Recap

The environment and its functions. The environment is the total planetary inheritance — all its biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) elements together. It performs four vital functions: supplying resources (renewable and non-renewable), assimilating waste, sustaining life through genetic and biodiversity, and providing aesthetic services. It can keep doing so as long as demand stays within its carrying capacity — extraction below the rate of regeneration, and waste within the environment's absorptive capacity.

The crisis. Population growth in developing countries and affluent consumption in developed ones have pushed demand past supply. Resources are being exhausted and waste exceeds what nature can absorb, so clean water has become an economic good and health costs are rising. Global problems such as global warming and ozone depletion add further burdens. The core change is a reversal of the supply–demand relationship for environmental quality.

State of India's environment. India is resource-rich but faces a dual threat — poverty-induced degradation and affluence-driven pollution. Priority concerns are land degradation, biodiversity loss, air pollution (especially vehicular), fresh-water management and solid-waste management. The CPCB (1974) and state pollution control boards monitor and regulate pollution.

Sustainable development. Defined by UNCED as meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs, it is fundamentally a moral issue of resource distribution. Herman Daly's conditions include limiting population within carrying capacity, input-efficient technology, extracting renewables no faster than they regenerate, depleting non-renewables no faster than substitutes are created, and correcting pollution. The UN framed 17 SDGs in 2015, to be met by 2030. …