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A recently released report by the Worldwatch Institute indicts India and China for being extremely high consumers of the world's resources and looks for alternative solutions to the problem
 While the consumerist patterns of the West have been mapped and reported on by various agencies, growing trends of similar patterns of resource-usage in developing countries in Asia are causing alarm. A report published by the Worldwatch Institute reveals how the erstwhile Third World countries are bringing to bear unforeseen effects on the world in the wake of industrialised development.
The two most populous countries -- India and China -- are responsible for draining a major chunk of the world’s resources with their increasingly unsustainable patterns of consumption. Though European nations and the United States are still by far the largest consumers of global resources, the developing world is taking up a disproportionate and steadily increasing share of resources required to support changing lifestyles and as raw materials for industry. Recent studies have begun to examine the global impact, as these two nations join the Western world as major consumers of resources and polluters of local and global ecosystems. A combination of factors, including high demand for resources by burgeoning industries, rising populations that need to be provided for and increasing per capita income in these growing economies, are contributing to the problem. The two Asian giants together have a population of 2.5 billion, nearly 40% of the world’s population of 6.5 billion. Despite low per capita resource consumption on the part of the average population, the two countries, especially China, are bringing heavy pressure on resources thanks to their commodity-intensive manufacturing activities. A conservation-based model of development is increasingly being advocated from within these countries and also by agencies like the Worldwatch Institute which has recently published its annual ‘State of the World’ report. The 2006 edition of the report has a special focus on China and India, which, apart from their rising populations, are also home to millions of the most poor. The report notes that the economic and political choices that these two countries make in the near future will be closely watched because of the bearing they have on the resources of the rest of the world. The observations in the study mark a change from about a decade ago, when these two countries were unable to feed their populations, to present patterns of extremely high consumption. One possible reading of the statistics is a situation where some parts of the population are getting access to resources like never before and the others are deprived of the most basic needs. As Chinese and Indian incomes rise, the use of food, energy and raw materials will also continue to climb, says the report. China’s economy has averaged a 9.5% growth rate. Last year, the country consumed 26% of the world’s crude steel, 32% of its rice, 37% of cotton and 47% of cement. Experts say that soaring prices of various goods and consumables show the strains on the world’s energy base and threaten food security in many other countries because of demands from India and China.
The markers of better living standards in these expanding industrial economies also mean additional strain on resources needed to build the supporting infrastructural base. Both countries have rising car ownership levels and expanding highways, and are spending heavily on airports, roads and ports. If China one day has three cars for every four people -- the current US ratio -- it will have a total of 1.1 billion cars. The whole world today has 800 million cars. To provide the roads, highways, and parking lots to house this vast fleet, China would have to pave an area equal to the land it now plants in rice, says Lester Brown, an environmental researcher who also chairs the Earth Policy Institute (EPI). India’s oil requirement has doubled since 1992. China, which was oil-sufficient in the mid-1990s, was the second largest oil importer in 2004. Meanwhile, India and China have scooped up shares in oil companies around the world. While spiralling demand for resources is resulting in an increase in worldwide oil and commodity prices, this is adversely affecting standards of life in developing as well as developed countries. The current per capita oil consumption in China and India is, respectively, one-fifteenth and one-thirtieth that of the United States. Threatening to shoot up to attain half of US consumption levels, this would cause the two countries to use 100 million barrels per day, more than 2005’s total daily world consumption of 85 million barrels, says the report. Consumption of foodgrain is also being traced along a similar unsustainable trajectory. With a shrinking and environmentally stressed farmland, China and India will buy more grain abroad, driving up prices for consumers worldwide. This also explains how the poor are in a no-gain situation, while ironically the highest consumers of resources inevitably are able to generate the capital required to weather steep price hikes in commodity prices. “Rising demand for energy, food and raw materials by 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians is already having ripple effects worldwide,” said Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin at the launch of the report. The authors hold the two nations accountable for increasing demands on Africa’s forests and fisheries, flourishing export markets in soybean and mineral ores from South America and Southeast Asia, and the loss of semi-skilled manufacturing jobs in Central America and Southeast Asia. Their economic decisions are reflected in their foreign policies, which impact trade and livelihoods worldwide. The Washington-based Worldwatch Institute said the economic miracles in China and India masked severe air and water pollution crises in those countries, a skewed development pattern that is getting increasingly problematic over time. The rising ecological impact of unbalanced use of resources is too stark and pressing a matter to be ignored. Strategists, on the other hand, fear that the competition for energy, particularly oil, could destabilise the planet and lead to new conflicts. The foreword to ‘State of the World 2006’ states: “Besides the focus on China and India, State of the World 2006 looks at actions corporations can take to be more socially responsible; examines the potential socio-economic, health, and environmental implications of nanoscale technologies; assesses the impacts of large-scale development of biofuels on agriculture and the environment; describes mercury sources, industrial uses, and health hazards worldwide; and provides an overview of the need to safeguard freshwater ecosystems, with examples of proven approaches in cities, villages, and farming regions around the world. “The Western economic model -- the fossil-fuel-based, auto-centred, throwaway economy -- is not going to work for China. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which by 2031 is projected to have a population even larger than China’s,” says Brown. This view is echoed by Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment, who says: “The Western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources -- energy and materials -- and generates enormous waste. The industrialised world has mitigated the adverse impacts of wealth generation by investing huge amounts of money. But... it remains many steps behind the problems it creates. India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory.” Certain ways are being worked out in both countries to undo some of the damage. China’s Congress passed a renewable energy law that comes into force this month. The country has been a pioneer in the use of small wind turbines, hydro generators and biogas plants. India now has the world’s fourth largest wind power industry and aims to raise its share of renewable energies to 20-25% of power generation, according to Worldwatch. “Both nations are signatories of the Kyoto Protocol, but as developing nations they are exempted from cutting their emissions. However, China has already taken voluntary measures, which have had a very positive impact,” says Hans Verholme, the World Wide Fund for Nature’s director for climate change. With their growing economies, expanding ecological footprints, and rising political influence, China and India, along with the United States, will need to be a part of any plausible global effort to build a sustainable world economy. The political ambivalence vis-à-vis resource management and models of development will need to give way to a full-fledged commitment to prosper within the limits imposed by nature, as these countries now have the leverage to make changes and find new and viable energy systems. “We were encouraged to find that a growing number of opinion leaders in China and India now recognise that the resource-intensive model for economic growth can’t work in the 21st century,” says Flavin. InfoChange News and Features, January 2006
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