This book examines the nuances of the relationship between development and environmental conservation policy in India over the last three decades. While India is taken as the focal point, the study extends to an analysis of global aspects and other developing countries as and when the situation demands. Understanding that development always has to take environmental issues into consideration, the book undertakes critical reviews of the different ways in which this has been done. The review is based on a grasp of the simultaneous developments in the theoretical understanding of the environment and ecosystems and provides pointers towards directions for possible change. The motivation for the book lies in the continuing distance between theoretical knowledge of the role of the environment, in particular the underlying long-term links between human wellbeing and wise use of nature, and its application in public policy. The book also proposes that whichever theoretical cornerstone is taken as the starting point, it is the ethical undertones that drive the analysis in directions that acquire meaning in terms of the quality and legitimacy of decision-making. It explores the relevance to policy of a variety of radical conceptual development and policy directions, such as dematerialising growth, the social metabolism approach and the degrowth movement. Further, the dilemma facing environmental policy continues to be how to simultaneously borrow from developments in and across disciplines while at the same time, and at a more practical level, dealing with a diversity of stakeholders.
Kanchan Chopra, a leading expert in the field of environment and development, received her doctoral degree from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Till May 2009, she was the Director and Professor of the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi where she had been a member of the faculty for close to three decades. She was also a visiting professor at the Energy Research Institute, Delhi till mid-2015. She is a Fellow of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm and the South Asian Network on Development and Environmental Economics and has also been elected as a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences in 2011. She has published extensively in national and international journals and has authored several books with leading international publishers. She has also co-edited two volumes of ‘Handbook of Environmental Economics in India’ published by Oxford University Press in 2009 and ‘Environmental Governance: Approaches, Imperatives and Methods’ published by Bloomsbury in 2012. From 2001 to 2005, she was a Member of the Assessment Panel and Co-chair of the Responses Working Group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an assessment supported by the United Nations to examine the relationship between human well-being and ecosystems. She is the Founder President of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics.
Dr. Chopra has recently been awarded the 2016 Kenneth Boulding Award presented by the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE).
