MAY GET LOST IN DETAILS

That’s the concern among environmentalists as Uttarakhand sets the gross environmental product in motion

- MEGHA PRAKASH DEHRADUN

ON JUNE 5, the occasion of World Environment Day, when Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat announced Uttarakhand would be the first state to introduce the Gross Environmental Product (GEP) as a measure of progress, it was a historic moment for the Himalayan state, as well as for environmentalists who have been pushing for GEP for close to a decade now (see ‘Making of GEP’).

“GEP is all about periodically evaluating the status of environment by measuring the growth of natural resources,” says Anil Prakash Joshi, an environmentalist based in Dehradun. Uttarakhand is an ecologically sensitive region. Yet, environmental degradation in the state has gone beyond the acceptable limit over the past few decades, making it prone to disasters and incurring huge losses to humanity. Hence there is an urgent need to monitor the growth of natural resources in parallel to the current development pattern, measured through economic growth, Joshi explains. Such a measure will also help assess the impact of developmental activities on the environment and analyse the extent to which it should be allowed. This will make the economy sustainable over time, he says. However, there is a fear that this concept of environmental growth may be seen and measured from the viewpoint of economic growth or gross domestic product (GDP). “That will dilute the very idea my organisation Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization (HESCO), and several other environmentalists have been striving for,” Joshi adds (see ‘Long road to...’, p24). His fears are not unfounded.