UPSC 2024 Essay · 125 marks
Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.
What a top answer must contain
These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this topic — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.
- Historical: Mesopotamia, Indus and Mayan collapse after deforestation — Chateaubriand's original line; Jared Diamond's Collapse as the modern anchor
- Ecological-scientific: soil binding, hydrological cycle, albedo; Thar's advance and the Aravalli gaps; ISRO Desertification Atlas — ~30% of India degraded
- Economic: forests as capital not obstacle — Costanza's ecosystem-services valuation, green GDP debate, Chipko's economics
- Political-legal: Forest Rights Act 2006 vs Forest (Conservation) Amendment 2023; compensatory afforestation's plantation-vs-forest sleight
- Ethical-philosophical: intergenerational equity, deep ecology (Naess), Gandhi's 'enough for need, not greed', Bishnoi and sacred groves
- International: Sahel's Great Green Wall, Amazon tipping point, UNCCD Bonn Challenge and India's 26 mn ha pledge
The band thresholds and the pre-scored sample answers behind this standard stay private — they are the calibration your copy is placed against.
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