When the then Indian railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav introduced kulhads, or traditional earthen cups, as a substitute to phase out the nonbiodegradable plastic cups, some environmentalists were quick to point out that given the scale of demand, production of disposable kulhads would lead to consumption of the fertile topsoil, taking over a decade to fully decompose and replenish the soil. Moreover, the artisans who bake these utilise wood-dust and coal-dust to fuel their furnaces, impressing a considerable environmental footprint in the process.

Being sustainable goes far beyond meaning well. It requires exercise of active, diligent initiative and constant conscientious vigilance on part of every potential transgressor. Not being blindsided by superficialities and probing deep, and acknowledging the enmeshed nature of environmental components - the dependencies, interactions, and collateral ramifications are vital to devising an effective and lasting sustainable economic plan, be it at any level. Flamboyant proposals and alternatives that appear to be innocuous and incur no environmental expense, maybe ultimately drawing upon an even more insidious and problematic source than apparent.

Expecting such a quantum of change as is necessary to prevent our ongoing environmental collapse while staying and operating within the framework of capitalism is futile. As long as there are demand creation and reliance on value on scarcity, profitmaking will merely shift the damage and find one way or another to overexploit the available resources.

South Asia - world's most biodiverse region 

Being one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, supporting a very high density and variety of flora and fauna, and resources, South Asia has very intricate ecosystems comprising of myriad threads of dependency, competition, and exchange. The niche overlap of coexisting species and populations are extremely high. 

It needs to be the pivotal consideration for sustainable economic planning, legislation, and enforcement, that individual components of the environment cannot be viewed in isolation. A top-down approach to environmental legislation disregards the ground-level intricacies and microscopic location-specific nuances. Herding every ecosystem with the same stick notwithstanding local quirks and salience leads to unforeseeable complications. 

Involving local communities

A notable example is the alienation of indigenous communities from protected areas, take as an instance the expulsion of nomads from reserves in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and the prevention of pastoral activities. In lack of grazing, the grass would overgrow and ultimately dry, die and fall over the ground, deterring fresh, new growth from taking place. A similar observation was noted with the case of alienation of leaf pickers from the Sunderbans.

What is needed is to involve the local communities who have harmoniously coexisted in-sync with nature for millennia and serve as the counterweight in the ecological balance, and devise an inclusive, holistic, a grassroots, bottom-up approach to sustainable development. If this is not done, suspension or removal of humans from the ecosystem would be tantamount to removing weight from a pair of stabilised scales, throwing it into disbalance.

Moreover, if demand exists, whether it be for timber or animals products, a bypass or evasive loophole shall always be found and exploited - it’s an endless, bothersome, and wasteful arms race between legislators and exploiters.

South Asia is seen as a natural solar energy bastion, but when we selectively focus on the cleanliness of alternative energy vis-a-vis fossil fuels, we tend to limit ourselves to the products and neglect the footprint of the investments.  

Solar energy requires a significant amount of land unobstructed by vegetation cover - in tropical areas this requires massive forest clearance and dealing heavy damage to biodiversity, given the high areal concentration of species in tropical regions.

Most of the alternative energy sector merely shifts the damage out of the frame of consideration into less-obvious avenues. It’s akin to stowing away a character behind the curtains only for it to appear later for a dramatic turn of events. Literal, singular, and cleverly-exclusive focus on harnessing renewable energy rather than on reducing the ecological footprint in the first place is a handy sleight deployed by corporations. 

Forests are often seen as free land and thus are the primary candidates to be devoted to solar energy infrastructure development, given the lack of arid areas and badlands in tropical regions. Agricultural and built-up land already being intensively-populated cannot be spared, hence forests are the Hobson's choice. Solar panels release heavy metals into the soil which ultimately makes their way to the water. Freshwater is the lifeline of South Asian settlements and this aggravates the threat. Often, excitedly-invested solar projects are abandoned or fall onto neglect, and the long-term footprint reduction compensation trading off the initial, acute environmentally-damaging investment is never mitigated as per expectations. Thus, the ecological footprint trail is merely being translated, not removed. Deforestation and material pollution replace atmospheric emissions.

Energy demand is no different from material demands and will be met someway or the other - it is thus pressing to ensure that if one known environmental offender channel is blocked, the substitute doesn’t prove to be a black sheep either. 

The destructive effects of palm oil are well-known. There’s absolutely no question about the role of the industry is causing massive losses of invaluable, ancient forests in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. There’s no denying that the unregulated reckless trampling of palm oil producers over the islands has brought hundreds of endemic floral and faunal species to the brink of extinction. But, if only we stop taking for granted the enormous effectiveness of palm oil - which has one of the largest usable biomass percentages of all major plant-based products, in fulfilling the burgeoning global demand for a variety of products, while consuming relatively less area of land and requiring few material resources, will we realise that palm oil may actually be an antihero than a supervillain. 

Simply put, the alternatives to palm oil are way uglier. Other plant oils aren’t remotely as versatile, nor are they so space, cost, and investment-effective. Plus palm oil is the healthiest of the easily-accessible mass-cultivated frying and cooking media. Despite a significant portion of the profits being claimed overseas, palm oil has helped mobilise a lot of economically backward communities and brought them out of penury. The industry has salvaged hundreds of thousands from unemployment and continues to do so.

Nonetheless, the palm oil industry needs meticulous regulation. For one, regions of forest devoted to palm oil production shouldn’t be haphazard, arbitrary, or conveniently opportunistic, based on the whims and fancies of the producers, but rather be selected wisely - and allocated land mustn’t contain an entire population of an endemic species, mustn’t overlie a peat-bog so as to compound the emissions during the processing and waste disposal, and mustn’t lie on the edges of the forest to render natural recovery difficult by exposing a larger open frontier.

Forest fragmentation is a major issue in Borneo, the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. Fragmentation of habitats disrupt the living rhythms of fauna, slows down forest recovery, and hampers a healthy gene flow, destroying genetic diversity, among numerous other ill-effects. Forest planning and systematic allocation of forest land, so as to minimise fragmentation per unit of land allocated has helped make forest-based economic activity in the region considerably sustainable.  

The coral triangle is an exceptionally biodiverse region stretching from the Philippines to Bali to the Solomon Islands. The rich ecosystem was and arguably continues to be in grave jeopardy due to unfettered and indiscriminate extensive international fishing by massive trawlers. However, working with local communities, creating clear yet accommodative fishing regulations, and enacting specific filters, bars, and caps on the entry and exploitation have shown promise, with the ecosystem exhibiting positive signs of recovery.

Be it palm oil or tropical reef fisheries, striking a balance between extraction and regeneration is crucial here. If small, evenly-distributed, non-localised portions of the ecosystem’s resources are harnessed fairly proportionately, a lasting, stable dynamic equilibrium can be established. In any other scenario, a single disproportion can deal with irreparable damage. Too much, too soon and a too specific need to all be avoided individually rather than only their intersection.

As long as genuine commitment, active initiative, and methodical consideration on part of each and every stakeholder is not evoked, enforcements shall be to little avail and in some cases, given the time and effort invested in such legislations and enactments, would be prudentially altogether avoided. Let alone environmental recovery, Sustainability itself shall continue to be a distant ideal rather than an achievable goal, as long as environment and development are viewed as competing influences. 

Sustainability is difficult to realise if restrictions put in place for our very survival and well-being are envisioned as being antithetical to so-called development. Equating unbounded profit and value maximisation with progress will ensure that South Asia heads towards profitable scarcities rather than plentiful prosperities. 

(The writer is an independent journalist, writer and researcher. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at pitamberkaushik1@gmail.com)