Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, New Delhi in association with Manav Rachna International Institute of Research and Studies, Faridabad and Dakshina Foundation, New Delhi is Organizing an International Conference on Environmental Challenges And Solutions

BACKGROUND:

In the past two decades, India has been able to achieve phenomenal economic growth. The country’s GDP growth rate in the past 15 years has averaged 7 percent and in some years exceeded 9%. But this rapid economic growth, experienced by India, has come with some unwelcome consequences and has resulted in unhealthy air and water pollution affecting infant mortality rates and life expectancy rates. The tension between economic development and the imperative to curb environment degradation remains the central challenge for India and the rest of the world.

India’s major challenges are directly attributable to its extremely high population density, especially the rise in urban centers. Urban India is growing rapidly in terms of population size. The increase in number of large cities with a million plus population is adding to the environmental problems faced by the country. In addition, unfocused practices contribute conjointly to the decimation of the subcontinent’s environmental system.

Global Issues  and Environmental Concerns

As environmental issues are global in nature, each country is in control of its own environment or territory and, hence, should be controlling, monitoring, and enacting regulations and practices in safeguarding its environment. This is also true for India. The Copenhagen Accord indicates that it is up to individual countries to devise and enforce the regulations and steps  necessary to achieve their national commitments towards environment. Because of the country specific role of controlling and monitoring the environment, it is difficult to enforce environmental standards on countries from a global perspective. Hence, each country should be willing to consider environmental issues as a probable contributor to the overall global degradation of the environment and participate in controlling it, through its laws and eco-friendly practices. In addition, each country could be part of a worldwide network ie: association or organization that uses the global network, technological know-how, and resources to be a contributing partner to global group in helping the environment.

The link between environmental concerns, its effects on people, and the resulting consequences on human life and the economy are easily traceable. Higher the environmental destruction greater the health problems faced by the people resulting in both human and economic costs. Hence let us get awakened together to make this planet , our Mother Earth , an Ecological Heaven.