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agreement is not only about safeguarding environment but also about stimulating economic demand and investment. Contain global warming at 2 degree Celsius effective by establishing market mechanisms to reduce emis sions efficiently alongside a strong regime of monitoring and verification. And fair in providing help to developing countries to tackle climate change.
We all know that the environmental issue came on the agenda of the world seriously after the Brundtland Commission report 'Our Common Future' was made public in. It has raised a serious issue of intergenerational equity. Are we eating up very fast all the resource that our forefathers had left for us and leave almost nothing for our future generations? The manda. rins of the modern civilisation want us to believe that all will be well once we have low carbon emission technologies in place and we all will be happy ever after. This is patently wrong, because it assumes that there will be no greed ever anywhere and everybody will behave. The financial crisis leading to a great recession is just an example of how the assumption everybody includ-" ing the state behaving honestly can go wrong. The emphasis is solely on the production. Consumption side is thoroughly ignored. It is continued to be assumed that wants are insatiable and will continue to grow. Unless the conventions of the Copenhagen type seriously deliberate a cut on consump tion, environmental problems will not get solved. The issue is not efficient production it is the issue of life style.
It is the issue of life style that calls for focus on both production and consumptions simultaneously. Gandhi advocated decentralised production for local units of human settlements taking account of the surrounding ecosystem services. He did not forbid regional, national and international trade and exchange of goods and services, but he definitely insisted on prioritising the local level production and consumption of the goods and services. This production has to consider the overall constraints that the local eco-systems impose on the survival of this specie in harmony with all other species that constitute the total eco system. Obviously, Gandhi had not specifically made the point of the limits of the ecosystem's overall constraints, but he had in his perspective placed the human specie as one of the numerous in nature and regarded the later as something to be respected and revered rather than being chained and tortured and exploited for material and bodily comforts alone. The reverence and regard for the nature has been germane to the Indian culture and civilisation and hence it was no wonder that Gandhi only reiterated it.
Gandhi raised the issue of consumption first because deciding about life style will determine the production requirements. In the present day context we need to raise and tackle important conceptual issues, such as "What exactly is consumption?" "Which consumer activities are most ecologically significant?" and "What strategies for changing consumer behaviour actu
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| SR No. | 007005 |
| Book Title | World of Philosophy |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave |
| Publisher | Shanti Prakashan |
| Publication Year | 2011 |
| Total Pages | 1002 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 30 MB |