DELIBERATIONS ON RETHINKING THE ENVIRONMENT: SUSTAINABILITY IN MODERN ERA

Nine years remained to the deadline the world had given to itself in the Rio Conference of 1992 for fulfilment Sustainable Development Goals before the recent UN Conference on Climate Change was held in Glasgow. If there was any display of unity between the Global North and the Global South, it was visible in their unanimous agreement of pushing the deadlines further away. Apart from that even today the tussle between the developed and the developing nation remains to be same. There have been numerous conferences and academic discourses undertaken in the last three decades which try to unravel this seemingly impossible balance of conserving the environment and development of nations. The solutions perhaps are also deferred to forever extending deadlines, never to culminate into reality. There were many sterling statements made during the 2021 COP, such as Tuvalu’s Head of the State standing knee deep in the ocean to highlight the plight of the sinking island due to rise in sea level, however these statements would only remain to be mere lip service theatrics unless the nations of the world do not materialise the principles of intergenerational equity and a collective responsibility towards Environment as an individual being.

This Conference aims to bring questions of Intergenerational Equity into sharp relief in the light of the recent developments, global and domestic events that highlight the drawbacks and lacuna of an anthropocentric environmental discourse. We hope to create a space where alternative ideas of environment, distinct from the current one which is revolving around the notions of propriety-ship, may be imagined and discussed. Whether our rivers and forests are the property of the nation or legal personalities in their own sense? Whether this distinct legal personality, which is that of a human being, enough to protect environment? Whether calling these entities- air, water, living animals, minerals, stones and rocks as “resources”-defeat our larger scheme of conservation of environment? These are few of the many questions that are hoped to be addressed in this Conference. The unresolvable conflict between the Global North and South seems to be a diversion which shadows these extremely pertinent questions poised before our future generations, who perhaps need a re-imagination of Earth and its various natural entities, which have suffered massive exploitation with incomprehensible reparations.

InternationalConference2022_brochure.pdf