Key Impacts, Risks and Opportunities: Sustainability Challenges

The race for unbridled economic growth has left a planet seriously depleted of environmental resources and perched on the brink of disaster.

The world’s ecological footprint suggests that consumption of natural resources every year is one and a half times more than the earth’s capacity to regenerate.
With increasing population, people will have only 25% of the resources that were available in 1950.

India mirrors these environmental challenges. With 17% of the world’s population, India accounts for only 2.4% of the global land mass, 4% of the world’s freshwater resources and 1% of the global forest resources.

The exacerbating impact of climate change and global warming is reflected in the changed weather patterns and higher temperatures. This affects agricultural production and thereby severely impacts the livelihoods of farmers. Given that several of ITC’s businesses are dependent on agricultural inputs, the impact of climate change and global warming has important ramifications for the Company and some of its major stakeholders – the farmers and communities in rural India.

India is on the edge of a serious water crisis with more than one third of the districts reeling under severe water-stress and 99 districts officially deemed drought-prone.

The conservation and management of India’s depleting water and other natural resources is therefore very important. More so because it directly impacts the livelihood security of over 70% of its population and 58% of its workforce, who are dependent on agriculture and related activities for their livelihood.

Largely consisting of resource-strapped small/marginal farmers, these agricultural communities are almost invariably engaged in rain-fed agriculture and therefore most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of seasonality and environmental degradation.