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution", much of it "human-induced" by burning fossil fuels and deforestation. NCERT's figures (sourced in the box to Wikipedia) are old: carbon dioxide and methane up "31 per cent and 149 per cent" above pre-industrial levels and atmospheric temperature up "1.1°F (0.6°C)" over the past century. Its likely effects: melting polar ice and rising seas, disrupted drinking-water supplies from snowmelt, extinctions, more tropical storms and tropical disease. The Kyoto conference of 1997 "resulted in an international agreement to fight global warming which called for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised nations".

Box 7.2, ozone depletion. Ozone in the stratosphere is destroyed by chlorine and bromine compounds from chlorofluorocarbons (refrigerants and aerosol propellants) and halons (fire extinguishers); more ultraviolet radiation then reaches the earth, causing skin cancer and harming phytoplankton and plants. "A reduction of approximately 5 per cent in the ozone layer was detected from 1979 to 1990." Concern led to "the adoption of the Montreal Protocol banning the use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) compounds", carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform and halons. (The Protocol was adopted on 16 September 1987 and entered into force on 1 January 1989.)

The supply-demand reversal. Are environmental problems new? Early in civilisation, before population growth and industrialisation, "the demand for environmental resources and services was much less than their supply", so pollution stayed within absorptive capacity and extraction below regeneration. With population growth and the industrial revolution "the demand for resources for both production and consumption went beyond the rate of regeneration", and the pressure on absorptive capacity rose. "We are now faced with increased demand for environmental resources and services but their supply is limited due to overuse and misuse." NCERT's Figure 7.2: the Damodar Valley, "one of India's most industrialised regions", where pollutants "are converting it into an ecological disaster".

7.3 State of India's Environment

India has "abundant natural resources": fertile soils (the Deccan's black soil suits cotton), the Indo-Gangetic plains ("one of the most fertile, intensively cultivated and densely populated regions in the world"), forests, minerals ("India accounts for nearly 8 per cent of the world's total iron-ore reserves"; bauxite, copper, chromate, diamonds, gold, lead, lignite, manganese, zinc and uranium) and the Indian Ocean. Development has pressed on these resources, and the threat "poses a dichotomy: threat of poverty-induced environmental degradation and, at the same time, threat of pollution from affluence and a rapidly growing industrial sector".

NCERT's five priority issues: "(i) land degradation (ii) biodiversity loss (iii) air pollution with special reference to vehicular pollution in urban cities (iv) management of fresh water and (v) solid waste management". Land degradation has twelve causes in its list: loss of vegetation through deforestation; unsustainable fuelwood and fodder extraction; shifting cultivation; encroachment on forests; forest fires and overgrazing; inadequate soil conservation; improper crop rotation; indiscriminate agro-chemicals; poorly planned irrigation; groundwater extraction beyond recharge; open-access resources; and the poverty of agriculture-dependent people. "India supports approximately 17 per cent of the world's human and 20 per cent of livestock population on a mere 2.5 per cent of the world's geographical area." Per capita forest land is "only 0.06 hectare against the requirement of 0.47 hectare", leading to excess felling of about 15 million cubic metres; soil is eroded "at a rate of 5.3 billion tonnes a year", losing 0.8 million tonnes of nitrogen, 1.8 million tonnes of phosphorus and 26.3 million tonnes of potassium (a Government estimate puts nutrient loss at 5.8 to 8.4 million tonnes).

Box 7.3, Chipko or Appiko. The Chipko movement protected forests in the Himalayas; in Karnataka a similar movement was called Appiko, "which means to hug". "On 8 September 1983, when the felling of trees was started in Salkani forest in Sirsi district, 160 men, women and children hugged the trees and forced the woodcutters to leave." They kept vigil for six weeks until officials promised scientific felling under the working plan, saved 12,000 trees, and the movement spread to neighbouring districts. Twelve years after a paper mill came to Uttar Kanara, "bamboo has been wiped out from that area". Appiko volunteers asked that local people be consulted when trees are marked and that trees within 100 metres of a water source or on slopes of 30 degrees or more not be felled. (Sirsi is a taluk of Uttara Kannada district, not a district; NCERT's source is CSE's State of India's Environment 2: The Second Citizens' Report.) GS3 2024 asked for four examples of environmental NGOs and activists influencing impact assessment; Appiko is the chapter's.

Box 7.4, pollution control boards. "The government set up the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 1974", followed by state boards. They collect and disseminate information on water, air and land pollution, lay down standards for sewage, effluents and emissions, advise governments, sponsor research, run awareness campaigns, prepare codes and guidelines, inspect industries, provide air-quality data for siting and planning, and "monitor the quality of water in 125 rivers (including the tributaries), wells, lakes, creeks, ponds, tanks, drains and canals". Air pollution is worst in cities, where vehicles are "the major contributors"; "the number of motor vehicles has increased from about 3 lakh in 1951 to 35 crores in 2022", two-wheelers and cars making up about 85 per cent. India "is one of the ten most industrialised nations of the world", and the CPCB "has identified seventeen categories of industries (large and medium scale) as significantly polluting".

7.4 Sustainable Development

"Environment and economy are interdependent and need each other." Development that ignores the environment "will destroy the environment that sustains life forms". Sustainable development "will allow all future generations to have a potential average quality of life that is at least as high as that which is being enjoyed by the current generation". NCERT gives three versions (key-term box): the UNCED definition, which it also traces to Our Common Future; Edward Barbier's, focused on the material standard of living of the poor ("increased income, real income, educational services, health care, sanitation, water supply") and on "lasting and secure livelihoods that minimise resource depletion, environmental degradation, cultural disruption and social instability"; and the Brundtland Commission's emphasis on future generations, in line with environmentalists who say "we have a moral obligation to hand over the planet earth in good order to the future generation".

The present generation can promote development compatible with "(i) conservation of natural assets (ii) preservation of the regenerative capacity of the world's natural ecological system (iii) avoiding the imposition of added costs or risks on future generations". Herman Daly, "a leading environmental economist", lists five conditions:

1. limit the human population "to a level within the carrying capacity of the environment" (the Plimsoll line);
2. technological progress should be "input efficient and not input consuming";
3. renewable resources should be extracted so that "rate of extraction should not exceed rate of regeneration";
4. for non-renewable resources, "rate of depletion should not exceed the rate of creation of renewable substitutes";
5. "inefficiencies arising from pollution should be corrected".

"In 2015, the UN formulated 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) intended to be achieved by the year 2030." (The Sustainable Development Solutions Network's Sustainable Development Report 2026 ranks India 94th of 169 countries, with a score of 68.3, up from 99th of 167 in 2025; it notes India's rise of 18 places since 2015.)

7.5 Strategies for Sustainable Development

Non-conventional energy. India depends heavily on thermal and hydro power, and both harm the environment: thermal plants emit carbon dioxide and produce fly ash; hydro projects "inundate forests and interfere with the natural flow of water". NCERT then says "wind power and solar rays are good examples of conventional sources of energy", a misprint for non-conventional (its own sub-headings treat them as alternatives to thermal and hydro).

• LPG and gobar gas in rural areas: households burning wood and dung cause deforestation, waste of dung and indoor pollution; subsidised LPG "is a clean fuel", and gobar gas plants turn dung into fuel and leave slurry as "a very good organic fertiliser".
• CNG in urban areas: "In Delhi, the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as fuel in public transport system has significantly lowered air pollution"; NCERT also mentions Delhi's odd-even scheme. (GS1 2015 asked why Delhi's air is worse than Mumbai's and Kolkata's.)
• Wind power: high initial cost, but "the benefits are such that the high cost gets easily absorbed".
• Solar power through photovoltaic cells: useful for remote areas and "totally free from pollution"; "India is also leading an International body called International Solar Alliance (ISA)". (GS3 2021 asked about the Green Grid Initiative launched at COP26 and its origin in the ISA.)
• Mini-hydel plants: small turbines on perennial mountain streams that meet local demand without changing land use or needing long transmission lines.
• Traditional knowledge: India has "about 15,000 species of plants which have medicinal properties", about 8,000 in regular use; Ayurveda, Unani, Tibetan and folk systems are in demand again.
• Biocomposting: decades of chemical fertilisers have damaged land and water; farmers are returning to compost, and earthworms "can convert organic matter into compost faster than the normal composting process".
• Biopest control: neem-based pesticides, mixed cropping and rotation, and the protection of snakes, owls, peacocks and lizards that eat pests.

7.6 NCERT's Conclusion

Development aimed at meeting a rising population's needs "puts greater pressure on the environment". Demand for environmental resources once fell short of supply; "now the world is faced with increased demand for environmental resources but their supply is limited due to overuse and misuse". Sustainable development "aims at promoting the kind of development that minimises environmental problems and meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their own needs". NCERT calls it "a paradigm shift in development thinking" that "ensures lasting development and non-declining welfare for all".

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

Three Frameworks

1. Functions, limits, crisis. Four functions, two capacities (carrying, absorptive), one reversal (supply exceeded by demand). Any "environmental crisis" answer can open with this chain and NCERT's Damodar Valley example.

2. India's dichotomy. Poverty-induced degradation (fuelwood, overgrazing, shifting cultivation, encroachment) and affluence-induced pollution (vehicles, industry, waste). Policies must address both: LPG and gobar gas for the first, CNG, standards and pollution boards for the second.

3. From definition to targets. The definition (needs and future generations), Daly's conditions (rates of extraction, depletion and pollution), and India's measurable commitments (the NDCs of 2015, 2022 and 2031-35; net zero 2070), with the dated progress figures as evidence.

Confused Pairs

• Carrying capacity (extraction and waste within limits) vs absorptive capacity (ability to absorb degradation).
• Renewable (trees, fish) vs non-renewable (fossil fuels) resources.
• Global warming (greenhouse gases, lower atmosphere) vs ozone depletion (CFCs and halons, stratosphere); Kyoto (1997) vs Montreal (1987).
• Chipko (Himalaya) vs Appiko (Karnataka, Salkani forest, 8 September 1983).
• Barbier (the poor's standard of living) vs Brundtland (future generations) vs Daly (five conditions).
• Non-fossil capacity (54.88 per cent, August 2026) vs emissions intensity (down 36 per cent, 2005-2020): two different NDC indicators.

Exam Strategy

• Prelims: the four functions; NCERT's five priority issues and twelve causes of land degradation; India's 17 per cent and 20 per cent on 2.5 per cent of area; CPCB 1974 and its tasks; seventeen polluting categories; Appiko's date, place and numbers; Daly's conditions; the SDGs (2015, 17 goals, 2030); ISFR 2023 figures; the NDC numbers for 2030 and 2035.
• Mains: the supply-demand reversal; the dichotomy; the definition and its two key words; strategies with Indian examples; dated progress on renewables, forests and climate targets.
• Avoid: "the environment has three functions" (NCERT: four, including life support); "wind and solar are conventional sources" (NCERT's misprint); "Sirsi district"; "India met all its 2030 NDC targets" (only the non-fossil capacity target is reported met; intensity was down 36 per cent by 2020 against 45); NCERT's 0.6 °C warming as today's figure.
• Cross-reading: chapter 5 (site page 6) for organic farming; the dropped Infrastructure chapter (site page 8) for energy; NCERT Class XII Contemporary World Politics, chapter 6, for the international politics of the environment.

Practice Questions

NCERT's exercises, worked

1. The environment is the total planetary inheritance and all resources, biotic and abiotic, and their interrelationships.
2. The environment cannot sustain life: resources deplete and the crisis sets in.
3. Renewable: trees, fish, water (if used within recharge). Non-renewable: petroleum, coal, iron ore.
4. Global warming and ozone depletion.
5. (i) Rising population raises demand on resources and waste; (ii) air pollution harms health; (iii) water contamination spreads disease; (iv) affluent consumption raises waste and emissions; (v) illiteracy limits awareness; (vi) industrialisation pollutes; (vii) urbanisation strains water, waste and air; (viii) falling forest cover reduces sinks and biodiversity; (ix) poaching destroys biodiversity; (x) global warming threatens agriculture, water and coasts. Each raises the government's costs of health, clean-up and regulation.
6. Supplying resources, assimilating waste, sustaining life (genetic and biodiversity), and providing aesthetic services.
7. Any six of NCERT's twelve: deforestation, fuelwood and fodder extraction, shifting cultivation, encroachment, forest fires and overgrazing, poor soil conservation, improper crop rotation, agro-chemicals, poor irrigation, groundwater overuse, open-access resources, poverty.
8. Degradation forces spending on new resources, on research and on health (respiratory and water-borne disease), money that could have gone to other uses: an opportunity cost.
9. Non-conventional energy, LPG and gobar gas, CNG, wind, solar, mini-hydel, traditional knowledge, biocomposting and biopest control (NCERT's strategies).
10. Fertile soils, the Indo-Gangetic plains, forests, rivers, minerals (iron ore about 8 per cent of world reserves), coal, gas and the Indian Ocean.
11. Partly: the problems sharpened with population growth and industrialisation, when demand for environmental services exceeded supply.
12. (a) Overuse: groundwater extraction beyond recharge; excess felling. (b) Misuse: dumping industrial effluents in rivers; indiscriminate pesticides.
13. Land degradation, biodiversity loss, urban air pollution, fresh-water management, solid waste.
14. Correcting damage (cleaning rivers, treating disease, restoring land) uses resources that had other uses; that forgone use is the opportunity cost.
15. Demand for environmental services once fell short of supply; it now exceeds supply because of population and affluence, which is the crisis.
16. Two consequences: polluted rivers and air; degraded land and forests. Yes, the problems are both poverty-induced (fuelwood, overgrazing) and affluence-induced (vehicles, industry).
17. Development that meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
18. Any four from 7.5 adapted to the locality (rooftop solar, biogas, composting, public transport on CNG).
19. Intergenerational equity means the present generation should leave the next at least the stock of "quality of life" assets it inherited.

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers)

20. "India's environmental problems are both poverty-induced and affluence-induced." Discuss with examples and suggest policy responses for each. (GS3, 15 marks)
21. Explain Herman Daly's conditions for sustainable development and apply two of them to India's groundwater and forests. (GS3, 10 marks)
22. Assess India's progress on its nationally determined contributions, distinguishing capacity, intensity and sink targets. (GS3, 15 marks)
23. What does the Appiko movement teach about community participation in forest management? (GS1/GS3, 10 marks)

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

• NCERT, Indian Economic Development (Class XI), ch. 7 "Environment and Sustainable Development", Reprint 2026-27: ncert.nic.in PDF.
• Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023 (PIB release, 21 December 2024).
• Central Ground Water Board, Dynamic Ground Water Resources of India 2025.
• PIB, Cabinet approves India's Nationally Determined Contribution for 2031-35, 25 March 2026; PIB, Cabinet approves India's updated NDC, August 2022.
• Central Electricity Authority, Installed Capacity Report as on 31 August 2026: cea.nic.in PDF.
• UN Treaty Collection status pages for the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and the Montreal Protocol, read 3-4 October 2026.
• World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (1987), ch. 2 "Towards Sustainable Development"; UN document A/42/427 (4 August 1987): un-documents.net.
• IPCC, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers, statement A.1.2: ipcc.ch PDF.
• NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, global monthly mean CO2 (read 4 October 2026): gml.noaa.gov; NOAA Climate.gov, "Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide": climate.gov.
• UNFCCC NDC Registry (India, 2031-2035), read 4 October 2026: unfccc.int.
• PIB, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Parliament answer on climate measures (NAPCC's nine missions), 24 July 2025: pib.gov.in.
• International Solar Alliance: isa.int.
• Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Sustainable Development Report 2026: PDF.