The most serious challenge before the states is pursuing economic development without causing further damage to the global environment. How could we achieve this? Explain with a few examples.

The earth has already been damaged enough by industrialisation and there was need to find a way to grow economically and not cause environmental degradation at the same time.

This could be achieved by ‘Sustainable Development’ i.e. combining economical growth with ecological responsibility. This motive can be achieved in the following ways-

• In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol set targets for industrialised nations to cut their green house gas emissions.

• The members of the group have both rights and duties with respect to the common resources i.e. its nature, level of use and the maintenance of a given resource.

• The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 covered global commons for mutual economic development.

• The Earth Summit of 1992 provided some measures to combat the increasing environmental degradation.

• Resource geopolitics (resource geopolitics is all about which nation gets what, where, when and how) has also emerged as a way to allocate and distribute natural resources among the nations for their global sustainable development.