MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT 
Lokesh Chandra Dube1 

“The Earth has enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed” ‐ Mahatma Gandhi 

Everything that surrounds us is our environment. In fact, with reference to any creature, everything
excluding it in the universe is its environment. In its constricted meaning environment is supposed to be
all matter, energy and their interaction with biological systems on earth. Earth being a living planet (recall
the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock) possesses (limited) capacity to accommodate changes called
cybernetics.

Man’s attitude towards Environment

From the time immemorial is has been thought that various matters on earth like air (gas), water (liquid)
and soil (solid) are the resources conferred by God to human beings for their consumption.

Religious belief of west that God created the world and then ordered Adam and his descendants to enjoy
it has been interpreted as if Man is empowered by the supreme power to authoritatively consume all the
‘resources’ of the living planet. This interpretation soon entered philosophy and thereby the science. The
same became part of our education system too.

Later, it was explained that environment is source of resources and sink of wastes generated by
consumption of these resources. This concept prevailed till the so-called pre-environmental era.
Stockholm’s Conference on Human Environment held in 1972 brought a paradigm shift in these
thoughts. This was the first time when environment was not seen as a resource or as a sink but as one
and only adobe of human beings in synergy with all living creatures. This conference established that
there is cause and effect relation between poverty and degradation of environment. Indira Gandhi in
India thus emphasized on removing poverty. In fact, Mahatma Gandhi had realized this in the days of
yours and left the concept of Antyodaya. Antyodaya is the model of development where plans are made
taking care of the conditions of least developed groups. Antyodaya results in Sarvodaya at last that is the
overall development in all strata of society.

                                                            
1
 Consultant at Emergent Ventures India, Gurgaon. lokesh@emergent‐vntures.com  

 
 

One such paradigm shift was the school of Deep Ecology, which rejects the human centered outlook of
development and supports a dialogue which is eco-centered. It promotes the ethics of conducting
human affairs according to the principles of environment.

Interpretation of the belief that man is declared master of nature led to western world to consume rather
overconsume the natural resources. Since they had the prime movers advantage in extraction of natural
resources; they attained culmination of development comparatively earlier than other parts of the world.
Unprecedented rate of resource extraction from environment resulted in two major consequences, first
depletion of resources (overconsumption) and second pollution (excessive sink action of environment).

Now the problem came how will take the responsibility of resource conservation and pollution
abatement, those who have created the problem or those who are going to be the sufferer and prone to
the adverse effects. Here came the dilemma what we call the problem of free rider in environmental
economics. Environment is a common property resource. Every consumer wants to share the
environmental benefits but hardly any will to pay for these benefits. Here came the concept of
externalities. Being global public good, the costs to remediate environment became a negative externality.
Later to internalize this external cost, the principle of polluter pays came into existence.

This is also important to distinguish between the natural environment and built environment. The two
interact and influence each other in number of ways. The industrial revolution heralded a completely
new era in which the term ‘environment’ attained new dimensions. Increased raw material demand
depleted the resources whereas increased energy demand created problem of pollution. The impacts of
human actions on environment have not necessarily been localized and short term in nature; some of
them occupied larger degrees in time and space. Increased energy demand mandated more and more
exploration of fossil fuel resources and their consumption for primary energy supply which along with
massive deforestation to satisfy food and shelter requirement of growing human population led to the
problem of enhanced green house effect. Carbon budget of world became imbalanced; the ‘missing
carbon’ added to global warming and associated implications of worldwide climatic changes.

In late eighties and early nineties it was realized that a blind race of economic development may lead to
serious consequences in long term and on massive scale. The 1987 Brundtland commission report
defined sustainable development as “Development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In 1992 UN
Conference on Environment and Development, the concept of sustainable development was invoked.
No later it turned out to be a buzzword and was ambiguously interpreted allover the world.

 
 

With the technological evolution, low pollution technologies have developed but they are hardly
available to the developing nations which are more prone to the pollution problem, thus it is the duty of
developed world to make these technologies available to the developing countries through technology
transfer and other incentives. The utmost thing to understand is that this planet is our only home; we are
not going to get another earth to live… This would be the true form of globalization.

There are two characteristics of sustainable development, inter-generational equality and intra-
generational equality. This means equality in terms of accessibility of resources between generations of
human beings and between the populations across the globe at the same time.

Thus the solution lies in realizing the fact that environmental resources are not only for us. In other
words, Earth belongs to all, me, my parents and my progeny, we have, in fact borrowed it from our
children.

The same thoughts are reflected in Indian philosophy. Ishavasyopanishad in its first saga proposes the
concept of sustainability as

Ishavasyam idam sarvam yatkincham jagatyam jagat

Tena tyakten bhunjithah ma gridha kasya swid dhsnam

“These all things in the world belong to the Almighty God, thus, consume them with sacrifice and do
not be greedy of others’ resources”

In words of Mahatma Gandhi "Civilisation in the real sense of the term consists not in the multiplication but in the
deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants…".

Hence a non effluent life style with decentralized and participatory model of economic growth based on
alternative technologies & environment friendly science is the need of hour. This can only be
accomplished when from childhood it is inculcated that we need to live harmony with nature and should
respect environment. Education system should be improved accordingly and a simple but observation
based study of environment should be made part of our introductory school education.