Environment & People|September 2020

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Editorial

Advisors Narne Prabhakar Kaza Krishna Rao Dr. N. Harinath Dr. V. Haraprasad Advisory Board M. Gopala Krishna, IAS (Retd.)

C.S. Ramalakshmi, I.F.S, Dr. N. Bhaskara Rao Prof. P.G. Sastry Er. G. Prabhakar Prof. D.N. Reddy Dr. Rameshwar Rao

TEACH TO RESPECT MOTHER NATURE

I

n India, September 5th is celebrated as Teachers’Day in memory of Bharat Ratna

Dr.Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a great statesman, philosopher and teacher. Sri Radhakrishnan

in his writings opposed western industrial capitalist civilization in which human beings were

S. Raghupathy

rapidly losings all sense of belonging to a meaningful greater whole. He wrote in 1929 “we seem

Prof. I.V. Muralikrishna

to be alienated from nature, leading skeptical , artificial and self-centered lives’ which appears to

Editor Dr. P. Narayana Rao

be more valid than ever. He wrote on teachers as “ true teachers are those who help us think for ourselves” and also on education as “the end product of education should be a free creative man , who can battle against historical circumstances and adverseries of nature”.

Associate Editors Sweta Pendyala Dr. B.Ramana Naik

In the wake of announcement of

New Education Policy by Government of india,

Dr.Radhakrishnan”s writings and speeches gain special relevance particularly regarding Higher Education. Dr.Radhakrishnan spoke highly on Indian Civilization and its intrinsic value system

Sub - editor Swarajyam P.

that is rooted in respect for nature propounded several thousands of years ago in our Vedas and Upanishads.As the future caretakers of the Earth, children are to be taught to take care of nature,

Design arcongraphics@gmail.com

to value their environment and benefit from it without hurting it. There is an urgent need to acknowledge Mother Nature as the greatest teacher and learn from her example. The great sci-

Edited, Printed & Published by

entist Albert Einstein once said that “we still don’t know one thousand of one percent of what

P. Narayana Rao on behalf of society

nature has revealed to us”. It is so relevant during our Corona times. We have to encourage the

for environment and education, hyderabad.

children to observe the mysteries of nature. Thay can be taught to plant treesand take care of them in their schools and also to take up project on conservation of natural resources like water

Address for communication 302, Padma Nilayam,

and energy through rain water harvesting and use of solar power. During these Corona times

St.No. 1, Shanti Nagar,

they can be taught how clean environment makes the difference in spread of the pandemic and

Hyderabad - 500 028.

thereby take care of solid waste in their surroundings.

email: nraopotturi@yahoo.com contact: 9247385331

Today when the humanity is facing unprecedented environmental crisis due to global warming and climate change, the importance of environmental education increased several fold and teachers have a special responsibility to instill in the minds of our children an understanding and

(The views expressed by authors may not be necessarily be the same as those of magazine)

respect for nature. It is also the duty of all citizens to rejuvenate Mother Earth which is the source of all living beings.

September 2020

3 Environment & people

content

Green campus done right: This Assam university sets an example

5

Has pandemic paved the way to organic farming?

6

Budget for clean air should focus on reducing emissions at source, not wasteful ‘solutions’

8

Remembering the Magic of Natural History Museums – and Why We Need Them

12

The Journey of the Humble Millet From Tribal Farms to Dinner Tables

16

Landless tribes fulfill nutritient needs by growing vegetables in bags

18

Why Cuban doctors deserve the Nobel Peace Prize

20

Retrofitting Coal power plants with Ensuring right to water during pandemics and beyond

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carbon capture may lead to increased water stress

22

The Elephants of Odisha Facean Uncertain and Dangerous Future

24

8 Best Places To Visit In Mizoram In 2020

28

Explainer: The Why and How of Disposing Electronic Waste

30

How an urban planner undertook green recovery in Telangana’s 72 ULBs

33

Eco cartoons

34

Two-thirds of glacier ice in the

Bengal’s Fishers Observe Fewer Shrimp, Fish Deaths Due to Pollution in 2020

14

Himalayas will be lost by 2100 if climate targets aren’t met

Environment & people 4

September 2020

26

How Assam Don Bosco University weaves climate action, preservation of flora and fauna, management of water resources in its green initiatives

C

ampuses hold a special significance in our educational fabric. But that was not always the case: Earlier, one could sit under a tree and learn about the world. Today, however, the infrastructure reflects the complexity of our lives.

A campus is not only about classrooms or space, but several processes that are invisible to the eye. How does the water move and reach every tap, where does the water come from and where does it go after use on the campus? It is, after all, among the many resources that have a story to tell.

The Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE) Green Campus Initiative has been trying to capture the story of these resources to transform our campuses into tools of sustainable education. One such campus is the Assam Don Bosco University.

Assam Don Bosco University is located in a sparsely populated area and allows space and opportunity for green initiatives. It does so by balancing infrastructure changes with policy-related initiatives.

The university has an ‘eco-friendly campus policy’ with clear-cut goals related to Climate action Management of water resources Management of energy resources Preservation of flora and fauna Conservation of ecosystem and wildlife Productive use of land Land as a resource The most prominent feature one witness-

es is the extensive use of agroforestry. The campus is 274 acres in size, out of which over 200 acres is dedicated to agroforestry.

This includes plantations of cocoa, rubber, coconut, cashews, neem, turmeric, ginger and lemon. The biggest plantation is dedicated to tea and is spread over 122 acres.

The campus demonstrates plantation practices to promote scientific research in crop development. The university plans to promote such plantations in nearby villages adopted by it. The practice is also ingrained into the campus culture: Over 20,000 trees have been planted in the last 10 years alone.

The campus has also undertaken kitchengardening; students cultivate mango, lychee, jackfruit, jujube, orange and pomelo trees. It has been divided into five kitchen gardens around the residential areas.

Mushroom cultivation is also practiced; in 2019, 45 students were trained in ‘Mushroom for the people: Issues and opportunities’.

Managing energy sensibly The university has not air-conditioned its classrooms. It, insteads, relies on an optimised window-to-wall ratio, good shading devices and builds features that enhance natural ventilation. These passive design strategies are the first line of defense against consuming relatively high energy.

The university, after conducting an energy audit of its campus, switched to energyefficient LED fixtures to meet its artificial lighting requirements.

The initiatives for energy conservation are complemented by actual energy generation on the campus to the tune of 320 kilowatt power. This is sufficient to meet a whopping 52 per cent of campus energy demand on peak performance.

The campus is in the process of understanding the feasibility of a micro-hydel plant by tapping a small stream passing through it, which will add 10 kilowatt to the energy generation.

Managing water and waste Another feature of the campus is its water bodies that help harvest rainwater and manage storm-water. It has a big freshwater lake spanning 10 acres, and which carries 360,000 cubic metre of water. Four minor reservoirs help replenish the ground water table.

The campus has also got the first step of waste management right — by having segregation at the source.

It has also expanded its waste management initiatives to go beyond the campus to the villages nearby by holding awareness campaigns and street plays to promote the idea of ‘plastic free village’. The university held a swachhta hi sewa campaign in 2019, which included a cloth-making workshop with local villages.

Air quality improvement The campus has a restricted vehicle policy, wherein only motor vehicles can be used inside the campus by those having a pass.

Hostel students are not permitted to keep motor vehicles, while day scholars use the common transport facilities provided by the university.

The trees, water bodies and clean air have contributed to the richness of flora and fauna. Spiders, birds, snakes and insects — there is plenty of biodiversity to experience on the campus.

(Source: downtoearth.org.in)

Has pandemic paved the way to organic farming?

Environment & people 6

September 2020

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of life. In spite of taking necessary counter measures, this still continues to be a pressing issue globally, impacting many lives and livelihoods.

Nishitha Pokala e are already encountering many indirect challenges due to Pandemic, one of them being ‘Agricultural Farming and Food Security’.

The demand for food has drastically increased and quarantine measures are massively impacting the labour availability thus reducing supply.

W

India abodes nearly around 120 million smallholder farmers, contributing up to 40 per cent of the country’s grain production, and over half of its fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and others.

One of the immediate concerns challenging us currently is the Food security as the distribution channels have diminished because of substantial restrictions with respect to supply chain of foods.

To overcome this plight, many people are turning to gardening and organic farming to grow their own fruits, vegetables and other crops in these tough times.

Sherya Dixit, a 26 year old Entrepreneur of a start-up named ‘Petite stories’ from Hyderabad is a nature enthusiast herself.

Petite stories encourages green gifting, also entails in reducing the Carbon foot- print of the city. Taking inspiration from her mother, who had ventured into gardening 10 years ago, this Green Panther has started off with growing few home décor and rare indoor plants. At the onset of Covid19, Shreya then showed keen interest in terrace gardening by growing few commercial plants like chilies, cabbage, carrot, pomegranates, mangoes and more.

This eco activist said “Pandemic has made me realise the importance of organic farming. It’s during this time, I tried to bond with plants a little more. You just have to invest a little time in Mother Nature and it has a lot to offer to mankind. When you nurture plants and it reciprocates, the feeling is exceedingly satisfying. So, I have started growing more varieties of plants on my terrace. Farming helps me escape the harsh reality of this world.”

Vahnika Shetty, another private employee from Chennai, also an environment lover, commenced organic farming during pandemic. Spinach, mint, coriander, fenugreek, lemon and tomatoes are few plants that she

has grown in the backyard of her house.

“I am a nature’s kid and greenery attracts me. Sitting with plants, observing and understanding them carefully makes me happy.

But in this frenetic and fast paced world, I could never spend time with Mother Earth.

Fortunately, Pandemic has given me enough time to take a step towards farming and connect with nature. Also, due to the current global crisis, the thought of fetching vegetables from a crowded market has immensely scared me and the whole process of distancing the vegetables and thoroughly washing was tedious as I am a working woman. I then decided to start farming at my own place and I have never been happier. I have also decided to grow more plants like Chilies, Watermelon and Papaya in the coming times.” added Vahnika.

Another, eco-freak Praveena, a cooperate employee from Visakmhapatna states “Gardening has always been my passion.

Nature always helped us lead a resourceful life. We owe a lot to Mother Earth and now is the right time, we give something back to it. Covid- 19 outbreak has honestly been a blessing in disguise for I have started my journey in farming. I harvested Amaranthus, Sorrel leaves, Carrot and Beetroot plants.

This has so far been really therapeutic.

In fact, I recommend everybody to grow their own food. It will definitely help you understand the magic of environment.”

In the days to come, food markets will face many more months of uncertainty due to pandemic, but if every individual could contribute into growing their own food, we can overcome the problem of food security together.

Pandemic has made me realize the importance of Organic Farming. – Shreya, a 26 year old Entrepreneur.

Due to the current global crisis, the thought of fetching vegetables from a crowded market has immensely scared me and the whole process of distancing the vegetables and thoroughly washing was tedious. I then decided to start farming at my own place and I have never been happier. – Vahnika Shetty, a private employee.

Nature always helped us lead a resourceful life. We owe a lot to Mother Earth and now is the right time, we give something back to it. – Praveena, a cooperate employee

September 2020

7 Environment & people

By Jyoti Pande Lavakare

The Supreme Court’s order directing the central and Delhi state government to move quickly on installing smog towers in Delhi will lead to a waste of public money, say environmentalists and air pollution scientists.

“A

ssuming that we can vacuum away our outdoor air pollution problem is not only a waste of tax-payers money, but also highly unscientific. If there is one lesson to learn from the COVID lockdowns, then it is the fact that we can clean our air and our act only by controlling the emissions from all the sources,” says Sarath Guttikunda, director of Urban Emissions, an air pollution information, research and analysis repository. Other air pollution analysts and researchers say that smog towers are one of the most wasteful expenditures of tax money. Anyone with even basic knowledge of the science of air pollution knows that only reducing emissions at source can bring down pollution. Jhatkaa, an Indian campaigning organisation that builds grassroots citizen power, has been running a campaign against smog towers since March 2020, giving the science

Environment & people 8

September 2020

and rationale behind it.

“When the bucket is overflowing and your house is flooded, you don’t go looking for a mop, you turn off the tap. The only solution to pollution is to stop pumping pollutants in the air.

Smog towers are a criminal waste of money and anyone with basic common sense can see that,” says Brikesh Singh of the Clean Air Collective, an unbranded collective of over 100 think-tanks, researchers and activist groups.

These reactions come after the court pulled up the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Delhi government on July 21, giving them seven days to comply with its direction on installing smog towers in the Capital.

‘We are shocked at the attitude of the respondents with respect to installation of smog towers, which were supposed to be installed within three months and for which an agreement was to be entered into and the order was passed on 13 January after obtaining the requisite reports’, the court said.

Earlier today, a furious Justice Arun Misra at the Supreme Court was reported sternly rebuking IITBombay, saying the court would “punish” the engineering education institute for withdrawing from a government project to install a smog

tower project in Delhi. Justice Misra threatened contempt proceedings, saying “I can’t tolerate this nonsense.” Environmentalists retweeted this exchange, questioning why the court was pressing this so urgently when science doesn’t back smog towers being of any use in reducing outdoor air pollution.

The court’s original order had come under severe criticism even when it was first passed in January this year. Even before the order was passed, awareness and advocacy non-profit Care for Air wrote an open letter to the Supreme Court on December 1, requesting it to not promote “band-aid fixes” like smog towers and other outdoor air-purifiers to deal with north India’s debilitating winter smog. At that time, campaigning for Delhi state’s Legislative Assembly elections was getting into high gear, and the main political parties and their candidates were promising to clean the city’s polluted air – the first time that pollution came up as a poll agenda.

It is heartening to note that life-threatening air pollution has at least become a political issue from the time when politicians denied its existence or its fatality. In November 2019, a debate on air pollution had taken place in Parliament, another first.

Voters across the city and social classes have demanded clean air as their right. But this political pressure has also thrown up bad solutions. One such group of so-called ‘solutions’ is smog towers, smog guns and vacuum cleaners to clean outdoor air. Such technologies belittle the problem on the one hand and on the other, they give false hope to those affected by air pollution. As Randeep Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, recently said, masks and smog towers provide more reassurance than actual protection.

This is exactly what politicians would like to take advantage of. The Gautam

Gambhir Foundation installed a ‘smog tower’ in Lajpat Nagar in early January, costing ?7 lakh, according to media reports.

Independent global air pollution experts have found it is not helping reduce pollution by even marginal amounts – even in its immediate vicinity. Four of the five experts, associated with Care for Air, visited the tower within the first three weeks of its inauguration on January 3 and found that PM2.5 some distance away from the tower was lower than PM2.5 close to the tower.

“I did a video shoot near the tower for 3 hours. There was absolutely no reduction in PM levels next to this smog tower and within a 150m radius on 3 different angles,” says Barun Aggarwal, CEO of clean air consultancy firm Breathe Easy Consultants, who visited the site on January 10 with his industry calibrated DustTrak monitor- an instrument used to accurately measure particulate matter concentrations. “I saw a man standing there with a local handheld meter taking readings. I found out he works for the company that made the tower, but he seemed completely clueless about how to take readings.”, says Aggarwal.

Things were worse three days later, on January 13, when atmospheric scientists and researchers Bhargav Krishna and Joshua Apte visited the tower. Its inbuilt monitor measured PM at 636, as photographed and tweeted by Krishna and Apte. Their photos and tweets also showed that some of the filters were already damaged and air wasn’t reaching the bottom outlets. On January 31, when Tanushree Ganguly who works on air pollution section at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, visited the tower, it wasn’t working.

Guttikunda has shown a back-of-theenvelope calculation for outdoor air-cleaning. Even assuming 100% efficiency at all times, any outdoor smog tower can purify

only 0.00007233796% of the air every hour.

Such towers are unviable and ineffectual as shown by the towers installed during the 2010 Commonwealth Games held in Delhi, which captured only 2.5kg of the nearly 5 million kg of particulate matter and dust that Delhi produces every month, Guttikunda analysed.

China’s giant smog-sucking tower installed in 2016 was found to be inefficient by the China Forum of Environmental Journalists after a 50-day trial. Smog-free towers called WAYU, developed and installed by IIT and National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) in Delhi in 2018, ended up as dustbins due to their ineffectiveness.

Outdoor air purifiers are inadvisable and must be rejected by the public. Such installations give the public a false sense of complacency and assurance. Governments support them in spite of the science and evidence against them as it helps them show their voters that they are solving the problem. At this point of a health emergency, we need strong actions that yield a real and significant reduction in PM2.5 levels. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated ?4,400 crore on February 1 this year towards clean air in this budget. The 15th Finance Commission was considering creating funds for local bodies to clean up the air. These funds should be targeted towards reducing emissions at source through improved industrial filters, faster transition to renewable energy, improved public transportation and the shutdown of old thermal power plants that do not meet emission standards.

(Source: carboncopy.info)

September 2020

9 Environment & people

Ranjan Panda It is the 10th anniversary of the recognition of human rights to water and sanitation and our approaches to ensuring water and sanitation during this pandemic should therefore be based on a rights regime and people should be provided with water that is safe. It should be supplied by adhering to the principles of affordability, equality and justice.

T

be yo n d

ng uri Ens

he COVID19 pandemic is getting worse by the day and has seriously exposed the lacunae in our water policies and service infrastructure.

Inequalities in availability and distribution of freshwater are more starkly visible than ever before. This is because water is the first line of our defence against Coronavirus and many people simply lack the right to the resource and required facilities. Time, we fixed the gaps as fast as possible, as well as worked towards building a resilient and just water supply regime.

It is estimated that nearly 800 million people across the world do not have access to clean water close to their homes. The problem does not end there. Almost two billion people, that’s more than a quarter of the current global population, lack water service that is free from contamination.

Having access to water is not enough.

People need to have sufficient and safe water to be able to live a healthy life. And when it comes to pandemics such as the current one, the requirement of water grows manifold.

Then, cleaning surfaces with water and disinfectants is also a major need to kill the virus. Handwashing with soap has always been recommended to effectively disrupt the transmission of respiratory diseases. Soap molecules disrupt SARS-CoV-2’s outer lipid membrane, thereby killing the microbe.

Running water is recommended as it flushes away the viral fragments. It has been observed that locations around the globe, where people do not have the habit of washing their hands, have a much higher level of exposure to Coronavirus. On the other hand, people, who do not have access to water, cannot culture the habit of handwashing frequently. So, they remain highly vulnerable to the virus.

n a s to c i wat er during pandem

d

rig

ht

40 percent people of the world at high risk According to a fact sheet shared by UNICEF, 3 billion people, that’s about 40 percent of the world’s population, do not have a handwshing facility with water and soap at home. When it comes to the least developed countries, nearly three quarters of the people lack basic handwashing facilities at home. More Environment & people 10

September 2020

than half of the people in the world do not have safe sanitation facilities yet.

The most acute shortages were found in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In case of sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania, the study found out, more than 50 percent of the population were without access to handwashing in 2019.

According to this study conducted by Michael Brauer and others from the University of Washington, in 46 countries, more than half of the population lacked access, and in eight countries (India, Nigeria, China, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia) the respective population that were estimated to be without handwashing access was more than 50 million. In India alone, some 499 million people lacked access. That’s almost 36 percent of the total population. Even in wealthier countries some populations lack access to handwashing.

The urban problem We often have the perception that urban areas are well off, because, water supply coverage is always comparatively better than the rural areas. Region-wise statistics available show how urban areas are also replete with gross inequalities.

Our urban areas have contrastingly different characters than the rural areas. Risk factors of infections in pandemics grow higher in the urban slums as population density is too high and concentration of the people in habitation areas is too dense. Then there are more gatherings of different forms in the urban areas and the market going population is also high and more frequent compared to rural areas. Not having handwashing facilities at home and lack of awareness on hand hygiene and crowd behavioural etiquettes can have devastating impacts on the population.

Public handwashing and sanitation facilities are important to contain the spread of diseases and viruses such as Corona. However, the world is also lagging behind in providing

adequate public facilities. Nearly half of healthcare facilities globally do not have basic handwashing facilities, while 47 percent of schools in developing countries lack handwashing facilities with soap and clean water.

Right to water The deadly Coronavirus has crippled human societies, shunted economic growth and pushed billions of people to poverty and food insecurity.

Even though safe water is a human right, many facilities worldwide are charging money to supply water to people, including the poor, in the name of meeting operation and maintenance cost. This pandemic has not only made the existing facilities crumble but also has given us an opportunity to look at our policies and practices afresh.

Right to water for everyone is important, not only the rich and other people who can afford safe water.

While making water access at doorstep in a time bound manner is a mandatory requirement, factoring in climate change (that has already induced water scarcity and is going to have much devastating impact in future) in our water supply planning is also essential.

The world is fighting COVID19 along with many disasters at a time.

Disasters aggravate water quality and quantity challenges. Especially in water scarcity regions, when such pandemics occur, the access further eludes the people. Making people pay for water in such cases would harm them to a great extent. Our approaches to ensuring water should therefore be based on a rights regime and people should be provided with water that is safe. It should be supplied by adhering to the principles of affordability, equality and justice. Water supply systems and infrastructure must also guarantee measures to ensure sustainability of the resources by adhering to principles and measures of ecosystem restoration.

(Source: sixdegreesnews.org)

September 2020

11 Environment & people

Sahas Barve’s work at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History involves measuring feathers to understand how birds stay warm in cold conditions.

Photo: Sahas Barve.

T

he red-whiskered bulbul, one of the most common bird species found in India, is hard to miss. She has a smart black crest on her head and a splotch of red on her face. She is bold. She will sing from exposed branches of trees, and show off her wide repertoire of calls in gardens, forests and farmlands. But bold as she is, you would have to be inordinately lucky to catch her to see her feathers up close, or get a quick measurement of her beak length for your study.

Within the collections of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), however, row upon row of this very species are laid out in clean drawers. Collected by Britishers and Indians decades ago by the thousands, these birds are preserved in natural history museums, in India as well as around the world. Similarly, attentive curators preserve insects, marine invertebrates, reptiles, plants, seeds, nests, bones, faecal samples and frozen tissues from a bygone era in many countries.

These specimens make natural history museums an invaluable repository of information for researchers. Sahas Barve, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, was emphatic when he said that his study on understanding how birds keep warm using their feathers would be impossible without such collections.

Environment & people 12

September 2020

“I study bird feathers from different species. Right now, I’m looking at over 250 species and 2,000 specimens. It would be impossible for me to go sample those species, and that many birds, in the field. My westernmost species is from northwest Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and my easternmost specimen is from Namdapha national park in Arunachal Pradesh,” he said. “It would probably take me a decade to do the same research that I did in six months, if I had to plan the field logistics for all those places.”

The bird specimens he’s studying come from four different countries, but Barve is able to access them all in one place now.

“Having all of them in one repository means I can directly compare the feathers of a laughingthrush from Bhutan to a snowfinch from Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

These biological libraries host more than specimens, which run into millions

sometimes. Old photographs, field notes and observations, audiovisual content of species are all part of the ‘metadata’ that these museums house. Put together, this information can paint a picture about how common some endangered species once were, like the Bengal tiger or great Indian bustard.

By accurately identifying where these specimens were collected, researchers can determine the geographic range and distribution of species in the past, and compare them to their distribution today. In a warming planet, species that are restricted to small areas may find their habitats shrinking even further, and data from natural history collections may offer our only clue to track this trajectory.

Like Barve, Anand Krishnan, a DSTINSPIRE faculty-fellow at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, has also used specimens from natural history collections in his research. He, along

with another researcher, Krishnapriya Tamma, studied morphological differences among barbets, a group of birds that is predominantly frugivorous.

“This was particularly helped by visiting museum collections such as those at the Smithsonian, because the entire morphological variation in the family was available at our fingertips. There is a vast resource of superbly preserved data there that is very helpful to address such questions,” said Krishnan.

In this age of molecular biology, researchers are also increasingly turning to natural history collections to study genes.

Using DNA sequences from both individuals alive today and preserved specimens from these collections, scientists are able to pinpoint the effect of environmental changes on wildlife. From carefully scraping DNA from the toe pads of birds, researchers can try to ascertain if populations of birds from different parts of the country are genetically different.

These collections act as windows into past life on the planet – both the recent human-dominated past and the distant paleontological past. A trip or two to one of these places can help researchers fill gaps in the evolutionary histories of species by studying their long-gone ancestors.

“Natural history collections are also very useful to educate and spread awareness

about biodiversity conservation, and the significance of natural history studies,” said Saunak Pal, a scientist at the BNHS. Pal has been with the organisation for five years now, and working with these specimens has been special. “Being associated with the BNHS museum is like a dream come true, as I have always been fascinated by the organisation, since when I was a student. Working in the museum comes with its own perks as you get to see an array of specimens collected from across the subcontinent, many of which have been collected over a hundred years ago,” he said.

Today, collections all over the world are being digitised to make these resources more accessible to researchers and natural history enthusiasts. Genetic data, three-dimensional scans of preserved animals, pictures of pressed plants and digitised field notes are being uploaded to online databases from natural history museums everywhere.

In India, this process of digitisation is in the early stages. Pal said easy access to information in natural history museums is a major hurdle for researchers in the country.

“This may be because there is a lack of proper digitisation of catalogues, specimens and associated metadata. It is essential to carry out standardised digitisation protocol across museums, and also to train museum staff and researchers in modern tools and techniques to carry out this humongous task smoothly,”

he added.

Maintaining natural history collections is a demanding task on an everyday basis as well. Barve said the sheer number of specimens in museums can pose a challenge. For example, changes in taxonomy can quickly translate into an astounding amount of physical reorganisation in museums. Curators have to control temperature and light, and ensure that storage areas are fumigated on a regular basis. In a tropical country like India, it is even more important to monitor temperature carefully to prevent specimens in collections from degrading.

“Both digitisation of specimens and proper maintenance of collections require regular funding and support from all bodies concerned. Hence, it is important for people to understand, value and support natural history collections as these might be the last reserve for many endangered and also some extinct species,” said Pal. There is a strong case for preserving specimens in museums – even those of common species like the red-whiskered bulbul.

For many scientists, these collections are invaluable, and they recollect memories of working in these museums with much enthusiasm.

“I have always had a lovely experience at natural history collections both within India and abroad, without exception. I have had great support from the people who work there, and they are always very open to researchers coming in to examine the collections,” Krishnan said. “In India in particular, visits to the BNHS collections have been very helpful to my research, and working in those collections is intellectually very stimulating.”

(Source: science.thewire.in)

September 2020

13 Environment & people

Y

Around mid-April, when Siddik Mollah, a fisherman at a village called Boyarmari, located in the district of North 24 Parganas in West Bengal, found that day-by-day shrimps were growing unhindered on his Bheri (embanked water body with shallow water), he was pleasantly surprised.

By the end of April, Mollah’s Bheri had a healthy population of shrimp.

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September 2020

arul Islam Mollah, another fisherman at Boyarmari, also had a similar experience. This year, nearly 90 percent of shrimps survived on his Bheri.

For almost the last ten years, every year, the picture was different. The end of April would come with scenes of dead shrimp floating on Bheris at Boyarmari. On average, between 50-80 percent of the shrimps would die in about 30-35 days of releasing larvae in the water body. This year, almost 95 percent of the shrimp survived, said Mollah.

Small canals connect Bheris at Boyarmari to a river called Bidyadhari, a saline water river, suitable for shrimp cultivation.

The river flows through the district of North 24 Parganas to the Bay of Bengal through the deltaic Sundarban region. Bidyadhari receives saline water under tidal effect from the sea. However, it also acts as a conduit to Kolkata’s sewage and effluents released from various factories, including tanneries, garment, plastic and glass factories.

“Effluent from tanneries is the main reason for the contamination of water. Since the last ten years, as the number of tanneries started increasing, water turned

more and more contaminated and shrimps started dying,” said Mollah.

Now, with factories remaining shut or working only in a limited capacity for the last four months due to the nationwide lockdown, anecdotes from fishers claim cleaner water has helped fish and other aquatic species to survive.

Salinity, pollution puts livelihoods at stake About 25 years ago, most of the existing Bheris were rice fields. As shrimp from West Bengal started gaining popularity in the export markets, farmers saw profitability in shrimp cultivation. They started converting agricultural land into Bheris, and the state government too supported this drive. Shrimp cultivation became a booming trade, not only at Boyarmari, but also in large parts of North 24 Parganas.

However, after Aila, a devastating storm that hit coastal West Bengal in 2009, many Bheris turned unfit for shrimp cultivation due to excess salinity. In normal circumstances, this salinity should have normalised naturally in the course of two to three years.

However, increasing river pollution never let the perfect condition for shrimp cultivation to prevail again.

Shrimps were subject to a disease called White Spot, a bacterial infection, which kills hundreds of shrimp in one go. Contaminated water is one of the major causes of this infection. As a result of this continued dip in shrimp production, many fishermen migrated outside West Bengal in search of jobs.

Rising river pollution In March 2019, hundreds of farmers from North 24 Parganas staged a protest at Basanti Highway, a major road in the district, against the rising pollution level in Bidyadhari. They claimed contaminated water of the river was destroying their crops, fish, shrimp and causing health problems in children.

Effluents from a large number of tanneries in and around Kolkata fall in Bidyadhari.

“Tannery industries are listed as the most polluting activity due to the wide type of chemicals applied during the conversion of animal skins into leather. Chromium salts, phenolics, tannins, organic matter, among other products, are constantly released to the environment in tannery wastewater. These pollutants offer environmental risks to the aquatic life and human health,” states a 2018 research article.

Kolkata has historically been a hub for leather production. It is home to more than 500 tanneries, which were once concentrated in Tangra, Tiljala and Topsia areas in the eastern fringes of the city. As the city expanded, these areas became densely populated localities, and the pollution on account of the tanneries created havoc for residents.

In 1995, the Supreme Court ordered 538 polluting tanneries in the areas to relocate to the outskirts and also set guidelines for leather waste treatment through effluent plants.

In 2005, the West Bengal government set up a new leather hub, the Calcutta Leather Complex, at Bantala, outside Kolkata in North 24 Parganas. The complex included an effluent treatment plant. At present, there are about 375 tanneries operating in the complex.

According to Ramesh Juneja, president of the Calcutta Leather Complex, 150 new tanneries have come up in the complex in the last ten years.

“The complex had a capacity of treating 20 million litres of effluent a day, and it was sufficient for existing units. The complex would add additional capacity of treating 20 million litres of effluent a day soon, as a

number of new tanneries are expected to open establishments in the complex in the coming days,” said Juneja.

In 2018, a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report observed that as of April 2017, 49 tanneries out of 376 tanneries in the leather complex were not connected with common effluent treatment plant (CETP). As a result, untreated effluents were discharged into the nearby river without treatment, leading to pollution.

Juneja claimed illegal tanneries outside the complex were the source of river pollution.

“About 200 illegal tanneries are still operating in Tiljala and Topia region, and they are the source [of] pollution in the river.

Tanneries in the leather complex have proper treatment plant and adhere to all norms,” he said.

“We need to seriously take up the issue of river pollution to save and improve the livelihood of the people engaged in shrimp cultivation. Water is an important factor in fishing and higher level of oxygen in the water makes a big difference in the quality and quantity of fish. Shrimp has potential to provide employment to a large number of people, including migrant workers in the region. Uncontrolled and unethical practices of releasing effluents in the river is a major threat to their livelihoods,” said Aniruddha Dey, chairperson, Professional Institute for Development & Socio Environmental Management (PRISM), an NGO. Silver lining in fish production this year More than 100 kms away from Boyarmari, at Tribeni, a town on the banks river Ganga in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, Arindam Chakraborty, a researcher in the field of fisheries, spotted fish like chital and aar floating alive in good numbers on the banks of the river. Other years, the shore would be populated with dead fish.

For years, an old shipwreck just, about 100-150 feet away from the bank of the river has been a nesting ground of several sweet

water fish that grow in parental care. The nooks of the shipwreck provided safe shelter for the fish to breed, as it remained out of bounds of fishing nets. However, when industrial effluent from nearby paper factories mixed with water, the fish would die a natural death and were found floating on the banks. But this year, they were mostly alive.

“Clean water, less industrial effluents helped the fish survive,” said Chakraborty.

With less pollution, this year, there are expectations that fish stock across West Bengal will rise.

“Due to less pollution, the distribution pattern of fish is better this year. They could migrate till long distances in the river from the sea. Also, during lockdown as fishing

activities had come to halt, the population of riverine fish was higher,” said B K Mahapatra, principal scientist at Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Kolkata.

However, fishermen are yet to see higher fish production turn into profits. Due to western disturbance, not many fishermen could venture into sea for fishing this year.

But they do anticipate a good fish stock.

“This year, the production of fish like Vemmani shrimp and pomfret was better than last year. However, it will take some time to assess the overall production, as fishermen could hardly venture into the sea due to bad weather. We do expect better fish production this year,” said Bijon Maity, secretary of the West Bengal United Fishermen Association.

While profits from fishing remain doubtful, fish are surely breathing again in West Bengal.

(Source:science.thewire.in)

September 2020

15 Environment & people

N

ative varieties of millet which can grow in drought-like conditions are making a comeback thanks to the indigenous Dognria Kondh community in Odisha and its growing traction among affluent consumers for their many health benefits.

During a participatory appraisal helping Dongria Kondhs to cope with climate change, the ancient tribal community mulled which of their grains could grow under high temperature and which could grow under low and erratic rainfall. It emerged that specific varieties of indigenous millets can grow under conditions of more heat and with as few as two monsoon showers.

Indigenous farmers in India are again recognising and asserting the value of millets, a cereal crop that was once central to their culture and is seen today as a perfect adaptation to ensure nutritional security in these times of climate distress.

As Dasara Kadraka lets the tiny russetcolored seeds flow from her cupped palms into an earthen storage pot, she remembers, “At one time, I’ve heard as a girl, we harvested 45 traditional varieties of millet. Even 10 years ago, we grew 11 varieties that went down to just two.”

“We have intensified our search for lost indigenous varieties,” the 70-year-old senior from the primitive Dongria Kondh tribal community that is working together since 2014 to revive their heritage millets in Kadaraguma village high on the Niyamgiri hill-range in eastern India’s Odisha state told VillageSquare.in. After ousting the British mining group Vedanta in 2013, the community has also felt that they must reoccupy their hills by bringing more land under traditional crops.

Millets stage a comeback More significant to its sustainable revival, millet is rapidly becoming a health food of choice for India’s urban middle class.

The government is also promoting millets under its National Food Security Act as key to combating under-nutrition, particularly in rural areas. Under the right-to-food guarantee, currently 4.5 million tons of food grains Environment & people 16

September 2020

at highly subsidised rates are distributed to nearly two-thirds of the Indian population.

Millets are a rich source of protein, vitamin B, and minerals such as magnesium, potassium, zinc, copper, and manganese.

They contain significant amounts of phenol, which act as anti-oxidants and as preventive

for degenerative illnesses such as heart diseases and cancer. It is gluten-free, and with low glycemic index, it is suitable for diabetics.

Referring to the one rupee rice the community gets under a government-subsidized scheme, Krusna Kadraka, headman of

Kadaraguma village, told VillageSquare.in, “Rice fills the stomach but does not last, and we are hungry and tired sooner. We must eat mandia (millets), which provides the energy to walk our steep hills every day.”

Strength from millets The very same sentiment comes from a retired schoolteacher buying 2 kg of millet powder at a Bhubaneswar city government outlet in Odisha. “Millet gives strength and since I am diabetic, a millet gruel mixed with yogurt is the best breakfast the doctor tells me,” said Ravindra Mishra.

A 100 gm pearl millet breakfast has 100% of daily iron requirement for adults while 100 gm of finger millet has half the requirement of iron and one-third of calcium, important for children and lactating mothers, said Namita Biswal, a city-based nutritionist.

“Since all the seasonal fruits have sucrose unsuitable for my weight-loss regimen, I have replaced semolina with mineralpacked millet grains while making savory breakfast dishes with plenty of vegetables,” 43-year-old Pinky Agarwal told VillageSquare.in. “If someone had told me to eat millet five year back, I might even have been offended,” the cost accountant said, referring to millet’s social stigma.

At the government tribal welfare department’s sales outlet, Kartik Kumar Swain said millet sales have doubled over the one year he has been manning the shop. In a month they procure 1,000 kg, all of which vanishes from the shelves within 20 days. At an earlier rural posting back in 1992, he remembers the government procured millet for a measly one rupee a kilogram, which has now increased 30 times.

Orphan crop’s political journey Out of 7,000 plant species that have been used for human food consumption since the beginning of agriculture, just three crops – rice, maize and wheat – provide 60% of the world’s plant-based calories and proteins today, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In India, 60 years ago millet was grown in 40% of all cereal cultivated area.

Dropping over the last 50 years, millet occupies only 11% of India’s cropped area. The major wave of undervaluation came from the 1960s onwards with the Green Revolution.

Within government policy there has emerged a food grain caste system. White

rice, bringing profit to fertilizer industrialists, large farmers, and export revenue to government, is considered the food for superior classes. India remains the second-largest exporter of rice after China.

Millet came to be known as a coarse grain eaten by the poor and used as fodder. It has largely remained excluded from government’s food grains research, policy, minimum support price buyback, irrigation facilities and marketing campaigns. Agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan has called millet one of the orphan crops.

The loss of heirloom millet varieties among Dongria Kondhs who inhabited regions inaccessible then started later but

by Development of Humane Action (DHAN) Foundation, a national NGO, is treating village school children to processed dishes they had never tasted before. “For now they plan to sell at city exhibitions, and supply to sweetmeat shops too,” the non-profit’s Bijaya Kumar Nayak told VillageSquare.in.

Running a supply micro- enterprise to established line-products is their dream project.

DHAN is working to get popular regional cinema actors to endorse their recipes.

Already having found lost millet varieties in remote hamlets still untouched by government’s push for cash crops and paddy, the Dongria Kondhs is in mission mode urgently enquiring among clan families and

declined more rapidly. NGOs working among the Dongria Kondhs say the skewed government policy to give subsidized rice to a millet-eating people is mainly responsible for the decline. Coupled with this is the government’s promotion of cash crops like pineapple, turmeric and ginger, which has cut into over 50% of millet land over the past 16 years.

at market meetings if anyone is still preserving a millet variety the others have abandoned.

Lost since nearly 40 years they have rescued the Kodo millet high on fiber and energy content, ideal for diabetics, two varieties of sorghum in Jangojodi village and another foxtail millet variety in Sagadi village.

Dasara Kadraka says she is hopeful about adding many more to this lost and found list.

Value-added millet Cashing on this increasing popularity and awareness of the goodness of millets among city people are tribal women self-help groups in the Eastern Ghats. In 15 villages of Odisha’s Koraput district tribal women are honing up their cooking skills learning attractive millet items that will appeal to urban consumers. Till recently, they only knew millet was either made into a bland porridge-like gruel or as rice, but now helped

(Source: agriculture)

September 2020

17 Environment & people

L

ack of land and water left tribes without vegetables in their diet, as buying vegetables was beyond their means. Growing vegetables in bags fulfills the need at no cost Life as a member of a tribal community, in the hillside village of Pipalpada in Ahwa administrative block of Dang district in Gujarat, is full of hardships and challenges. Majority of the land falls under Purna Wildlife Sanctuary. Villagers grow rice mostly, and finger millet on pasture lands of the mountain slopes.

Tribes here practice rain-fed farming but do not own the land. The forest department gives permission to practice agriculture to sustain themselves and hence the villagers cannot sell the land.

The villagers’ work includes working on their farms and bringing firewood.

Ujjwala Yojana, a scheme through which gas cylinders are given to families below poverty line, has reached the area. However, many people have not received the cylinder and the ones who have, are afraid to use it on a daily basis. “Difficulty in replacing the empty cylinder and lack of training on usage and safety are the main reasons,” Shevantibai, a villager, told VillageSquare.in.

In such a scenario, without any land, the tribes had no means of consuming vegetables. But with the landless Dang women growing vegetables in bags now, they are able to include vegetables in their diet every day, almost free of cost.

Lack of livelihood options Monsoon does not last long in this village on the border between Maharashtra and Gujarat.

People go in search of water when summer starts.

Over summer, the tribal community struggles for water. There are very little employment opportunities.

Hence, men and younger couples move for work to nearby cities or work in sugarcane plantation or sugarcane factories, mainly in Tapi, Navsari, Badauli, and Saeen areas. Migrated villagers work on farms and factories, mostly for a period of six months.

In this part of Dang, which is one of the poorest districts in the country, villagers migrate as families, so that men and women can work on the farms, and women can prepare food. Old people and middle-aged women stay back in the village, to take care of the farm and prepare it for the monsoon.

Diet sans vegetables “We do not have enough to eat during summers. We survive on nachani roti made of ragi, and chutany, a paste made of red or green chilly,”

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September 2020

Anjanabai a resident of Pipalpada told VillageSquare.in.

A lot of research indicates that lack of nutrient-rich food impacts the overall physical development of individuals, especially the development of children. And furthermore, with the societal structure of hierarchy, women suffer the most from lack of nutrients. “In the past we used to eat many kinds of vegetables from the mountains but over time things have changed. Dependence on the jungle is mostly for firewood nowadays,� Meeraben of Gundvahal village told VillageSquare.in.

Nutrition gap Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP), that has set up women’s self-help groups (SHGs), introduced improvements in farming practices and conducted small-scale entrepreneurship trainings, to empower the community, observed the nutrition gap.

Observing that the tribes consumed hardly any vegetables, AKRSP started the campaign for landless kitchen gardens, also known as bori bagicha among the locals. Bori bagicha, which means garden-in-a-bag, was initiated as the villagers do not own land where they can grow vegetables.

Although villagers have access to drinking water now, water is still scarce for agriculture. The idea behind the landless kitchen gardens is that, despite lack of water and land availability, there was still the possibility of growing vegetables in bags.

Vegetables at no cost With landless kitchen gardens, the tribal communities have started to use diverse vegetables in their diet. With resources, at a minimum cost of Rs 10 to 50 for the seeds, families can have multiple vegetables daily for their consumption.

The women fill 3 to 5 used bags with compost and soil and choose to grow bitter gourd, ridge gourd, bottle gourd, tomatoes, pumpkin and other vegetables. Initially AKRSP conducted a workshop to teach the women, and provided them with seeds and bags. Now the women get the seeds through their SHGs. Prior to this intervention, as getting vegetables from the mountains reduced over time, community members started to buy vegetables from the nearby market. The women would buy vegetables if they had money. But they bought limited quantity as the vegetables are beyond their means.

They do buy vegetables from the market occasionally now, but to a limited extent. The money that they used to spend on buying vegetables is now spent on other things including seeds for the bori bagicha. They find it much cheaper and easier to grow vegetables at home. Bori bagicha project is in progress across Dang district.

Access to vegetables in the diet means better health, though a proper study to measure the impact of the vegetable consumption is yet to be done. But for now, women are happy and grateful that they are getting vegetables in their diet at almost no cost. Some women have gone further and set up nurseries, and sell plants and vegetables at the market.

(Source: villagesquare.in)

September 2020

19 Environment & people

Cuban medical workers are risking their health to break the chain of COVID-19 infection. They have also developed drugs to help fight the disease

By Vijay Prashad

F

ive years ago, I read the story of Félix Báez, a Cuban doctor who had worked in West Africa to stop the spread of Ebola. Báez was one of 165 Cuban doctors of the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade who went to Sierra Leone to fight a terrible outbreak in 2014 of a disease first detected in 1976. During his time there, Báez contracted Ebola.

The World Health Organization and the Cuban government rushed Báez to Geneva, where he was treated at the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève. He struggled with the disease, but thanks to the superb care he Environment & people 20

September 2020

received, his Ebola receded. He was flown to Cuba. At the airport in Havana, he was received by his wife Vania Ferrer and his sons Alejandro and Félix Luis as well as Health Minister Roberto Morales.

At the website Cubasí, Alejandro — a medical student — had written, “Cuba is waiting for you.” In Liberia, the other Cuban doctors also fighting Ebola cheered for Báez.

A Facebook page was started called Cuba Is With Félix Báez, while on other social media forums the hashtag #FélixContigo and #FuerzaFélix went viral.

Báez recovered slowly, and then, miraculously, decided to return to West Africa to continue to fight against Ebola.

No wonder that there is an international campaign to have the Cuban doctors be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. This aspect of Cuba’s work is essential to its socialist project of international solidarity through care work.

US campaign against the doctors When Báez returned to West Africa, his colleague, Ronald Hernández Torres, based in Liberia, wrote on Facebook, “We are here by our decision and we will only withdraw when Ebola is not a health problem for Africa and the world.” This is an important statement, a reaction to the offensive campaign led by the United States government against Cuban internationalism.

The United States Congressional Research Service reported that “In June 2019, the [US] State Department downgraded Cuba to Tier 3 in its 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report,” for, among other reasons,

not taking“action to address forced labour in the foreign medical mission programme.”

This policy came alongside pressure by the US government on its allies to expel the Cuban missions from their countries.

Strikingly, the United Nations Human Rights Council — under pressure from Washington — said it would investigate Cuban doctors. Urmila Bhoola (UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery) and Maria Grazia Giammarinaro (UN special rapporteur on trafficking in persons) wrote a letter to the Cuban government in November 2019.

The letter made grand statements — such as alleging that the Cuban doctors suffered from forced labour; but there was no evidence in the letter. Even their statement of concern seemed plainly ideological rather than forensic.

In early 2020, the US government intensified its attempt to delegitimise the Cuban medical mission programme. On January 12, 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, “We urge host countries to end contractual agreements with the Castro regime that facilitate the #humanrights abuses occurring in these programmes.”

US allies in Latin America, such as Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, expelled the Cuban medical missions. This would become a catastrophic decision for these countries as the COVID-19 pandemic developed across Latin America.

In July 2020, the New York-based Human Rights Watch published a document accusing the Cuban government of formulating “repressive rules for doctors working abroad.” It focused on Resolution 168, adopted in 2010, that provides a code of conduct for Cuban doctors, including ensuring that the medical workers honour the laws of their hosts and do not exceed the remit of their mission, which is to take care of the medical needs of the population.

Human Rights Watch merely offers this resolution — and other regulations — as evidence; it accepts that it cannot prove that these regulations have ever been implemented: “Human Rights Watch has not been able to determine the extent to which Cuban health workers have broken the rules and law, or whether the Cuban government has enforced criminal or disciplinary sanctions against them.”

It is stunning that a human rights organisation would spend so much time with so lit-

tle evidence assaulting a programme that is widely recognised for bringing an improvement of living standards for people.

The organising committee for the group Nobel Peace Prize for Cuban Doctors responded to Human Rights Watch with a stinging rebuttal. It pointed out that the HRW report said nothing about the attacks on the Cuban medical program, including the official US government attempt to bribe Cuban doctors to defect to the United States and the expenditure by USAID of millions of dollars to create disinformation against the programme.

Even more egregious, the HRW document misreads the evidence it does offer, including the transcript of a dialogue between the Cuban ministry of health and medical workers. The HRW report uses as factual a text by Prisoners Defenders, a Spain-based non-profit led by an anti-Cuban activist; HRW does not declare the political opinions of this highly controversial source.

The HRW report reads less like a credible account by a human rights organisation and more like a press release from the three Republican senators — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott — who recently introduced a bill to scuttle Cuba’s medical mission programme.

But nevertheless, they persist In a study published in April 2020, the Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde found that Mais Médicos (More Doctors) programme of the Cuban doctors in Brazil improved health indicators of the population; this programme brought medical care to remote areas, often for the first time.

Alexandre Padilha of the Workers Party (PT) was a minister of health under President Dilma Rousseff and a member of the team that created the Mais Médicos program. He said that after the Cuban doctors had been ejected, there was an increase in infant mortality and increased pneumonia among the Indigenous communities where they worked; all this was catastrophic during the COVID19 pandemic.

In June 2020, President Jair Bolsonaro, who had expelled the Cuban doctors in December 2019, asked for them to start work again in Brazil; they were needed to compensate for Brazil’s catastrophic reaction to the COVID-19 virus. Even USAID money to compensate for the loss of the Cuban doctors was not sufficient; Bolsonaro wanted the Cuban doctors to stay.

Cuban Doctors to the rescue Cuban medical workers are risking their health to break the chain of the COVID-19 infection. Cuban scientists developed drugs — such as interferon alpha-2b — to help fight the disease. Now Cuban scientists have announced that their vaccine is in trials; this vaccine will not be treated as private property but will be shared with the peoples of the world. This is the fidelity of Cuban medical internationalism.

On August 21, Raúl Castro — the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba — spoke at an event for the 60th anniversary of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). At the meeting, Castro mentioned that 61 per cent of the medical workers in the Henry Reeve Brigade were women; since the start of Cuban medical internationalism in 1960, over 400,000 medical workers have worked in more than 40 countries. These medical workers believe in the twin missions of medical care and internationalism; it is a lesson that they learned from the teachings of Che Guevara, a doctor and an internationalist.

(Source: downtoearth.org.in)

September 2020

21 Environment & people

As much as 32 percent of the world’s coal-fired power plants globally are exposed to water scarcity for at least five months per year. 15 percent of those power plants are in India, a study has said.

by Sahana Ghosh

R

etrofitting coal power plants with water and energy intensive carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS) will lead to a substantial increase in freshwater consumption for India.

Researchers recommend developing water-efficient CCS technologies or locate

Environment & people 22

September 2020

CCS technologies in regions not affected by water scarcity.

Addition of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to reduce emissions could stress water resources in a vast proportion of coal-fired power plants in India that are already exposed to water scarcity, a study has warned.

A study by University of Berkeley researchers reveals that as much as 32 percent of the world’s coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) are exposed to water scarcity for at least five months per year and 43 percent face regional water scarcity for at least one month per year. Of these 32 percent, 56 percent are located in China, 15 percent in India, and 11 percent in the United States, said study author Lorenzo Rosa.

“CCS technologies are energy and

water-intensive processes. Retrofitting CFPPs with CCS will lead to a substantial increase in freshwater consumption for India.

Irrigated agriculture is still by far the largest water use in India, but CCS will further strain water resources,” said Rosa.

“To reduce vulnerability it is necessary to develop water-efficient CCS technologies or locate CCS technologies in regions not affected by water scarcity,” he added.

CCS is considered a crucial strategy for meeting carbon dioxide emission reduction targets. It consists of the separation of carbon dioxide from industrial and energy-related sources, transport to a storage location and long-term isolation from the atmosphere.

Post-combustion CCS, where carbon dioxide is first captured from the flue/fuel gases, is a preferred, economically viable

technology to reduce carbon emissions because it can be retrofitted to existing power plants without decommissioning them.

Coal continues to be the mainstay of India’s power mix, contributing to more than 50 percent of it. With its policies, the national government also makes it clear that this will remain the scenario at least for several years even as the emphasis on renewable grows. India currently has no commercial CCS projects at large scale.

Rosa and co-authors explain that energy-producing facilities such as coal-fired power plants consume large amounts of cooling water. The type of cooling method used in a power plant (wet cooling towers, oncethrough cooling, or air-cooled condensers) affects water consumption.

Installing CCS at these facilities requires that they produce additional energy to compensate for the energy used by the CCS process. With that comes additional consumption of cooling water. In addition, the CCS process itself adds to the overall water consumption in a fashion that depends upon the CCS technology deployed, they said.

Factoring in four types of CCS systems, Rosa analysed the potential impacts on water resources that would result from retrofitting large (greater than 100 MW gross capacity) CFPPs with the CCS systems. They are absorption, adsorption (with temperature and pressure swing processes), and membranes.

The finding that 32 percent of CFPPs are exposed to water scarcity for at least five months per year suggests that these coalfired units might not be well suited for retrofitting with CCS unless alternative water sources are available, said Rosa.

China, with 48 percent of the world’s CFPP capacity, also consumes the greatest share of freshwater, followed by India and the United States. In China, more than 30 percent of the installed CFPP capacity faces water scarcity from March to October while more than 40 percent of India’s CFPP capacity faces water scarcity in the dry season (December–June).

“We mapped 218 coal-fired power plants in India with a capacity greater than 100 MW,” said Rosa, adding that CFPPs located in other Asian countries are not particularly exposed to water scarcity, because of high water availability and being constructed along the coast to use seawater as a cooling medium.

Agreeing with the findings, coal chemistry scientist Binoy Saikia, who was not associated with the study, also underscored the water footprint in coal washeries for removing high ash content before transport of coal to the power plant.

“Currently, India also faces big water pollution from coal mining activities like acid mine drainage, groundwater contamination. Indian coal washeries require water and also generate a large amount of contaminated water after beneficiation to produce clean coal,” he said.

“The process (CCS) requires high energy consumption and drastic treatments. In India, CCS is not yet fitted commercially in large scale, as far as I know. In a few Indian power plants, fluidised bed combustion is used to reduce the sulphur dioxide emission in few Indian power plants,” Saikia of CSIR-North East Institute of Science & Technology told Mongabay-India.

Ahead of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, India had pledged to unconditionally reduce the emission intensity of its Gross Domestic Product (carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP) by 30-35 percent from the 2005 level by 2030, and achieve 40 percent of its installed power capacity from renewables.

In a 2018 notification, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change defined strong limits on the usage of water for inland thermal power plants (TPP). It mandates all old and new inland TPPs to be based on cooling tower technology from 2017 onwards and also proposes a limit of 3 cubic meters per megawatt hours (m3/MWh) for specific water consumption of all inland thermal power plants.

Vaibhav Chaturvedi, an economist who leads the Council on Energy, Environment and Water’s (CEEW) work on low-carbon pathways said the notification on water withdrawal limits for power plants has significant potential to reduce pressure on India’s water

resources.

“A failure to implement this policy will result in continuous increase in withdrawals and will put more pressure on India’s water resources. In the long run, however, withdrawals will increase across scenarios due to the growth in underlying electricity generation, but will still be comparable to current withdrawals,” Chaturvedi said.

Disputes over water with India’s neighbouring countries are likely to compound the water stress issue, according to CEEW research. For example, their study states that TPPs dependent on the Brahmaputra for meeting their water needs can expect water stress in a regional rivalry scenario as China is upstream in the river basin.

“India does not have a CCS power plant

and so there is no India-specific data on CCS. For India, at this moment what we know from our research is that nuclear power plants have a higher water footprint compared to coal power plants,” said Chaturvedi.

“CCS is nowhere right now in India’s discussions. But we have been saying that we should never close ourselves to any technology. Technological innovation has an important role in making technologies less water and energy-intensive,” said Chaturvedi.

(Source: science.thewire.in)

September 2020

23 Environment & people

As India celebrates World Elephant Day, on August 12, the distressed elephants of Odisha face an uncertain and dangerous future. Once the pride of Odisha, elephants now see the state as a graveyard.

I

n 1979, there were 2,044 elephants in Odisha, in the dense forests of Dhenkanal, Deogarh, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Sambalpur, Angul, Sundargarh and Cuttack. In the 2017 census, their number had dropped to 1,976. They have also been forced to leave their native forests, break up into smaller populations and scatter out into several other districts.

There has been no census in three years.

Odisha loses more elephants than most elephant-bearing states even though the elephant population in some states is two- or three-times higher. The threats to elephants in Odisha are similar to those identified across many parts of India and South Asia.

A devastated landscape Changes in Odisha’s landscape have virtually ruined elephant habitats and traditional corridors, bringing the pachyderms into frequent conflict with humans and threats in human settlements. Keonjhar district had 112 elephants in 2002 but only 40 in 2017, having lost most of them to large-scale mining.

Dhenkanal district had 81 elephants in 2002 and 169 in 2017 because elephants couldn’t cross over into other forests on their traditional migration routes, cut off by the Rengali irrigation canal network. Today, Dhenkanal witnesses more human-elephant conflict than any other district in Odisha.

The 60-odd elephants from the Chandaka

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sanctuary were so disturbed by development activities that they have now virtually abandoned the area and moved to Ganjam and Cuttack. In fact, the 2017 census counted only one elephant in Chandaka. A group of 15-16 elephants from Chandaka that strayed into Ganjam’s Rambha forest range for five or five years has been wiped out due to electrocutions, accidents and train kills. Another similarly sized group remains holed up in Ganjam’s Khallikote range, but their number has halved. Some Chandaka elephants of Khurda district have made inroads into Puri district, where they were never seen in the past, resulting in many conflicts due to which lives have been lost on both sides.

A larger group of about 25 Chandaka elephants that migrated to Cuttack has now shrunk to fewer than 20, and moves around in small forested patches in the Athagarh and Khuntuni forest ranges in human dominated landscapes.

The Odisha government officially identified 14 elephant corridors in January 2010, covering over 870 sq. km and including three inter-state corridors – with West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The state spent Rs 20 crore to improve these corridors.

However, these paths are not protected by law, Biswajit Mohanty, the secretary of the Wildlife Society of Odisha (WSO), told The Wire Science.

Odisha had also identified five elephant reserves, and notified three of them: the Mahanadi Reserve (8,036 sq. km), the Mayurbhanj Reserve (7,043 sq. km) and the the Sambalpur Reserve (5,846 sq. km); the South Odisha Reserve (4,216 sq. km) and the Baitarani Reserve (10,516 sq. km) haven’t been notified. Mohanty said the last two were left out under pressure in 2007 from the mining lobby.

The elephants’ mortality rate in the state has been rising quickly. There were 33 elephant deaths per year on average from 1990 to 2000, then 46 per year from 2000 to 2010, and 78 per year since 2010. Of the 784 deaths in the last ten years, 281 (36%) died unnatural deaths and 160 (20%) died due to non-ascertained causes, mostly since the bodies had been found in a highly decomposed state. According to Mohanty, nearly 50% of all the elephants that die in Odisha do so for reasons other than natural causes.

And of the 784 that have died since 2010, 114 were killed by poachers (primarily for ivory). Of these 114, 79 were killed using

live electric wires. Another 45 elephants died due to negligence by the power supply department, in the form of sagging power lines and poorly fixed poles. Trains killed 26, speeding vehicles on roads killed six and 11 died after falling in human-made structures like open wells and canals. The cause of death remains unknown in 160 deaths.

Electric-wire-trap poaching is a major concern and many elephants have been killed this way in Dhenkanal, Angul, Cuttack and Keonjhar districts, aided by inadequate patrols and lack of monitoring. Many forest areas have naked overhead 11-KV and 33KV power lines that need to be insulated to keep poachers from plugging into them.

Fewer breeding male elephants All together, about 20 adult breeding male elephants die every year. Conservative estimates suggest there may be 150-175 adult males, including sub-adults, and 80-100 large breeding males older than 20-25 years. (Mating with immature males leads to unhealthy calves and higher mortality.)

One disturbing trend in this regard is capturing wild tuskers that attack villagers or houses and keeping them inside zoos. In January 2020, the Odisha forest department captured two tuskers from Jajpur and Angul districts.

One of them died due to injuries while in captivity while the other languished in Kapilash zoo. Mohanty said WSO has been demanding his release into the wild for the last six months, perhaps after radio-collaring him to track his movements.

However, the Odisha government is doing little to protect and conserve its elephants, as a result leaving the local elephant population to collapse. Mohanty and other experts say unless the government regularly monitors and fixes accountability – right from the chief minister and including the state forest ministry – elephants will continue to perish in large numbers. Mohanty said that in Keonjhar, more than 12 unnatural deaths of elephants have been reported in the last few years, but the incumbent district forest officer hasn’t faced any action.

However, the forest department has

fenced off hundreds of acres of dense forest habitat with barbed wire fences that remain in place for five to seven years at a time.

They prevent elephants from moving easily between Keonjhar, Angul, Dhenkanal, Sambalpur and Sundargarh districts, leading to conflicts with local villagers. Despite repeated requests from experts to remove these fences, they have all stayed up.

On February 17 this year, the state’s environment and forests minister Bikram Keshari Arukha stated in the assembly that 246 elephants had died in Odisha between 2016-2017 and 2018-2019 due to accidental electrocution, disease, accidents involving trains and road vehicles, and of natural and other causes. Arukha also said that according to the 2017 elephant census, Odisha had 1,976 elephants. The single largest group

among them – of 330 – was in the Similipal forest division; Dhenkanal had 169; Satakosia had 147; and Athagarh had 115. Of the 50 forest ranges in the state, 12 don’t have any elephants.

The minister also said the state has set up elephant conservation projects in Similipal National Park and in the Mahanadi and Sambalpur ranges. Officials are also taking steps to 14 elephant corridors and are digging new ponds in the corridors and planting saplings to feed the elephants, he added.

And to prevent accidental electrocution, the minister said his office is coordinating regular meetings with officials from the state energy department as well as with railway and road transport authorities.

(Source: science.thewire.in)

September 2020

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In the world of glaciology, the year 2007 would go down in history. It was the year a seemingly small error in a major international report heralded huge changes in our understanding of what was happening to the Himalayan glaciers.

J

ust one year after Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth sparked conversations about anthropogenic (humanmade) global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its 4th Assessment Report.

This state-of-the-science summary was the gold standard to inform the world about climate change. The report contained one small but serious error – that all glaciers in the Himalayas would vanish by the year 2035.

The scandal sparked a flurry of new research, including my own, and we can now see that some Himalayan glaciers will survive into the next century. The latest data tells us that if we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, then between one-third and onehalf of glacier ice will be lost by 2100. If not, and we carry on with business as usual, then

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two-thirds of Himalayan glaciers will vanish by the end of this century.

But how did such an error come to be presented as fact by a world-leading scientific organisation? This is a tale of repetitions and an apparently unintended typo lending credibility to an unfounded statement. The IPCC quoted a report from the World Wildlife Foundation, which had taken the Himalayan meltdown date from an interview in New Scientist. That interview quoted speculation by an Indian glaciologist, who apparently misquoted another scientist’s work predicting glaciers worldwide would shrink by 80% by 2350.

The IPCC did eventually apologise for their failure to identify this error. Although embarrassing, it did not undermine their core conclusions. The IPCC undertook to improve their peer-review process before their next report in 2013.

The Himalayas are sacred mountains.

Their name in Sanskrit means “abode of snow”. But glaciers are a political issue in central Asia. Glacier-fed rivers provide water to over a billion people for food production

and hydropower. India and Nepal in particular rely on glacier melt water to buffer seasonal droughts before the summer monsoon.

These countries are rapidly industrialising and generally oppose limiting their carbon emissions.

After the IPCC report, the Indian government acted quickly to suppress panic with a controversial discussion paper presenting selective evidence showing that glaciers in northern India and Pakistan were stable or even expanding. However, the Karakoram glaciers in question benefit from greater winter snowfall and cooler summers as a result of global heating. How persistent this Karakoram anomaly will be remains unknown.

Resolving a Himalayan error Glaciologists were left wondering what the fate of Himalayan glaciers would be.

Little research was being done and data was scarce. Problems with accessing remote, high-elevation glaciers in politically unstable regions deterred fieldwork. Civil war in Nepal, the Taliban in Pakistan and suspicion of foreign scientists in China and India made these mountains difficult places to work.

Field observations and surveys suggested that glaciers had not noticeably changed. Glaciologists soon realised that changes in ice volume were hidden by rock debris on the surfaces of many large glaciers. So measurements of changes in glacier area were misleading and concealed the scale of ice loss.

Then, in the early 2010s, rapid advances in satellite Earth observation technology and declassification of Cold War satellite photographs opened a window into these remote mountains.

The scale of glacier change across the Himalayas could be seen for the first time.

The new satellite data allowed glaciologists to measure changes in glacier volume over a 40-year period.

This revealed that nearly all Himalayan glaciers were shrinking at a similar rate.

The future of Himalayan glaciers New research shows that the rate at which glacier ice is lost from the Himalaya has doubled in the last 20 years and is similar to the rate of ice loss globally. Although extreme altitudes were thought to protect glaciers from climate change, we now know that high mountains are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

The proliferation of data allowed glaciologists to train computer models to project how glaciers will change in the future. These models tell us that between one-third and one-half of glacier ice in the Himalaya will be lost by 2100. If we don’t act to keep climate change within the ambitious Paris Agreement target of 1.5? then twothirds will be lost in the same period.

While the weakening of the summer monsoon and atmospheric pollution affect glacier life expectancy, rising global temperatures are causing Himalayan glaciers to shrink. These predictions are bad news for the one billion people who depend on glacierfed rivers for water in spring at the start of the agricultural season.

As glaciers decline, droughts are becoming more frequent before the summer rains, putting intense stress on populations in southern and central Asia. Governments, including India’s, have now recognised the scale of the problem. To avoid a humanitarian crisis, the world must keep global heating within a range that will limit glacier loss.

(Source: theconversation.com)

September 2020

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8 Best Places To Visit In Mizoram In 2020 Vi Dev

E

verything about Mizoram feels ' different'; from its natural bounties and colourful carnivals to attires and distinct food options. These, along with the distinct culture of Mizoram and its people, give it a sublime look and vibe. Mizoram is also a place of teeming beauty, which is manifested in its mystifying plains and hills spread ubiquitously. If Mizoram never crossed your mind until now; make sure you read the complete article to know why Mizoram deserves a visit this year. Have a look at these ten best places to visit in Mizoram in 2020.

1. Khwanglung Wildlife Sanctuary PC: Bdmshiva If your idea of a vacation is to explore and connect with nature, then

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September 2020

Khwanglung Wildlife Sanctuary should be your stop! Located about 130 Km away from Aizawl, the sanctuary is one of the most visited places in Mizoram due to the biodiversity, and wilderness it offers. This wildlife reserve spreads across a massive 35 Sq Km and is abode to several rare and exotic animals such as Royal Bengal Tiger, Gibbon, Sambar, Barking Deer, Sero and the Hoolock, to name a few! Besides the wildlife, the lush valleys and the stunning views of the Sanctuary are hard to miss!

2. Solomon Temple PC: Jhmar13 Nestled in the heart of Aizawl district, Solomon Temple is an important destination for the people of the Christian Faith. A religious sect called Kohhran Thianghlim built this famous tourist attraction. It was commissioned in 1997, and it took the organisation

two laborious decades to turn that vision into actuality. Built with pristine white marble and crafted by artists with exceptional skills, Solomon Temple is unquestionably one of the most prominent places to visit in Mizoram.

3. Mizoram State Museum PC: Irina Gelbukh Located about 5 Km away from the Solomon Temple, the Mizoram State Museum is a delight for anyone who has a liking in local anecdotes and history. The museum is among the best tourist places in Mizoram thanks to the state authorities of Mizoram for managing and sustaining the collections of artefacts and antiquities of the land of Mizoram and the Mizo people. Also, the museum displays the conventional lifestyles of the Mizo people through daily

objects like vessels, clothes, and tools. A trip to the museum is undoubtedly worth it, if one is interested in the history of the Mizo tribe.

4. Phawngpui Tlang (Blue Mountain) PC: Yathin S Krishnappa Located about 230 Km away from Aizawl and reaching 2330 m above sea level, Phawngpui Tlang or the Blue Mountain is the highest peak in Mizoram. This peaceful hilly state, where nature and its people come together, offers an amazing and unique experience! Packed by herds of mountain goats and flocks of birds, there is minimal or no human intrusion at the slopes of this beautiful mountain; leaving them fairly untouched and spotless.

Thus, Phawngpui Tlang is a popular place to visit in Mizoram among the trekking circuit.

5. Vantawng Falls PC: Lpachuau Falling

ed at a distance of 135 Km from Aizawl and is a popular attraction for nature enthusiasts and tourists from all across the world. Also, one can involve in activities like hiking and trekking to enjoy the surrounding hills and thick forests. Moreover, this hotspot can be viewed from a distance, and it is truly a mesmerising sight, even from afar.

6. Rih Dil PC: Ngcha The Rih Dil is a heart-shaped pool positioned at the border of

Myanmar and Mizoram. According to a popular Mizo folk tale, this lake is believed to be the place where spirits retire before they cross over to the afterlife. The lake is open to Mizo people and visitors with special permits. And for tourists to explore this natural haven, the special permission has to be obtained by the Deputy Commissioner's Office.

7. Tamdil PC: Coolcolney Tamdil (Tam

Lake) is a natural lake reputed for its unique fish varieties and prawns. Located just about 90 minutes drive from Aizawl, this stunning lake offers some of the best activities to partake in. Be its boat rides, Jungle safaris (located adjacent to the lake) or camping options, Tamdil offers anything and everything for people from all walks of life!

8. Dampa Wildlife Sanctuary PC: Coolcolney Dampa is a tiger reserve stationed in West Phaileng district and is located 130 Km from Aizawl. A permit to visit Dampa forest can be obtained directly by meeting the forest official staying in West Phaileng or can be taken from the forest department in Aizawl. And the best time to

visit this place is during the winter season, i.e., from October to January. This sanctuary is a haven to many exotic animals, like Tiger, Elephants and Langurs. On the whole, Dampa Wildlife Sanctuary is an excellent place for tourists and travellers to discover the best of life forms.

(Source: nativeplanet.com)

from a height of 750 feet, Vantawng Falls is the highest waterfall in Mizoram. It is situat-

September 2020

29 Environment & people

Sejal Mehta

W

hat do you do with your e-waste? The answers would possibly range across a wide spectrum – from ‘what is e-waste’, ‘office IT vendor’ and ‘collection boxes’ to ‘we just dump it in the dustbin’ or ‘hoard it in a cupboard.’ It would appear that disposing of e-waste effectively (or at all) is not a priority because, unlike our natural waste, it doesn’t really get in the way.

How much e-waste are we generating and why should we worry about it?

Simple answer: because we’re quickly reaching up to the brim with it.

According to a 2019 United Nations report, titled ‘A New Circular Vision For Electronics, Time for a Global Reboot’ consumers discard 44 million tonnes worth of electronics each year; only 20% is recycled sustainably.

The Global E-Waste Monitor 2020 shows that consumers discarded 53.6 million tonnes worth of electronics in

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2019 globally, up 20% in 5 years.

India generated 3.2 million tonnes of e-waste last year, ranking third after China (10.1 million tonnes) and the US (6.9 million tonnes). Following the current growth rate of e-waste, an ASSOCHAM-EY joint report, titled ‘Electronic Waste Management in India’ estimated India to generate 5 million tonnes by 2021. The study also identified computer equipment and mobile phones as the principal waste generators in India.

With COVID-19 keeping people indoors, the usage is only getting higher; and without proper intervention, it is likely to be over 100 million tonnes by 2050.

What happens if we don’t recycle?

Two things – from dumpsters, it either goes to landfills or travels down in unregulated markets.

Ashley Delaney is Founder at Group TenPlus, a Goa company that manages the collection of electronic waste.

“An ordinary circuit board from a mobile or laptop con-

tains roughly 16 different metals,” says Delaney. “Most informal sectors will probably be able to retrieve a couple of metals and landfill the rest. Hazardous chemicals like mercury, which are used to extract these metals, leach into the soil, which will be damaged forever. If you find discarded batteries, tube lights, CFL bulbs, chances are the soil around them will be barren. Simply put – composting sites have fungus growing around it, despite being a ‘waste space’. But look around a dumpster, e-waste will ensure that nothing natural will grow around it, not even grass.”

Once the quantities increase, the leaching of metal finds its way to everything around that space, even food. When e-waste travels to our oceans in large quantities, it contaminates water with gaseous or liquid toxins, which we can’t even see. A study led

by SRM University, Tamil Nadu, found that soil from informal electronic recycling sites that recover metals showed high levels of contamination across Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai.

Why should we recycle e-waste?

The point of extracting metals and plastic from e-waste is to use them towards making more electronics. This is not as easy as it seems. These metals are difficult to extract – the UN report puts the total recovery rates for cobalt at 30% (despite technology existing that could recycle 95%). It’s used for laptops, smartphones, and electric car batteries, and recycled metals are two to 10 times more energy-efficient than metals smelted from virgin ore. The way forward to ensuring a sustainable chain in manufacturing and recycling is to build effective reuse methods.

This is also vital because the key elements in most electronics – rare earth metals – aren’t exactly rare as their name suggests, but are definitely hard to obtain, at least locally. The latest forecasts show that ewaste’s global worth is around $62.5 billion annually, which is more than the GDP of most countries. It’s also worth three times the output of all the world’s silver mines.

Is my local kabadiwala (scrap dealer) a good option?

Short answer: no.

When you give your e-waste to an unauthorised waste-collector, you’re contributing to the chain of unregulated markets, which accounts for handling over 95% of e-waste

generated in India. These markets attempt to extract metals from devices to sell them onward, but possibly with fewer skills per metal and the necessary safety standards.

“There are thousands of informal dismantling and recycling units – Dharavi in Mumbai, Meerut, Moradabad, Seelampur in Delhi, and many more,” says Pranshu Singhal, Founder, Karo Sambhav. “These spaces engage in open-air burning of wires to extract copper, use cyanide-based acid to extract metals – at great harm to themselves and the environment around them.”

Once they extract copper from a product

who are still growing and developing.

Individual chemicals in e-waste such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, PCBs, PBDEs, and PAHs are known to have serious impacts on nearly every organ system.”

Dharavi is one of the top hubs in India for the informal recycling of e-waste. Studies have shown that even the water there is acidic and the fumes are causing health problems. As Delaney says, “Don’t go to a kabadiwala – you’re handing him a knife to either kill himself or someone else with it.”

–it finds its way back into the secondary market, whatever part of the world it might end up. The challenge primarily is the practices that are deployed.

A 2018 documentary Welcome to Sodom explores the almost dystopian, shocking world of the Agbogbloshie dump in Ghana, where life revolves around toxic waste, versus a hope of a healthier life. The site says, “Every year about 2,50,000 tons of sorted out computers, smartphones, air conditions tanks and other devices from a far away electrified and digitalised world end up here, shipped to Ghana illegally.”

Reports show that e-waste workers suffer from stress, headaches, shortness of breath, chest pain, weakness, and dizziness and even DNA damage. There is a body of research, the report cites, that shows “a significant risk of harm, especially to children

India is the only country in Southern Asia with e-waste legislation, with laws to manage e-waste in place since 2011, mandating that only authorised dismantlers and recyclers collect e-waste. There are now 312 authorised recyclers in the country.

The E-waste (Management) Rules, 2016 (effective from October 2016) mandated collection targets and transferred responsibilities to the producers – Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). This put the onus on the brands to ensure that waste was brought back in. These targets were relaxed in 2018.

Karo Sambhav’s Singhal understood the importance of early-stage success after the regulations were passed. The e-waste movement had begun finally in India and without quick effects, it would lose momentum.

Having worked in the sustainability space before – at Nokia and with Thomas Lindquist

What are India’s laws to manage e-waste?

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(who coined the EPR concept), Singhal launched Karo Sambhav.

“We work with waste collectors and aggregators and help them get formalised – ensure everyone has pan cards, bank accounts and give invoices, and ensure that waste is traceable,” he said. This was also the time of demonetisation, GST – policies that pushed unregulated extractors to align themselves to a collection centre. As far as businesses were concerned, data sets, transaction records allowed transparency and a trail for the trajectory of e-waste.

Why don’t we see more outreach about recycling our waste?

While our conversations around sewage and garbage segregation are targeted and goal-oriented, the quiet crisis literally taking up 70% of our landfills gets very little talk time, especially from the brands themselves.

‘The idea behind the waste management rules was not just to ensure waste is collected and recycled responsibly but also that manufacturers start to include sustainable methods,” says Priti Mahesh, Chief Programme Officer at Toxics Link.

“Right now, the manufacturing chain is scattered – parts for an item come from one country, the battery from another, the assembly happens in a third. So even collection and extraction are a bit ambiguous and so is the financial cost. This system is flawed. The deposit refund scheme (where there is some refund on the return of a product) is available, but not mandated. In a price-sensitive market, with no penalties attached, a brand is unlikely to make a product more expensive to factor this cost in when a competitor won’t,” she added.

In the current setting, she says, it requires extra effort, costs and infrastructure for not much in return, so most brands are not ready to take financial responsibility.

That leads to a dangerous loop. Consumers are met with enough advertising the world over that urges them to buy more, but how many brands are using ad space to remind you to be mindful of this global crisis?

According to Delaney, some brands avail of the deposit refund scheme, but don’t advertise it. “Say you return your car battery to the company and are delighted when they offer you Rs. 400 discount in exchange for a new one. What they’re not telling you is they’re refunding what is due to you; it is not a discount – but Indian jugaad.”

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The solution lies in creating a circular economy of electronics, says a report from the World Economic Forum. The products need to be designed so that they can be reused, durable, and safe for recycling. The producers should also have buy-back or return offers for old equipment and plans to incentivise the consumer financially. The report also advocates a system of ‘urban mining’ by strengthening the extended producer responsibility provision.

What can a consumer do? The 4 R’s Reuse: Use your gadgets for longer. The upgrade to a new electronic item should ideally happen for necessity, not style. If you’re okay to use second-hand electronics, do so.

Repair: Ensure repair policies exist. Ask for them.

Recycle: Talk to the brand: The best and most effective longer-term situation, which might

require some persistence on your part, is talking to the brand. The requests to some established brands for comments on this story were met with either silence or a refusal to comment. But if enough consumers ask for what practices are in place, it will become integrated in the way a brand communicates with us – through retail and advertising.

Even if you buy at a mall, a chain, or a small retail store, ask what is the return/ recycle policy. If you don’t understand the answers,

call the brand.

Most brands have collection details on their websites. Use them. Think beyond phones and laptops, be mindful of all electronics – batteries (for car and gadgets both), speakers, tubelights. It’s easy to throw these in the trash – but Don’t.

Research: “I’d add one more R here – research,” says Suchismita Pai, Head of Outreach at Swach, Pune. “Almost everything is biodegradable in its own time. What you need to look for is something that is biocompostable within a reasonable span of time. Check on the box of a new product for e-waste instructions. It’s always there, read it. Every manufacturer has a toll free number.

Use it.”

Registered collection organisations: If you’re using registered organisations in your city, ask them about their methods, recyclers, and where the waste is going. A simple google search will yield results in your city, you can start with the ones in this story (Group TenPlus, Karo Sambhav, Swach, Toxic Links) – and ask them for alternatives in your cities. Because, not every ISI marked product is authentic. A good brand will always have transparency.

But ultimately, brands will have to accept the onus of supporting customers through this. “Organisations like ours do collection drives, outreach campaigns, but ultimately our reach is limited,” says Singhal.

“India is a country of billions. The brands that sell you the product have the largest presence. E-waste will need to be integrated into how brands communicate constantly with us in the future. India generated 3 million tonnes already and it will only rise exponentially.”

Singhal accepts that while we have already come a long way, these are early stages. India is far from establishing strong structures and maturity of processes in the business structure and that the need for high investment in recycling infrastructure is paramount. In the meantime, consumers can give e-waste as much attention as they would to their daily garbage. A mind-set shift might be the start of a circular vision.

How an urban planner undertook green recovery in Telangana’s 72 ULBs Extensive mapping, designing of parks with detailed cost estimates and implementation frameworks were prepared as part of the project Shivali Jainer

T

he green cover in some districts of Telangana at the time of initiation of Telangana Urban Green Environment Project (TUGEP) was less than 10 per cent when Anubhav Jangra, an architect and urban planner, decided to go on board with designing parks across 72 urban local bodies (ULB).

Jangra was a part of Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment’s training ‘Tools and Approaches for Citywide Water Sanitation, 2019’, following which he worked as a planning consultant on project ‘Preparation of DPR on Urban Green Environment Project in 72 ULBs of Telangana State’ as part of Rs 338-crore

Telangana Municipal Development Project (TMDP).

As part of the project, extensive mapping and designing of parks with detailed cost estimates and implementation frameworks were prepared. Unencumbered land was identified in 72 ULBs including wastelands, public land and water bodies. The project design included establishment of parks, treebuffer zones and greening of roadsides, medians, intersections and rotaries.

About six million trees; 281 kilometres of roadside plantation; 687 parks spread across 305 acres; development of 91 junctions took place in 72 cities to increase the urban green cover in the state 33 per cent from 24 per cent.

The project is a response to climate change and issues of pollution and is expected to provide access to social and recreational spaces to citizens, increase municipal aesthetics and biodiversity including endemic flora and fauna.

The first step under TUGEP was, hence, to develop a detailed project report for the

same. As part of the project, Jangra was able to inform the design guidelines for various public parks and open spaces to include rainwater harvesting techniques to address the issue of urban flooding.

After attending CSE’s training, Anubhav reworked on the scope of the project and included rainwater harvesting structures to save millions of litres of water going down the drain, potentially flooding the neighbourhood.

The ULBs were sensitised via an additional chapter for way forward on water-sensitive urban design and planning techniques with measures such as bio-swales and retention basins.

TMDP officials led to a state-level parallel project on lake revitalisation in urban areas headed by urban forestry consultant.

He was also able to use the geographical information systems training in his work as part of mapping and analysis.

(Source: downtoearth.org.in)

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