Q.(a) Highlight any four steps taken by the Government of India to minimize the greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental Security — From Intuition to Definition

Think about what "security" usually means. For a country, security is about protecting its borders, its people, and its way of life from military threats — armies, missiles, invasions. That is traditional security.

Now imagine a different kind of threat. A river that both countries share starts drying up because of deforestation upstream. Crops fail year after year because the monsoon has become erratic. A coastal city slowly becomes uninhabitable as the sea rises. No one fired a shot, but people are starving, migrating, or fighting over the last clean water source.

That is the intuition behind environmental security: the idea that environmental degradation and resource scarcity can be just as dangerous to a nation's stability, health, and survival as a military attack.

The Core Idea

It has two linked dimensions:

1. The environment as a source of threat — When natural resources (water, fertile land, clean air, forests) are damaged or run out, it can trigger conflict, famine, disease, and mass migration. For example, water scarcity in the Indus basin has repeatedly strained relations between India and Pakistan.

2. The environment as something that needs protection — A nation is not truly secure if its people cannot breathe clean air, drink safe water, or grow food reliably. So protecting ecosystems (forests, wetlands, biodiversity) becomes a security priority, just like defending borders.

How It Differs from Traditional Security

Why It Matters for Exams …

Let’s start with something you already know. Think of a seesaw in a playground. If two children of roughly equal weight sit on opposite ends, the seesaw stays level — neither side can simply slam the other to the ground. But if a heavy adult sits on one side, the child on the other end is stuck in the air, helpless. The seesaw works only when both sides have enough weight to check each other.

That is the core intuition behind Balance of Power in international relations. It is the idea that peace and stability are most likely when no single country or group is so powerful that it can dominate all others. Instead, power is distributed in such a way that any one actor who tries to push too far will be met by a combination of others strong enough to push back.

The precise meaning

In the NCERT Class 12 Political Science textbook (Chapter 1, The Cold War Era), Balance of Power is described as a situation in which no one nation or alliance is so powerful that it can threaten the security of others. It is not about everyone being equally strong — that is impossible. It is about a rough equilibrium, where the cost of aggression becomes too high for any would‑be bully.

The textbook explains that during the Cold War, the world saw a classic example: the United States and the Soviet Union were the two superpowers. Each had a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and a network of allies. Neither could defeat the other without suffering unacceptable damage. That mutual fear — not goodwill — kept the peace between them for decades. This is Balance of Power working at the global level.

Why does it matter?

Balance of Power is not a law of nature; it is a strategy that countries deliberately pursue. Here is why it matters:

• It prevents one country from becoming a hegemon — a single power that can dictate terms to everyone else. History shows that when one state becomes overwhelmingly strong, it tends to bully its neighbours, and war becomes more likely.
• It creates a system of deterrence. If you know that attacking another country will bring in its allies against you, you think twice. This is why countries form alliances (like NATO during the Cold War) — to pool their strength and make the balance tilt against an aggressor.
• It gives smaller countries room to survive. A small nation can stay independent not because it is strong, but because the big powers are too busy checking each other to swallow it up. This is called the security dilemma in reverse: the very rivalry of the strong protects the weak.

How do countries maintain a balance?

Countries use several tools to keep the balance from tipping:

• Alliances — binding agreements to come to each other’s aid if attacked. Example: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the Warsaw Pact.
• Armaments — building up one’s own military strength so that an adversary cannot easily win.
• Buffer states — keeping a neutral country between two rivals so they do not share a direct border (e.g., Afghanistan between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century). …