Abstract
All the economists today have established that externalities (free-rider issues) and public goods are the leading causes of market failure, holding environmental economics to the utmost level of relevance. Pollution types can be segregated physically based on the channels (water, air, and land) or the sectors responsible for causing them (such as industry, electricity generation, transport, agriculture, and waste disposal). Thus, sustainability emerges as a key challenge of the 21st century for public think tanks and the business community in the form of carbon emissions and global warming. So, in order to understand the role of sustainability in the era of development, this study tries to understand, on a broader level, the unique position and role of South Asian nations (particularly India) in impacting the global climatic paradigm shift. The same is integrated with a bird’s eye view of the factors that could be prospective climatic game changers for a globally competitive environmental performance in the future. What differentiates this study from the various other existing studies is that it views sustainability in terms of resilience and argues that the key is to combine both adaptive and mitigating measures simultaneously. The study concludes with the key policy implications in order to have better green governance.