In sum, the growth of India's national economy versus its natural services economy do not need to be a zero sum game. However it will take a massive paradigm shift in policy and broader cultural norms. India's drive to break the 10% GDP glass ceiling has resulted in the construction of a precarious tower built on thin foundation. The architects of this metaphorical tower -by and large- pay lip service to conservation and CSR and moreover exclude India's massive rural population to the margins of economic sustenance. A true understanding of this dynamic supports Kugelman's observation that the rise of extremism is secondary to the lack of integration of local communities "in the fruits of ...resource extraction" and human right grievances that leave locals in "toxic living conditions." The longer natural resource management is ignored and populations marginalized, the deeper and wider the divide will become between those enjoying economic prosperity and those being denied same. A retreat from the brink requires sweeping and revolutionary plans and facilitation of sustainable industry practices and processes particularly re human equality and conservation of water/ biodiversity. Couple this with broadbased education re the value of conservation and energy saving measures, and a more pyramidal national growth and security (based on sustainability) could be achieved. One that preserves natural capital and promotes human equality. Failure to do so may have dramatic impact on the long term story of India's rise that- as PM Singh stated 'history will judge harshly.' Due to the scale of India as a population and economy, any change would need to emerge from scaled grassroots initiatives, supported and networked through medium services and complimented by government incentives. The good news is India is historically famous for improbable and en mass migration of norms and beliefs.
-PGI is a UN Global Compact service provider in the business of designing and facilitating industries based on the precepts of the UN Millennium Goal Global Compact. It's latest project is an efficiency-by-design vertically integrated private company for the propagation, production and world wide marketing of bamboo consumables from Arunachal Pradesh. It will be the first of its kind, and the centerpiece of PGI's 2011 agribusiness initiative, Eco-Logical Fox. The company will be unvieled in January 2011 via press release. For more information write info@peerlessgreen.net
Below is a reprint of TOI Dec 28, 2010 OpEd:
A Crucial Connection
India can hardly overstress the link tying natural resources to national security
Michael Kugelman
With India’s soaring growth and rising global clout hogging media headlines, it is easy to forget the nation is beset by security challenges. Naxalite insurgency rages across more than two-thirds of India’s states, while long-simmering tensions in J&K exploded once again this summer. Meanwhile, two years post-Mumbai, Pakistan remains unwilling or unable to dismantle the anti-India militant groups on its soil. Finally, China’s military rise continues unabated. As Beijing increases its activities across the Himalayan and Indian Ocean regions, fears about Chinese encirclement are rife.
It is even easier to forget that these challenges are intertwined with natural resource issues. Policy makers in New Delhi often fail to make this connection, at their own peril. Twenty-five per cent of Indians lack access to clean drinking water; about 40 per cent have no electricity. These constraints intensify security problems.
India’s immense energy needs – household and commercial – have deepened its dependence on coal, its most heavily consumed energy source. But India’s main coal reserves are located in Naxalite bastions. With energy security at stake, New Delhi has a powerful incentive to flush out insurgents. It has done so with heavy-handed shows of force that often trigger civilian casualties. Additionally, intensive coal mining has displaced locals and created toxic living conditions for those who remain. All these outcomes boost support for the insurgency.
Meanwhile, the fruits of this heavy resource extraction elude local communities, fuelling grievances that Naxalites exploit. A similar dynamic plays out in J&K, where electricity-deficient residents decry the paltry proportion of power they receive from central government-owned hydroelectric companies. In both cases, resource inequities are a spark for violent anti-government fervour.
Resource constraints also inflame India’s tensions with Pakistan and China. As economic growth and energy demand have accelerated, India has increased its construction of hydropower projects on the western rivers of
the Indus Basin – waters that, while allocated to Pakistan by the Indus Waters Treaty, may be harnessed by India for run-of-theriver hydro facilities. Pakistani militants, however, do not make such distinctions. Lashkar-e-Taiba repeatedly lashes out at India’s alleged “water theft”. Lashkar, capitalising on Pakistan’s acute water crisis (it has Asia’s lowest per capita water availability), may well use water as a pretext for future attacks on India.
Oil and natural gas are resource catalysts for conflict with China. Due to insufficient energy supplies at home, India is launching aggressive efforts to secure hydrocarbons abroad. This race brings New Delhi into fierce competition with Beijing, whose growing presence in the Indian Ocean region is driven in large part by its own search for natural resources.
India’s inability to prevent Chinese energy deals with Myanmar (and its worries about similar future arrangements in Sri Lanka) feeds fears about Chinese encirclement, but also emboldens India to take its energy hunt further afield. Strategists now cite the protection of faraway future energy holdings as a core motivation for naval modernisation plans; India’s energy investments already extend from the Middle East and Africa to Latin America. Such reach exposes India to new vulnerabilities, underscoring the imperative of enhanced sea-based energy transit protection capabilities.
While sea-related China-India tensions revolve around energy, land-based discord is tied to water. South Asia holds less than 5 per cent of annual global renewable water resources, but China-India border tensions centre around the region’s rare water-rich areas, particularly Arunachal Pradesh. Additionally, Chinese dam-building on Tibetan Plateau rivers – including the mighty Brahmaputra – alarms lower-riparian India. With many Chinese agricultural areas water-scarce, and India supporting nearly 20 per cent of the world’s population with only 4 per cent of its water, neither nation takes such disputes lightly.
India’s resource constraints, impelled by population growth and climate change, will likely worsen in the years ahead. Recent estimates envision water deficits of 50 per cent by 2030 and outright scarcity by 2050, if not earlier. Meanwhile, India is expected to become the world’s third-largest energy consumer by 2030, when the country could import 50 per cent of its natural gas and a staggering 90 per cent of its oil. If such projections prove accurate, the impact on national security could be devastating.
So what can be done? First, New Delhi must integrate natural resource considerations into security policy and planning. India’s navy, with its goal of developing a blue-water force to safeguard energy resources overseas, has planted an initial seed. Yet much more must be done, and progress can be made only when policy makers better understand the destabilising effects of resource constraints. Second, India should acknowledge its poor resource governance, and craft demandside, conservation-based policies that better manage precious – but not scarce – resources. This means improved maintenance of water infrastructure (40 per cent of water in most Indian cities is lost to pipeline leaks), more equitable resource allocations, and stronger incentives for implementing water- and energy-efficient technologies (like drip irrigation) and policies (like rainwater harvesting).
Such steps will not make India’s security challenges disappear, but they will make the security situation less perilous. And they will move the country closer to the day when resource efficiency and equity join military modernisation and counterinsurgency as India’s security watchwords.
The writer is programme associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC.
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