Geopolitics politics, especially international relations, as influenced by geographical factors is considered as geopolitics/ global politics. World politics deals with issues like poverty and epidemics, wars and treaties, the rise and decline of state power, the relationship between the governments that represent their countries in the international arena and the role of intergovernmental organizations.

1. Environmental Concerns 

• Throughout the world, cultivable areas are barely expanding and a substantial portion of the existing agricultural area is losing its fertility. Grasslands have been overgrazed and fisheries over-harvested. Water bodies have suffered extensive depletion and pollution, severely affecting food production.
• According to the Human Development Report 2016 of the United Nations Development Program, 663 million people in developing countries have no access to safe water and 2.4 billion have no access to sanitation, resulting in the death of more than three million children every year.
• Natural forests which help to stabilize the climate, moderate water supplies, and harbour a majority of the planet’s biodiversity on land are being cut and people are being displaced. The loss of biodiversity continues due to the destruction of the habitat in areas which are rich in species.
• Ozone Hole  A steady decline in the total amount of ozone in the earth’s stratosphere is called an ozone hole. It poses a real danger to ecosystems and human health.
• Coastal pollution is increasing globally. Although the open sea is relatively clean, the coastal waters are becoming largely polluted due to land-based activities. If unchecked, intensive human settlement of coastal zones across the globe will lead to further deterioration in the quality of the marine environment.

• If the various governments take steps to check environmental degradation, these issues will have political consequences. Most of them are such that no single government can address them fully.
• Therefore they have to become part of ‘world politics’. Issues of environment and natural resources are political in other deeper sense. Reasons for environmental degradation, responsible acts, corrective measures, partition of natural resources of the earth etc., all these raise the issue of who wields how much power.
• Although environmental concerns have a long story, awareness of the environmental consequences of economic growth acquired an increasingly political character from the 1960s onwards.
• The Club of Rome, a global think tank, published a book in 1972 entitled Limits to Growth, dramatizing the potential depletion of the earth’s resources against a backdrop of a rapidly growing world population. International agencies, including the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), began holding international conferences and promoting detailed studies to get a more coordinated and effective response to environmental problems. Since then, the environment has emerged as a significant issue of global politics.
• The growing focus on environmental issues within the arena of consolidated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. This is known as the “Earth Summit”. 170 states, thousands of NGOs and many multinational corporations attended this summit. Five years earlier, the 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, had warned that traditional patterns of economic growth were not sustainable in the long term, especially given the demands of the South for further industrial development.
• The obvious point at the Rio Summit was that the rich and developed countries of the First World, generally referred to as the ‘global North’ were pursuing a different environmental agenda than the poor and developing countries of the Third World, called the ‘ global South’.
• Whereas the northern states were concerned with ozone depletion and global warming, the southern states were anxious to address the relationship between economic development and environmental management.
• The Rio Summit produced conventions dealing with climate change, biodiversity, and forestry, and recommended a list of development practices called ‘Agenda 21’. But it left unresolved considerable differences and difficulties.
• There was a consensus on combining economic growth with ecological responsibility. This approach to development is commonly known as ‘sustainable development’.
• Some critics have pointed out that Agenda 21 was biased in favour of economic growth rather than ensuring ecological conservation. Let us discuss some of the contentious issues in the global politics of the environment.

2. The Protection of Global Commons

• ‘Commons’ are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community.
• This could be a common room or community centre, a park or a river. Similarly, there are some areas or regions of the world which are located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state and require common governance by the international community.
• These are known as global commons or communis humanitatis. They include Earth’s atmosphere, ocean floor, Antarctica and outer space.
• Cooperation over the global commons is not easy. There have been many path-breaking agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol.
• A major problem underlying all ecological issues relates to the difficulty of achieving consensus on common environmental agendas based on vague scientific evidence and time frames.
• The discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the mid-1980s revealed the opportunity as well as dangers inherent in tackling global environmental problems.
• Similarly, the history of outer space as a global commons shows that the management of these areas is thoroughly influenced by North-south inequalities.
• As with the earth’s atmosphere and the ocean floor, the crucial issue here is technology and industrial development. This is important because the benefits of exploitative activities in outer space are far from being equal either for the present or future generations.

3. Common But Differentiated Responsibilities

• There exists a difference in the approach to the environment between the countries of the North and the South. The developed countries of the north want to discuss the environmental issue as it stands now and want everyone to be equally responsible for ecological conservation. The developing countries of the South feel that much of the ecological degradation in the world is the product of industrial development undertaken by the developed countries. If they have caused more degradation, they must also take more responsibility for undoing the damage now. Moreover, the developing countries are in the process of industrialization and they must not be subjected to the same restrictions, which apply to the developed countries. Thus the special needs of the developing countries must be taken into consideration in the development, application, and interpretation of rules of international environmental law. This argument was accepted in the Rio Declaration at the Earth Summit in 1992 and is called the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’.
• The relevant part of the Rio Declaration says that “States shall cooperate in the spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem. Given the different contributions of global environmental degradation, states have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development given the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technological, and financial resources they demand”.
• The 1993 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) also provides that the parties should act to protect the climate system based on quality and by their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. The parties to the Convention agreed that the largest share of historic and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries. It was also acknowledged that per capita emissions in developing countries are relatively less. China, India, and other developing countries were exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement setting targets for industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse emissions. Certain gases like carbon dioxide, methane, hydro-fluoro carbons, etc., are considered at least partly responsible for global warming, the rise in global temperature which may have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. The protocol was agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto Japan, based on principles set out by UNFCC.

4. Common Property Resources

• Common property represents common resources for the group. The underlying norm here is that members of the group have both rights and duties concerning the nature, levels of use, and maintenance of the given resource.
• Through mutual understanding and centuries of practice, many village communities in India have defined members’ rights and responsibilities.
• A combination of factors, including privatization, agricultural intensification, population growth and ecosystem degradation have caused the common property to diminish in size, quality and availability to the poor in much of the world.
• The institutional arrangement for the actual management of the sacred groves on state-owned forest land appropriately fits the description of a common property regime. Along the forest belt of south India, sacred groves have been traditionally managed by village communities.

5. Sacred Groves in India 

• Protecting nature for religious reasons is an ancient practice in many traditional societies. Sacred groves in India exemplify such practices as protecting forest vegetation in the name of certain deities or natural or ancestral spirits.
• As a model for community-based resource management, groves have gained attention in conserving literature.
• The sacred groves can be seen as a system that informally forces traditional communities to harvest natural resources in an ecologically sustainable way.
• Some researchers believe that sacred groves hold the potential for preserving not only biodiversity and ecological functions but also cultural diversity.
• Sacred groves embody a rich set of forest preservation practices and they share characteristics with common property resource systems. Their size ranges from clumps of a few trees to several hundred acres.
• Traditionally sacred groves have been valued for their embodied spiritual and cultural attributes. Indians usually worship natural objects like trees and groves. Many temples have originated from sacred groves.
• Deep religious reverence for nature, rather than resource scarcity, seems to be the basis for the long-standing commitment to preserving these forests. However, expansion and human settlement have slowly encroached on sacred forests.
• In many places, the institutional identity of these traditional forests is fading with the advent of new national forest policies.
• A real problem in managing sacred groves arises when legal ownership and operational control are held by different entities.
• The two entities, the state and the community, vary in their policy norms and underlying motives for using the sacred grove.

6. India’s stand on environmental issues

• India signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in August 2002. India, China and other developing countries were exempt from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol because their contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases during the industrialization period was not significant.
• However, the critics of the Kyoto Protocol point out that sooner or later, India and China, along with other developing countries, will be among the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
• At the G-8 meeting in June 2005, India pointed out that the per capita emission rates of developing countries are a tiny fraction of those in the developed world.
• Following the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities, there is a view that the major responsibility of curbing emissions rests with the developed countries, which have accumulated emissions over a long period.
• India’s international negotiating position relies heavily on principles of historical responsibility, as enshrined in UNFCC.
• This acknowledges that developed countries are responsible for the emissions of greenhouse gases in past and present scenarios and emphasizes that economic and social development are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries.
• So India is wary of recent discussions within UNFCC about introducing binding commitments on rapidly industrializing countries like Brazil, China, India etc., to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
• India feels this contravenes the very spirit of UNFCC. Neither does it seem fair to impose restrictions on India when the country’s rise in per capita carbon emission by 2030 is likely to still represent less than half the world average of 3.8 tonnes in 2000. Indian emissions are predicted to rise from 0.9 tonnes per capita in 2000 to 1.6 tonnes per capita in 2030.
• The Indian government is participating in global efforts through several programs, India’s national auto fuel policy mandates cleaner fuels for vehicles. The Energy Conservation Act passed in 2001, outlines the initiatives to improve energy efficiency.
• Similarly, the Electricity Act of 2003 encourages the use of renewable energy. Recent trends in importing natural gas and encouraging the adoption of clean coal technologies show that India has been making real efforts.
• The government is also keen to launch a national mission on biodiesel, using about 11 million hectares of land to produce biodiesel by 2011-2012. India ratified The Paris climate agreement on 2^nd October 2016. And India has one of the largest renewable energy programs in the world.
• A review of the implementation of the agreement at the Earth Summit in Rio was undertaken by India in 1997. One of the key conclusions was that there had been no meaningful progress concerning the transfer of new and additional financial resources and environmentally sound technology on concessional terms to developing countries.
• India finds it necessary that developed countries take immediate measures to provide developing countries with financial resources and clean technologies to enable them to meet their existing commitments under the UNFCCC.
• India is also of the view that the SAARQ countries should adopt a common position on major global environmental issues so that the region’s voice carries greater weight.

7. Environmental Movements 

• Till now we looked at the way governments have reacted at the international level to the challenge of environmental degradation.
• However, some of the most significant responses to this challenge have not come from the governments but from groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working in different parts of the world.
• Some of them work at the international level, but most of them work at the local level. These environmental movements are the most vibrant, diverse and powerful social movements across the globe today.
• It is within social movements that new forms of political action are reinvented. These movements raise new ideas and long-term visions of what should be done and should not be done in our individual and collective lives. 

1. The forest movements of the south, in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Continental Africa and India are faced with enormous pressures.
2. Forest clearing in the third world continues at an alarming rate, despite three decades of environmental activism.
3. The destruction of the world’s last remaining grand forest has increased in the last decade.

• The minerals industry is one of the most powerful forms of industry on the planet. Large numbers of economies in the South are now being reopened to MNCs through the liberalization of the global economy.
• The mineral industry’s extraction of earth, its use of chemicals, its pollution of waterways and land, its clearance of native vegetation, and its displacement of communities, are the other factors, that continue to invite criticism in various parts of the globe.
• One best example is, in the Philippines where a vast network of groups and organizations campaigned against the Western Mining Corporation (WMC), an Australian-based multinational company.
• Much opposition to the company in its own country Australia is based on antinuclear sentiments and advocacy for the basic rights of Australian indigenous people.
• Another group of movements are those involved in struggles against mega dams. In every country where a mega-dam is built, one is likely to find an environmental movement opposing it.
• Increasingly anti-dam movements are pro-river movements for more susceptible and equitable management of river systems and valleys. The early 1980s saw the first anti-dam movement launched in the north, namely, the campaign to save the Franklin River and its surrounding forests in Australia.
• This was a wilderness and forest campaign as well as an anti-dam campaign. At present, there has been a spurt in mega-dam buildings in the south, from Turkey to Thailand to South Africa from Indonesia to China.
• India has had some of the leading anti-dam, pro-river movements. Narmada Bachao Andholan is one of the best-known of these movements. It is significant to note that in anti-dam and other environmental movements in India, the most important shared idea is Non-Violence.

8. Resources Geopolitics

• Resource geopolitics is all about who gets what, when, where and how. Resources have provided some of the key means and motives of global European power expansion. They have also been the focus of inter-state rivalry.
• Western geopolitical thinking about resources has been dominated by the relationship of trade, war and power, at the core of which were overseas resources and maritime navigation.
• Since sea power itself rested on access to timber, naval timber supply became a key priority for major European powers from the 17^th century onwards.
• The critical importance of ensuring an uninterrupted supply of strategic resources, in particular oil, was well established both during the First World War and the Second World War.
• Throughout the Cold War, the industrialized countries of the North adopted several methods to ensure a steady flow of resources.
• These included the deployment of military forces near exploitation sites and along sea lanes of communication, the stockpiling of strategic resources, efforts to prop up friendly governments in producing countries as well as support to multinational companies and favourable international agreements.
• Traditional Western strategic thinking remained concerned with access to supplies, which might be threatened by the Soviet Union. A particular concern was Western control of oil in the Gulf and strategic minerals of Southern and Central Africa.

9. Distribution of Oil Reserves in the World

• Security of supply countries to worry about government and business decisions about several minerals, in particular radioactive materials. However, oil continues to be the most important resource in global strategy.
• The global economy relied on oil for much of the 20^th century as a portable and indispensable fuel. The immense wealth associated with oil generates political struggles to control it, and the history of petroleum is also the history of war and struggle.
• Nowhere is this more obviously the case than in West Asia and Central Asia. West Asia, specifically the Gulf region, accounts for about 30 per cent of global oil production.
• But it has about 64 per cent of the planet’s known reserves and is therefore the only region able to satisfy any substantial rise in oil demand.
• Saudi Arabia has a quarter of the world’s total reserves and is the single largest producer. Iraq’s known reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia’s.
• And, since substantial portions of Iraqi territory are yet to be fully explored, there is a fair chance that actual reserves might be far larger.
• The United States, Europe, Japan, and increasingly India and China, which consume this petroleum, are located at a considerable distance from the region.
• Water is another crucial resource that is relevant to global politics. Regional variations and the increasing scarcity of fresh water in some parts of the world point to the possibility of disagreements over shared water resources as a leading source of conflicts in the 21^st century.
• Water wars may arise due to conflicts among countries sharing the water bodies. Countries sharing rivers can disagree over many things. For instance, a typical disagreement is a downstream state’s objection to pollution, excessive irrigation, or the construction of dams by an upstream state, which might decrease or degrade the quality of water available to the downstream state.
• States have used force or power to protect or seize freshwater resources. Examples include violence between Israel, Syria and Jordan in the 1950s and 1960s over attempts by each side to divert water from the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers and more recent threats between Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the construction of dams on the Euphrates River.
• Several studies show that countries that Share Rivers and many countries that do share rivers are involved in military conflicts with each other.

10. Indigenous People and their Rights

• The questions and thoughts of indigenous people bring the issues of environment, resources and politics.
• The UN defines the indigenous population as comprising the descendants of people who inhabited the present territory of a country at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world and overcame them.
• Indigenous people now, live more in conformity with their particular social, economic and cultural customs and traditions than the institutions of the country of which they now form a part.

In India, there are 30 crore indigenous people spread throughout the world. There are

1. 20 lake indigenous people of the Cordillera region of the Philippines,
2. 10 Lake Mapuche people of Chile, 6lakh tribal people of the Chittagong hill tracts in Bangladesh,
3. 35lakh North American natives, 50,000 Kuna living east of Panama Canal
4. 10lakh small peoples of the Soviet north.

Like other social movements, indigenous people speak of their struggles, their agenda and their rights.

• The Indigenous voices in world politics call for the admission of Indigenous people to the world community as equals. Indigenous people occupy areas in Central and South America, Africa, India(called tribals) and Southeast Asia.
• Many of the present-day island states in the Oceania region -Australia, and New Zealand were inhabited by the Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian people throughout thousands of years.
• They appeal to governments to come to terms with the continuing existence of indigenous nations as enduring communities with an identity of their own. ‘Since times immemorial’ is the phrase used by indigenous people all over the world to refer to their continued occupancy of the lands from which they originate.
• The worldviews of the indigenous people, irrespective of their location, are strikingly similar concerning land and the variety of life systems supported by it. The loss of land, which also means the loss of an economic resource base, is the most obvious threat to the survival of indigenous people.
• In India, the description “indigenous people” is usually applied to the Scheduled Tribes who constitute nearly 8% of the population of the country. Except for small communities of hunters and gatherers, most indigenous populations in India depend primarily on the cultivation of land.
• For centuries, they had free access to as much land as they could cultivate. It was only after the establishment of the British Colonial rule that areas, which had previously been inhabited by the Scheduled tribe communities, were subjected to outside forces.
• Although they enjoy constitutional protection in political representation, they have not got many benefits of development in the country.
• They have paid a huge cost for development since they are the single largest group among the people displaced by various developmental projects since independence.
• Issues related to the rights of the indigenous communities have been neglected in domestic and international politics for very long.
• During the 1970s, growing international contacts among indigenous leaders from around the world aroused a sense of common concern and shared experiences.
• The World Council of Indigenous People was formed in 1975. The council has become the first of 11 indigenous NGOs to receive consultative status in the UN.