When one sees a good idea, that is actually working, one delves into its essence, and then asks the question, “Why isn’t it being applied everywhere?” This, I believe, is the heart of the challenge of sustainable development.

Sustainable development places equal weight on both terms. Development is the challenge of meeting basic needs, ending extreme poverty and having the opportunity to improve material conditions over time. Sustainability, of course, means many things: how all the above can be achieved over a long-term. In our time, it also implies environmental sustainability.

India has achieved a rapid economic growth in the last few years. But it has, ironically, not met the basic needs of the population, and has certainly not achieved the growth in an environmentally sustainable manner.

India has to face – and is already facing – massive environmental challenges that are not being attended to. India is right up there in difficulty because this is just about the most crowded place and the most densely populated rural environment in the whole world. There is tremendous environmental stress on almost every front right now – land degradation, soil degradation,

destruction of natural habitats, and biodiversity loss. But, the two most severe ones are water stress and climate stress.

The water challenge here exemplifies what is true about almost all environmental challenges that are multi-factorial. There is no one simple stressor underway in India’s worsening water situation. On one hand, there are massive floods of unprecedented dimensions, and on the other, there is a worsening water scarcity that has not been confronted. Ground water depletion, definitive massive pollution of waterways, land degradation effect on river flows, major downstream flooding, diversion of rivers, destroying downstream ecologies, and climate change are some of the great unknowns. It is known that climate change will alter the precipitation and evaporation cycle, but what’s not known is the manner, and what it would mean for the monsoons, their locations, timings, and intensity. The rising temperatures in the Himalayan region will change the water runoffs from the Himalayas dramatically, and a very significant part of India’s water supply for agriculture depends on that. So, both the timing and the amount of water flow from the great Himalayan rivers will change over the next 50 years. One part would