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EDITORIAL 

Thinking Ahead Towards Converging Perspectives  

Kanchan Chopra1 

As this issue of the Journal is published, at this crucial juncture in history, 
when the global pandemic seems to be relentless, the good news is that 
more holistic thinking and action on environmental issues is emerging all 
around. The agenda of humanity’s need to deal with climate change 
immediately has come to the fore. Also, and importantly, the International 
Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Platform for 
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the two inter-governmental 
agencies charged with the responsibility of designing action on climate 
change, biodiversity, and ecosystem services, joined hands to publish a 
Report (in June 2021) on the synergies and trade-offs between actions on 
climate change and biodiversity. Even more significantly, perhaps, the 
UNDP Report (2020), for the first time, compiled a country-wise human 
development index adjusted for planetary impact called the Planetary 
Human Development Index (PHDI). This brings the planetary impact of 
development into focus in a big way. In India, the Biodiversity 
Collaborative, a major initiative supported by the government, brought 
together a network of institutions and individuals to promote biodiversity 
research and conservation to enhance human well-being. A National 
Coalition for Natural Farming is due to celebrate the first year of its 
existence.  

                                                        
1 Co-ordinating Editor (2020-21), Former Director, and Professor, Institute of Economic  

Growth, University of Delhi, New Delhi – 110007; choprakanchan14@gmail.com.  

Copyright © Chopra 2021. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial   

4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic  

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v4i2.524  

 

 

mailto:choprakanchan14@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v4i2.524


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [2] 

In a small though significant manner, the ground covered by the 
contributions to this issue resonate with these developments, both by way 
of reflections on some and provision of conceptual and policy 
underpinnings for others.  

A seminal event in early 2021 was the publication of a global review led by 
Professor Partha Dasgupta titled The Economics of Biodiversity. This review 
reiterates that we are part of Nature; human beings as well as the flora and 
fauna are embedded in it. Through a well-documented and succinctly 
explained set of arguments, this report points out the practical manner in 
which we can guide human activity to remain limited to the “safe operating 
space” within the bounds of nature.  

This issue carries two commentaries on The Dasgupta Review—one offers an 
ecologist’s perspective and the other an economist’s.  While taking due note 
of the depth and reach of the recommendations, both feel that the Review 
could have paid more attention to pathways for institutional change and the 
role of bio-centric approaches, political ecology, and other new approaches 
to environmental problems.  

The two thematic essays in this issue exemplify different perspectives 
towards environmental policy. One of them, in the tradition of 
environmental economics, reviews the available information and identifies 
gaps that thwart the realization of ambient standards of environmental 
quality. Using air pollution in Delhi as an example, it provides a discussion 
on how to use available economic estimates for designing and using 
economic instruments such as pollution taxes and pollution permits in 
addition to using command-and-control approaches.   

The second thematic essay provides an overview of the literature on socio-
metabolic research. Changes in bio-physical stocks and flows over time 
measure the impact of human activity on the environment. As development 
in the conventional sense (of production of more goods and services) takes 
place, the social metabolism of the economy as measured by these changes 
is altered. For example, for the first time in human history, more than 100 
billion tonnes of materials enter the global economy every year, of which 
only about 8% is recycled, creating an enormous “circularity gap”. This 
perspective encourages us to use physical flows to study the impact on the 
environment.  

One of the research papers provides a partial application of a material 
export–import analysis of the Nicobar Islands. The authors study physical 
export–import flows in the archipelago to reflect on the social, economic, 
and ecological impact of the tsunami of 2004 and the subsequent process of 
recovery. This literature pinpoints what we are missing when we measure 



[3] Kanchan Chopra 

change only through monetary values. However, the question that remains 
unanswered is this: how does it provide direction to policy-makers? And 
how will it translate into the kind of change we need in human behaviour?  

As a counterfoil to the above, two research papers study individual and 
household behaviour in response to new technologies or new ways of 
packaging them. One looks at the solar energy option and asks: if a solar 
microgrid is introduced in a region as an alternative servicing system, how 
will it impact the demand for solar appliances? The total impact, sometimes 
referred to as “the frontier rebound effect,” is investigated in the context of 
a rural community in Rajasthan. On a similar note, another paper studies 
farmers’ decisions with regard to the adoption of on-farm conservation 
measures and finds that the existence or otherwise of community-level 
measures has a significant effect on individual decisions. So do the 
decisions taken by others in the village. 

In terms of policy design, both these papers provide pointers towards a 
combination of strategies. In one case, a lower price for solar power needs 
to be coupled with a different packaging of technology. In the second, the 
nature of individual behaviour as nested in collective behaviour is 
highlighted. These in-depth, empirical explorations in disparate settings 
offer us clues on how to enable change. 

In summary, this issue of the Journal reflects on and presents diverse 
approaches to the environmental, indeed existential, dilemmas that 
humanity now encounters. In the final analysis, each of these approaches 
throws light, through alternative lenses, on the same reality. How can we 
use them to converge on pathways for a nature-friendly future?  That is the 
question that needs to be addressed now. 

And finally, the Editorial Board of EES and the Executive Committee of 
INSEE would like to express their grateful thanks to the Foundation for 
Ecological Security for a generous grant that has supported the publication 
of the two issues of this volume of the Journal.  


