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GS Paper: GS3

  • Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP)

     

    States in the National Capital Region were directed to be ready to implement actions under the ‘emergency’ category of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) to control air pollution, said an official order.

    Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP)

    • In 2014, when a study by the WHO found that Delhi was the most polluted city in the world, panic spread in the Centre and the state government.
    • Approved by the Supreme Court in 2016, the plan was formulated after several meetings that the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) held with state government and experts.
    • The result was a plan that institutionalized measures to be taken when air quality deteriorates.
    • GRAP works only as an emergency measure.

    How does it work?

    • As such, the plan does not include action by various state governments to be taken throughout the year to tackle industrial, vehicular and combustion emissions.
    • When the air quality shifts from poor to very poor, the measures listed under both sections have to be followed since the plan is incremental in nature.
    • If air quality reaches the severe+ stage, GRAP talks about shutting down schools and implementing the odd-even road-space rationing scheme.

    Measures taken under GRAP

    1) Severe+ or Emergency

    (PM 2.5 over 300 µg/cubic metre or PM10 over 500 µg/cu. m. for 48+ hours)

    • Stop entry of trucks into Delhi (except essential commodities)
    • Stop construction work
    • Introduce odd/even scheme for private vehicles and minimise exemptions
    • Task Force to decide any additional steps including shutting of schools

    2) Severe

    (PM 2.5 over 250 µg/cu. m. or PM10 over 430 µg/cu. m.)

    • Close brick kilns, hot mix plants, stone crushers
    • Maximise power generation from natural gas to reduce generation from coal
    • Encourage public transport, with differential rates
    • More frequent mechanized cleaning of road and sprinkling of water

    3) Very Poor

    (PM2.5 121-250 µg/cu. m. or PM10 351-430 µg/cu. m.)

    • Stop use of diesel generator sets
    • Enhance parking fee by 3-4 times
    • Increase bus and Metro services
    • Apartment owners to discourage burning fires in winter by providing electric heaters during winter
    • Advisories to people with respiratory and cardiac conditions to restrict outdoor movement

    4) Moderate to poor

    (PM2.5 61-120 µg/cu. m. or PM10 101-350 µg/cu. m.)

    • Heavy fines for garbage burning
    • Close/enforce pollution control regulations in brick kilns and industries
    • Mechanized sweeping on roads with heavy traffic and water sprinkling
    • Strictly enforce a ban on firecrackers

    Has GRAP helped?

    • The biggest success of GRAP has been in fixing accountability and deadlines.
    • For each action to be taken under a particular air quality category, executing agencies are clearly marked.
    • In a territory like Delhi, where a multiplicity of authorities has been a long-standing impediment to effective governance, this step made a crucial difference.

     

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  • Recurring urban floods point to need for moving away from land-centric urbanism

    Context

    Flood in Chennai has revived memories of the devastating Chennai floods of 2015, a collective trauma that its residents are yet to outlive.

    Role of climate change

    • In August this year, as monsoon floods raged across the subcontinent, IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report (AR6) was published.
    • The report noted the increasing frequency of heavy precipitation events since the 1950s and inferred that they were being driven by human-induced climate change.
    • The climate crisis, is here.
    • It has made extreme rainfall events more severe and unpredictable than ever before.

    Role of poor planning and encroachment

    • In 2015, the National Green Tribunal in India formed a committee to report on the status of natural stormwater drains in Delhi.
    • On inspection, out of the 201 “drains” recorded in 1976, 44 were found to be “missing.
    • Geospatial imaging established that 376 km of natural storm drains — encroached on and paved over — had disappeared from Bengaluru.
    • In both cases, these “missing” waterways were either encroached and built over or connected to sewage drains.
    • Poor design and corruption significantly contribute to urban floods.
    • By violating environmental laws and municipal bye-laws, open spaces, wetlands and floodplains have been mercilessly built over, making cities impermeable and hostile to rainwater.

    Way forward

    • We need to move away from land-centric urbanisation and recognise cities as waterscapes.
    • We need to let urban rivers breathe by returning them to their floodplains.
    • The entire urban watershed needs to heal, and for that to happen, we need less concrete and more democracy and science at the grassroots.

    Conclusion

    Ever since concretisation became shorthand for urbanisation, rainfall in a changing climate no longer finds its way towards subterranean capillaries or surface water bodies.

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  • Char Dham Road Project

    The needs of defence and environment have to be balanced and a “nuanced” approach is required, said the Supreme Court while hearing an appeal against the widening of roads in Uttarakhand hills for the “Char Dham project”.

    What is Char Dham?
    • The Char Dham is a set of four pilgrimage sites in India.
    • It is believed that visiting these sites helps achieve moksha (salvation).
    • The four Dhams are, Badrinath, Dwaraka, Puri and Rameswaram.

    The highway project

    • The Char Dham highway project connects the four himalayan shrines of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath in Garhwal Himalayas.
    • It has 899-km road which the Centre wants to broaden near Dehradun.

    What is the controversy?

    The Supreme Court formed a high-powered committee (HPC) to examine the issues. In July 2020, the HPC submitted two reports after members disagreed on the ideal width for hill roads.

    • Deforestation: In 2018, the road-expansion project was challenged by an NGO for its potential impact on the Himalayan ecology due to felling trees, cutting hills and dumping muck (excavated material).
    • Terrain damage: It was observed that a wider road requires additional slope cutting, blasting, tunnelling, dumping and deforestation.
    • Increasing vulnerability: All of this will further destabilise the Himalayan terrain, and increase vulnerability to landslides and flash floods.

    Criticism of the Project

    • Work without clearance: Project work and felling of trees on different stretches, adding up to over 250 km, has been continuing illegally since 2017-18.
    • Misusing old clearance: Work started on stretches adding up to over 200 km on the basis of old forest clearances issued to the Border Roads Organisation during 2002-2012.
    • False declaration: The work began by falsely declaring that these stretches did not fall in the Eco Sensitive Zones of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, Rajaji National Park, Valley of Flowers National Park etc.

    The defence angle

    • Even as the project grappled to come clean, it garnered support from the MoD seeking a double-lane road to meet the requirement of the Army.
    • The project always had a strategic angle to it as the highways would facilitate troop movement to areas closer to the China border.
    • Suddenly, this became the sole justification for building wider roads.

     

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  • [pib] Mineral Conservation and Development (Amendment) Rules, 2021

    The Ministry of Mines has notified the Mineral Conservation and Development (Amendment) Rules (MCDR), 2021.

    About the Amendment

    • The MCDR have been framed under section 18 of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957.
    • It aims to provide rules regarding conservation of minerals, systematic and scientific mining, development of the mineral in the country and for the protection of environment.

    Key highlights of the amendments:

    Digital aerial imaging of the mines

    • Digital mapping: All plans and sections related to mine shall be prepared by combination of Digital Global Positioning System (DGPS) or Total Station or by drone survey.
    • Drone Imaging: Lessees having annual excavation plans of 1 million tonne or more or having leased area of 50 hectare or more are required to submit drone survey images of leased area and up to 100 meters outside the lease boundary every year.
    • Satellite imaging: Other lessees submit high resolution satellite images obtained from CARTOSAT-2 satellite

    This step will not only improve mine planning practices, security and safety in the mines but also ensure better supervision of mining operations.

    Penalty Provisions

    Penalty provisions in the rules have been rationalized. Amendment in the rules categorized the violations of the rules under the following major heads:

    • Major Violations: Penalty of imprisonment, fine or both.
    • Minor Violations: Penalty reduced. Penalty of only fine for such violations prescribed.
    • Decriminalization of Rules: Violation of other rules has been decriminalized. These rules did not cast any significant obligation on the concession holder or any other person

    Financial Assurance

    • Amount of financial assurance increased to five lakh rupees for Category ‘A’ mines and three lakh rupees for Category ‘B’ mines from existing three and two lakh rupees, respectively.
    • Provision of forfeiture of financial assurance or performance security of the lease holder added in case of non-submission of final mine closure plan within the period specified.

    Employment Opportunity

    • Allowed engagement of a part-time mining engineer or a part-time geologist for small mines which will ease compliance burden for small miners.
    • Diploma in mining and mine surveying is added in qualification for full-time Mining Engineer.

     

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  • Challenges in India’s net-zero emission target

    Context

    Even though New Delhi has invested in renewable energy and announced a net-zero target, there is a gap between the announcements and the ground reality, as is evident from the promotion of coal.

    India’s commitments

    •  AT the COP 26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India has set a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.
    • India also updated its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) that have to be met by 2030.
    • Its new pledge includes increasing the country’s installed renewable capacity to 500 GW, meeting 50 per cent of its energy requirements from non-fossil fuel sources.

    India’s achievements on past commitments

    • At the COP 21 in Paris, India, made similar ambitious announcements and aimed to reduce the economy-wide emissions intensity by 33-35 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.
    • In August, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy announced that the country has installed 100 GW of renewable energy capacity.
    • The majority of this 100 GW, about 78 per cent, is due to large-scale wind and solar power projects.
    • While this is a milestone, India is on track to accomplishing only about two-thirds of its planned renewable target of 175 GW installation by 2022.
    •  To achieve its new goals, India will need to do more in different directions.
    • For instance, it has a target of achieving 40 GW of green energy from the rooftop solar sector by 2022, but it has not been able to achieve even 20 per cent of that so far.
    • In the transport sector, India has targeted a 30 per cent share of electric vehicles (EV) in new sales for 2030.

    India’s climate actions against the Paris Agreement targets

    •  The Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis that tracks government climate action against the Paris Agreement targets, deems India’s performance as “highly insufficient” simply because coal represents about 70 per cent of the country’s energy supply. 
    • India also needs to cut down subsidies to the fossil fuel industry drastically — not the case currently.
    • While in the past seven years, the country has invested Rs 5.2 trillion in renewable energy, the investment in fossil fuel industry, though down by (only) 4 per cent from 2015-19, was Rs 245 trillion.
    • Coal production is estimated to increase to one billion tonnes by 2024 from 716 million tonnes in 2020-21.
    • According to the Central Electricity Authority, coal capacity is projected to increase from 202GW in 2021 to 266GW by 2029-30.
    • The Government of India is not actively discouraging such investments.
    • On the contrary, coal subsidies are still 35 per cent higher than the subsidies for renewables and coal-fired power generation receives indirect financial support from the government through income tax exemptions and land acquisition at a preferential rate.

    Conclusion

    It is also true that India’s energy transition would be in its own interest because, otherwise, economic growth will not be sustainable and human security will be at stake if dozens of millions of climate refugees are created due to the devastating consequences of climate change.

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  • Does India have a right to burn fossil fuels?

    Context

    There has been quite a lot of debate on India’s dependence on coal against the backdrop of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting. The crux of the theoretical argument is that India needs to develop, and development requires energy.

    Carbon budget framework

    • India has neither historically emitted nor currently emits carbon anywhere close to what the global North has, or does, in per capita terms.
    • If anything, the argument goes, it should ask for a higher and fairer share in the global carbon budget.
    • There is no doubt that this carbon budget framework is an excellent tool to understand global injustice but to move from there to our ‘right to burn’ is a big leap.
    • However, the question is do the countries in the global South necessarily need to increase their share in the global carbon budget?

    Why should developing countries aim for development without increasing carbon emission

    1) Reducing the cost of renewable energy

    • Normally the argument in favour of coal is on account of its cost, reliability and domestic availability.
    • Recent data show that the levelised cost of electricity from renewable energy sources like solar (photovoltaic), hydro and onshore wind has been declining sharply over the last decade and is already less than fossil fuel-based electricity generation.
    •  On reliability, frontier renewable energy technologies have managed to address the question of variability of such sources to a large extent and, with technological progress, it seems to be changing for the better.
    • As for the easy domestic availability of coal, it is a myth.
    • India is among the largest importers of coal in the world, whereas it has no dearth of solar energy.

    2) Following different development model

    •  During the debates of post-colonial development in the Third World, there were two significant issues under discussion — control over technology and choice of techniques to address the issue of surplus labour.
    • India didn’t quite resolve the two issues in its attempts of import-substituting industrialisation which worsened during the post-reform period.
    • But it can address both today.
    • The abundance of renewable natural resources in the tropical climate can give India a head start in this competitive world of technology.
    • South-South collaborations can help India avoid the usual patterns of trade between the North and the South, where the former controls technology and the latter merely provides inputs.
    • And the high-employment trajectory that the green path entails vis-à-vis the fossil fuel sector may help address the issue of surplus labour, even if partially.
    • Such a path could additionally provide decentralised access to clean energy to the poor and the marginalised, including in remote regions of India.

    3) Limitation of addressing global injustice in terms of a carbon budget

    •  The framework of addressing global injustice in terms of a carbon budget is quite limiting in its scope in more ways than one.
    • Such an injustice is not at the level of the nation-states alone; there is such injustice between the rich and the poor within nations and between humans and non-human species.
    • A progressive position on justice would take these injustices into account instead of narrowly focusing on the framework of nation-states.
    • Moreover, it’s a double whammy of injustice for the global South when it comes to climate change.
    • Not only is it not primarily responsible, but the global South, especially its poor, will unduly bear the effect of climate change because of its tropical climate and high population density along the coastal lines.
    • So, arguing for more coal is like shooting oneself in the foot.

    Way forward

    • One of the ways in which this can be done is by making the global North pay for the energy transition in the South.
    • Chalking out an independent, greener path to development may create conditions for such negotiations and give the South the moral high ground to force the North to come to the table, like South Africa did at Glasgow.

    Conclusion

    Even if one is pessimistic about this path of righting the wrongs of the past, at the very least, it is better than the status quo.

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  • NASA’s DART mission to hit and deflect an Asteroid

    NASA will launch the agency’s first planetary defense test mission named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

    What is DART Mission?

    • The main aim of the mission is to test the newly developed technology that would allow a spacecraft to crash into an asteroid and change its course.
    • It is a suicide mission and the spacecraft will be completely destroyed.
    • The target of the spacecraft is a small moonlet called Dimorphos (Greek for “two forms”).
    • It is about 160-metre in diameter and the spacecraft is expected to collide when it is 11 million kilometres away from Earth.
    • Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos (Greek for “twin”) which has a diameter of 780 metres.

    Is there any threat from this asteroid?

    • The asteroid and the moonlet do not pose any threat to Earth and the mission is to test the new technology to be prepared in case an asteroid head towards Earth in the future.
    • The spacecraft will navigate to the moonlet and intentionally collide with it at a speed of about 6.6 kilometres per second or 24,000 kilometres per hour.

    Why Dimorphos?

    • Didymos is a perfect system for the test mission because it is an eclipsing binary which means it has a moonlet that regularly orbits the asteroid.
    • It is observable when it passes in front of the main asteroid.
    • Earth-based telescopes can study this variation in brightness to understand how long it takes Dimorphos to orbit Didymos.

    How big is the spacecraft?

    • NASA states that DART is a low-cost spacecraft, weighing around 610 kg at launch and 550 kg during impact.
    • The main structure is a box (1.2 × 1.3 × 1.3 metres). It has two solar arrays and uses hydrazine propellant for manoeuvring the spacecraft.

     

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  • [pib] E-Amrit Portal for E-Vehicles

    India today launched ‘E-Amrit’, a web portal on electric vehicles (EVs), at the ongoing COP26 Summit in Glasgow, UK.

    It is a must-go portal for every aspirant. Click here to visit E-Amrit.

    E-Amrit Portal

    • E-Amrit is a one-stop destination for all information on electric vehicles—busting myths around the adoption of EVs, their purchase, investment opportunities, policies, subsidies, etc.
    • The portal has been developed and hosted by NITI Aayog under a collaborative knowledge exchange programme with the UK government.

    Features of the portal

    • It intends to complement initiatives of the government on raising awareness about EVs.
    • It aims to sensitize consumers on the benefits of switching to electric vehicles.

    Need for E-Amrit

    • In the recent past, India has taken many initiatives to accelerate the decarbonization of transport and adoption of electric mobility in the country.
    • Schemes such as FAME and PLI are especially important in creating an ecosystem for the early adoption of EVs.

     

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  • [pib] Reserve Bank – Integrated Ombudsman Scheme

    The PM will launch two innovative customer-centric initiatives of the Reserve Bank of India.

    What are the schemes?

    [A] Integrated Ombudsman Scheme

    • It aims to further improve the grievance redress mechanism for resolving customer complaints against entities regulated by RBI.
    • The central theme of the scheme is based on ‘One Nation-One Ombudsman’ with one portal, one email and one address for the customers to lodge their complaints.
    • There will be a single point of reference for customers to file their complaints, submit the documents, track status and provide feedback.
    • A multi-lingual toll-free number will provide all relevant information on grievance redress and assistance for filing complaints.

    [B] RBI Retail Direct Scheme

    • It is aimed at enhancing access to government securities market for retail investors.
    • It offers them a new avenue for directly investing in securities issued by the Government of India and the State Governments.
    • Investors will be able to easily open and maintain their government securities account online with the RBI, free of cost.

     

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  • India’s first Fishing Cat Collaring Project

    The Wildlife Institute of India (WII-Dehradun) Conservation Biologists will begin collaring ten Fishing Cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) in the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) in Andhra Pradesh.

    About Fishing Cats

    • About twice the size of a typical house cat, the fishing cat is a feline with a powerful build and stocky legs.
    • It is an adept swimmer and enters water frequently to prey on fish as its name suggests.
    • It is known to even dive to catch fish.
    • It is nocturnal and apart from fish also preys on frogs, crustaceans, snakes, birds, and scavenges on carcasses of larger animals.
    • It is capable of breeding all year round but in India its peak breeding season is known to be between March and May.

    Conservation status

    • IUCN Red List: Endangered
    • CITES: Appendix II
    • Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Schedule I

    Various threats

    • One of the major threats facing the fishing cat is the destruction of wetlands, which is its preferred habitat.
    • As a result of human settlement, drainage for agriculture, pollution, and wood-cutting most of the wetlands in India are under threat of destruction.
    • Another threat to the fishing cat is the depletion of its main prey-fish due to unsustainable fishing practices.
    • It is also occasionally poached for its skin.

     

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