The discourse on environmental sustainability and political ecology raises several questions on material inequality, poverty, increasing population and disproportionate allocation of resources, but we often overlook the critical question of what we need to sustain and to what extent? The lack of financial resources and its constant interplay with the developmental goals of the states have created economic uncertainties and provided us with a solid rationale to not act on curtailing carbon emissions. However, the relevance of ecological sustainability compels us to move beyond the instrumental reasoning of materialistic economic goals and strengthen the discourse on prioritising the subsistence rights of poor and marginalised societies. There is no doubt that the unprecedented vulnerability and inadequate coping capacity of least developed nations cause massive damage and hinder the prospects for risk aversion strategies simply because they cannot bear the cost of implementing adaptation policies.
