(a) Explain any three environmental concerns in global politics which no single government can address. OR (b)

Question

Q. (a) Explain any three environmental concerns in global politics which no single government can address.

(OR)

(b) Explain the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities'.

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Part (a)Concept understanding — Global Commons Definition

Global Commons: What Belongs to Everyone, Yet No One

Imagine a village with a single, lush grazing field in the centre. Every villager can let their cattle graze there. The grass is free, the land is shared. For a while, it works beautifully. But if one person brings ten extra cows, the grass gets a little thinner. If everyone does that, the field turns to dust, and no one can graze at all.

That field is a commons — a resource shared by a community. Now scale that village up to the entire planet. The Global Commons are the Earth's shared resources that no single country owns, but every country depends on.

The Intuition: A Shared Backyard

Think of the atmosphere, the high seas, Antarctica, or outer space. No passport is needed to breathe the air. No nation can fence off a patch of the Pacific Ocean and claim it. These spaces and resources exist beyond national borders. They are the planet's collective inheritance.

The core tension is this: everyone can use them, but no one is responsible for them. A factory in one country pumps carbon into the atmosphere, and the resulting climate change floods a coastline on the other side of the world. A fishing fleet from one nation overharvests a patch of open ocean, and the fish stock collapses for everyone.

The Precise Definition

Global Commons refers to natural or man-made resources and domains that lie outside the political reach of any single nation-state, are accessible to all, and are managed (or mismanaged) collectively by the international community.

The key elements are:

Beyond National Jurisdiction: No country has sovereignty. You cannot plant a flag on the deep seabed and claim it.
Shared Access: In principle, any state or individual can use them.
Collective Management: Because no single authority exists, governance relies on international treaties, agreements, and norms.

The Four Classic Domains

Domain	What It Is	Why It's a Commons	Key Challenge
The High Seas	Oceans beyond any country's Exclusive Economic Zone (200 nautical miles from shore)	No nation owns it; ships of all flags can sail and fish	Overfishing, pollution, piracy
The Atmosphere	The blanket of air surrounding Earth	Every country emits into it; no one can fence off a layer	Climate change, ozone depletion
Antarctica	The continent south of 60°S latitude	Frozen by the Antarctic Treaty (1959) for peaceful, scientific use only	Territorial claims (frozen, not resolved), tourism pressure
Outer Space	Space beyond Earth's atmosphere, including the Moon and other celestial bodies	The Outer Space Treaty (1967) forbids national appropriation	Space debris, militarisation, mining rights

The Tragedy of the Commons …

Part (b)Concept understanding — Common But Differentiated Responsibilities

Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR)

The Intuition: Fairness in a Shared Problem

Imagine a large room that slowly fills with smoke. Some people have been in the room for hours, breathing the smoke and adding to it with their own cigarettes. Others just walked in a minute ago. Now everyone agrees: the smoke is dangerous, and the room must be cleared.

Would it be fair to ask the person who just walked in to do the same amount of work as those who filled the room? No. The ones who caused most of the problem, and who have already benefited from being in the room longer, should take the lead in fixing it. That is the core idea behind CBDR.

Now apply this to the planet. Since the Industrial Revolution, a handful of countries (the US, Western Europe, Japan) burned enormous amounts of coal, oil, and gas to build their wealth. They pumped most of the carbon dioxide that is now warming the climate. Developing countries like India, China, and many in Africa have emitted far less, both historically and per person. Yet climate change affects everyone — and often hits poorer countries hardest.

CBDR says: every country must act on climate change, but not all countries must act equally, because they are not equally responsible for the problem and not equally capable of solving it.

The Precise Statement

Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) is a principle of international environmental law, formally stated in the 1992 Rio Declaration (Principle 7) and embedded in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992). It holds that: Common : All states have a shared obligation to protect the global environment. Differentiated : The specific obligations of each state depend on its historical contribution to the environmental problem and its capacity (economic and technological) to address it.

In practice, this means developed countries (listed in Annex I of the UNFCCC) are expected to:

Take the lead in reducing emissions.
Provide finance and technology to developing countries.

Developing countries (non-Annex I) are expected to act, but with less stringent targets and with support.

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Part (a): Global warming, ozone depletion, and pollution of the global commons with biodiversity loss are transboundary threats no single government can solve alone.

Part (b): CBDR recognises a shared duty to protect the environment but places the heavier, first burden on developed countries, giving developing countries flexibility and support.

Part (a)

Many environmental problems in global politics are, by their very nature, transboundary — they originate in one place but their effects spread across the whole planet, so no single government acting alone can address them. The first such concern is global warming and climate change. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide released by industry, transport and deforestation anywhere accumulate in the shared atmosphere and raise temperatures everywhere, producing rising sea levels, melting glaciers, extreme weather and disrupted rainfall that ignore national frontiers; a single country cutting its emissions cannot stop a process driven by all. The second concern is the depletion of the ozone layer. Chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons emitted by some industrialised nations thin the ozone layer that shields the entire earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, endangering people and crops far from where the gases were released, so protection requires all nations to phase out these substances together. The third concern is the pollution and over-exploitation of the "global commons" together with the loss of biodiversity. The oceans, the atmosphere, Antarctica and outer space lie outside any one country's jurisdiction, and marine pollution, overfishing and the destruction of forests and species diminish resources that belong to all humanity. Because these areas are owned by no single state, only cooperative international agreements can conserve them. In each case the problem is collective and the solution must be collective too. …

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Same / Similar Concept — real previous-year questions on the same or a closely similar concept, not this exact question.

CBSE 2026Set 59/3/11 markMCQ
$Q. The concept of ‘sustainable development’ emphasises on : (A) utilizing maximum resources for human development. (B) increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. (C) combining economic growth with ecological responsibility. (D) maximising the efforts for environmental conservation.$
›Reveal solutionSolution

Sustainable development means meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs — it combines economic progress with ecological responsibility.

The idea of sustainable development emerged from a growing recognition that unchecked economic growth was depleting natural resources and degrading ecosystems at an alarming rate. By the late twentieth century, it became clear that development could not be measured solely by rising incomes or industrial output. A new framework was needed, one that acknowledged the interdependence of human prosperity and environmental health.

At its heart, sustainable development rejects the false choice between growth and conservation. It does not ask us to abandon economic progress, nor does it permit us to sacrifice the environment for short-term gain. Instead, it insists that the two must advance together. Economic activities should be designed so that they do not exhaust resources or poison the systems—air, water, soil, biodiversity—on which all life depends. This is ecological responsibility woven into the fabric of growth itself.

The other options miss this balance. Utilizing maximum resources for human development (option A) is precisely the extractive mindset that sustainable development seeks to replace; it treats nature as an infinite storehouse, ignoring limits and regeneration rates. Increasing GDP (option B) is a narrow economic metric that says nothing about how that wealth is generated or distributed, and whether it leaves behind polluted rivers and barren land. Maximizing efforts for environmental conservation (option D) sounds appealing but, taken alone, can neglect the legitimate development needs of communities—particularly in countries where millions still lack basic services. …
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CBSE 2020Set 59/2/11 mark
$Q. Explain the concept of ‘Privy Purse’.$
›Reveal solutionSolution

The Privy Purse was a tax-free annual payment guaranteed by the Indian government to former ruling princes after they acceded their states to the Union of India, serving as compensation for surrendering sovereignty and personal property.

When India gained independence in 1947, the subcontinent was not a single unified territory but a patchwork of British India and over 560 princely states. These states, ranging from tiny estates to kingdoms larger than European nations, were ruled by maharajas, nawabs, nizams and other hereditary princes who had enjoyed treaty relationships with the British Crown. The challenge facing the new government was monumental: how to persuade these rulers to merge their domains into the Indian Union without triggering resistance or fragmentation.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, as Home Minister, orchestrated the integration process with a combination of persuasion, pressure and pragmatic incentives. The princes were asked to sign Instruments of Accession, transferring control over defence, external affairs and communications to the central government. In return, they received certain guarantees codified in merger agreements and later enshrined in the Constitution.

The Privy Purse was the centrepiece of these guarantees. It was an annual payment from the Consolidated Fund of India, fixed as a percentage of the state's revenue at the time of merger or as a negotiated sum. The amount varied wildly—the Nizam of Hyderabad received several million rupees annually, while smaller rulers received far more modest sums. Crucially, these payments were tax-free and guaranteed in perpetuity under Article 291 of the Constitution. The princes also retained certain privileges: they could use their titles, fly their flags, maintain limited personal staff and keep their private properties, palaces and jewellery.

Note

The Privy Purse was not a pension in the ordinary sense. It was understood as compensation for the surrender of sovereignty and the merger of what had been independent or semi-independent kingdoms. The princes argued they had given up entire states; the payment recognised that sacrifice.

For two decades the arrangement held, though it sat uneasily with the egalitarian ideals of a democratic republic. Critics argued that hereditary privileges and tax-free wealth contradicted the principle of equality before the law. The princes, meanwhile, saw the guarantees as a binding contract that the state had no right to abrogate unilaterally. …
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CBSE 2020Set 59/3/11 mark
$Q. Suggest any one measure that should be taken to make the WTO more acceptable to the developing countries.$
›Reveal solutionSolution

The WTO should grant developing countries longer transition periods and greater flexibility in implementing trade rules, recognizing their weaker economic position and need to protect infant industries.

The World Trade Organization operates on the principle that all member states, regardless of economic strength, must follow the same trade liberalization rules. This "one-size-fits-all" approach creates profound difficulties for developing nations. When a country with fragile industries and limited technological capacity is forced to open its markets at the same pace as wealthy industrialized economies, the results are predictable: domestic producers cannot compete with cheaper or higher-quality imports, unemployment rises, and entire sectors collapse before they have had a chance to mature.

The most effective reform would be to institutionalize special and differential treatment in a meaningful way—not as vague language in agreements, but as concrete, enforceable provisions. Developing countries need substantially longer timeframes to reduce tariffs, phase out subsidies, and comply with intellectual property standards. A textile manufacturer in Bangladesh or a pharmaceutical company in India requires breathing room to build capacity, invest in technology, and achieve economies of scale before facing the full force of global competition. Without that space, trade liberalization becomes a mechanism for entrenching inequality rather than spreading prosperity.

This measure addresses the core grievance that the WTO serves the interests of developed nations. Rich countries built their own industries behind high tariff walls during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; they achieved industrialization precisely because they protected their markets. Demanding that today's developing countries abandon those same tools while their economies are still vulnerable strikes many as hypocritical. Flexible timelines would acknowledge historical context and economic reality. …
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Q.(a) Explain any three environmental concerns in global politics which no single government can address.

Part (a)

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