Environmental Economics

The environmental protection and mitigating the impact of environmental degradation has been a global concern, India is not an exception. The environmental degradation has threatened the entire living world and all walks of human life and motored the policies towards sustainable development and mitigating the impact of environmental degradation have become a great challenge to both the people and the policy framers. The adverse impact of environmental degradation on both agriculture and living conditions has been glaring. According to the World Development Report 2010, climate change is one of most complex challenges of present century. No country alone can take on interconnected challenges posed by climate change, including controversial political decisions, daunting technology change and for reaching global consequences. Another dilemma lies in the fact that all the measures of poverty alleviation go against the environment. The challenges like ensuring food security on one hand and shifting to the sustainable and economically viable agriculture on the other are too hard to ignore. Thus it becomes very difficult for the policy framers to choose between the environment and poverty alleviation. Further, the political decisions become difficult when it comes between the poverty and environment. Thus it becomes an urgent imperative to examine the challenges and opportunities in general and in India in particular. It is in this sense a national seminar with financial support of University Grants Commission was organized in which scholars from across the country and various disciplines participated. We received a number of good quality papers examining the various dimensions of the subject. The issues intersecting the environmental degradation and sustainable development like climate change and agricultural adaptation, poverty alleviation with sustainable modes, environmental politics, green consumption and marketing, population growth, bio-diversity, bio-fuel, environmental management, gender (econ-feminism) and increasing pollution. Besides these issues, there is also the need of the acquaintance of scientific facts related to agriculture and irrigation, people’s awareness and consumption pattern, poverty alleviation all in context of challenges and opportunities of sustainable development/sustainable rural development. These two basic phenomena, complimentary to each other, require to be seen in policy perspective also. The present volume on environmental degradation and sustainable development caters to the academic need and support to policy framers.