The political and environment risks of continued, rapid growth in India and China

China and India used to be lower industiralised, but now they are emerging as newly industrialised. The economic growth in these countries is more than any other in the world. India’s human and economic developments are bad for the country, but the consequences of the growth are good for the country. Whereas China’s growth is good for the country, but the consequences are bad for it.
Increased population from economic migration and potential job prospects help development, but also decreases human welfare for individuals due to lack of resources and sanitation and puts pressure on wages. There will be a reduction of poverty, proven by China overtaking India’s economic growth by 4.5% in 13 years.
Investment opportunities have increased, leading to more transnational companies or businesses, globalisation of trades and services and a high cultural influence. For example; the Pearl River Delta region in Hong Kong has been transformed into a business district of heavily urban buildings and money making companies. From a political standing, this could give China and India more of an influence of opinion in new policies and suggested strategies in all aspects of global management, but also cause it to become heavily dependent on core countries for investments. This increase in businesses has consequences like over exploitation of resources. This causes water scarcity, food chain and ecosystem disturbances and loss of biodiversity that is already under pressure from climate change. The hydrological cycle could be thrown out of its delicate balance and groundwater sources will deplete due to increased temperatures causing transpiration.
The millennium ecosystem assessment, formed by the United Nations aims for a sustainable world by 2015. The larger CO2 emissions make this aim harder and harder to achieve in the allotted time. The IPCC assess the anthropogenic factors that cause climate change and according to statistics, China and India are main contributors to CO2 emissions. The pollution in these countries is causing respiratory problems, disease and death. China has had 590,000 premature annual deaths due to urban air pollution, and India has had 460,000, according to figure 15, they are the two biggest contributors. The public that have experiences these deaths may think that their countries policies are inadequate or inefficient, causing political instability within the government to rethink their approaches.
Geopolitics is heavily linked to the risks of continuing growth. India and China compete for dwindling resources of energy and water due to the increased demand and population change. Price wars for gas and oil causes the market to increase and prices sky-rocket, and OPEC struggle to ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of oil to consumers.
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) advices the US president about national and global intelligence which influences US foreign policy and came up with 4 scenarios about the future balance of world power. One of the most statistically likely to happen is the “BRIC’s bust-up” which explains that there will be an increase in conflicts between powers over resources and the countries containing the resources will have more control as other countries become dependent on them.
In conclusion, weighing up the benefits with the impacts of economic and political growth, the risks are too high to stop growth and focus on the environment all the time or the country will lose their global influence. I think that governments will take the environment into account, but will not sacrifice their economy for sustainable resources and development.