With a growth rate of over eight per cent, if we add up the costs of environmental damage and accounted for the displacement of people due to our policies then the country would have negative economy, said Vandana Shiva, founder, Navdhanya. She was delivering the keynote address at "Climate Change India 2008', a two-day national conference that was inaugurated in the city on Tuesday. City-based World Institute of Sustainable energy is hosting the conference. Shiva said the poor would be most affected by climatic upheavals leading to extreme events like floods and droughts. "The externalities of growth like pollution and poverty could undo the benefits accrued due to high GDP,' she said. She cited the example of Bundhelkhand, which had seen a reduction in rainfall in successive years from 987 mm in 2003-04 to 240 mm in 2007-08. " Forty per cent of the people have migrated from their homes and the region has faced violent conflicts over water,' she said. Calling on the government to stop pouring money into the "fossil fuel infrastructure', she said it was unsustainable and the need of the hour required us to invest into renewable energy. Agricultural practices of farmers like excessive use of fertilizers were extracting all the carbon and the biomass content from the soil, which was reducing soil moisture leading to crop failure, she said. Shiva raised the contradiction that had arisen out of India claiming the concept of equity -as the right to pollute -to participate in emissions targets. "Leading up to the Bali summit, there were statements that said that we will not participate in the target emission cuts unless we reached the emission targets of the developed countries. However, by the time we reach that kind of equity, we would have wiped out ourselves,' Shiva said.