Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS delivered a talk titled , ‘What levels of development can humanity sustainably aspire to?’ at Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (IGIDR) in Mumbai on 23 April 2025.
Abstract of the Talk :
What levels of development can the Global South sustainably aspire to? We argue that positioning Nordic countries as the leaders of “sustainable development”, as is often done, poses a serious dilemma: international adoption of their lifestyles risks severely breaching planetary biophysical limits, while non-adoption risks perpetuating developmental inequality. We introduce a revised conceptual framework for “sustainable development” emphasising scalability as a pivotal facet. Our results highlight Panama, Costa Rica, and Sri Lanka as having achieved high levels of social progress with low environmental pressures, representing a more realistic aspiration for the rest of humanity.
The talk was based on Dr Dhara’s recently published paper, co-authored with Dr Soumyajit Bhar, titled, A scalability-centric perspective on global human development within environmental limits.