Environment and Natural Resources

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: "Environment and Natural Resources" is Chapter 6 of the current Contemporary World Politics (Reprint 2026-27); it was Chapter 8 before the rationalisation of 2022-23, and this site keeps the old numbering in its page order. NCERT's purpose is to show why environmental and resource questions are "deeply political": who causes degradation, who pays, who corrects it and "who gets to use how much of the natural resources of the Earth". The chapter runs from the Earth Summit of 1992 and the global commons to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, India's negotiating position, the environmental movements, the geopolitics of oil and water, and the indigenous peoples. UPSC asks the chapter's questions in GS2 and GS3 every few years: India's "evolving climate change policy in international forums within geopolitical context" (GS2 2022), the outcomes of COP26 (GS3 2021), carbon credits and the Clean Development Mechanism (GS3 2014), global warming and the measures against it (GS3 2022), and sustainable development against economic development (GS4 2014); Prelims 2026 asked about India's long-term low-emission strategy and its biennial reports. This page follows NCERT's sections in order, quotes the Rio Declaration, the UNFCCC and the Brundtland Report where NCERT quotes them, prints NCERT's figures first, and dates every treaty count to the UN Treaty Collection as read in October 2026.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

Environmental issues are political in two senses. The first is practical: most environmental problems are "such that no single government can address them fully", so "they have to become part of 'world politics'". The second is NCERT's deeper sense: "Who causes environmental degradation? Who pays the price? And who is responsible for taking corrective action? Who gets to use how much of the natural resources of the Earth? All these raise the issue of who wields how much power." The chapter is about the second sense; the treaties are its evidence.

North and South want different things. At Rio in 1992 "the rich and developed countries of the First World, generally referred to as the 'global North' were pursuing a different environmental agenda than the poor and developing countries of the Third World, called the 'global South'": the North "concerned with ozone depletion and global warming", the South "anxious to address the relationship between economic development and environmental management". Every later dispute in the chapter, from the commons to Kyoto, is a version of this one.

Commons need rules nobody owns. "'Commons' are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community." Regions "located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state" are the global commons, res communis humanitatis: the atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor and outer space. Their management "is thoroughly influenced by North-South inequalities", because "the crucial issue here is technology and industrial development".

PART 1 — Quick Reference

The Chapter at a Glance

Treaties and Conferences (NCERT's statement first; the UN Treaty Collection as read on 3-4 October 2026)

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

Environmental Concerns in Global Politics

NCERT widens the book's definition of world politics one last time. The earlier chapters dealt with "wars and treaties, rise and decline of state power, the relationship between the governments" and inter-governmental organisations; chapter 5 added poverty and epidemics. Now it asks whether a list of environmental facts belongs in politics at all: cultivable area "is barely expanding any more"; grasslands "overgrazed", fisheries "over-harvested", water bodies depleted and polluted; according to the UNDP's Human Development Report 2016, "663 million people in developing countries have no access to safe water and 2.4 billion have no access to sanitation, resulting in the death of more than three million children every year"; natural forests "are being cut down and people are being displaced"; biodiversity loss; "a steady decline in the total amount of ozone in the Earth's stratosphere (commonly referred to as the ozone hole)"; and coastal pollution "increasing globally ... largely due to land-based activities". NCERT's Aral Sea box, a Prelims favourite, records that "thousands of people have had to leave their homes as the toxic waters have totally destroyed the fishing industry" and that locals joke that "if everyone who'd come to study the Aral had brought a bucket of water, the sea would be full by now".

The answer is yes, twice over. If governments take steps, "these issues will have political consequences"; and since most "are such that no single government can address them fully", they must become part of world politics. The deeper reason is distributional: "Who causes environmental degradation? Who pays the price? And who is responsible for taking corrective action? Who gets to use how much of the natural resources of the Earth?"

The history NCERT gives is short. Awareness "acquired an increasingly political character from the 1960s onwards"; "the Club of Rome, a global think tank, published a book in 1972 entitled Limits to Growth, dramatising the potential depletion of the Earth's resources against the backdrop of rapidly growing world population"; international agencies including UNEP "began holding international conferences and promoting detailed studies". The focus "was firmly consolidated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992", the Earth Summit, "attended by 170 states, thousands of NGOs and many multinational corporations". Five years earlier "the 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, had warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term, especially in view of the demands of the South for further industrial development". Rio exposed the North-South divide described in First Principles. It "produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity, forestry, and recommended a list of development practices called 'Agenda 21'", left "considerable differences and difficulties" unresolved, and produced "a consensus on combining economic growth with ecological responsibility", the approach "commonly known as 'sustainable development'". NCERT notes the critique: "Some critics have pointed out that Agenda 21 was biased in favour of economic growth rather than ensuring ecological conservation."

The Protection of Global Commons

The concept is in the key-term box. NCERT's Antarctica box, from which Prelims draws most of its Antarctic statements, says the continental region "extends over 14 million square kilometres and comprises 26 per cent of the world's wilderness area, representing 90 per cent of all terrestrial ice and 70 per cent of planetary fresh water", with "a further 36 million square kilometres of ocean"; its marine ecosystem rests on "the krill, which is central to marine food chain"; "deep ice cores provide an important source of information about greenhouse gas concentrations and atmospheric temperatures of hundreds and thousands of years ago". On ownership "there are two claims": "some countries like the UK, Argentina, Chile, Norway, France, Australia and New Zealand have made legal claims to sovereign rights over Antarctic territory", while "most other states have taken the opposite view that the Antarctic is a part of the global commons". The differences "have not prevented the adoption of innovative and potentially far-reaching rules"; "since 1959, activities in the area have been limited to scientific research, fishing and tourism", though parts have been "degraded by waste as a result of oil spills".

Two facts about the Antarctic regime that coaching notes misstate. The Antarctic Treaty was signed at Washington on 1 December 1959 and entered into force in 1961; Article IV freezes, rather than extinguishes, the seven territorial claims NCERT lists. The Protocol on Environmental Protection (Madrid, 1991; in force 1998) prohibits "all activities relating to Antarctic mineral resources, except for scientific research", and the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat states: "It is sometimes publicly reported that the Protocol 'expires' in 2048. This is a misinterpretation and is not correct. Neither the Protocol, nor the Antarctic Treaty, have a termination date. For the first fifty years from the Protocol's entry into force (1998), it can only be modified by the unanimous agreement of all Consultative Parties." After that a review conference can be called, but the mineral ban cannot be removed unless a binding legal regime on mineral activities is in force.

The ozone story belongs here too: "the discovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic in the mid-1980s revealed the opportunity as well as dangers inherent in tackling global environmental problems". The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, adopted 16 September 1987 and in force 1 January 1989, has 198 parties (India acceded on 19 June 1992); its Kigali Amendment on hydrofluorocarbons entered into force on 1 January 2019, and India accepted it on 27 September 2021 (UN Treaty Collection, 3 October 2026).

Common but Differentiated Responsibilities

NCERT states the two positions. "The developed countries of the North want to discuss the environmental issue as it stands now and want everyone to be equally responsible for ecological conservation. The developing countries of the South feel that much of the ecological degradation in the world is the product of industrial development undertaken by the developed countries. If they have caused more degradation, they must also take more responsibility for undoing the damage now. Moreover, the developing countries are in the process of industrialisation and they must not be subjected to the same restrictions, which apply to the developed countries." The South's argument "was accepted in the Rio Declaration at the Earth Summit in 1992 and is called the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities'".

NCERT quotes the Declaration: "States shall cooperate in the spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem. In view of the different contributions of global environmental degradation, states have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technological and financial resources they command." (This is Principle 7 of the Rio Declaration. NCERT's copy differs from the adopted text in three places, which reads "in a spirit of global partnership", "contributions to global environmental degradation" and "the technologies and financial resources they command".) It then quotes the UNFCCC: parties should act to protect the climate system "on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" (Article 3, paragraph 1). The parties "agreed that the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries" and "that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low". Hence "China, India, and other developing countries were, therefore, exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol", which NCERT defines as "an international agreement setting targets for industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions", naming "Carbon dioxide, Methane, Hydro-fluoro carbons etc." as the gases "considered at least partly responsible for global warming", "agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto in Japan, based on principles set out in UNFCCC". (The Paris Agreement later re-stated the formula with a third clause: "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances", Article 2.2.)

Common Property Resources

The concept and NCERT's sacred-grove example are in the key-term box. NCERT's longer box adds that sacred groves ("parcels of uncut forest vegetation in the name of certain deities or natural or ancestral spirits") range "from clumps of a few trees to several hundred acres"; that "Hindus commonly worshipped natural objects, including trees and groves" and "many temples have originated from sacred groves"; that "deep religious reverence for nature, rather than resource scarcity, seems to be the basis" of their preservation; and that "a real problem in managing sacred groves arises when legal ownership and operational control are held by different entities", the state and the community, which "vary in their policy norms and underlying motives".

India's Stand on Environmental Issues

"India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002" (the depositary's record is an accession dated 26 August 2002). India, China and others "were exempt from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol because their contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases during the industrialisation period ... was not significant"; critics "point out that sooner or later, both India and China, along with other developing countries, will be among the leading contributors". 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", and following CBDR "India is of the view that the major responsibility of curbing emission rests with the developed countries, which have accumulated emissions over a long period of time". India's position "relies heavily on principles of historical responsibility, as enshrined in UNFCCC", which "emphasizes that 'economic and social development are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country parties'". So "India is wary of recent discussions within UNFCCC about introducing binding commitments on rapidly industrialising countries (such as Brazil, China and India)", which "contravenes the very spirit of UNFCCC"; nor does it seem fair "when the country's rise in per capita carbon emissions by 2030 is likely to still represent less than half the world average of 3.8 tonnes in 2000. Indian emissions are predicted to rise from 0.9 tonnes per capita in 2000 to 1.6 tonnes per capita in 2030."

NCERT's list of India's programmes is of its time: "India's National Auto-fuel Policy mandates cleaner fuels for vehicles. The Energy Conservation Act, passed in 2001, outlines initiatives to improve energy efficiency. Similarly, the Electricity Act of 2003 encourages the use of renewable energy." It names imports of natural gas, clean coal technologies and "a National Mission on Biodiesel, using about 11 million hectares of land to produce biodiesel by 2011–2012", then jumps: "India ratified the Paris Climate Agreement on 2 October 2016. And India has one of the largest renewable energy programmes in the world." The 1997 review of Rio's implementation concluded "that there had been no meaningful progress with respect to transfer of new and additional financial resources and environmentally-sound technology on concessional terms to developing nations"; India "finds it necessary that developed countries take immediate measures" on finance and clean technology, and holds "that the SAARC countries should adopt a common position on major global environment issues".

Environmental Movements: One or Many?

"Some of the most significant responses to this challenge have come not from the governments but rather from groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working in different parts of the world", mostly "at the local level". These movements "are amongst the most vibrant, diverse, and powerful social movements across the globe today", and "it is within social movements that new forms of political action are born or reinvented". NCERT's examples make its point that "diversity is an important trait".

Forest movements of the South, "in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, continental Africa and India", face "enormous pressures": "forest clearing in the Third World continues at an alarming rate, despite three decades of environmental activism", and "the destruction of the world's last remaining grand forests has actually increased in the last decade". NCERT's "Are forests 'wilderness'?" box draws the North-South contrast: the forests of the South "are still peopled", those of the North "more or less devoid of human habitat", so the North's "wilderness" perspective sees environment "as 'somewhere out there'", to be "protected from humans through the creation of parks and reserves", while "most environmental issues in the South are based on the assumption that people live in the forests". Wilderness campaigns exist in the South too: eagles in the Philippines, "the alarmingly low number of Bengal tigers" in India, the ivory trade in Africa; "many of the wilderness issues have been renamed biodiversity issues in recent times, as the concept of wilderness has been proved difficult to sell in the South". NCERT's margin note sends students to the Chipko movement (the sister book's dropped chapter on popular movements covers it).

Mining. "The minerals industry is one of the most powerful forms of industry on the planet", and many economies of the South "are now being re-opened to MNCs through the liberalisation of the global economy". Its extraction, chemicals, pollution, clearance of vegetation and "displacement of communities ... continue to invite criticism and resistance". NCERT's example is the Philippines, where "a vast network of groups and organisations campaigned against the Western Mining Corporation (WMC), an Australia-based multinational company", and its photo box is the 2006 protest against an open-cast coal mine at Phulbari in Bangladesh.

Anti-dam movements. "In every country where a mega-dam is being built, one is likely to find an environmental movement opposing it", and "increasingly anti-dam movements are pro-river movements for more sustainable and equitable management of river systems and valleys". "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." Mega-dam building has spurted "in the South, from Turkey to Thailand to South Africa, from Indonesia to China". "India has had some of the leading anti-dam, pro-river movements. Narmada Bachao Andolan is one of the best known of these movements." NCERT's closing observation, often asked: "in anti-dam and other environmental movements in India, the most important shared idea is non-violence".

Resource Geopolitics

"Resource geopolitics is all about who gets what, when, where and how." Resources "have provided some of the key means and motives of global European power expansion" and "the focus of inter-state rivalry". Western thinking "has been dominated by the relationship of trade, war and power, at the core of which were overseas resources and maritime navigation": "since sea power itself rested on access to timber, naval timber supply became a key priority for major European powers from the 17th century onwards", and the importance of "uninterrupted supply of strategic resources, in particular oil, was well established both during the First World War and the Second World War".

During the Cold War the North used "the deployment of military forces near exploitation sites and along sea-lanes of communication, the stockpiling of strategic resources, efforts to prop up friendly governments in producing countries, as well as support to multinational companies and favourable international agreements"; a particular concern was "Western control of oil in the Gulf and strategic minerals in Southern and Central Africa". After the Cold War "the security of supply continues to worry government and business decisions with regard to several minerals, in particular radioactive materials", but "oil continues to be the most important resource in global strategy". NCERT's oil figures are its edition's: West Asia, "specifically the Gulf region, accounts for about 30 per cent of global oil production. But it has about 64 per cent of the planet's known reserves"; "Saudi Arabia has a quarter of the world's total reserves and is the single largest producer. Iraq's known reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's." The consumers, "the United States, Europe, Japan, and increasingly India and China ... are located at a considerable distance from the region". Its satirical box, "Everyone is playing crude!", has Sheikh Petrodollah, Mr Bigoil, the Gobbledoos and the "Errorists".

Water. "Regional variations and the increasing scarcity of freshwater in some parts of the world point to the possibility of disagreements over shared water resources as a leading source of conflicts in the 21st century"; "some commentators ... have referred to 'water wars'". The typical disagreement is "a downstream (lower riparian) state's objection to pollution, excessive irrigation, or the construction of dams by an upstream (upper riparian) state". NCERT's examples of force: "those between Israel, Syria, and Jordan in the 1950s and 1960s over attempts by each side to divert water from the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers, and more recent threats between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq over the construction of dams on the Euphrates River". For India the same vocabulary applies to the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, held "in abeyance" by the Cabinet Committee on Security after the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025 (page 5 of this book).

The Indigenous Peoples and Their Rights

"The question of indigenous people brings the issues of environment, resources and politics together." NCERT gives the UN definition: indigenous populations comprise "the descendants of peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world and overcame them", and they "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". NCERT's count is "approximately 30 crore indigenous peoples spread throughout the world including India", with examples: "20 lakh indigenous people of the Cordillera region of the Philippines, 10 lakh Mapuche people of Chile, six lakh tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, 35 lakh North American natives, 50,000 Kuna living east of Panama Canal and 10 lakh Small Peoples of the Soviet North".

Their demand is "the admission of indigenous people to the world community as equals". They occupy areas in Central and South America, Africa, "India (where they are known as Tribals)" and Southeast Asia, and the island states of Oceania; "'since times immemorial' is the phrase used by indigenous people all over the world to refer to their continued occupancy of the lands from which they originate"; their worldviews "are strikingly similar with respect to land and the variety of life systems supported by it"; "the loss of land, which also means the loss of an economic resource base, is the most obvious threat to the survival of indigenous people". In India the description "is usually applied to the Scheduled Tribes who constitute nearly eight per cent of the population"; most "depend for their subsistence primarily on the cultivation of land"; only after British rule were their areas "subjected to outside forces"; and "although they enjoy a constitutional protection in political representation, they have not got much of the benefits of development" and "are the single largest group among the people displaced by various developmental projects since independence". Internationally, "the World Council of Indigenous Peoples was formed in 1975" and "became subsequently the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN"; many anti-globalisation movements (chapter 7) "have focussed on the rights of the indigenous people".

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

Three Frameworks

1. NCERT's four questions. Who causes degradation, who pays, who corrects, who uses how much. Run any environmental dispute (Kyoto's exemptions, the commons, the Narmada, the Aral Sea) through them and the North-South, state-community and present-future divides fall out in order.

2. Three kinds of property. Global commons (no state's jurisdiction: atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor, outer space), common property resources (a community's rights and duties: sacred groves, village commons), and sovereign resources (oil, rivers) whose geopolitics NCERT describes last. Each has its own law and its own politics; a Mains answer that conflates them loses the examiner.

3. The arc of India's position. 1992 (CBDR accepted at Rio), 1997-2002 (Kyoto exemption; accession), 2005 (per-capita argument at the G-8), 2015-16 (Paris ratified; the first NDC's intensity and capacity targets), 2022 (updated NDC), 2026 (the 2031-2035 NDC: 47 per cent intensity cut, 60 per cent non-fossil capacity, 3.5-4.0 billion tonnes sink; net zero 2070). Finance and technology transfer are the constant demand from NCERT's 1997 review to the dated note above.

Confused Pairs

• Global commons (atmosphere, Antarctica, ocean floor, outer space) vs common property resources (sacred groves).
• Rio Declaration's CBDR (Principle 7) vs the UNFCCC's "CBDR and respective capabilities" (Article 3.1) vs Paris's "in the light of different national circumstances" (Article 2.2).
• Kyoto (1997; binding targets for Annex B; India and China exempt; India acceded 2002) vs Paris (2015; NDCs for all; India ratified 2 October 2016).
• Signed, never ratified (US, Kyoto) vs party that withdrew (US, Paris, effective 4 November 2020 and again 27 January 2026).
• Stockholm 1972 (UNEP; 26 principles) vs Rio 1992 (UNFCCC, CBD, Agenda 21, Forest Principles).
• Antarctic Treaty (1959; claims frozen) vs Madrid Protocol (1991; mineral activities banned indefinitely).
• Migration of "wilderness" to "biodiversity": NCERT's point that the North's framing failed to sell in the South.

Exam Strategy

• Prelims: memorise NCERT's four commons and three agreements, the Antarctica box numbers, the Rio outputs, the Kyoto gases and exemptions, India's dates (Kyoto 26 August 2002 accession; Paris 2 October 2016 ratification), the Scheduled Tribe share ("nearly eight per cent"), the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (1975), and the treaty counts as dated above.
• Mains: quote the Rio Declaration and UNFCCC passages NCERT quotes; quote Brundtland exactly; frame India's position with NCERT's three principles (historical responsibility, per-capita emissions, development as "the first and overriding priority") and close with the 2031-2035 NDC; date every figure.
• Avoid: "the high seas are one of NCERT's commons" (the ocean floor is); "the US withdrew from Kyoto" (never a party); "the Antarctic mining ban ends in 2048"; "195 parties to Paris" (194 after 27 January 2026); "CBDR-RC is Rio's phrase" (the UNFCCC's); "India signed and ratified Kyoto" (NCERT's wording; the record is an accession).
• Cross-reading: page 7 (global security; the Maldives example); page 9 (anti-globalisation movements and indigenous rights); the sister book's dropped chapter on popular movements (Chipko, Narmada); the Class XII geography pages on resources.

Practice Questions

NCERT's exercises, worked

1. (c): "The environmental degradation caused by human activities has become pervasive and has reached a dangerous level" is NCERT's reason; (a) and (b) are partial.
2. (a) correct (170 countries in NCERT's count, thousands of NGOs, many MNCs); (b) correct, the UN Conference on Environment and Development; (c) correct in NCERT's words ("firmly consolidated"); (d) correct, a summit of heads of state and government.
3. (a), (b) and (c) are true; (d) is false: NCERT says the management of the commons "has reflected the North-South divide" and attributes the "wilderness" perspective, not greater concern for the commons, to the North.
4. Conventions on climate change (UNFCCC), biodiversity (CBD) and forestry (the Forest Principles); Agenda 21; the Rio Declaration with CBDR; a consensus on "sustainable development"; unresolved North-South differences.
5. Regions "outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state" requiring "common governance": the atmosphere (greenhouse gases, ozone depletion), Antarctica (waste, oil spills, pressure on fishing), the ocean floor (resource extraction by those with the technology), outer space (unequal benefits of exploitation); the management of each "is thoroughly influenced by North-South inequalities".
6. The Rio Declaration's principle that states have common but differentiated responsibilities "in view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation", with developed countries acknowledging their responsibility; implemented through differentiated obligations (Kyoto's Annex B targets; Paris's nationally determined contributions), finance and technology transfer to developing countries, and per-capita rather than aggregate benchmarks.
7. Because the problems crossed borders and no single government could address them; because scientific evidence (the ozone hole, warming) and the Brundtland Report made unsustainability visible; because Rio institutionalised them in conventions; and because of NCERT's deeper reason, that they decide "who wields how much power".
8. Compromise: the North accepted CBDR at Rio and exemptions at Kyoto; the South accepted the conventions and, at Paris, contributions for all. Accommodation: finance and technology transfer, the Doha second period, the NDC cycle. Without both, NCERT's 1997 review ("no meaningful progress" on finance and technology) repeats.
9. Through sustainable development as Brundtland defines it: renewable energy (India's 52.57 per cent non-fossil capacity, February 2026), energy efficiency (the Energy Conservation Act 2001), cleaner fuels (the Auto-fuel Policy), forest and tree cover (the 3.5-4.0 billion tonne sink target), community management of common property (sacred groves), and finance and technology transfer to developing countries.

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers)

10. "In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities." Trace this principle from the Rio Declaration through the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement, and assess whether India's 2031-2035 NDC is consistent with it. (GS2, 15 marks)
11. Distinguish the global commons from common property resources with NCERT's examples. Why does NCERT say the management of the commons "is thoroughly influenced by North-South inequalities"? (GS3, 10 marks)
12. "The most important shared idea" of India's environmental movements "is non-violence." Examine with reference to the anti-dam and forest movements NCERT describes. (GS1/GS3, 10 marks)
13. "Resource geopolitics is all about who gets what, when, where and how." Apply the statement to water in South Asia, with the Indus Waters Treaty's abeyance since April 2025 as your case. (GS2, 15 marks)

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

• NCERT, Contemporary World Politics (Class XII), ch. 6 "Environment and Natural Resources", Reprint 2026-27: ncert.nic.in PDF.
• UN Treaty Collection, status pages read 3-4 October 2026: UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, Doha Amendment, Paris Agreement, Convention on Biological Diversity, Cartagena Protocol, Nagoya Protocol, Montreal Protocol, Kigali Amendment, BBNJ Agreement; depositary notifications C.N.71.2025 and C.N.102.2026.
• Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty.
• Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992), text: Convention on Biological Diversity copy.
• United Nations, conference pages: Stockholm 1972 and Rio 1992.
• World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (1987), ch. 2: UN-hosted text.
• PIB, "Cabinet approves India's Nationally Determined Contribution (2031-2035)", 25 March 2026: pib.gov.in.
• Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, Parties.
• UN News, "Belém COP30 delivers climate finance boost and a pledge to plan fossil fuel transition", 22 November 2025: news.un.org.
• European Commission, Joint Research Centre, EDGAR, GHG emissions of all world countries, 2026 report: edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu PDF.