World Environment Day is celebrated each year on June 5. The first major international event dealing with the environment was held in Stockholm, from June 5-16, 1972. At that event only two heads of government were present, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, and Olaf Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden. The conference resulted in a major declaration which charted out 26 different principles that defined global action dealing with issues of environment and development.
Twenty years later the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, popularly known as the Rio Summit, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, over 12 days in June 1992. This particular event represented a much wider agenda and attracted much larger participation than the Stockholm conference, clearly indicating the increased interest of the global society on issues related to the environment. The Rio conference attracted over 30,000 people which included not just a large number of heads of state, but a range of other professionals, including representatives of civil society. Altogether 167 countries were represented in the events of the Earth Summit, and very high expectations were raised on the occasion that, perhaps, showed that the human society was now ready to deal with the world’s environmental problems in an effective and sincere manner.
This year’s World Environment Day came 18 years after the Rio Summit and two years before the 20th anniversary of that landmark event. Unfortunately, very little has happened in this intervening period to justify the high expectations and euphoria generated among environmentalists during the Rio Summit.
World Environment Day 2010 was based on the theme “Many species. One Planet. One Future”. This theme very effectively summarises the reality of what the world is facing by way of challenges in the environmental field. Firstly, it emphasises the enormous wealth that the planet possesses of species that have benefits far beyond the wealth that we covet in the form of man-made structures and artefacts as well as the treasures that are hidden in the form of gold in the entire banking system of the world. Yet the priceless treasure of biodiversity of this planet is under serious threat.
Not only has the expansion of human settlements and infrastructure such as industry, transport facilities and townships encroached expansively on the biodiversity of this planet, but we have imposed other serious threats, such as human-induced climate change, which could have even more serious consequences.
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly brought out that of all the species that were assessed, 20 to 30 per cent would be under the threat of extinction if average global surface temperature were to exceed 1.5 to 2.5 degree Celsius. The consequences of any such threat actually materialising would be disastrous, because not only would the loss of biodiversity result in various imbalances that could result in the spread of disease, but it could also limit our ability to pursue agriculture as we know it and produce the food that we would need in the future.
Further, it could also deprive human society of sources from which medicines and material for healing could be produced against a whole range of ailments and diseases in the future. The many species that we have on the planet are an irreplaceable bounty that is in the interest of human society to protect and preserve.
The concept of one planet is again particularly relevant, since the footprint of human activities has been expanding rapidly in recent decades, exceeding the capacity of the earth’s ecosystem to absorb. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) International attempts a computation of the human footprint based on our consumption of a range of natural resources and the capacity of the earth’s ecosystem to withstand the exploitation of the former. Based on extensive analysis, the computed value of the size of this footprint in relation to existing capacity is about 25 per cent. It is also estimated that human society through its footprint has been exceeding the earth’s absorptive capacity since the beginning of the 1980s. Hence it can be concluded that we human beings are rather ineffective in bringing about a reversal in existing trends, and are grossly negligent of our responsibility to protect the earth’s ecosystems.
Since we live on spaceship earth and since we are residents of this sole planet, we have no choice but to change our ways and start shrinking our footprint to a size where it can be accommodated within the size of the earth’s ecosystems. Efforts to do so must involve the new technologies being developed, new substitutes taking over from those resources the exploitation of which has now reached unsustainable levels, and a change in consumption patterns and lifestyles by which all stakeholders are able to increase their resource use efficiency and reduce the size of our collective footprint.
The concept of “one future”, which is a part of this year’s theme of World Environment Day, also has implications which go far beyond protection of the environment. Human society cannot ignore the fact that “one future” implies a far more equitable pattern of development, much greater fairness in the use of natural resources and much more uniform generation of economic wealth than we have seen in past decades.
The world is living in an era of instant communication and the deprivation and hardship of any section of society while a few privileged ones continue to prosper and enhance their economic well being is clearly not a part of a sustainable system.
Hence, World Environment Day needs to generate a new distributive justice by which different societies can grow on an equitable basis and reverse the inequality that we see today with a small percentage of the world’s population benefiting from the largest use of natural resources while a large majority remains deprived.
None of the changes that World Environment Day is expected to trigger will come about unless we see a major transformation of pricing which clearly incorporates the cost imposed by production and consumption decisions in the nature of externalities on the environment and regulatory measures that are directed at similar objectives and changes in lifestyles that transform the current system of inequitable production and consumption. Change will come through enlightened leadership and much greater awareness on the part of society at large across the globe. If World Environment Day 2010 can at least spark a debate on some of these issues then this particular occasion would mark an important turning point in human history, and a transition that is clearly long overdue.

Dr R.K. Pachauri is the director-general of The Energy & Resources Institute(TERI), chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and director of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute