``The age of open-ended growth is over. The time has come to put quotas on production of automobiles and chemicals. We should have a commission to limit the number and type of industries,'' Maj Gen (retd) Vinod Saighal said in his keynote address at the summit, organised by the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment. He appealed to the youth to address these concerns in a big way, saying, ``your future is being mortgaged at an alarming rate'' adding the summit would recommend the creation of a youth eco-revival fund.

``Every kind of economic system has committed eco-violence. Despite the proliferation of non-government organisations worldwide with an objective to protect the ecological balance, the rate of global environmental decline has been steeper than ever,'' helamented Saighal said the summit which would try to mobilise the people about the linkages between population and environment. ``In population, we have gone beyond the Malthusian self-corrections, though it is possible, with a sensitisation drive, to achieve zero population growth at least in the urban conglomerates. More than a quarter of the pregnancies in the country are unwanted,'' he explained.

``The summit will also come out with a plan for demilitarisation of the Himalayan region to save its ecology besides recommending a study on the low-frequency communication between submarines which is believed to be affecting the communication between whales,'' he said.

Representatives from various countries would present their country papers tomorrow which would be incorporated in the `Delhi Declaration' to be issued at the end of the summit, he said.

Earlier, P R Trivedi, chairman of the institute, called for a neological doctrine which could give a new dimension to the process of governance. ``We need anew paradigm of governance to save us from ecological chaos,'' he said.