Green Growth Strategy for Sustainable Development:India’s Green Growth Strategy

The global ecosystem is finite and economic growth is pushing it beyond limits - making development unsustainable. Today, climate change, a symptom of unsustainable development, is threatening the basic elements of life. Economic thinkers across the globe began to recognize the need to build a prosperous and secure future based on policies that will sustain and expand the environmental resource base. The world needed a new way of assessing development which would include human and ecological well being within its definition.

Sustainable development growth strategy evolved as the economic thinkers realized that growth policies must be redefined to ensure that the needs of the present are fulfilled without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Asia and Pacific countries moved a step further and introduced 'Green Growth strategy' - a strategy to eliminate the tradeoffs between economic growth and investment and gains in environmental quality and social inclusiveness. A green economy requires social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development to work in a mutually reinforcing fashion. In India, environmental sustainability has become a major challenge. For an environmentally sustainable future, India needs to value its natural resources, and ecosystem services to better. India can make green growth a reality by introducing strategies for reduction in environmental degradation, conservation and efficient use of energy, preservation of biological diversity and climate adaptation in agriculture. This alone will help India to maintain its growth rate without jeopardizing future environmental sustainability.