MillenniumPost
Opinion

Carbon sink on fire

The Amazon episode must urge India to reflect on its own track record and climate commitments

Smoke rises from the Amazon fire engulfing Sao Paulo city even as forest fires rage across the Indian countryside. Crops of forest dwellers of Araku valley in Andhra Pradesh are being damaged and the output of natural honey in the same area dropped drastically. These are all telling signs of collateral consequences of the struggle for sustenance, as well as development and economic prosperity.

While Amazon fires have suddenly caught the attention of the entire world, quietly in our own backyard, illegal and indiscreet mining by politicians has been polluting Araku forests, causing immense harm to crops and health of tribal people. Experts say that radiation from mobile towers disorients honey-bees; they forget the location of their queen-bee and hive. Annual production of natural honey has fallen from 600 tonnes to 150 tonnes. No doubt, deforestation, mining, and development of roads and communication are serious problems for the environment in India. But, the devastation of Amazon tropical forests is an international calamity.

The impregnable canopy of the largest rainforest of the world in Amazon is on fire; over 70,000 incidents so far this year, its smoke choking even cities like Sao Paulo a thousand kilometres away from Brasilia. There is an outcry across the world since this carbon sink absorbs a good part of the CO2 spewed by humanity and releases oxygen. Precious animal and plant species are getting extinguished. Yet, considering rainforest protection as an impediment to development, the conservative President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who came to power in January this year, brazenly advocates deforestation for the sustenance and prosperity of his people.

Not surprisingly, at this juncture of international criticism, this 'Trump of the Tropics', gets an endorsement from Donald Trump. Contrary to scientific cautions of global warming, for them, climate change is a natural phenomenon without any need for human intervention. Thus, Bolsonaro not only rebuked the alarm raised by his own environmental agency and sacked its Director but has also diminished its staff and funding, diluted the laws against environmental crimes like illegal logging and mining and got the highly-trained-and-armed forest cops diverted for desk jobs. As a result, there is indiscriminate stripping of the rainforest for agriculture, animal ranching, and mining, apparently serving business interests. Obviously, forest fires have only multiplied. Similarly, fires have increased in neighbouring Bolivia too due to their indulgence in increased burning of forests for the cultivation of crops used for biofuel production. The situation has been aggravated in the dry season. However, human efforts can only put out smaller blazes; it requires heavy rains to dampen the infernos. Since isolated showers of September can only bring small relief, the devastation will continue.

Already Amazon forest has lost 20 per cent of its size in recent years to cater to the Trans-Amazonian Highway. Each year, thousands of square miles of it are cut down for cattle grazing and crop production, not only adding to pollution through burning and decaying vegetation but also disrupting the water cycle by allowing water to run off rather than being trapped in soil and vegetation. As a consequence, there is an increased vulnerability to drought in the area and further loss of trees. All this means that there is a heightened release of global warming pollution, leading to a vicious cycle – more fires, more carbon dioxide and more warming. The net result is that the 'Lungs of the world' that supplies 20 per cent of earth's oxygen, will end up with a short supply.

India too has faced several critical moments of such nature in the recent past with 13 out of the 15 warmest years and the annual mean temperature rising by 1.2 degrees Celsius. The forest fires were equally harsh. Over 375,000 hectares were burnt in Uttarakhand in 1995, followed by the burning of 80,000 hectares in the Ganga-Yamuna watershed area in 1999. Then, it was 19,000 hectares in Himachal Pradesh in 2010 and two fires in Maharashtra in 2008 and 2010 that damaged some 10,000 hectares. While Uttarakhand continues to face the vagary of fire – 3500 hectares of forests were gutted in the first half of 2018, the vulnerable North East is also witnessing a steady increase in such incidents. In six years till 2017, forest fires increased by 160 per cent in our country.

Like elsewhere, over 90 per cent of such fires in India too are caused by humans, deliberately or due to negligence. Jhum cultivation in the North East, that involves clearing patches of land of trees and setting them on fire to add to nutrition of soil is often responsible for spreading the fire to adjacent forests. In Maharashtra, the burning of leaves in the process of collection of fallen mahua flowers for liquor-making and burning of tree stubs to manure cleared fields also make the forests vulnerable to fires. Likewise, pine needles with their inflammable resins in the Himalayan belt and eucalyptus with oil content elsewhere make the forests susceptible to fires. Reasons behind such incidents are varied. And the scientific community across the world has been red-flagging these environmental issues for long.

The scientific community has been maintaining that global temperatures are heading towards a rise of over 5 degree Celsius, while the threshold should have been 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels. To get a clear perspective, it is stated that the temperature difference between today's world and the last ice age is about 5 degrees centigrade.

The Paris Agreement is a culmination of all the international efforts to heed to these warnings. As per the Agreement, member countries will have to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius and greenhouse emissions have to be reduced by 45 per cent as soon as possible, apart from reaching other more ambitious goals in course of time. The focus should be on transition to renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and management of forests and oceans, etc. But, countries need to transform their economies to be in line with sustainable development goals on their own, without any enforcement.

Some countries have taken the issues seriously. In France, 90 per cent of its electricity comes from nuclear, hydro and wind sources and they are going all out to finish with petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. Norway and the Netherlands will do away with such transports by 2025 and 2030 respectively. The Netherlands even wants to cut down its greenhouse gas emissions level by 95 per cent – far exceeding the Paris Agreement goal, by 2050 itself. But, these are only a few countries.

The others are caught up in the conundrum of development and protection of the environment. Poor and developing countries feel that those developed countries that are sermonising about common good have already caused enough harm to the environment. The demand is thus for the developed nations to provide them with financial help for investing in clean technology. The pledged contribution of $100 billion to the Green Climate Fund every year should come from them. But, the USA which uses a substantial quantity of oil from the Gulf has pulled out of the Paris Agreement.

Although India stands firmly on the issue of climate change, we are quite behind in achieving sustainable development goals. We still don't have the state action plans ready and even our infrastructure is not strong enough. We are still focussing on coal energy even as 300 million citizens are yet to get a steady supply of electricity. Even crop burning has not been stopped. Green technology and alternative sources of energy are still a distant dream. Further, our poor performance in Global Environment Protection Index – 177 out of 180 countries – only portrays non-seriousness and apathy of our government and their enforcement agencies.

It is for this very reason that in Vizag, untreated sewage is being discharged into the sea or water bodies with the alibis of lack of adequate drainage lines or non-optimal functioning of the treatment plants. At the same time, industrial effluents are callously sent to water tanks. Uranium mining in Jaduguda, pollutants dumped by pharma and chemical units in Srikakulam and Vizag areas are serious health issues. APPCB either sits over the complaints or does not bother when the companies do not comply with their notices even after two years, although they have all the powers to revoke their licences. Similarly, the issue of pollution in the operations of Visakhapatnam Port is lingering on for decades without any action in sight. For such governments, forest fires are only lesser issues.

Even the Centre is equally culpable. When forest fires increased by 160 per cent, they reduced the spending to prevent them which was Rs 43.85 crore in 2015 reduced down to Rs 34.56 crore in 2017. Nothing noteworthy has been done except creating a satellite-linked tracking system to have a real-time assessment of large fires for alerting the states. But, the techniques of forest staff continue to be rudimentary, as pointed out by the Parliamentary Standing Committee in February 2019.

India is a long way from even reaching reasonable levels of compliance of Paris Agreement goals. Yet, as is his tendency for creating illusions, like in matters of black money, employment, economy and corruption, PM Modi has stated at UNESCO headquarters that the target set by the Paris Agreement for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be reached in the next year-and-a-half itself. It appears to be grossly 'unrealistic' when the task on hand is mountainous.

It requires hard thinking and real commitment to change over to renewable energy and taking stern action against illegal deforestation, logging and mining gangs. Sustenance through jhum, mahua flowers, etc., cannot be dispensed with but fires need to be prevented. We cannot afford to follow the path of Brazil for development, since for us, 'Nature is beauty, beauty is happiness and happiness is honey of life'.

(Dr. N Dilip Kumar, IPS (retd) is a former Member of Public Grievances Commission, Delhi. The views expressed are strictly personal)

Next Story
Share it