India now has the world’s third largest ecological footprint ....

According to the Global Footprint Network and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India now has the world’s third largest ecological footprint (after the United States and China), and its citizens are using almost twice what the natural resources within the country can sustain. The capacity of nature to sustain Indians has declined sharply by almost half in the past four decades or so. This, despite an explicit commitment made in India’s 1992 National Conservation Strategy and the Policy Statement on Environment and Development, to “ensure sustainable and equitable use of resources for meeting the basic needs of the present and future generations without causing damage to the environment”.