State of India's environment

India is rich in natural resources: the fertile black soil of the Deccan, the Indo-Gangetic plains, large forests, about 8 per cent of the world's iron-ore reserves, and coal and natural gas.

But its environment is under pressure from two opposite sides at once:

• Poverty-induced degradation: poor people, with no other choice, overuse the land, forests and water around them.
• Pollution from affluence and a growing industrial sector.

India's priority environmental issues are land degradation, the loss of biodiversity, air pollution (especially from vehicles in cities), the management of fresh water (groundwater is being both used up and polluted), and solid waste management.

The scale of the pressure: India has about 17 per cent of the world's people and 20 per cent of its livestock, on only 2.5 per cent of the world's area. Land is degraded by deforestation, shifting cultivation (burning a patch of forest, farming it, then moving on), over-grazing, wrong farming practices and poor irrigation. About 5.3 billion tonnes of soil are lost to erosion every year.

What is being done? The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), set up in 1974, and the state pollution control boards set standards for clean air and water and check that they are met. They have much to do: the number of vehicles grew from about 3 lakh in 1951 to about 35 crore in 2022. People's movements also protect forests: the Chipko movement in the Himalayas, where villagers hugged trees to stop them being cut, and the Appiko movement, which followed its example.