Achieving sustainable growth with emphasis on environmental protection could come into conflict with poor people’s needs in a country like India – Comment.

Introduction

India must lift millions out of deprivation while honouring its net-zero-by-2070 pledge. Because the poor depend most directly on land, forests, commons and cheap energy, environmental protection measures can collide with their immediate needs — though the conflict is real, it is not absolute.

Where the conflict appears

• Forest and wildlife conservation: relocation from tiger-reserve core areas and restrictions on forest use affect an estimated 25–30 crore forest-dependent people.
• Coal phase-down: the coal belts of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha support lakhs of direct and informal livelihoods; premature closure without a just transition deepens regional poverty.
• Regulatory bans: court- and NGT-ordered closures of brick kilns, sand mining and construction (as under Delhi's winter GRAP) hit daily-wage earners hardest.
• Cost burdens: cleaner fuels and technologies — LPG refills, CNG retrofits, compliant kilns — strain poor households and micro-enterprises.
• Even green projects displace: land acquisition for mega solar parks and hydel projects has triggered local protests.

Why protection also serves the poor

• The poor bear the worst costs of degradation — toxic air, floods, droughts and heatwaves — with the least capacity to adapt or relocate.
• Win-win instruments exist: MGNREGA watershed and afforestation works, community forest rights under the FRA 2006 (Mendha-Lekha's bamboo economy), PM-KUSUM solar pumps, and natural farming at scale in Andhra Pradesh.
• Green sectors create jobs: renewable energy already employs around a million people in India (IRENA estimates).
• Equity demands that those least responsible for degradation not bear a disproportionate mitigation burden.

Conclusion

The apparent trade-off is best resolved through inclusive green growth: just-transition financing for coal districts, rights-based conservation, targeted compensation for those hurt by green regulation, and LiFE-style demand shifts — so that ecology and equity reinforce, rather than negate, each other.