It is a sustainability `problématique' — the inevitability of more and the reality of less. At the time of Independence, the Indian population was about 340 million, around a billion less than what it is now. In 2011, at the time of the last census, population density was 382 people per square kilometre, about 3.25 times more than 1951. India’s geographical area meanwhile has only increased by about 10,810 sq km because Sikkim, Goa and Daman and Diu joined the Indian Union. While the country is not growing geographically, the population and population density are. To most people, it is obvious that this is not sustainable because we will run out of space to produce food and to meet other human requirements. We will need more of everything — housing, consumer products, transportation, food and water, infrastructure, energy, waste disposal spaces and their capacity enhancement— when, in reality, we have a limited supply of resources. There is another sustainability problématique. The world is releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an increasing rate while there is less space to do so without far-reaching consequences for global temperature rise. This is made possible due to large-scale use of fossil fuels,in particular the dirtier one,i.e coal and less of cleaner one (or less polluting),i.e natural gas - the primary aim should be to reduce the transfer of carbon to the atmosphere in absolute terms. From time to time, we have claimed success and congratulated each other. Starting with the Clean Development Mechanism to the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund, we have celebrated the means while the end is not in sight. We keep talking in terms of reducing per capita consumption of fossil fuels, such as the dirtier one like coal(instead its use rises due to rise in power demand) while the number of people on the planet keeps growing, and of reducing the fossil-fuel based energy intensity of our economies while the economies keep expanding. The net result is rise of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and consequently the global average temperature are higher than when we began talking in 1995. The term, development, is more difficult to comprehend than it appears. Development could be a desirable state, a process, or deliberate action to change things for the better, such as overcoming ills that undermine human well-being like poverty, population growth, corruption, greed and intolerance. But development is often construed as increased human well-being over time and, thus, simplified into more of everything, for more and more people. With a global population of over eight billion, planetary boundaries are being breached in a way that could change the environment from a conducive to a hostile state. It may invite more defence and security spends from tax payers money.
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