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GS Paper: GS3-18.Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.

  • Species in news: Eurasian Otters

     

     

    Researchers conducting a study in Odisha’s Chilika Lake have found the presence of a viable, breeding population of Eurasian Otters, a fishing cat in the brackish water lagoon.

    Eurasian Otters

    • IUCN Status: Near Threatened
    • Species in India: Smooth-coated, Asian small-clawed and Eurasian Otters
    • Habitat: Smooth-coated — all over India; Asian small-clawed — only in the Himalayan foothills, parts of the Eastern and southern Western Ghats; Eurasian — Western Ghats and Himalayas.
    • Diet comprises several small animals, mainly crabs and small fishes.
    • Lives in small packs, is mostly nocturnal, but can be diurnal in areas which are less disturbed.

  • [pib] ‘1000 Springs’ Initiative

     

     

    Union Tribal Affairs Ministry has launched “1000 Spring Initiatives” and an online portal on GIS-based Spring Atlas with hydrological and chemical properties of the Springs on the occasion.

    ‘1000 Springs’ Initiative

    • The ‘1000 Springs Initiative’ aims at improving access to safe and adequate water for the tribal communities living in a difficult and inaccessible part of rural areas in the country.
    • It is an integrated solution around natural springs.
    • It includes the provision of infrastructure for piped water supply for drinking; provision of water for irrigation; community-led total sanitation initiatives; and provision for water for backyard nutrition gardens, generating sustainable livelihood opportunities for the tribal people.
    • It will help in harnessing the potential of perennial springs’ water to address the natural scarcity of water in tribal areas.

    Spring Atlas

    • Springs are natural sources of groundwater discharge and have been used extensively in the mountainous regions across the world, including India.
    • However, in the central and eastern Indian belt with more than 75% tribal population, it remains largely unrecognized and under-utilized.
    • An online portal on GIS-based Spring Atlas has been developed to make these data easily accessible from an online platform.
    • Presently, data of more than 170 springs have been uploaded on the Spring Atlas.

  • World Air Quality Report, 2019

     

    The 2019 World Air Quality Report was recently released

    World Air Quality Report

    • The World Air Quality Report is released by the pollution tracker IQAir and Greenpeace.
    • The report focuses on PM2.5 as a representative measure of air pollution.

    Highlights of the report

    • India accounts for two-thirds of the world’s most polluted cities — 21 of the most polluted 30 cities; 14 of the highest 20; and 6 of the highest 10 — in the report.
    • Among countries, when population is taken into account, average PM2.5 pollution is highest in Bangladesh, followed by Pakistan, while India is at number 5.
    • China is at number 11 in the list of countries affected by population, with population factored in. Chinese cities achieved a 9% average decrease in PM2.5 levels in 2019.
    • While cities in India, on average, exceed the WHO target for annual PM2.5 exposure by 500%, national air pollution decreased by 20% from 2018 to 2019, with 98% of cities experiencing improvements.
    • It said 90% of the global population breathing unsafe air.

    Top polluted Indian Cities

    Back2Basics

    PM 2.5

    • PM 2.5 refers to particulate matter (ambient airborne particles) which measure up to 2.5 microns in size and has a range of chemical makeups and sources.
    • It is widely regarded as the pollutant with the most health impact of all commonly measured air pollutants.
    • Due to its small size PM2.5 is able to penetrate deep into the human respiratory system and from there to the entire body, causing a wide range of short- and long-term health effects.
    • Particulate matter is also the pollutant group which affects the most people globally. It can come from a range of natural as well as man-made sources.
    • Common sources of PM include combustion (from vehicle engines, industry, wood and coal burning), as well as through other pollutants reacting in the atmosphere.

  • Pakke Tiger Reserve

     

    The government in Arunachal Pradesh is planning to build a 692.7 km highway through the 862 sq km Pakke Tiger Reserve (PTR). Named the East-West Industrial Corridor, the highway aims to connect Bhairabhunda in West Kameng district and Manmao in Changlang district along Arunachal Pradesh’s border with Assam.

    About Pakke Tiger Reserve (PTR)

    • Pakke Tiger Reserve, also known as Pakhui Tiger Reserve, is a Project Tiger reserve in the East Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh.
    • The 862 km2 reserve is protected by the Department of Environment and Forest of Arunachal Pradesh.
    • This Tiger Reserve has won India Biodiversity Award 2016 in the category of ‘Conservation of threatened species’ for its Hornbill Nest Adoption Programme.
    • It falls within the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspot.

  • Jalyukta Shivar Abhiyan

     Jalyukta Shivar, the flagship water conservation project launched by the earlier government has been officially scrapped by the present Maha government.

    What is Jalyukta Shivar?

    • Launched in December 2014 after Maharashtra experienced consecutive droughts, the project aimed at rolling out measures that could potentially mitigate water scarcity in the most drought-prone villages in a systematic manner.
    • Nearly 52 per cent of the state’s geographical area is prone to drought, either naturally or due to poor rainfall.
    • This includes Marathwada and adjoining areas of Madhya Maharashtra and large parts of Vidarbha.
    • The project targeted strengthening and streamlining existing water resources like canals, bunds and ponds by arresting maximum run-off rainwater during monsoon.
    • Tasks to widen and deepen natural water streams and connect them to nearby water storage facilities like earthen or concrete check-dams were proposed.
    • In the first phase, planned during 2015 – 2019, Jalyukta Shivar envisaged making 5,000 villages drought-free, every year.
    • During its proposed tenure, the government eyed at making 25,000 drought-prone villages water-sufficient.

    Was Jalyukta Shivar beneficial?

    • While the exact number of villages that were declared drought-free remains unknown, the programme attempted to bring water stress down in a majority of the most water-scarce villages in the state.
    • In January last year, then CM had announced that the scheme had transformed 16,000 drought-prone villages of Maharashtra.

    What is the future of water conservation in the state?

    • Geologists and hydrologists, who worked on implementing the project, shared similar views and hailed Jalyukta Shivar.
    • This was mainly due to the interventions undertaken in the existing water reserves, planned de-silting activities, among many others.
    • However, experts agreed that the scheme was not appropriately implemented.
    • Now with Jalyukta Shivar no longer in existence, focused efforts of the past five years, in most likelihood, will go down the drain unless a similar scheme is introduced.
    • With rainfall variations getting more pronounced, in addition to depleting groundwater reserves, the state will need concrete interventions to tackle future water requirements.

  • Future for the World’s Children Report 2020

    The Future for the World’s Children Report 2020 was recently released.

    About the report

    • The report was released by a commission of over 40 child and adolescent health experts from around the world after assessing 180 countries.
    • It was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and The Lancet medical journal.

    What is Flourishing Index?

    • Flourishing is the geometric mean of Surviving and Thriving.
    • For Surviving, the authors selected maternal survival, survival in children younger than 5 years old, suicide, access to maternal and child health services, basic hygiene and sanitation, and lack of extreme poverty.
    • For Thriving, the domains were educational achievement, growth and nutrition, reproductive freedom, and protection from violence.

    Threats to Children

    • The report highlights the distinct threat posed to children from harmful marketing.
    • Evidence suggests that children in some countries see as many as 30,000 advertisements on television alone in a single year, while youth exposure to vaping (e-cigarettes) advertisements increased by more than 250% in the U.S. over two years, reaching more than 24 million young people.
    • Studies in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the U.S. — among many others — have shown that self-regulation has not hampered commercial ability to advertise to children.
    • Children’s exposure to commercial marketing of junk food and sugary beverages is associated with the purchase of unhealthy foods and overweight and obesity, linking predatory marketing to the alarming rise in childhood obesity.
    • The number of obese children and adolescents increased from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2016 — an 11-fold increase, with dire individual and societal costs, the report said.

    What is Sustainability Index?

    • Under the Sustainability Index, the authors noted that promoting today’s national conditions for children to survive and thrive must not come at the cost of eroding future global conditions for children’s ability to flourish.
    • It ranks countries on excess carbon emissions compared with the 2030 target.
    • This provides a convenient and available proxy for a country’s contribution to sustainability in future.

    Highlights of the SI

    • The report noted that under realistic assumptions about possible trajectories towards sustainable greenhouse gas emissions, models predict that global carbon emissions need to be reduced from 39·7 gigatonnes to 22·8 gigatonnes per year by 2030 to maintain even a 66% chance of keeping global warming below 1·5degrees C.
    • No country in the world is currently providing the conditions we need to support every child to grow up and have a healthy future alarmed the report.

    India’s performance

    India ranked 77th on a sustainability index that takes into account per capita carbon emissions and ability of children in a nation to live healthy lives and secures 131st spot on a flourishing ranking that measures the best chance at survival and well-being for children.

    Performance of nations in SI

    •  Norway leads the table for survival, health, education and nutrition rates – followed by South Korea and the Netherlands.
    • The central African Republic, Chad and Somalia come at the bottom.
    • However, when taking into account per capita CO2 emissions, these top countries trail behind, with Norway 156th, the Republic of Korea 166th and the Netherlands 160th.
    • Each of the three emits 210 per cent more CO2 per capita than their 2030 target, the data shows, while the U.S., Australia, and Saudi Arabia are among the 10 worst emitters.
    • The lowest emitters are Burundi, Chad and Somalia.
    • According to the report, the only countries on track to beat CO2 emission per capita targets by 2030, while also performing fairly — within the top 70 — on child flourishing measures are Albania, Armenia, Grenada, Jordan, Moldova, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Uruguay and Vietnam.

  • Conquering the green frontier

    Context

    India has to forge a different development model -one that will shift India’s workforce from agriculture to globally leading, resource-efficient businesses.

     How India can deliver sustainable prosperity?

    • The two intertwined forces: Just as liberalisation and globalisation transformed the economy in the past, two different yet intertwined forces will likely transform the economy in the future.
    • First–High competitiveness: India must have globally leading companies across a range of key sectors such as financial services and manufacturing.
      • Global productivity frontier: These super competitive businesses should define the global productivity frontier so that they can surpass the production processes of the best companies in the world.
    • Second-Long term sustainability: India must also adopt a resource-efficient, low-carbon development pathway to utilise scarce natural resources effectively. There is no other way.
      • Apocalyptic air pollution.
      • Dire water shortages.
      • Rising temperatures and-
      • Extreme climate events- have already brought us to the brink of an environmental crisis.
      • The need for India’s leadership for achieving the target: Moreover, note that the world needs India’s leadership to achieve the 2 degree Celsius global warming target.
      • In short, India’s growth has to be green.
    • What is the problem in achieving these goals?
      • No nation has ever attempted these twin transformations — high competitiveness and long-term sustainability — simultaneously.
      • The traditional development model: The traditional development model has been a farm-to-factory development model with economies transitioning from traditional agriculture to resource-intensive, urban manufacturing.
      • India has to forge a different development model — one that will shift India’s workforce from agriculture to globally leading, resource-efficient businesses.
      • Also, these companies must use the most advanced green technologies and business models.
      • India’s development model will, therefore, need to take the Indian economy from “the farm-to-green frontier”.

    Three focus area for green transformation

    • The productivity transformation driven by super competitive businesses is well underway.
      • We now need to consider a comprehensive policy package that will enable us to simultaneously undertake a green transformation.
      • Global best practices and India’s own experiences suggest three focus areas for such a transformation.
    • India has the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world and our larger companies are also pursuing innovation-driven growth.
    • Specific and stable policy goals
      • Specific and stable policy goals need to be established to set detailed green targets for various sectors.
      • A macro-economic model that factors in-
      • Current skills.
      • Sectoral connections.
      • Relative emission and-
      • Financial constraints are necessary to inform such targets going forward.
      • Such a model can then be used to evaluate various green growth scenarios.
      • Decarbonisation approaches in the green frontier scenario will drive the growth of green industries, green jobs, green skills, green entrepreneurs and green finance.
    • Pursuing the policy goals: Global and Indian experience highlights that green targets will have to be pursued in a stable manner across decades.
      • Most large emitters and pollutants are associated with long-lived (20-30 plus years useful life) assets.
      • The basic requirement for investment in green assets: Investments in green assets will only be possible if there is the sanctity of contracts, pricing stability, and consistent policies that are backed up by the full force of law.
      • Implementation: Finally, these specific and stable policy goals need to be implemented urgently to avoid lock-in with high-carbon assets.
    • Revamp the institutional framework: India may need to revamp its existing institutional framework for environmental governance in order to align it with the country’s green transformation.
      • Four levels of institutional structure: As demonstrated by global best practices, a comprehensive institutional framework could include four levels — super sovereign, sovereign, state/province and city.
      • Council for monitoring: An independent council or board may also be required to monitor, report, and verify green targets.
    • Appropriate financing capacity: Indian policymakers and entrepreneurs will unleash market forces that will drive the growth of waste management, solar panels, electric vehicles, super-efficient appliances, recyclable food packaging, clean coal, etc.
      • These green industries will require massive investments and appropriate financing capacity will have to be created to support their growth.
      • Preliminary estimates suggest that India’s green transformation may require an average investment of $95 billion to $125 billion per year, aggregating over $1 trillion in the next decade.
      • A “green super fund” could be established to jumpstart green investments by pooling together international and domestic capital.
      • Dual roles of financial institution: Such a financial institution could play a dual role in mediating and mitigating risk for global capital, as well as identifying sectoral project pipelines.
      • The success of financial institution: Indian financial institutions have been very successful in building up new industries such as microfinance, EdTech, and affordable healthcare, which have delivered both financial and social returns; however, financial support for green industries will have to be orders of magnitude larger.
      • Moreover, the “green super fund” may have to be able to invest across the capital structure (debt plus equity) as well as across the company lifecycle (early stage, growth capital, infrastructure investments, and so on).

    Conclusion

    Our future depends on how we resolve our environmental challenges. Further, we are the world’s third-largest carbon emitter and will play a crucial role in getting the planet to a low-carbon trajectory. Simply put, we must urgently transform our economy to get to the green frontier.

  • [pib] International protection for Great Indian Bustard, Bengal Florican and Asian Elephant

    India’s proposal to include Great Indian Bustard, Asian Elephant and Bengal Florican in Appendix I of UN Convention on migratory species was unanimously accepted at the undergoing CMS CoP in Gandhinagar.

    Great Indian Bustard

    • The Great Indian Bustard, an iconic, critically endangered and conservation dependent species, exhibits transboundary movements, and its migration exposes it to threats such as hunting in the boundary area of Pakistan-India and power-line collisions in India.
    • Inclusion of the species in Appendix I of CMS will aide in transboundary conservation efforts facilitated by International conservation bodies and existing international laws and agreement.

    Asian Elephant

    • The Government of India has declared Indian elephant as National Heritage Animal. It is also provided with the highest degree of legal protection by listing it in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
    • The Great Indian Bustard is a Critically Endangered species with a small population of about 100–150 individuals that is largely restricted to Thar desert in Rajasthan, India.
    • The species has disappeared from 90% of this range; their population has reduced by 90% within 50 years (six generations), and their threats are expected to increase in future.

    Bengal Florican

    • The Bengal Florican an iconic, critically endangered species of topmost conservation priority, exhibits transboundary movements, and its migration exposes it to threats such as land-use changes, collision with power transmission line at the boundary area of India-Nepal and probable power-line collisions.
    • Inclusion of the species in Appendix I of CMS will aid in transboundary conservation efforts facilitated by International conservation bodies and existing international laws and agreement.
    • It populations has declined as a result of habitat loss, hunting and the species no longer breeds outside Protected Areas in the Indian subcontinent, except in a few areas of Assam.

  • State of India’s Birds 2020 (SoIB) Assessment

     

    State of India’s Birds 2020 (SoIB) assessment was recently released.

    Highlights of the report

     

     

    • The SoIB was produced using a base of 867 species (among 1,333 birds ever recorded in India), and analysed with the help of data uploaded by birdwatchers to the online platform, eBird.
    • Adequate data on how birds fared over a period of over 25 years (long-term trend) are available only for 261 species.
    • Current annual trends are calculated over a five-year period.

    Alarming declines

    • The SoIB assessment raises the alarm that several spectacular birds, many of them endemic to the sub-continent, face a growing threat from loss of habitat due to human activity, widespread presence of toxins including pesticides, hunting and trapping for the pet trade.
    • Diminishing population sizes of many birds because of one factor brings them closer to extinction because of the accelerated effects of others, the report warned.
    • Over a fifth of India’s bird diversity, ranging from the Short-toed Snake Eagle to the Sirkeer Malkoha, has suffered strong long-term declines over a 25-year period.
    • More recent annual trends point to a drastic 80% loss among several common birds.

    Various species mentioned

    • Of 101 species categorised as being of High Conservation Concern — 59 based on range and abundance and the rest included from high-risk birds on the IUCN Red List.
    • Endemics such as the Rufous-fronted Prinia, Nilgiri Thrush, Nilgiri Pipit and Indian vulture were confirmed as suffering current decline.
    • And all except 13 had a restricted or highly restricted range, indicating greater vulnerability to man-made threats.
    • Peafowl, on the other hand, are rising in numbers, expanding their range into places such as Kerala, which is drying overall, and areas in the Thar desert where canals and irrigation have been introduced. Stricter protection for peacocks under law also could be at work.

  • National Groundwater Management Improvement Programme

    The Government of India and the World Bank have signed a $450 million loan agreement to support the national programme to arrest the country’s depleting groundwater levels and strengthen groundwater institutions.

    About the Programme

    • The World Bank-supported programme will be implemented in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh and cover 78 districts.
    • These states span both the hard rock aquifers of peninsular India and the alluvial aquifers of the Indo-Gangetic plains.
    • They were selected based on several criteria, including degree of groundwater exploitation and degradation, established legal and regulatory instruments, institutional readiness, and experience in implementing initiatives related to groundwater management.
    • This programme will contribute to rural livelihoods and in the context of climatic shifts, build resilience of the rural economy.

    Objectives

    The programme will, among others, enhance the recharge of aquifers and introduce water conservation practices; promote activities related to water harvesting, water management, and crop alignment; create an institutional structure for sustainable groundwater management; and equip communities and stakeholders to sustainably manage groundwater.

    Particulars of the programme

    • The programme will introduce a bottom-up planning process for community-driven development of water budgets and Water Security Plans (WSPs).
    • Water budgets will assess surface and groundwater conditions (both quantity and quality) and identify current and future needs.
    • The WSP, on the other hand, will focus on improving groundwater quantity and incentivize selected states to implement the actions proposed.
    • Such community-led management measures will make users aware of consumption patterns and pave the way for economic measures that reduce groundwater consumption.
    • Crop management and diversification will be the other focus areas.