Predicaments of Power and Nature in India: An Introduction

Abstract

"Political leaders and the media, corporations and popular movements, are all engaged with issues of how to strike a balance with nature more than ever before. Climate change and the loss of biological diversity, the threat of nuclear contamination and the issues of wider ecological security of the underprivileged, are all among the issues that jostle for attention. With recent regime-shifts on the global political arena, commitments that were earlier out of sight are now plausible. However, while time was running short, partisan national interests took centre stage. This was starkly evident in the run up to the Copenhagen United Nations Convention on Climate Change in December 2009. The prospects for a global commitment on how best to reduce greenhouse gases were hard to reach at Copenhagen. This is not the first time in human history that people have foreseen or feared such threats to human life. The aftermath of the Second World War saw public protests that led to early restraints on nuclear tests in the atmosphere and in the ocean. In 1962, the publication of Silent Spring led to a larger awareness of more unseen threats such as the ecological and health impacts of chemical pesticides."