Over-extraction, loss of natural recharge, and pollution are threatening India’s groundwater resource. Any hope for mitigating the looming groundwater crisis lies in understanding the irony of an invaluable yet invisible resource.
Jay Mazoomdaar brings to us the various facets of this irony and the impact it can have on the lives of the people.
TerraGreen (TERI), March, 2010
Before delving deep into the groundwater scenario in India, let us look at the following figures.
This is what India’s Ministry of Water Resources says:
• Groundwater represents one of the most important water sources in India and accounts for over 400 cu km of the annual utilizable resource in the country.
• The total annual replenishable groundwater resource of the country is 433 BCM (billion cubic metre).
• Keeping 34 BCM for natural discharge, the net annual groundwater availability for the entire country is 399 BCM.
• The annual groundwater draft is 231 BCM, out of which 213 BCM is for irrigation use and 18 BCM is for domestic and industrial use.
This is what the experts have to say:
• Groundwater usage in north India is the highest in the world.
• Across India, the mean rate of drop in the water table has been one metre in every three years.
• From August 2002 to October 2008, groundwater depletion in Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi was equivalent to a net loss of 109 cu km of water—double the capacity of India’s largest surface water reservoir.
• These states are losing at least 30% more of their groundwater resources than previously estimated by the government.
And this is what is predicted:
• By 2020, severe groundwater shortage will hit several Indian states, especially Delhi and Mumbai.
• By 2025, many parts of India could run out of groundwater! Groundwater has been the most important and the most reliable fresh water resource in India.
About 80% of the country’s rural water supply for domestic uses is met by groundwater. At the same time, farmers’ dependence on it has grown phenomenally over the last century, as more than half of India’s irrigated land is fed by groundwater.
Paradoxically, groundwater is also an invisible resource. It is difficult to accurately determine how much groundwater is left and in what condition. And its invisibility leads to this very reliable resource being taken for granted. Worse, since groundwater is a key resource for poverty alleviation and economic development, the obvious results are over-exploitation and contamination.
The crisis
Increasingly, across the world, the dependence on groundwater has risen, leading to indiscriminate withdrawal. Simultaneously, the depleting stock is being contaminated with agricultural chemicals, industrial discharge, and urban waste…often irreversibly. In most cases, the plunder is at best overlooked by the government and at worst, facilitated with subsidized power and other concessions. With 60% of the global population and just 36% of the Earth’s available freshwater share, Asia faces the grimmest crisis.
In the Azraq basin in Jordan, for example, reckless groundwater withdrawal has lowered the water table by up to 16 m between 1987 and 2005. By 1993, springs and pools in the Azraq Oasis had dried up completely. In the north-eastern plains of China, over 60 000 sq km receives spare rainfall. But this area has become the breadbasket of the country by extracting huge quantities of groundwater for irrigation. It is estimated that as much as 70% of the agricultural water needs are met by groundwater in this region. The water tables are falling rapidly, threatening agricultural productivity and food security.
Then, there is the problem of contamination. Already, 1.7 billion people lack access to safe water in the developing countries. More than 3 million people die from water-borne diseases each year in developing countries, the majority of whom are children under the age of five.
The most important water contaminants created by human activities are microbial pathogens, nutrients, pesticides, oxygen-consuming substances, heavy metals, and persistent organic matter. Water contaminated by microbes remains the greatest single cause of human illness and death on a global scale. These pollutants enter water systems through agricultural run-off; domestic and industrial effluents and inadequately treated wastewater discharge; erosion; mine and landfill leachate; litter disposal; and so on. Every aspect of our lifestyle and economy endangers the water sources on which we depend.
Approximately 2 million tonnes of human waste are released annually into rivers and streams around the globe, and an estimated 2.6 billion people still do not have improved sanitation facilities. In 8 out of 13 regions under UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), less than 50% of the wastewater discharged into freshwater and coastal areas is treated.
In the other five regions, the proportion of treated wastewater falls below 20%. Projected increase in the use of fertilizer for food production and wastewater effluents over the next three decades suggests that there will be a 10%–20% rise in river nitrogen flows globally, continuing the trend of a spurt of 29% between 1970 and 1995 due to poor agricultural practices.
Food, at the cost of water
Agriculture and animal husbandry are water-intensive processes. To produce food worth one calorie of energy, one litre of water is needed. So, to satisfy the need of 3000 calories per person for a population of 6.5 billion on the Earth, our daily requirement of water is equivalent to a water body that is 1 m deep, 1 km wide, and 7 million km long—long enough to encircle the Earth 180 times!
The production of just 1 kg of rice and 1 kg of chicken require 1800 and 6000 litre of water, respectively! With growing demand for more and better food, triggered by a rapidly rising population and urbanization, all possible ways of increasing the supply are explored. And one such way is the exploitation of groundwater.
Across the world, crop yields in the areas that are irrigated with groundwater are often substantially higher than those irrigated by surface sources. India is no exception. Here, yields in groundwater-irrigated areas tend to be 1.2–3 times higher. As much as 84% of India’s agricultural output is groundwater influenced. In the five decades since independence, the net irrigated area in India went up from 20 to 66 million hectares—a jump of 330%. In the same period, groundwater-irrigated areas increased from 6 to 34.5 million hectare—a jump of 575%.
During 1970–94, groundwater-irrigated lands in India have increased by 105%, while surface water irrigated land rose by only 28%. It is estimated that the cumulative investment in groundwater structures in India is more than Rs 55 000 crore. And most of this investment is by individual farmers who have, since the early decades of independence, tapped into the country’s groundwater resources (with state support where initiative was missing) to get the benefit of new agricultural technologies.
Starting from the mid- 1960s, the introduction of new techniques and high-yielding crop varieties in the course of the Green Revolution saw greater dependence on groundwater irrigation. Farmers found that switching to a more reliable and controllable form of irrigation yielded bigger and better harvests, leading to overall prosperity.
The spin-off of these success stories was a chain reaction—more and more farmers were inspired to switch to groundwater to irrigate. Without adequate surface irrigation capacity, the growth of groundwater irrigation infrastructure as a private ‘resource’ was sudden and spectacular. More than just multiplying farmers’ incomes, the creation of these resources meant that more and more labourers were finding work in villages, lifting themselves out of poverty while being a part of the wealth generation process. Soon enough, extending sops to the farmers in terms of electricity to pump water became one of the trump cards of political parties and a staple of election manifestos.
The result was that, to this day, groundwater irrigation is unregulated and overexploited, and given the socio-economic factors in play, it is unviable for the government of the day to effectively regulate the usage. Several blocks of Punjab and Haryana are close to hitting rock bottom in terms of exploitation of groundwater, while in many districts across India, CGWB (Central Ground Water Board) studies put the decline in water levels at more than 4 m a year. But why not explore surface water?
The top–bottom link
As far as surface water is concerned, India gets about 4000 BCM of precipitation a year, including snow. But close to half of this quantity (1869 BCM) is the natural runoff in rivers. Accounting for evaporation, replenishable groundwater resources are about 433 BCM. But together with utilizable surface water (690 BCM), the per capita availability of water as computed in 1997 was 1869 cu m, well above the 1000 cu m yardstick denoting ‘water starvation’. The figure declined to 1820 cu m in 2001. And the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in a 2008 report projected the per capita availability in 2050 at 1140 cu m a year, just above the water-starved mark. Another study cited a closer deadline for water stress—the year 2025!
What is worse is that even these figures do not show the real picture and could be misleading, as the water availability is hardly uniform. Varying rainfall and population density mean that while the Brahmaputra–Barak Basin might have a per capita availability of over 14 000 cu m of water a year, those living in the Sabarmati Basin make do with just about 300 cu m. In fact, researchers have found that many other basins such as Mahi, Tapi, and Pennar are already water-stressed.
Rich in surface water resources, India should not have groundwater depletion problems. But almost 85% of India’s surface water goes into the sea. India receives an average 600 mm of rain annually (which translates into 4 trillion cu m), but only about 15% of this is used for irrigation. The rest reaches the sea via the massive river systems. If India was to increase surface water use from the present 15% to 25%, most of the groundwater depletion issues would disappear.
The current scenario
Unfortunately, over the past five decades, indiscriminate exploitation of groundwater resources and simultaneous neglect of surface water systems – be it canals, bunds, or reservoirs – has led to dipping water tables and in some places, irreversible degradation of the source due to poor or no recharge, contamination, and more recently, saline ingress. While the early 1960s spurred the boom in sinking of tubewells – supported by government aid and subsidies in terms of power – over the consequent decades, increasing population pressure and rapid urbanization meant total dependence on groundwater for drinking water and domestic use, especially in the spiralling cities that power development.
As of March 2004, nearly 15% (839) of the 5723 blocks assessed by the CGWB and the states across the country were categorized as ‘overexploited’, meaning that extraction in excess of net annual recharge. Another 226 were ‘critical’, meaning that recharge just about managed to cover the exploitation. Some 30 blocks have already scraped the barrel, now left with only saline groundwater. With an average annual depletion of groundwater level of 10 cm, the north Indian plane – across Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and west Uttar Pradesh – is on the brink of a water disaster.
A study in 2009 by Virendra Mani Tiwari from Hyderabad’s National Geophysical Research Institute, along with scientists of the University of Colorado, United States, said that the amount of groundwater pumped out across northern India is the highest in the world! Citing satellite data, the study said that the 54 trillion litres pumped out in the region – a 2000 km sweep from West Pakistan to Bangladesh along North India – contributes to a 5% rise in sea levels. Major cities in India like New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai face acute water shortage.
Urbanization has resulted in massive pressure on water supplies. The last report by the CGWB projected Delhi’s demand for groundwater for 2025 at 0.57 BCM (more than double of what it is now), with no water available for irrigation! The state of development of groundwater resources in the national capital is 170% in the negative. Even as of now, only 0.28 BCM of groundwater is available in a year. By 2020, severe shortage will hit Delhi, as well as Mumbai.
Compounding factors
The problems of coastal erosion and salinity ingress in groundwater is being felt more severely in the recent years due to the destruction of protective mangrove cover and reduced sediment discharge by rivers. Other human activities like rampant beach mining also add to the problem. As recently as the Asian tsunami of 2004, mangroves acted as a buffer in a number of stretches. Without the effective bio-fencing of mangrove cover or dune vegetation, coastlines are increasingly getting exposed to erosion.
A free-flowing river gathers sediments as it meanders inland and deposits the load when it reaches the sea. This sediment load compensates for much of the coastal erosion. But when a dam is built on a river to break its flow, the river’s sediment load settles in the dam’s reservoir. Globally, more than 50 000 large dams are in operation today. At least 100 billion tonnes of sediment has been retained in these reservoirs in the past 50 years, causing significant reduction in the flux of sediment to the coasts. From Egypt (Nile River delta) to Morocco (Moulouya wetlands) to Louisiana (Mississippi River delta), big dams exacerbate coastal erosion across the world.
Too many dams on rivers also mean that too little water reaches the deltas. This, in effect, results in limited percolation to coastal aquifers. On the other hand, restricted river fl ow forces coastal people to extract more and more groundwater, already under severe pressure due to a spurt in population along the coasts. It is this low-recharge-high-extraction scenario that makes coastal aquifers vulnerable to seawater ingress. Contamination, however, is an even bigger threat to the availability of quality groundwater.
In 2003, arsenic groundwater contamination was reported in Bihar. More recently, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand also followed suit. Combining the fi rst report of groundwater arsenic contamination in 1976 from Chandigarh and a few villages of Punjab (Patiala) in northern India of upper Ganga plain with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, and that of Bangladesh, it appears that a good portion of the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra plain – an area 569 749 sq km and a population over 500 million – may be at risk from groundwater arsenic contamination.
Also, present records show that 17 states in India are endemic for fluorosis. An estimated 62 million people in India, including 14 million children, suffer from dental, skeletal, and non-skeletal fluorosis.
The magnitude
‘If we compare the total amount of available water on the Earth to a water bottle containing 18 litres of water, the available freshwater is only three teaspoons. Add to this the groundwater stock which is just 1% of the Earth’s total water. Unfortunately, we are taking little care of this priceless reserve. Groundwater arsenic and fluoride contamination in developing countries could be more serious than any human tragedy known to mankind,’ warns Dr Dipankar Chakraborti, Director, School of Environmental Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
When we trace the growth of our so-called ecological footprint, water emerges as the biggest victim. While the world’s population increased by 300% in the 20th century, the use of water increased by 700%! Over a longer period of 250 years since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide formulations in the atmosphere have gone up by approximately 36%, methane by 150%, and nitrous oxide by 16%.
Five years back, eminent water scientist duo Michel Meybeck and Charles Vörösmarty warned that ‘the global impacts of human interventions in the water cycle, including land cover change, urbanization, industrialization, and water resources development, are likely to surpass those of recent or anticipated climate change, at least over decades.’
In the same year, the UN (United Nations) declared 2005–15 as the International Decade for Action (Water for Life) ‘to enhance international cooperation in addressing the exploitation and degradation of water resources.’ But with half the decade gone, there is hardly any effective move towards inter-governmental agreements to protect trans-boundary freshwater systems.
The IPCC report does offer projections of how global warming will impact groundwater and rainfall patterns, but the latest UN World Water Development Report (2009) notes that ‘these impacts are likely to be small (and possibly negligible) compared with the stresses placed on groundwater systems by current socio-economic drivers’. Yet, inexplicably, if media reports are to be believed, about a month before the COP15 (Fifteenth Conference of Parties) in December 2009, the backroom boys in Barcelona decided not to have any mention of water issues in the negotiating text.
But even beyond the issues of food and health security involving billions worldwide, groundwater performs an array of ecological services which are often intangible. Across the world, the dry season flow in many rivers depends largely on catchment baseflow derived from groundwater discharge. A healthy groundwater level also ensures water availability in wetlands, one of the most biologically productive and diverse inland ecosystems. Groundwater, particularly during dry seasons, is a prime source for instream flows that is crucial for the maintenance of fisheries and aquatic ecosystems.
Ironically, the widely understood benefits of this invisible resource are those that follow its extraction – its ability to maximize agricultural output and therefore, material well-being of user communities. Their efforts, accordingly, are towards the maximum utilization of the resource rather than its conservation and prevention of source pollution. The economic dividends of exploiting the aquifer, in the public perception and in the short term, far override its environmental benefits as a drought buffer and a reserve.
But while the individual may be tempted by the short-term incentives, governments and policymakers cannot afford to lose their long-term focus if the world is to avoid water wars in the future. Water extraction is predicted to increase by 50% by 2025 in developing countries and by 18% in developed countries (World Water Assessment Programme 2006). Since nearly all industrial and manufacturing activities require adequate water supplies, this situation is likely to impede socioeconomic development and increase pressures on freshwater ecosystems.
At the global scale, the integrity of aquatic ecosystems – the state of their physical elements, their biodiversity, and their processes – continues to decline, reducing their capacity to provide clean freshwater, food, and other key services.
The way forward
It may not be too late yet. But reducing stress on groundwater systems requires reducing land-based pollution, rehabilitating degraded habitats, and conserving water resources. Similarly, replenishing water tables may require more than artificial recharging.
Once polluted, it becomes very difficult to purify groundwater aquifers. Pollutants become attached to the aquifer’s sand, soil, and rocks, and serve as a continuous source of contamination. Research has shown that overdraft can lead to aquifer compaction (reduction of pore spaces), stopping recharge. Even if recharge is theoretically feasible and sufficient water is available, the low flow rates which are characteristic of many fine grained aquifers can make the process so slow that little can be done on a human time scale.
In order to seek solutions, understanding the groundwater dynamics is also very vital. In Rajasthan, as Marcus Moench, Director of Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, pointed out that local communities often feel that groundwater overdraft problems get solved whenever rainfall is above normal. In reality, the water pumped out would have been underground for 100 to 20 000 years. And the recharge dynamics largely depend on the permeability of soils, since fl ow patterns do not depend much on the short-term fluctuations in rainfall. Besides, predominantly, natural aquifers are spread over vast regions, meaning localized events and efforts are unlikely to yield significant results.
Compartmentalized government schemes and incentives pertaining to blocks and villages, therefore, will most likely fail to reflect the recharge dynamics, not to mention groundwater conditions and utilization patterns. On the other hand, major quality problems can also depend on localized conditions. For example, the amount of arsenic found in water from a particular well may depend on the amount of organic matter available where the well was drilled. A well that runs alongside a tree trunk, buried deep underground, may have relatively more arsenic than a well drilled only a short distance away.
At another level, many usages and environmental values of groundwater depend on the depth of water and not on the volume available. In the case of the Ganga basin, for example, decline in water level would reduce base flows in streams long before the aquifer would face any threat of depletion. In certain stretches, the Ganga basin contains over 20 000 feet of saturated sediment. But dewatering of only the top few feet would have tremendous impact.
Given the complex factors at work, it would be simplistic to expect one piece of legislation to regulate or control the overexploitation of groundwater across the country, since the distribution of the resource and the demand are varied. A state like Arunachal Pradesh, for instance, has developed barely 0.04% of its groundwater resource, while at the other end, Gujarat has tapped into 76%. A composite solution, therefore, should focus on a clutch of measures tailored to every state’s peculiar conditions.
While in agriculture-intensive states, a move to regulate government subsidy for electricity to farmers could bear results, in others, development of surface irrigation networks would take the pressure off groundwater as the predominant source of irrigation. Most importantly, however, a shift in mindset is essential — groundwater needs to be looked upon as a community resource, not an individual asset. Management of groundwater resources at the level of villages and communities is likely to lead to better strategies for utilization and recharge.
In states like Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan, however, efforts need to be fasttracked to prevent further deterioration; it is too premature to even contemplate a turnaround for the over-exploited or dark blocks. For a start, political parties must stop patronizing indiscriminate exploitation of groundwater as a means to drum up vote banks.
Eventually, policymakers and governments will have to tackle the issue of equitability. From the climate change debate to the dynamics of carbon points, the objective is to make the biggest damager pay the most. In regulating the supply of groundwater and restricting approvals for exploitation, the poor, credit-dependent farmer who is seeking a late entry will be affected much more than the rich farmer who has thrived for decades on the very basis of such oversight.
On the other hand, continuation of status quo will mean higher costs of extraction as water tables fall in subsequent years, hitting the poor further. In case of water scarcity, the first to be affected economically are those who cannot afford deeper wells. The future course of action must safeguard against further marginalization of the poor. While access to groundwater needs is to be made equitable, so must be the responsibility for the resource. Sustainable management involves enrolling more and more user communities as stakeholders in the process, rather than just the owners.
To begin with, the state needs to step in as a participant in a sector it has so far left to individual whim and clout. Slashing subsidies and ensuring that the rich farmer pays for the groundwater he uses to irrigate his fields and that the urbanite picks up the bill for his wastage would pave the way for better management and distribution of the resources at hand, besides offering a genuine chance for replenishment.
At the same time, the demand for groundwater needs to be rationalized. Provisions for harvesting rainwater and artificial recharge must be made mandatory in future constructions. As a policy, the government needs to encourage micro-irrigation technologies that make much better use of water than flood irrigation; develop better surface irrigation capacity to reduce the stress on groundwater; encourage community participation in groundwater management to encourage sustainable cropping patterns; bolster supply augmentation strategies for more efficient recharge; and overall, promote conjunctive use of water.
Groundwater is a great driver of the economy and a great tool for poverty alleviation, and as a country we have drawn liberally on this vital yet invisible resource. It is time that we shift our mindset from resource development to resource management. Otherwise, it is our future that would dry up along with our groundwater resources.
(Acknowledgment: CGWB, SOES-JU, UNWATER 2007, WWAP 2006, IPCC, UNEP-GIWA, WHO, UNICEF, DFID, IWMI-TATA, M Moench, H Sud, A Narayanamoorthy, N K Garg and Q Hassan)
The author is an independent journalist
Conning Conservation
Tigers are being killed well within the Ranthambhore reserve
DNA (Jaipur), 13 March, 2010
Yet again, Ranthambhore is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Two sub-adult tigers were found dead last Sunday and the forest authorities accepted that the big cats died due to poisoning. This was the latest in a series of mishaps that have cost Ranthambhore at least seven tigers – adults, sub-adults and cubs – in the last three years.
Last Sunday, as the news spread, spin doctors within and outside the forest department quickly swung into action. First, they told the media that Ranthambhore’s tiger population had reached the saturation mark and that the surplus tigers would always be at risk when they moved out. They also claimed that the only way to avoid such tragedies would be to shift these tigers to Sariska and blamed the Centre for putting the tiger translocation process on hold. Next, they pointed fingers at a few local hoteliers who did not want tigers to be moved to Sariska as fewer tigers in Ranthmbhore would have hurt their business interests.
To be fair, a lot has changed for the good in Ranthambhore over the past five years. The forest department had its plate full in 2005 when the Central Bureau of Investigation confirmed the local extinction of tigers in Sariska. A few months later, poachers arrested by Rajasthan police admitted to killing more than 20 tigers in Ranthambhore. In sheer embarrassment, the state government swiftly transferred Ranthambhore’s two top forest officials.
The tiger population has bounced back in Ranthambhore since 2005 when the reserve recorded just 26 tigers. Today, the number stands above 40. But Ranthambhore tiger reserve is spread over 1300 sq km – too large an area to become crowded with 40 tigers. Corbett National Park, for example, has more than 150 tigers in as much area. So how did the state forest bosses claim that Ranthambhore was over-populated? Obviously, by Ranthambhore, they meant Ranthambhore national park which is just a small part of the Ranthambhore tiger reserve.
Most of Ranthambhore’s tigers are inside the prey-rich, well-protected 300 sq km national park area. The rest of the tiger reserve – about 1000 sq km of Sawai Man Singh sanctuary, Kela Devi sanctuary and reserve forests – is not protected at all and, therefore, has no natural prey left. Tigers have little option here but to feed on cattle and, in turn, invite retribution.
When the forest authorities say that tigers are moving out of Ranthambhore to die, tigers are only moving from one part of the reserve to another. The latest poisoning deaths were reported from Taldakhet, a small village in Keladevi sanctuary, hardly a kilometre from the national park boundary, very much inside the tiger reserve. It is indeed shocking how a 1000 sq km tiger forest – about three-fourth of Ranthambhore tiger reserve -- has been surrendered to grazing and encroachment and accepted by the forest authorities as death zones.
About 300 sq km of the national park area may get crowded with 40 tigers but the remaining 1000 sq km of the tiger reserve should ideally be able to house thrice that number. After the Sariska lesson, authorities should have tried to restore the entire reserve as prime tiger habitat. Next, they should have gone ahead to reclaim the corridors to Kuno in Madhya Pradesh to Ramgarh Bisdhari sanctuary near Bundi for natural dispersal of tigers. Unfortunately, they have just given up on these areas and are now seeking to save tigers by airlifting them to Sariska.
And therein lies another example of conservation myopia. The tiger translocation programme has been put on hold in Rajasthan after three siblings were arbitrarily picked up from Ranthambhore to repopulate Sariska. Recently, the Centre ordered DNA tests to ascertain the breeding compatibility of Ranthambhore tigers before translocating them.
This embargo has further irked the state forest bosses who were already at loggerheads with the Centre in 2008 when National Tiger Conservation Authority made it mandatory to pick up only floating sub-adults for translocation and prohibited shifting the resident population. Tigers seek out individual territories by the time they are three and a settled tiger, if moved, only tries to return. Many of you may recall the Pench tiger that started "homing" soon after being shifted to Panna. A floater, on the other hand, is typically a young tiger in transit looking for territory and hence, is more likely to adjust to a new location.
The catch is that identifying and tracking a floater takes much longer than arbitrarily picking up a resident tiger. On top of that, the order for DNA tests has only made state forest bosses more impatient. Good science is a must for the success of the world’s first wild tiger repopulation drive in Sariska. But good science is often laborious and time-consuming. So many in Jaipur seem keen to exploit Ranthambhore’s fatalities to fast track airlifting of tigers to Sariska. They have even offered an imaginative twist to this Centre-state tussle by involving “a section of Ranthambhore’s hoteliers”.
Indeed, the Ranthambhore tourism lobby may have the clout to engage conservationists who can influence the policies of the Union government but the hoteliers have little reason for trying to plot such an ambitious conspiracy. Even if the Centre decides not to wait for the DNA test results and allows the state to resume shifting tigers to Sariska, the 2008 directives necessitate that only floaters be picked up. Ranthambhore’s tourism zone is inside the national park area occupied by resident tigers while floaters typically move in peripheral forests. How can removal of tigers from non-tourism areas affect the chances of tiger sighting and tourism in Ranthambhore?
It is time to get real. The forest authorities need to focus on hard ground management instead of taking short cuts. For starters, they could set a deadline for reclaiming the entire Ranthambhore reserve area for the tiger. If protected, Ranthambhore’s 1000 sq km death zone will make for a bigger tiger habitat than all of Sariska (681 sq km). Guess what, tigers do not need airlifting if they can walk free, and safe.
Author is an independent journalist and filmmaker
DNA (Jaipur), 13 March, 2010
Yet again, Ranthambhore is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Two sub-adult tigers were found dead last Sunday and the forest authorities accepted that the big cats died due to poisoning. This was the latest in a series of mishaps that have cost Ranthambhore at least seven tigers – adults, sub-adults and cubs – in the last three years.
Last Sunday, as the news spread, spin doctors within and outside the forest department quickly swung into action. First, they told the media that Ranthambhore’s tiger population had reached the saturation mark and that the surplus tigers would always be at risk when they moved out. They also claimed that the only way to avoid such tragedies would be to shift these tigers to Sariska and blamed the Centre for putting the tiger translocation process on hold. Next, they pointed fingers at a few local hoteliers who did not want tigers to be moved to Sariska as fewer tigers in Ranthmbhore would have hurt their business interests.
To be fair, a lot has changed for the good in Ranthambhore over the past five years. The forest department had its plate full in 2005 when the Central Bureau of Investigation confirmed the local extinction of tigers in Sariska. A few months later, poachers arrested by Rajasthan police admitted to killing more than 20 tigers in Ranthambhore. In sheer embarrassment, the state government swiftly transferred Ranthambhore’s two top forest officials.
The tiger population has bounced back in Ranthambhore since 2005 when the reserve recorded just 26 tigers. Today, the number stands above 40. But Ranthambhore tiger reserve is spread over 1300 sq km – too large an area to become crowded with 40 tigers. Corbett National Park, for example, has more than 150 tigers in as much area. So how did the state forest bosses claim that Ranthambhore was over-populated? Obviously, by Ranthambhore, they meant Ranthambhore national park which is just a small part of the Ranthambhore tiger reserve.
Most of Ranthambhore’s tigers are inside the prey-rich, well-protected 300 sq km national park area. The rest of the tiger reserve – about 1000 sq km of Sawai Man Singh sanctuary, Kela Devi sanctuary and reserve forests – is not protected at all and, therefore, has no natural prey left. Tigers have little option here but to feed on cattle and, in turn, invite retribution.
When the forest authorities say that tigers are moving out of Ranthambhore to die, tigers are only moving from one part of the reserve to another. The latest poisoning deaths were reported from Taldakhet, a small village in Keladevi sanctuary, hardly a kilometre from the national park boundary, very much inside the tiger reserve. It is indeed shocking how a 1000 sq km tiger forest – about three-fourth of Ranthambhore tiger reserve -- has been surrendered to grazing and encroachment and accepted by the forest authorities as death zones.
About 300 sq km of the national park area may get crowded with 40 tigers but the remaining 1000 sq km of the tiger reserve should ideally be able to house thrice that number. After the Sariska lesson, authorities should have tried to restore the entire reserve as prime tiger habitat. Next, they should have gone ahead to reclaim the corridors to Kuno in Madhya Pradesh to Ramgarh Bisdhari sanctuary near Bundi for natural dispersal of tigers. Unfortunately, they have just given up on these areas and are now seeking to save tigers by airlifting them to Sariska.
And therein lies another example of conservation myopia. The tiger translocation programme has been put on hold in Rajasthan after three siblings were arbitrarily picked up from Ranthambhore to repopulate Sariska. Recently, the Centre ordered DNA tests to ascertain the breeding compatibility of Ranthambhore tigers before translocating them.
This embargo has further irked the state forest bosses who were already at loggerheads with the Centre in 2008 when National Tiger Conservation Authority made it mandatory to pick up only floating sub-adults for translocation and prohibited shifting the resident population. Tigers seek out individual territories by the time they are three and a settled tiger, if moved, only tries to return. Many of you may recall the Pench tiger that started "homing" soon after being shifted to Panna. A floater, on the other hand, is typically a young tiger in transit looking for territory and hence, is more likely to adjust to a new location.
The catch is that identifying and tracking a floater takes much longer than arbitrarily picking up a resident tiger. On top of that, the order for DNA tests has only made state forest bosses more impatient. Good science is a must for the success of the world’s first wild tiger repopulation drive in Sariska. But good science is often laborious and time-consuming. So many in Jaipur seem keen to exploit Ranthambhore’s fatalities to fast track airlifting of tigers to Sariska. They have even offered an imaginative twist to this Centre-state tussle by involving “a section of Ranthambhore’s hoteliers”.
Indeed, the Ranthambhore tourism lobby may have the clout to engage conservationists who can influence the policies of the Union government but the hoteliers have little reason for trying to plot such an ambitious conspiracy. Even if the Centre decides not to wait for the DNA test results and allows the state to resume shifting tigers to Sariska, the 2008 directives necessitate that only floaters be picked up. Ranthambhore’s tourism zone is inside the national park area occupied by resident tigers while floaters typically move in peripheral forests. How can removal of tigers from non-tourism areas affect the chances of tiger sighting and tourism in Ranthambhore?
It is time to get real. The forest authorities need to focus on hard ground management instead of taking short cuts. For starters, they could set a deadline for reclaiming the entire Ranthambhore reserve area for the tiger. If protected, Ranthambhore’s 1000 sq km death zone will make for a bigger tiger habitat than all of Sariska (681 sq km). Guess what, tigers do not need airlifting if they can walk free, and safe.
Author is an independent journalist and filmmaker
Who’s Killing Corbett's Tigers?
Four tigers found dead in less than a month, within a triangular patch of about 40 sq km in the heart of one of India’s best reserves. Natural deaths? Infighting? Poaching? With the media rife with speculation, Open cuts through the clutter to find some answers.
Open magazine, 11 Feb, 2010
To understand the fuss about four dead tigers in Corbett tiger reserve in one month—when 66 deaths were reported across India last year—consider the larger picture. When India’s tiger count is at an all-time low of 1,411, Corbett stands out as a rare success story where the numbers have been steadily on the rise. From 137 in 2001 to 164 in 2007, a thriving stock makes Corbett, at the Himalayan foothills in Uttarakhand, north India’s most densely populated tiger forest.
So four deaths in quick succession in the heart of the reserve have triggered panic: are we losing one of the few remaining strongholds of the national animal?
With so many tigers at Corbett, four natural deaths in one month is very much a possibility. But each of the four carcasses had something or the other unusual about them, making the forest authorities edgy and fuelling speculation of poaching in the media.
When a delayed transfer of the viscera to Bellary’s Indian Veterinary Research Institute spoiled any chance of conclusive analyses, rumblings of foul play just got louder.
THE CASE
Four tigers died one after the other dead-deep inside the Corbett core within 31 days in December and January.
»The first casualty, an eight-year-old male, was reported on 13 December near Mota Sal, a giant tree that serves as a landmark near Dhikala Chaur (grassland).
»The second victim was an 11-year old tigress, found by the Ramganga river close to Sarpduli rest house on 16 December.
»The third carcass was that of a four-year-old male, found on 5 January in Phuli Chaur near Dhikala tourist complex.
»The fourth death was reported on 12 January when beat guards found a six-year-old tiger dead near Gaujra chowki at the edge of the Dhikala range.
Of the four cases, the third appears to be the simplest. The young male was the victim of a territorial fight, possibly over a kill that was found half-consumed nearby. The tiger carcass had sharp canine wounds and the paw pads had traces of fur that came off the other tiger during the tussle. To bury speculation, a large male tiger showed up graciously during the spot funeral, possibly in honour of its vanquished rival.
The second death raised eyebrows as a shoe sole was found in the stomach of the tigress. It is not unusual to find garbage by the riverside, washed down from villages upstream Ramganga, and the old tigress, too hungry and unable to hunt, was probably attracted by the leathery smell of a wet shoe and chewed it up. The undigested sole remained in her tummy and may or may not have hastened her imminent end.
One may dismiss speculation of foul play in these two cases: the young male found on Phuli Chaur was just unlucky, as death from in-fighting is common in the wild; few animals survive long enough to die of old age like the Sarpduli tigress. But the other two deaths—the first and the fourth—do raise uncomfortable questions.
Tigers can live up to 12 years in the wild. There was no injury mark whatsoever on the eight-year-old male found dead near Mota Sal; it is anyway unlikely for such a mature tiger in its prime to have got into a territorial fight with an equal adversary. Typically, mature tigers take on inexperienced youngsters or an old weakling, the results of which would be rather obvious.
Reliable sources say the internal organs of the tiger had “small blister-like eruptions” on them. The tiger defecated while dying, possibly because of muscle relaxation or stress or intestinal trauma—but the sample was not tested. The officials claimed that the robust male died due to “respiratory and cardio-vascular problems”.
The fourth carcass at Gaujra, however, bore tell-tale signs. The tiger had retched before dying and the post-mortem revealed enough indications of poison in its visceral organs. While the official jury is still out, even the top forest bosses present at the spot agree that the tiger was poisoned.
THE MYSTERY
The hushed consensus about poisoning in the fourth case revived doubts over the first casualty, the eight-year-old male whose death many felt was not satisfactorily explained.
The tiger that was poisoned at Gaujra was found at the edge of the Ramganga reservoir. Poison dehydrates animals and they try to reach the nearest water body. But the first tiger found dead at Mota Sal, though not too far from the other bank of the reservoir, was not exactly close to it. However, animals when poisoned also try to avoid the sun and heat. Since the carcass was found under a clump of trees, only yards away from the Dhikala grassland, it is possible that the tiger drank at the reservoir and crossed the open grassland (about 2 km) and lay down to die in the cool, shaded forest.
As crows fly, the distance between the spots where the first and fourth carcasses were found is less than 5 km. Though the Ramganga reservoir lies in between, lack of rain last monsoon has shrunk the stretch of water, and it would not have been impossible for even a poisoned tiger to swim across.
Could there be other tigers poisoned to death in this area that went unnoticed? Tiger carcasses rot quickly and are often scavenged upon by hyenas and jackals, so it may not be possible to discover each and every carcass.
The Corbett management admits as much. But be it one, two or more, tigers are evidently being poisoned in Corbett.
Of course, tiger killings are not unprecedented in Corbett. In 1998, a tigress and three cubs died after feeding on a poisoned cattle carcass near Jamun village in the Kalagarh division. Only last year, a decomposed carcass was found in Dhela range in March. In 2008, a tiger was found dead in Jhirna range and was disposed of in a hurry. In 2007, a tiger was camera-trapped with a deep snare-wound on its neck and was subsequently found dead. In 2006, a tiger was shot dead barely 7 km from the Corbett boundary by poachers in the Terai West division.
But all these incidents happened in the peripheral forests of Corbett. This time round, the killing zone is at the core of the reserve. How are poachers getting there? Why are they risking going so far in when they can easily target tigers at the periphery?
What is the motive, since poisoned tigers wander away and make it impossible to retrieve the carcass for skin, bones etc.? If these are revenge killings, who can possibly have anything against tigers in the Corbett core, far away from human habitation? Or is the Corbett management or someone higher up the real target?
FINDING ANSWERS
The forest staff obviously has the best access to these tigers. Those who man the two canteens—one with Kumaun Vikas Mandal and another run privately—also stay at Dhikala. Then, there are the tourist guides and drivers who enter the Corbett tiger reserve’s core zone on a daily basis.
Following a hunt, a tiger consumes part of the kill and hides the rest to come back later for a second meal. Those looking to poison the kill, therefore, must know the forest well and have free access to get there before the tiger returns to it. Canteen workers do not know the forest so well. Accompanied by tourists and bound by timetables, guides lack the necessary access. And there are no opposing lobbies in the Corbett forest management to trigger sabotage by the staff.
The rumour mill at Ramnagar, though, is circulating two conspiracy theories, woven around two “aggrieved insiders”. Buddi Kala, who ran the private canteen at Dhikala since pre-Project Tiger days, was ousted this year through an open tender that awarded the contract to small-time BJP functionaries from Ramnagar. Jaswant Singh Pradhan, who has been in Corbett since 1993 as a guide and then as a trainer, wanted to replace honorary warden Brijendra Singh, a conservationist close to the Gandhi family, but failed.
Kala, now the head of Dogudda village council near Kotdwar, does not even care to discuss “the angle”, but the staff at Dhikala vouch for him as “a family member”. He would never harm the forest, they say, since “the sympathy of the department” was with him during his fight to retain the canteen contract.
Pradhan, too, seems too busy with his flourishing hotel business. “As a local person who understands Corbett, I felt I qualified for the warden’s post. But it was up to the government. Everyone knows I have always helped the (forest) department,” he says. A family friend adds that Pradhan’s sons are also doing well for themselves as guides at Corbett.
Brijendra Singh himself finds the sabotage theory rather imaginative. “I wouldn’t be the honorary warden if the BJP government did not want me to. I have never compromised Corbett’s interests. Some local elements may resent some of my tough stands, but I doubt if any of them would target the tigers,” he says.
Since nobody seems to have any motive to kill tigers in Corbett’s core, the investigation narrows down to the final and usual suspect: local Gujjars. While much of Corbett is free of any human settlement, 20-25 Gujjar families camp in five different areas of the Kalagarh range along the boundary of the core zone. One of these settlements is at Gaujra, where the fourth tiger was found dead. The forest officials grilled the head of this extended Gujjar family (complete with his four wives and 22 sons), and made him dig up a cow kill he had recently buried to “discourage the tiger”.
The cow carcass “did not appear poisoned” and Gujjars got the benefit-of-doubt given their lack of motive. Explains Heera Singh Karmiyal, range officer, Dhikala: “These Gujjars are here for many years. Sometimes, their buffaloes enter the core area and we fine them. But that has been the only point of friction. There is no history of these Gujjars targeting tigers because tigers rarely take their buffaloes.”
Due to their size and close-knit herds, buffaloes are not quite the favourite with tigers in a forest with an abundant prey base. Cows, on the other hand, are the easiest to hunt. But Gujjars, Karmiyal points out, do not rear cows and have no reason to count the kills as a loss.
But if Gujjars do not keep cows, how come cows are being killed deep inside the forest? A site visit to Gaujra revealed dozens of cows grazing alongside a few horses that Gujjars keep for transporting milk. The forest staff promptly explained the lot as feral cows—animals abandoned by villagers. Gujjars also maintained that they had nothing to do with the cows.
Reliable sources at Dhikala, however, confirmed that the presence of cows at Gaujra is a recent phenomenon, and the first few animals were spotted possibly just a year ago. But what has triggered this sudden influx of cows?
Soon after coming to power, the BJP government in Uttarakhand replaced the Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act, 1955, with the stringent Cow Protection Act, 2007. Apparently, aimed at checking illegal smuggling of cows across India’s eastern borders, the new law banned cow slaughter and imposed tough regulations on the transport and sale of cows. It became almost impossible to sell off non-milch cows even in Uttar Pradesh’s grey markets.
Though the 2007 Act also prohibits abandoning cows, cattle owners soon started setting their unproductive cows free. Villages around Rathuadhab found it convenient to send their cows to Gujjars inside forests. Local sources claim that Gujjars occasionally charge small amounts per cow to allow the animal in. But that is not the real incentive. When some of these cows breed inside the forest, their foster-owner Gujjars sell calves back to the villagers at price discounts ranging from 30 to 50 per cent of the market rate.
Last week, at least seven calves were spotted at Gaujra. No doubt, it has become a source of easy money for Gujjars in the area. This new found stake in abandoned cows could be the missing motive for poisoning tigers.SECURING CORBETT
With the onset of summer every year, a number of Gujjars from up north move in with buffaloes to join their brethren inside the reserve and make the best use of the Ramganga reservoir. This summer is going to be particularly tough due to scanty rainfall last monsoon. The Corbett management is anticipating a strong influx. With these Gujjars, fresh herds of abandoned cows will also move in towards the Corbett core, lure more tigers and, in turn, trigger retribution.
This potential crisis can be averted if the park management implements a longstanding plan for relocating Gujjar families outside Corbett. A forested site near Haridwar has been procured, but the law requires the state government to notify an equal area under the Forest Protection Act. Since much of Uttarakhand is already designated as ‘protected forests’, the state wants an exemption on this. Many believe it will be wise to accord the state a waiver to fast-track the rehabilitation process. The Centre offers up to Rs 10 lakh per relocated family, and the forest department has Rs 2 crore idling from funds earlier sanctioned by the Uttarakhand government to implement its Gujjar Relocation Plan.
In the long term, however, removal of abandoned cows or rehabilitation of Gujjars will not be enough to secure the future of the tiger in Corbett. There are other equally or even more critical factors—like increasing man-animal conflict and mindless tourism pressure—that are threatening this reserve. But to be able to focus on stakeholders along the reserve boundary, the authorities must secure the heart of Corbett first. With just a couple of months to a dry summer, time is not on their side.
(The author is an independent journalist.)
Centre orders DNA test for tigers
Open magazine, 4 Feb, 2010
IMPACT Ranthambore tigers will be genetically tested to ensure only those compatible are sent to repopulate Sariska
IMPACT Ranthambore tigers will be genetically tested to ensure only those compatible are sent to repopulate Sariska
After Sariska fiasco, DNA tests for tigers before shifting
Hindustan Times, 2 Feb, 2010
Following a Hindustan Times report on the genetic incompatibility of tigers that were shifted to Sariska National Park in Rajasthan last year, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has ordered DNA tests on tigers of Ranthambore and Sariska, to ascertain breeding compatibility before shifting any more of them.
The investigation (Rajasthan govt sent tiger siblings to repopulate Sariska, June 29, 2009) exposed how tigers were picked up arbitrarily for translocation without genetic or spatial analysis. Following the report, the translocation process in Rajasthan was put on hold.
Between June 2008 and February 2009, two sisters and their half-brother were sent to Sariska. These tigers have so far failed to breed.
Panna National Park in Madhya Pradesh didn’t make this mistake. With two tigers sourced from Bandhavgarh and Kanha reserves, it got a third one from Pench in November last year — five months after the HT investigation — to ensure genetic diversity.
The decision on mandatory DNA testing of Ranthambore tigers was taken an NTCA meeting last month, attended by Forests and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. The NTCA has already issued an order, designating Bangalore’s National Centre for Biological Science to conduct the tests to identify individual tigers with breeding compatibility.
“The Hon’ble Minister for Environment and Forests has directed DNA testing of all three tigers already translocated to Sariska… through fecal samples, besides similar testing for the two tigers earmarked at Ranthambore for translocation to Sariska,” says the note.
“The process of DNA analysis will take time. However, the translocation programme will continue and our priority is to determine the compatibility of a couple of young tigers that have been moving in the outskirts of Ranthambore. The future of these tigers is uncertain due to heavy biotic pressure (human presence) in these areas and they will definitely have a better chance of survival in Sariska,” added NTCA member-secretary Dr Rajesh Gopal.
(The writer is an independent journalist)
Following a Hindustan Times report on the genetic incompatibility of tigers that were shifted to Sariska National Park in Rajasthan last year, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has ordered DNA tests on tigers of Ranthambore and Sariska, to ascertain breeding compatibility before shifting any more of them.
The investigation (Rajasthan govt sent tiger siblings to repopulate Sariska, June 29, 2009) exposed how tigers were picked up arbitrarily for translocation without genetic or spatial analysis. Following the report, the translocation process in Rajasthan was put on hold.
Between June 2008 and February 2009, two sisters and their half-brother were sent to Sariska. These tigers have so far failed to breed.
Panna National Park in Madhya Pradesh didn’t make this mistake. With two tigers sourced from Bandhavgarh and Kanha reserves, it got a third one from Pench in November last year — five months after the HT investigation — to ensure genetic diversity.
The decision on mandatory DNA testing of Ranthambore tigers was taken an NTCA meeting last month, attended by Forests and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. The NTCA has already issued an order, designating Bangalore’s National Centre for Biological Science to conduct the tests to identify individual tigers with breeding compatibility.“The Hon’ble Minister for Environment and Forests has directed DNA testing of all three tigers already translocated to Sariska… through fecal samples, besides similar testing for the two tigers earmarked at Ranthambore for translocation to Sariska,” says the note.
“The process of DNA analysis will take time. However, the translocation programme will continue and our priority is to determine the compatibility of a couple of young tigers that have been moving in the outskirts of Ranthambore. The future of these tigers is uncertain due to heavy biotic pressure (human presence) in these areas and they will definitely have a better chance of survival in Sariska,” added NTCA member-secretary Dr Rajesh Gopal.
(The writer is an independent journalist)
Salve Beats a Hasty Retreat
IMPACT Harish Salve takes cover as Open turns on the heat over his disingenuous note to the Supreme Court on a highway expansion plan through Kanha-Pench.
Open magazine, 22 January, 2010
Within 48 hours of Open publishing a report (Surrendering the Last Frontier by Jay Mazoomdaar) on how amicus curiae Harish Salve had deviated, in his note to the Supreme Court, from the court’s Central Empowered Committee’s (CEC) recommendations against the proposed expansion of NH7 through Pench-Kanha, Salve admitted before the court that his note was factually incorrect and withdrew it.
Addressing the court on Friday, Salve said he was being hounded by the media and “a journalist” had sent him a point-by-point query seeking clarifications on his amicus note. He wondered if he was answerable outside the court and if his integrity was being questioned. At this, the court observed that the amicus curiae should continue with his job if his conscience was clear.
In his reply to Open’s queries, Salve admitted that his amicus note was wrong in claiming that the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) had cleared the National Highway Authority of India’s NH7 expansion project through Pench-Kanha. (The board had actually rejected it.) He accepted this before the court today and further said that the case should now be heard on the basis of the CEC report and the NHAI petition and that his amicus note should be considered “never submitted”.
At this, the counsel representing the local residents submitted that the CEC report had clearly recommended against any expansion of NH7 through Pench and that the view of the Ministry of Environment and Forests should be sought on the matter. The counsel representing the Ministry of Environment and Forests iterated that the ministry stood by the CEC report.
The court has scheduled the next hearing for 29 January.
Open magazine, 22 January, 2010
Within 48 hours of Open publishing a report (Surrendering the Last Frontier by Jay Mazoomdaar) on how amicus curiae Harish Salve had deviated, in his note to the Supreme Court, from the court’s Central Empowered Committee’s (CEC) recommendations against the proposed expansion of NH7 through Pench-Kanha, Salve admitted before the court that his note was factually incorrect and withdrew it.
Addressing the court on Friday, Salve said he was being hounded by the media and “a journalist” had sent him a point-by-point query seeking clarifications on his amicus note. He wondered if he was answerable outside the court and if his integrity was being questioned. At this, the court observed that the amicus curiae should continue with his job if his conscience was clear.
In his reply to Open’s queries, Salve admitted that his amicus note was wrong in claiming that the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) had cleared the National Highway Authority of India’s NH7 expansion project through Pench-Kanha. (The board had actually rejected it.) He accepted this before the court today and further said that the case should now be heard on the basis of the CEC report and the NHAI petition and that his amicus note should be considered “never submitted”.
At this, the counsel representing the local residents submitted that the CEC report had clearly recommended against any expansion of NH7 through Pench and that the view of the Ministry of Environment and Forests should be sought on the matter. The counsel representing the Ministry of Environment and Forests iterated that the ministry stood by the CEC report.
The court has scheduled the next hearing for 29 January.
Surrendering the Last Frontier
The Kanha-Pench landscape is one of India’s best four tiger habitats. But despite objections from the National Board for Wildlife, National Tiger Conservation Authority, Wildlife Institute of India and Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee, a highway might just deny the big cat its best chance of survival.
Open magazine, 21 January, 2010
Forget the felled trees, and the highway, for a moment. These are mere props in this theatre of the absurd. But the climax will indicate which way the fine balancing act of growth-vs-green is likely to go in the future.
The plot unfolds in the heartland of erstwhile Gondwana—a ‘dark mysterious blank’ on the map of the British Empire of yore until the mid-nineteenth century, when a young Captain, James Forsyth, started exploring the dense and dangerous tiger forests of central India with the scientific curiosity of a geologist.
One-and-a-half centuries since, much has changed in this land of the Gond tribe. Rail and roadways crisscross the lush landscape that has survived development and deforestation in democratic, independent India. The remains of the mighty forests still constitute India’s best green landscape with an intricate network of national parks and sanctuaries. Fittingly, Kamal Nath, one of the tallest political leaders of this green belt, became India’s environment minister in 1991.
Two decades on, the Member of Parliament from Chhindwara today holds the portfolio of Road Transport and Highways. Today, against the collective wisdom of the country’s best experts, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) wants to roll out highways on Nath’s home turf, cutting through and cutting apart India’s best, and last, surviving forests.
THE STAKE
According to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and Wildlife Institute of India (WII), in 2008, the forest landscape connecting Kanha and Pench tiger reserves is one of the four most viable tiger habitats in the country (the other three being the Western Ghats, Corbett and Kaziranga). This 16,000 sq km landscape has two source populations and a total of 141 tigers. This is also home to some of India’s most endangered species, such as gaurs (Indian bison) and dhols (Indian wild dog).
Forest connectivity makes a landscape superior wildlife habitat, allowing animal movement and gene flow. In the absence of forest corridors, small tiger populations in isolated reserves face the risk of local extinction—either due to poaching in the short term or due to genetic decay over generations. Sariska is a prime example.
The Kanha-Pench landscape thrives on its healthy contiguity. In isolation, the tiger population of about 30 at Pench is far from viable. The area of Pench tiger reserve (411 sq km) in itself is insufficient for a viable habitat. As per NTCA, a population is not viable below 80-100 tigers, and for such a population, at least 800-1,000 sq km of habitat is required. Clearly, the connectivity to Kanha (917 sq km, 89 tigers) is key to keep the tiger population at Pench viable. The same is true for the other mega fauna in the area.
THE CASE
Almost 9 km of the Nagpur-Jabalpur road—National Highway No 7 (NH7)—passes along the periphery of the Pench Tiger Reserve, notified by the Madhya Pradesh government as core critical tiger habitat under the Wildlife (Protection) Act. Another 47-km-stretch of this road cuts through areas under South Seoni Forest division that serves as a buffer for Pench and has several forest corridors to Kanha.
As part of the Golden Quadrilateral project, the NHAI decided to widen this 2-lane road to a four–lane highway in 2006. The Madhya Pradesh government, on its part, cleared the proposal and forwarded it to the Centre for approval. Since the project involved both impact on a tiger reserve and use of forest land, it required clearance from the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) and the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) as well.
The NBWL rejected the NHAI plan in September 2008. The FAC reserved its opinion since Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), a non-governmental organisation, had already filed a petition before the Central Empowered Committee (CEC), set up by the apex court in 2003 to advise it on technical matters of wildlife and forestry.
Seeking to stop tree felling and construction work along the sensitive stretch, the WTI application said: ‘The use of forest land falling in the Pench Tiger Reserve, the South Seoni Forest Division and the Nagpur Division can be avoided by using an alternative route via Chhindwara and Seoni. This alternative route though approximately 55 per cent longer than the existing one, must still be preferred to protect such a vital habitat.’
The CEC took the case to the Supreme Court, and the NHAI, on its part, offered to construct either an elevated 9-km road over the forest or a few underpasses for the movement of wild animals.
In November 2008, Dr Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of NTCA, made a field inspection as a CEC invitee and his report explained why the proposal for road widening would ‘irreversibly damage the tiger habitat’ and ‘should be implemented under no circumstances’. His report noted: ‘No safeguards would restore the said habitat to its present status. Most of the safeguards/retrofilling structures for wildlife are suggested (by NHAI) on the basis of practices in vogue abroad for smaller animals which may be meaningless in the context of tigers and their larger prey animals. The alternative route would save the priceless habitat.’
The CEC itself made a site visit in March 2009, and in its report, backed Dr Gopal’s position. ‘The CEC is of the considered view that the proposed (project) will cause irreparable damage to one of the most important and critical wildlife habitats in the country. It is one of the last, perhaps the only, extensive track of wildlife habitat covering an area of 16,000 sq km. Such a habitat should be further consolidated and protected rather than be allowed to be fragmented and destroyed. The ecological cost of the present project is immense and no mitigative measures are adequate to compensate the same,’ the report said.
The CEC also convened a meeting in May 2009 to consult representatives of the NHAI, MP Forest Department, WII, WTI and a number of wildlife experts. All the experts—‘without any exception or reservation’—agreed that the proposed four-laning would be disastrous.
‘The landscape, being one of the most important wildlife areas in the country, needs to be preserved and protected at any cost. The experts were of the view that it is absolutely imperative that the National Highway is realigned and the additional cost and the increased length of the road on this account should not be a limiting factor,’ the CEC noted.
THE TWIST
So far, it seemed an open and shut case. But days before the case came up for a hearing before the apex court on 15 January, amicus curiae Harish Salve in his note suggested that the widening of the highway be allowed with provisions for a few underpasses as sought by the NHAI.
Consider how the amicus curiae deviates from the CEC report:
» ‘The NHAI has suggested an alternate (sic) proposal and in respect of which it claims that it has the approval of State Board of Wildlife and National Board of Wildlife. This proposal envisages building underpasses in the stretch and fencing the entire 9 km.’
This is factually incorrect, as the NBWL rejected any such proposal on 18 September 2008.
» ‘NHAI claims that after the detailed deliberations with the various forest authorities, it has been agreed that’ 13 underpasses will be made, 2.5 metre chain link fencing will be camouflaged by vegetations, road land will be restricted to 30 metres, and forest land used for temporary diversion of traffic will be ‘restored to original’.
None of the top four forest and wildlife authorities in the case—NBWL, FAC, NTCA or WII—agreed to any of these proposals. So who are these ‘various forest authorities’?
» Salve’s note further states that to reduce the traffic pressure on the forest stretch of NH7, NHAI should be directed to develop the available alternative alignments as well. Put simply, Salve advises the court to start construction on all major roads in the area. If the NHAI is indeed instructed to improve the alternative alignments, why widen the sensitive road at all? Or is it, if the buzz in political circles in Madhya Pradesh is to be believed, to let Kamal Nath develop as much road length as possible on his home turf?
» Finally, after listing all of NHAI’s claims, Salve goes ahead and stamps his seal of approval by suggesting that the apex court instruct the NHAI to deposit Rs 50 crore for ‘counterbalancing ameliorative measures’ since ‘there is inevitably going to be some disruption being caused to the Pench National Park’.
“The CEC report is the correct professional advice to the court. The amicus report doesn’t reflect the CEC’s concerns over conservation in the most important tiger landscape in the country,” says Sanjeev Chadha, who held the office of member-secretary when CEC filed the report. He completed his CEC term in September 2009.
“Technically, it is alright for the amicus to have a different view as long as it assists the court in coming to a fair decision. However, an ‘expert body’ such as CEC was created to assist the court on expert matters, and hence the amicus should ordinarily not have a contrary view,” says Sanjay Upadhyay, a Supreme Court advocate.
While Salve has admitted that he “was mistaken about the NBWL clearance”, he takes “full responsibility” for his note. “My suggestions are never in suppression of any statutory authority. Obviously, the SC permission is in addition to and not in substitution of their (NBWL) clearance. So the last word is always with the NBWL. The clearance from the SC is in addition to all clearances, not in lieu of them,” he tells Open.
Counters Upadhyay: “With all due respect to the learned amicus, it is the SC which is the final arbiter and not the NBWL. The NBWL is the highest statutory body under the Wildlife Protection Act and needs to act in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Wildlife Act. The SC has the full authority to take a different stand if it finds that such a view of the NBWL is not in accordance with law.” Moreover, there is no instance when a project cleared by the SC was subsequently turned down by the NBWL.
Salve also maintains that his note need not reflect the CEC advice: “There is no question of dilution. The CEC’s advice is being contested by the NHAI and the Court wanted my view in the matter. I felt that the balance between the need for development and construction of the road was a midway found acceptable to all.”
But the consensus reflects the opposite. “The CEC report is the outcome of a series of consultations with and field inspections by the best experts of the country. Its recommendations are the final technical view and should be binding,” says Ashok Kumar of WTI.
Raj Panjwani, a senior Supreme Court advocate, agrees. “The NBWL, NTCA, WII and CEC have all rejected the project. Even if the amicus curiae has taken a different stand, the opinion of the technical bodies should prevail,” he says.
KEEPING THE FAITH
The SC has asked for the opinion of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the next hearing is due on 21 January.
Says eminent tiger scientist Dr Ullas Karanth: “This case will have bearing on hundreds of such cases. The basic approach of the NHAI is wrong. These roads were made centuries back when land use patterns were different. Today, we need new alignments wherever necessary to safeguard the few remaining forest landscapes of India.”
Little wonder that the CEC minced no words when it stated that this is one of those exceptional cases where ecological security must necessarily take precedence over developmental needs.
Says Ashok Kumar: “I respect the Judiciary’s impeccable record on upholding environmental causes. Our courts have done a great deal for conservation. I am keeping faith.”
(Mazoomdaar is an independent journalist.)
Open magazine, 21 January, 2010
Forget the felled trees, and the highway, for a moment. These are mere props in this theatre of the absurd. But the climax will indicate which way the fine balancing act of growth-vs-green is likely to go in the future.
The plot unfolds in the heartland of erstwhile Gondwana—a ‘dark mysterious blank’ on the map of the British Empire of yore until the mid-nineteenth century, when a young Captain, James Forsyth, started exploring the dense and dangerous tiger forests of central India with the scientific curiosity of a geologist.
One-and-a-half centuries since, much has changed in this land of the Gond tribe. Rail and roadways crisscross the lush landscape that has survived development and deforestation in democratic, independent India. The remains of the mighty forests still constitute India’s best green landscape with an intricate network of national parks and sanctuaries. Fittingly, Kamal Nath, one of the tallest political leaders of this green belt, became India’s environment minister in 1991.
Two decades on, the Member of Parliament from Chhindwara today holds the portfolio of Road Transport and Highways. Today, against the collective wisdom of the country’s best experts, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) wants to roll out highways on Nath’s home turf, cutting through and cutting apart India’s best, and last, surviving forests.
THE STAKE
According to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and Wildlife Institute of India (WII), in 2008, the forest landscape connecting Kanha and Pench tiger reserves is one of the four most viable tiger habitats in the country (the other three being the Western Ghats, Corbett and Kaziranga). This 16,000 sq km landscape has two source populations and a total of 141 tigers. This is also home to some of India’s most endangered species, such as gaurs (Indian bison) and dhols (Indian wild dog).
Forest connectivity makes a landscape superior wildlife habitat, allowing animal movement and gene flow. In the absence of forest corridors, small tiger populations in isolated reserves face the risk of local extinction—either due to poaching in the short term or due to genetic decay over generations. Sariska is a prime example.
The Kanha-Pench landscape thrives on its healthy contiguity. In isolation, the tiger population of about 30 at Pench is far from viable. The area of Pench tiger reserve (411 sq km) in itself is insufficient for a viable habitat. As per NTCA, a population is not viable below 80-100 tigers, and for such a population, at least 800-1,000 sq km of habitat is required. Clearly, the connectivity to Kanha (917 sq km, 89 tigers) is key to keep the tiger population at Pench viable. The same is true for the other mega fauna in the area.
THE CASE
Almost 9 km of the Nagpur-Jabalpur road—National Highway No 7 (NH7)—passes along the periphery of the Pench Tiger Reserve, notified by the Madhya Pradesh government as core critical tiger habitat under the Wildlife (Protection) Act. Another 47-km-stretch of this road cuts through areas under South Seoni Forest division that serves as a buffer for Pench and has several forest corridors to Kanha.
As part of the Golden Quadrilateral project, the NHAI decided to widen this 2-lane road to a four–lane highway in 2006. The Madhya Pradesh government, on its part, cleared the proposal and forwarded it to the Centre for approval. Since the project involved both impact on a tiger reserve and use of forest land, it required clearance from the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) and the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) as well.
The NBWL rejected the NHAI plan in September 2008. The FAC reserved its opinion since Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), a non-governmental organisation, had already filed a petition before the Central Empowered Committee (CEC), set up by the apex court in 2003 to advise it on technical matters of wildlife and forestry.
Seeking to stop tree felling and construction work along the sensitive stretch, the WTI application said: ‘The use of forest land falling in the Pench Tiger Reserve, the South Seoni Forest Division and the Nagpur Division can be avoided by using an alternative route via Chhindwara and Seoni. This alternative route though approximately 55 per cent longer than the existing one, must still be preferred to protect such a vital habitat.’
The CEC took the case to the Supreme Court, and the NHAI, on its part, offered to construct either an elevated 9-km road over the forest or a few underpasses for the movement of wild animals.
In November 2008, Dr Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of NTCA, made a field inspection as a CEC invitee and his report explained why the proposal for road widening would ‘irreversibly damage the tiger habitat’ and ‘should be implemented under no circumstances’. His report noted: ‘No safeguards would restore the said habitat to its present status. Most of the safeguards/retrofilling structures for wildlife are suggested (by NHAI) on the basis of practices in vogue abroad for smaller animals which may be meaningless in the context of tigers and their larger prey animals. The alternative route would save the priceless habitat.’
The CEC itself made a site visit in March 2009, and in its report, backed Dr Gopal’s position. ‘The CEC is of the considered view that the proposed (project) will cause irreparable damage to one of the most important and critical wildlife habitats in the country. It is one of the last, perhaps the only, extensive track of wildlife habitat covering an area of 16,000 sq km. Such a habitat should be further consolidated and protected rather than be allowed to be fragmented and destroyed. The ecological cost of the present project is immense and no mitigative measures are adequate to compensate the same,’ the report said.
The CEC also convened a meeting in May 2009 to consult representatives of the NHAI, MP Forest Department, WII, WTI and a number of wildlife experts. All the experts—‘without any exception or reservation’—agreed that the proposed four-laning would be disastrous.
‘The landscape, being one of the most important wildlife areas in the country, needs to be preserved and protected at any cost. The experts were of the view that it is absolutely imperative that the National Highway is realigned and the additional cost and the increased length of the road on this account should not be a limiting factor,’ the CEC noted.
THE TWIST
So far, it seemed an open and shut case. But days before the case came up for a hearing before the apex court on 15 January, amicus curiae Harish Salve in his note suggested that the widening of the highway be allowed with provisions for a few underpasses as sought by the NHAI.
Consider how the amicus curiae deviates from the CEC report:
» ‘The NHAI has suggested an alternate (sic) proposal and in respect of which it claims that it has the approval of State Board of Wildlife and National Board of Wildlife. This proposal envisages building underpasses in the stretch and fencing the entire 9 km.’
This is factually incorrect, as the NBWL rejected any such proposal on 18 September 2008.
» ‘NHAI claims that after the detailed deliberations with the various forest authorities, it has been agreed that’ 13 underpasses will be made, 2.5 metre chain link fencing will be camouflaged by vegetations, road land will be restricted to 30 metres, and forest land used for temporary diversion of traffic will be ‘restored to original’.
None of the top four forest and wildlife authorities in the case—NBWL, FAC, NTCA or WII—agreed to any of these proposals. So who are these ‘various forest authorities’?
» Salve’s note further states that to reduce the traffic pressure on the forest stretch of NH7, NHAI should be directed to develop the available alternative alignments as well. Put simply, Salve advises the court to start construction on all major roads in the area. If the NHAI is indeed instructed to improve the alternative alignments, why widen the sensitive road at all? Or is it, if the buzz in political circles in Madhya Pradesh is to be believed, to let Kamal Nath develop as much road length as possible on his home turf?
» Finally, after listing all of NHAI’s claims, Salve goes ahead and stamps his seal of approval by suggesting that the apex court instruct the NHAI to deposit Rs 50 crore for ‘counterbalancing ameliorative measures’ since ‘there is inevitably going to be some disruption being caused to the Pench National Park’.
“The CEC report is the correct professional advice to the court. The amicus report doesn’t reflect the CEC’s concerns over conservation in the most important tiger landscape in the country,” says Sanjeev Chadha, who held the office of member-secretary when CEC filed the report. He completed his CEC term in September 2009.
“Technically, it is alright for the amicus to have a different view as long as it assists the court in coming to a fair decision. However, an ‘expert body’ such as CEC was created to assist the court on expert matters, and hence the amicus should ordinarily not have a contrary view,” says Sanjay Upadhyay, a Supreme Court advocate.
While Salve has admitted that he “was mistaken about the NBWL clearance”, he takes “full responsibility” for his note. “My suggestions are never in suppression of any statutory authority. Obviously, the SC permission is in addition to and not in substitution of their (NBWL) clearance. So the last word is always with the NBWL. The clearance from the SC is in addition to all clearances, not in lieu of them,” he tells Open.
Counters Upadhyay: “With all due respect to the learned amicus, it is the SC which is the final arbiter and not the NBWL. The NBWL is the highest statutory body under the Wildlife Protection Act and needs to act in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Wildlife Act. The SC has the full authority to take a different stand if it finds that such a view of the NBWL is not in accordance with law.” Moreover, there is no instance when a project cleared by the SC was subsequently turned down by the NBWL.
Salve also maintains that his note need not reflect the CEC advice: “There is no question of dilution. The CEC’s advice is being contested by the NHAI and the Court wanted my view in the matter. I felt that the balance between the need for development and construction of the road was a midway found acceptable to all.”
But the consensus reflects the opposite. “The CEC report is the outcome of a series of consultations with and field inspections by the best experts of the country. Its recommendations are the final technical view and should be binding,” says Ashok Kumar of WTI.
Raj Panjwani, a senior Supreme Court advocate, agrees. “The NBWL, NTCA, WII and CEC have all rejected the project. Even if the amicus curiae has taken a different stand, the opinion of the technical bodies should prevail,” he says.
KEEPING THE FAITH
The SC has asked for the opinion of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the next hearing is due on 21 January.
Says eminent tiger scientist Dr Ullas Karanth: “This case will have bearing on hundreds of such cases. The basic approach of the NHAI is wrong. These roads were made centuries back when land use patterns were different. Today, we need new alignments wherever necessary to safeguard the few remaining forest landscapes of India.”
Little wonder that the CEC minced no words when it stated that this is one of those exceptional cases where ecological security must necessarily take precedence over developmental needs.
Says Ashok Kumar: “I respect the Judiciary’s impeccable record on upholding environmental causes. Our courts have done a great deal for conservation. I am keeping faith.”
(Mazoomdaar is an independent journalist.)
The Melting Truth about Climate Change
Open magazine, 21 January, 2010
You read it here first. Six weeks before evidence from a new study busted the claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, Open had set the record straight. It has now been accepted that the claim made by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is untrue. Which is what Jay Mazoomdaar had argued in our cover story on climate change in Open’s issue dated 4 December.
The 2035 date, it appears, was picked up by the IPCC from a report in the New Scientist. And this report itself was based on a ‘speculative’ estimate by Syed Iqbal Hasnain, then a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Hasnain is now an academic with The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), headed by IPCC chief RK Pachauri.
In A Climate of Chaos (see next post), Open had made its case against the projection thus:
‘The recent report on Himalayan glaciers by Dr VK Raina, a former deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India… said that the Gangotri glacier had been retreating rapidly at about 20 m per year until 2000, but has since slowed down considerably, and practically remained standstill since September 2007… In a paper published in Current Science last year, Dr Sharad Jain, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, pointed out that even if the annual recession rate of the Gangotri glacier reaches 40 m—which is double the current rate—a glacier that measures 30 km in length will take about 700 years to melt away.’
And 2035 is hardly the only problem with the IPCC report. For instance, it is now clear that the report, as originally claimed, was not ‘peer-reviewed’. The report said that Arctic temperatures would rise twice as fast as global temperatures over the next 100 years. But it overlooks the fact that the Arctic was actually 1-2 degrees warmer than the present temperature in the 1930s. The report points out that the proportion of tropical cyclones that are high-intensity storms has increased in the last three decades, but does not mention that the total number of intense tropical cyclones has fallen sharply during the period. About small islands like the Maldives being vulnerable to sea-level rise, well, not if they’re made of coral, which is more than capable of outgrowing any sea-level rise. Besides, sea level in the Maldives is no higher now than it was 1,250 years ago. We could go on. Perhaps in a later issue…
You read it here first. Six weeks before evidence from a new study busted the claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, Open had set the record straight. It has now been accepted that the claim made by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is untrue. Which is what Jay Mazoomdaar had argued in our cover story on climate change in Open’s issue dated 4 December.
The 2035 date, it appears, was picked up by the IPCC from a report in the New Scientist. And this report itself was based on a ‘speculative’ estimate by Syed Iqbal Hasnain, then a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Hasnain is now an academic with The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), headed by IPCC chief RK Pachauri.
In A Climate of Chaos (see next post), Open had made its case against the projection thus:
‘The recent report on Himalayan glaciers by Dr VK Raina, a former deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India… said that the Gangotri glacier had been retreating rapidly at about 20 m per year until 2000, but has since slowed down considerably, and practically remained standstill since September 2007… In a paper published in Current Science last year, Dr Sharad Jain, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, pointed out that even if the annual recession rate of the Gangotri glacier reaches 40 m—which is double the current rate—a glacier that measures 30 km in length will take about 700 years to melt away.’
And 2035 is hardly the only problem with the IPCC report. For instance, it is now clear that the report, as originally claimed, was not ‘peer-reviewed’. The report said that Arctic temperatures would rise twice as fast as global temperatures over the next 100 years. But it overlooks the fact that the Arctic was actually 1-2 degrees warmer than the present temperature in the 1930s. The report points out that the proportion of tropical cyclones that are high-intensity storms has increased in the last three decades, but does not mention that the total number of intense tropical cyclones has fallen sharply during the period. About small islands like the Maldives being vulnerable to sea-level rise, well, not if they’re made of coral, which is more than capable of outgrowing any sea-level rise. Besides, sea level in the Maldives is no higher now than it was 1,250 years ago. We could go on. Perhaps in a later issue…
A Climate Of Chaos
If climate change is your biggest concern, $50 billion has been well spent to convince the world of man-made global warming and its dramatic threats. But sold on the hypothesis of a projected catastrophe, we are ignoring the clear and present dangers facing the earth
Open magazine, 27 Nov, 2009
First, a disclaimer: this article does not intend to make the reader doubt the dangers of global warming. It intends to go a little further.
Second, an admission: it is never easy to approach any ‘gospel truth’ with facts and reason. Ask Dr Mitchell Taylor.
One of the most startling advertisements of climate change is that global warming has made life difficult for polar bears and will wipe out two-thirds of their population in the next 50 years. In 2002, however, a USA Geological survey of Wildlife noted that polar bear populations ‘may now be near historic highs’. More recently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service recorded that that there were 20,000-25,000 polar bears, up from 5,000-10,000 estimated in the 1950s and 1960s.
Those reports did not make news. But then, Dr Taylor, one of the planet’s most experienced Arctic biologists who has been following polar bears for three decades, happily—and inconveniently— reported that of the 19 different polar bear populations, almost all were at optimum levels or increasing; only two have for local reasons modestly declined. Even the southern less ice region of the Davis Strait, Dr Taylor noted, ‘is crawling with polar bears. It’s not safe to camp there. They’re fat. The mothers have cubs. The cubs are in good shape.’
The result of his report? Dr Taylor was barred from the much-hyped meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG), set up under the IUCN Species Survival Commission, held in July this year at Copenhagen, because his views running ‘counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful’.
Covered with much fanfare by the media, the PBSG meet ‘renewed the conclusion from previous meetings that the greatest challenge to conservation of polar bears is…climatic warming’. The ban on Dr Taylor, and his field observations, went largely unreported.
THE MYTH
Dr Taylor was not the only one doubting the theory of man-made global warming or its impact.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2007 (fourth assessment) authored by 52 scientists, claimed a scientific consensus on its findings that increasing emission of greenhouse gases due to human activities had already triggered a dangerous trend of global warming and unless emission levels were controlled, the trend would soon lead to rapid melting of snow and ice, causing rivers to dry up and coastal areas to disappear under a rising sea.
But so far, at least 650 scientists from around the world have questioned the report’s findings. Dissent has always been there. According to a survey of 530 climate scientists in 27 countries, conducted in 2003 by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch at the GKSS Institute of Coastal Research in Germany, 82 per cent said global warming was happening, 56 per cent said it was mostly caused by human activities, and only 35 per cent said models could accurately predict future climate conditions.
More recently, a study published in Energy and Environment in 2008 found that of a total 528 papers on climate change (2004-2007), only one paper made any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results. While 32 papers rejected the IPCC consensus outright, 263 did not commit either way.
Of course, there is a consensus that the climate is changing. Climate is determined by averaging weather variables over an extended period and has been changing ever since the earth has been turning. And, nobody denies that the earth’s resources are getting increasingly stretched due to spiralling population and human development. So, leave alone science, the common sense way forward is to adopt environmentally sustainable economies and lifestyles.
But forced to acknowledge climate change as the biggest threat facing mankind, the scientific fraternity has been raising three fundamental questions. Is the global climate really warming up? If so, is the change due to human activities (greenhouse gas emissions) and can it be controlled by human intervention (reduction in emissions)? Are the alarming forecasts of imminent tipping points realistic?
• A number of scientists deny any evidence of any unnatural or significant rise in global temperature. For example, they refer to the Nasa Giss data that show how the South Pole winter (June-August) has cooled about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1957 and the coldest year was 2004. Nasa itself, after hyping the year 1998 as the hottest in US history, eventually accepted a data error and corrected the record to 1934 as the hottest year.
According to these sceptics, while bandying about the lowest ice extent since satellite monitoring began in 1979 in the Arctic, climate activists gloss over the fact that the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica, has set a new record for maximum ice extent. Since 1979, the trend has been progressively upwards for the total Antarctic ice extent, with a number of new records set over the past 15 years.
Some, like Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, argue that historically, there have been sharp rises in temperature over very short periods. In 1200 AD, Europe was 2 degrees centigrade warmer than it is today and agriculture flourished even in Greenland.
• Many agree that the climate has been showing a warmer trend but maintain that there is no scientific evidence to prove that the warming is man-made or it can be controlled by reducing GHG emissions.
Some of them, like Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, blame solar activities, and not GH gases, for the warming trend.
Others, like Luc Debontridder of Brussels’ Royal Meteorological Institute or Professor Geoffrey G Duffy of the University of Auckland, maintain that water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds have a much greater greenhouse impact than carbon dioxide (CO2). Incidentally, atmospheric water vapour is not anthropogenic, its formation and dynamics are independent of human activities.
• The scientific fraternity is most critical when it comes to random doomsday predictions. Mike Hulme, head of the EU integrated project Adam (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies), recently blamed alarmist tendencies for “complicating things with climate change myths” by linking everything—from hurricane Katrina to Mumbai rains—to global warming. He slammed movies like The Day After Tomorrow and Age of Stupid for exaggerating threats of climate change.
Back home, not too long ago, the country’s most prominent climate expert appeared on a news channel to support the theory that global warming was behind the melting of the ice Shiva Lingam (stalagmite formation) at Amarnath. He looked more angry than embarrassed when reminded that the stalagmites in the neighbouring caves were in good health because they did not have to suffer the temperature rise caused by too many jostling devotees.
Unfortunately, the IPCC itself triggered this alarmist trend. So much so that in the final draft of the fourth assessment report released in 2007, the panel had to revise its exaggerated predictions made in 2001 and reduce the overall estimate of the effects of global warming by 25 per cent.
THE SCARE
For India, the most dramatic climate forecast is that the Gangotri glacier will disappear by 2035, reducing the Ganga to a seasonal river.
The recent report on Himalayan glaciers by Dr VK Raina, a former deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India, found it ‘premature to make a statement that glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating abnormally because of global warming’. On Gangotri, the report said that the glacier had been retreating rapidly at about 20 metres per year until 2000, but has since slowed down considerably, and practically remained standstill since September 2007.
“Data generated from the Himalayas over the last 100 years indicate that the glaciers have been retreating continuously, barring a flip here and there. But the rate of retreat has not been alarming or unnatural, especially in the last decade or so. There is nothing to support claims that these glaciers, including Gangotri, will disappear in the next few decades,” maintains Dr Raina.
In a paper published in Current Science last year, Dr Sharad Jain, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, pointed out that even if the annual recession rate of the Gangotri glacier reaches 40 metres – which is double the current rate—a glacier that measures 30 km in length will take about 700 years to melt away.
“It was a rather simplistic way to explain the improbability of the glacier disappearing in the near future. After considering nonlinearities and to make a conservative estimate, the time-span could be assumed to be hundreds of years. If the snout of the Gangotri glacier was indeed at the Gangotri temple about 4,000 years ago, its retreat over four millennia has been just 18 km,” explains Dr Jain.
Even if we assume that the Gangotri glacier is in real danger of melting away, will it make the Ganga a seasonal river?
Three rivers—the Chambal, Ken and Betwa—contribute to the Ganga through the Yamuna. In Bihar, four mighty rivers—the Ghaghara, Gandak, Kosi and Sone—join in. Together, these tributaries bring enough water to make the Ganga’s flow at downstream Patna almost 17 times its flow at upstream Devprayag. But even in the headwaters region, the Ganga depends only partially on the Gangotri glacier for water. As Dr Jain points out, snow and glacier melting contribute only 29 per cent to the annual flow at Devprayag; the rest is from rainwater. More than 70 per cent of the flow at Haridwar is due to rainfall and beyond Haridwar, the influence of the Gangotri glacier on river flow becomes progressively less—at Allahabad, it is less than 4 per cent.
“Most of the Ganga’s catchment is rain fed. Even during the lean season, there is enough baseflow (discharge derived from groundwater sources), particularly downstream Haridwar. Glaciers or no glaciers, the Ganga will remain a perennial river as long as groundwater tables are intact,” claims Professor I B Singh, an authority on the Ganga and a veteran geologist with Lucknow University.
The other perceived threat of global warming—rising sea levels leading to erosion, salinity and inundation—has unsettled many in India, particularly along its 8,000-km-long coastline.
While a significant rise in sea levels and subsequent inundation still remain only a possibility, increasing salinity and rapid erosion are already making lives miserable for much of India’s coastal population. But can these trends be attributed to climate change?
“Over the last 2,000 years, many rapid warming and cooling episodes occurred on 100-year scales. This has resulted in the rise and fall of sea levels. The threat perception on account of sea level rise is less compared to the other factors,” says Dr TN Prakash, a senior scientist at the Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.
According to Dr Prakash, coastal erosion is a natural, seasonal phenomenon. But the impact is being felt more severely in recent years due to destruction of protective mangrove covers and reduced sediment discharge by rivers. Other human factors, like rampant beach mining, also add to the problem. As recently as the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004, mangroves acted as a buffer in a number of stretches along the coastline. Without the effective bio-fencing of mangrove cover or dune vegetation, coastlines are increasingly getting exposed to erosion.
A free-flowing river gathers sediments as it meanders inland and deposits the load when it reaches the sea. This sediment load compensates for much of coastal erosion. But when a dam is built on a river to brake its flow, the river’s sediment load settles down in the dam’s reservoir.
Globally, more than 50,000 large dams are in operation today. At least 100 billion tonnes of sediment has been retained in these reservoirs in the past 50 years, causing significant reduction in the flux of sediment to coasts. From Egypt (Nile river delta) to Morocco (Moulouya wetlands) to Louisiana (Mississippi river delta), big dams exacerbate coastal erosion across the world.
Too many dams on rivers also mean that too little water reaches deltas. This, in effect, results in limited percolation to coastal aquifers. Also, restricted river flow forces coastal people to extract more and more groundwater, already under severe pressure due to a spurt in population along the coasts. It is this low-recharge-high-extraction scenario (not any perceived rise in sea levels) that is making coastal aquifers vulnerable to seawater ingress.
“There is need for reorientation in our thinking. We should ensure better management of water resources instead of worrying about climate change over which we anyway have no control. By extracting too much groundwater, constructing big dams and allowing effluents to enter the water system, we have created a water crisis that poses a far greater challenge,” says Dr BP Radhakrishna, former president of the Geological Society of India, Bangalore.
THE BLINDSPOT
If you are taken in by the apocalypse scenario of a future water catastrophe caused by glacier meltdowns and rise in sea levels, you had better figure out how severe a water crisis is facing us right now.
Consider these:
• By 2015 all countries, except Canada and Scandinavian nations, will suffer water shortage in at least a part of their territory. If present trends continue, according to the UN Water Report of 2007, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population will face water stress.
• Such water scarcity will also jeopardise our food security. Agriculture and animal husbandry are water intensive processes. It takes a litre of water to produce food worth one calorie of energy. So, to satisfy the need of 3,000 calories per person for a population of 6.5 billion on earth, our daily requirement of water is equivalent to a water body that is 1 metre deep, 1 kilometre wide and 7 million kilometre long—long enough to encircle the earth 180 times.
• Already, in parts of the world such as West Asia, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the North China Plain and the High Plains in North America, human water use has exceeded average annual water replenishment. With 60 per cent of the global population and just 36 per cent of the earth’s available freshwater share, Asia faces the grimmest crisis.
• An analysis of Nasa satellite data published in Nature this August shows that the groundwater level has been going down by 33 cm per year in India’s northern plane (Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi) over the past decade due to over extraction.
Indeed, if we trace the growth of our so-called ecological footprint, water emerges the biggest casualty. While the world’s population increased by 300 per cent in the 20th century, the use of water increased by a staggering 700 per cent. Over a longer period of 250 years since the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide formulations in the atmosphere have gone up by approximately 37 per cent, methane by 150 per cent and nitrous oxide by 16 per cent.
But does our water security depend on climate change? The IPCC report does offer projections of how global warming will impact groundwater and rainfall patterns, but the latest UN World Water Development Report of 2009 notes that ‘these impacts are likely to be small (and possibly negligible) compared with the stresses placed on groundwater systems by current socio-economic drivers’.
Besides causing groundwater depletion, these socio-economic drivers have also triggered a problem of contamination. Already, 1.7 billion people lack access to safe water in developing countries. In India and Bangladesh, more than 500 million people are living in an arsenic affected area of 600,000 sq km in the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra plain. In India alone, at least 62 million people, including 14 million children, are suffering from fluorosis.
“If we compare the total amount of available water on earth to a water bottle containing 18 litres of water, the available surface freshwater is only three teaspoons. This puts enormous pressure on the groundwater stock which is again less than 1 per cent of the earth’s total water. We are taking little care of this priceless reserve. Groundwater arsenic and fluoride contamination in developing countries could be more serious than any human tragedy known to mankind,” warns Dr Dipankar Chakraborti, director, School of Environmental Studies, Kolkata.
The major water contaminants created by human activities are microbial pathogens, nutrients, pesticides, oxygen-consuming substances, heavy metals and persistent organic matter. These pollutants enter water systems through agricultural run-off, domestic and industrial effluents and inadequately treated wastewater discharge, erosion, mine and landfill leachate, litter disposal etcetera. Every aspect of our lifestyle and economy endangers the water sources we live on.
Sample these:
• Approximately 2 million tonnes of human waste is released annually into rivers and streams around the globe.
• It is estimated that 90,000 to 100,000 chemicals are in regular use; many of them toxic.
• In the US alone, industries produce more than 36 billion kg hazardous organic chemical-based pollutants every year, and only 10 per cent of this is being disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner.
• Projected increases in fertiliser use for food production over the next three decades suggest that there will be a 10–20 per cent global increase in river nitrogen flows.
“These are not computer-simulated trends. These are real, hard data. While climate change is natural, the hype over it is political. This din diverts our attention from pollution, the biggest man-made disaster,” says Dr Arun D Ahluwalia, director, Centre of Advanced Studies in Geology, Punjab University, Chandigarh.
Five years back, water scientists Michel Meybeck and Charles Vörösmarty warned that “the global impacts of human interventions in the water cycle…are likely to surpass those of recent or anticipated climate change, at least over decades.”
Granted, the UN declared 2005–2015 the International Decade for Action (Water for Life), ‘to enhance international cooperation in addressing the exploitation and degradation of water resources’. But even after half a decade, there is hardly any effective move for inter-governmental agreements to protect trans-boundary freshwater systems, or a commitment to cut down on use of pesticides and toxins that poison water worldwide. The world has been too busy fighting the perceived threats of global warming.
THE BOTTOMLINE
But even if the climate change debate is far from over, shouldn’t we anyway try to reduce air pollution? Won’t the mitigation methods prescribed to fight global warming anyway help the environment?
Yes, we should cut down emissions by all means. But we should set ourselves realistic targets. Pushing for high targets will always delay a global consensus. More importantly, reducing emissions requires making compromises – both individual (lifestyle) and economic. Since we and our economy can make only that much compromise at a time, higher emission targets may not leave room to set effective targets for reducing water usage or regulating contamination.
And, no, not all prescriptions to fight climate change are necessarily healthy. We should not encourage bio-fuel or jatropha cultivation, without assessing how it will affect our food security on a planet of finite land and water resources. We should not promote plantation of fast-growing trees, particularly in areas where rootstocks can bounce back, without assessing how monocultures damage soil quality and biodiversity. But yes, we should start asking questions.
A few years back, Professor Stott described the “climate angst” as “each successive generation’s craving for its own Noah myth”. Today, few remember the scare of global cooling in the early 1970s when alarmists started predicting the imminent collapse of the world. That climate hysteria lasted for about two decades till, in the late 80s, it was time for global warming.
Copenhagen 2009 comes two decades after the IPCC was established in 1988 and released its first report in 1990. With no real deal in sight (see next post below), perhaps it is time for the pundits to move on to the next climate scare.
Meanwhile, you may still refuse to go with the flow. The world may yet avoid water wars.
Mazoomdaar is an independent journalist and filmmaker
Open magazine, 27 Nov, 2009
First, a disclaimer: this article does not intend to make the reader doubt the dangers of global warming. It intends to go a little further.Second, an admission: it is never easy to approach any ‘gospel truth’ with facts and reason. Ask Dr Mitchell Taylor.
One of the most startling advertisements of climate change is that global warming has made life difficult for polar bears and will wipe out two-thirds of their population in the next 50 years. In 2002, however, a USA Geological survey of Wildlife noted that polar bear populations ‘may now be near historic highs’. More recently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service recorded that that there were 20,000-25,000 polar bears, up from 5,000-10,000 estimated in the 1950s and 1960s.
Those reports did not make news. But then, Dr Taylor, one of the planet’s most experienced Arctic biologists who has been following polar bears for three decades, happily—and inconveniently— reported that of the 19 different polar bear populations, almost all were at optimum levels or increasing; only two have for local reasons modestly declined. Even the southern less ice region of the Davis Strait, Dr Taylor noted, ‘is crawling with polar bears. It’s not safe to camp there. They’re fat. The mothers have cubs. The cubs are in good shape.’
The result of his report? Dr Taylor was barred from the much-hyped meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG), set up under the IUCN Species Survival Commission, held in July this year at Copenhagen, because his views running ‘counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful’.
Covered with much fanfare by the media, the PBSG meet ‘renewed the conclusion from previous meetings that the greatest challenge to conservation of polar bears is…climatic warming’. The ban on Dr Taylor, and his field observations, went largely unreported.
THE MYTHDr Taylor was not the only one doubting the theory of man-made global warming or its impact.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2007 (fourth assessment) authored by 52 scientists, claimed a scientific consensus on its findings that increasing emission of greenhouse gases due to human activities had already triggered a dangerous trend of global warming and unless emission levels were controlled, the trend would soon lead to rapid melting of snow and ice, causing rivers to dry up and coastal areas to disappear under a rising sea.
But so far, at least 650 scientists from around the world have questioned the report’s findings. Dissent has always been there. According to a survey of 530 climate scientists in 27 countries, conducted in 2003 by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch at the GKSS Institute of Coastal Research in Germany, 82 per cent said global warming was happening, 56 per cent said it was mostly caused by human activities, and only 35 per cent said models could accurately predict future climate conditions.
More recently, a study published in Energy and Environment in 2008 found that of a total 528 papers on climate change (2004-2007), only one paper made any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results. While 32 papers rejected the IPCC consensus outright, 263 did not commit either way.
Of course, there is a consensus that the climate is changing. Climate is determined by averaging weather variables over an extended period and has been changing ever since the earth has been turning. And, nobody denies that the earth’s resources are getting increasingly stretched due to spiralling population and human development. So, leave alone science, the common sense way forward is to adopt environmentally sustainable economies and lifestyles.
But forced to acknowledge climate change as the biggest threat facing mankind, the scientific fraternity has been raising three fundamental questions. Is the global climate really warming up? If so, is the change due to human activities (greenhouse gas emissions) and can it be controlled by human intervention (reduction in emissions)? Are the alarming forecasts of imminent tipping points realistic?
• A number of scientists deny any evidence of any unnatural or significant rise in global temperature. For example, they refer to the Nasa Giss data that show how the South Pole winter (June-August) has cooled about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1957 and the coldest year was 2004. Nasa itself, after hyping the year 1998 as the hottest in US history, eventually accepted a data error and corrected the record to 1934 as the hottest year.
According to these sceptics, while bandying about the lowest ice extent since satellite monitoring began in 1979 in the Arctic, climate activists gloss over the fact that the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica, has set a new record for maximum ice extent. Since 1979, the trend has been progressively upwards for the total Antarctic ice extent, with a number of new records set over the past 15 years.
Some, like Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, argue that historically, there have been sharp rises in temperature over very short periods. In 1200 AD, Europe was 2 degrees centigrade warmer than it is today and agriculture flourished even in Greenland.
• Many agree that the climate has been showing a warmer trend but maintain that there is no scientific evidence to prove that the warming is man-made or it can be controlled by reducing GHG emissions.
Some of them, like Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, blame solar activities, and not GH gases, for the warming trend.
Others, like Luc Debontridder of Brussels’ Royal Meteorological Institute or Professor Geoffrey G Duffy of the University of Auckland, maintain that water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds have a much greater greenhouse impact than carbon dioxide (CO2). Incidentally, atmospheric water vapour is not anthropogenic, its formation and dynamics are independent of human activities.
• The scientific fraternity is most critical when it comes to random doomsday predictions. Mike Hulme, head of the EU integrated project Adam (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies), recently blamed alarmist tendencies for “complicating things with climate change myths” by linking everything—from hurricane Katrina to Mumbai rains—to global warming. He slammed movies like The Day After Tomorrow and Age of Stupid for exaggerating threats of climate change.Back home, not too long ago, the country’s most prominent climate expert appeared on a news channel to support the theory that global warming was behind the melting of the ice Shiva Lingam (stalagmite formation) at Amarnath. He looked more angry than embarrassed when reminded that the stalagmites in the neighbouring caves were in good health because they did not have to suffer the temperature rise caused by too many jostling devotees.
Unfortunately, the IPCC itself triggered this alarmist trend. So much so that in the final draft of the fourth assessment report released in 2007, the panel had to revise its exaggerated predictions made in 2001 and reduce the overall estimate of the effects of global warming by 25 per cent.
THE SCARE
For India, the most dramatic climate forecast is that the Gangotri glacier will disappear by 2035, reducing the Ganga to a seasonal river.
The recent report on Himalayan glaciers by Dr VK Raina, a former deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India, found it ‘premature to make a statement that glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating abnormally because of global warming’. On Gangotri, the report said that the glacier had been retreating rapidly at about 20 metres per year until 2000, but has since slowed down considerably, and practically remained standstill since September 2007.
“Data generated from the Himalayas over the last 100 years indicate that the glaciers have been retreating continuously, barring a flip here and there. But the rate of retreat has not been alarming or unnatural, especially in the last decade or so. There is nothing to support claims that these glaciers, including Gangotri, will disappear in the next few decades,” maintains Dr Raina.
In a paper published in Current Science last year, Dr Sharad Jain, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, pointed out that even if the annual recession rate of the Gangotri glacier reaches 40 metres – which is double the current rate—a glacier that measures 30 km in length will take about 700 years to melt away.
“It was a rather simplistic way to explain the improbability of the glacier disappearing in the near future. After considering nonlinearities and to make a conservative estimate, the time-span could be assumed to be hundreds of years. If the snout of the Gangotri glacier was indeed at the Gangotri temple about 4,000 years ago, its retreat over four millennia has been just 18 km,” explains Dr Jain.
Even if we assume that the Gangotri glacier is in real danger of melting away, will it make the Ganga a seasonal river?
Three rivers—the Chambal, Ken and Betwa—contribute to the Ganga through the Yamuna. In Bihar, four mighty rivers—the Ghaghara, Gandak, Kosi and Sone—join in. Together, these tributaries bring enough water to make the Ganga’s flow at downstream Patna almost 17 times its flow at upstream Devprayag. But even in the headwaters region, the Ganga depends only partially on the Gangotri glacier for water. As Dr Jain points out, snow and glacier melting contribute only 29 per cent to the annual flow at Devprayag; the rest is from rainwater. More than 70 per cent of the flow at Haridwar is due to rainfall and beyond Haridwar, the influence of the Gangotri glacier on river flow becomes progressively less—at Allahabad, it is less than 4 per cent.
“Most of the Ganga’s catchment is rain fed. Even during the lean season, there is enough baseflow (discharge derived from groundwater sources), particularly downstream Haridwar. Glaciers or no glaciers, the Ganga will remain a perennial river as long as groundwater tables are intact,” claims Professor I B Singh, an authority on the Ganga and a veteran geologist with Lucknow University.
The other perceived threat of global warming—rising sea levels leading to erosion, salinity and inundation—has unsettled many in India, particularly along its 8,000-km-long coastline.While a significant rise in sea levels and subsequent inundation still remain only a possibility, increasing salinity and rapid erosion are already making lives miserable for much of India’s coastal population. But can these trends be attributed to climate change?
“Over the last 2,000 years, many rapid warming and cooling episodes occurred on 100-year scales. This has resulted in the rise and fall of sea levels. The threat perception on account of sea level rise is less compared to the other factors,” says Dr TN Prakash, a senior scientist at the Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.
According to Dr Prakash, coastal erosion is a natural, seasonal phenomenon. But the impact is being felt more severely in recent years due to destruction of protective mangrove covers and reduced sediment discharge by rivers. Other human factors, like rampant beach mining, also add to the problem. As recently as the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004, mangroves acted as a buffer in a number of stretches along the coastline. Without the effective bio-fencing of mangrove cover or dune vegetation, coastlines are increasingly getting exposed to erosion.
A free-flowing river gathers sediments as it meanders inland and deposits the load when it reaches the sea. This sediment load compensates for much of coastal erosion. But when a dam is built on a river to brake its flow, the river’s sediment load settles down in the dam’s reservoir.
Globally, more than 50,000 large dams are in operation today. At least 100 billion tonnes of sediment has been retained in these reservoirs in the past 50 years, causing significant reduction in the flux of sediment to coasts. From Egypt (Nile river delta) to Morocco (Moulouya wetlands) to Louisiana (Mississippi river delta), big dams exacerbate coastal erosion across the world.
Too many dams on rivers also mean that too little water reaches deltas. This, in effect, results in limited percolation to coastal aquifers. Also, restricted river flow forces coastal people to extract more and more groundwater, already under severe pressure due to a spurt in population along the coasts. It is this low-recharge-high-extraction scenario (not any perceived rise in sea levels) that is making coastal aquifers vulnerable to seawater ingress.
“There is need for reorientation in our thinking. We should ensure better management of water resources instead of worrying about climate change over which we anyway have no control. By extracting too much groundwater, constructing big dams and allowing effluents to enter the water system, we have created a water crisis that poses a far greater challenge,” says Dr BP Radhakrishna, former president of the Geological Society of India, Bangalore.
THE BLINDSPOTIf you are taken in by the apocalypse scenario of a future water catastrophe caused by glacier meltdowns and rise in sea levels, you had better figure out how severe a water crisis is facing us right now.
Consider these:
• By 2015 all countries, except Canada and Scandinavian nations, will suffer water shortage in at least a part of their territory. If present trends continue, according to the UN Water Report of 2007, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population will face water stress.
• Such water scarcity will also jeopardise our food security. Agriculture and animal husbandry are water intensive processes. It takes a litre of water to produce food worth one calorie of energy. So, to satisfy the need of 3,000 calories per person for a population of 6.5 billion on earth, our daily requirement of water is equivalent to a water body that is 1 metre deep, 1 kilometre wide and 7 million kilometre long—long enough to encircle the earth 180 times.
• Already, in parts of the world such as West Asia, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the North China Plain and the High Plains in North America, human water use has exceeded average annual water replenishment. With 60 per cent of the global population and just 36 per cent of the earth’s available freshwater share, Asia faces the grimmest crisis.
• An analysis of Nasa satellite data published in Nature this August shows that the groundwater level has been going down by 33 cm per year in India’s northern plane (Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi) over the past decade due to over extraction.
Indeed, if we trace the growth of our so-called ecological footprint, water emerges the biggest casualty. While the world’s population increased by 300 per cent in the 20th century, the use of water increased by a staggering 700 per cent. Over a longer period of 250 years since the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide formulations in the atmosphere have gone up by approximately 37 per cent, methane by 150 per cent and nitrous oxide by 16 per cent.
But does our water security depend on climate change? The IPCC report does offer projections of how global warming will impact groundwater and rainfall patterns, but the latest UN World Water Development Report of 2009 notes that ‘these impacts are likely to be small (and possibly negligible) compared with the stresses placed on groundwater systems by current socio-economic drivers’.
Besides causing groundwater depletion, these socio-economic drivers have also triggered a problem of contamination. Already, 1.7 billion people lack access to safe water in developing countries. In India and Bangladesh, more than 500 million people are living in an arsenic affected area of 600,000 sq km in the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra plain. In India alone, at least 62 million people, including 14 million children, are suffering from fluorosis.
“If we compare the total amount of available water on earth to a water bottle containing 18 litres of water, the available surface freshwater is only three teaspoons. This puts enormous pressure on the groundwater stock which is again less than 1 per cent of the earth’s total water. We are taking little care of this priceless reserve. Groundwater arsenic and fluoride contamination in developing countries could be more serious than any human tragedy known to mankind,” warns Dr Dipankar Chakraborti, director, School of Environmental Studies, Kolkata.
The major water contaminants created by human activities are microbial pathogens, nutrients, pesticides, oxygen-consuming substances, heavy metals and persistent organic matter. These pollutants enter water systems through agricultural run-off, domestic and industrial effluents and inadequately treated wastewater discharge, erosion, mine and landfill leachate, litter disposal etcetera. Every aspect of our lifestyle and economy endangers the water sources we live on.
Sample these:
• Approximately 2 million tonnes of human waste is released annually into rivers and streams around the globe.
• It is estimated that 90,000 to 100,000 chemicals are in regular use; many of them toxic.
• In the US alone, industries produce more than 36 billion kg hazardous organic chemical-based pollutants every year, and only 10 per cent of this is being disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner.
• Projected increases in fertiliser use for food production over the next three decades suggest that there will be a 10–20 per cent global increase in river nitrogen flows.
“These are not computer-simulated trends. These are real, hard data. While climate change is natural, the hype over it is political. This din diverts our attention from pollution, the biggest man-made disaster,” says Dr Arun D Ahluwalia, director, Centre of Advanced Studies in Geology, Punjab University, Chandigarh.
Five years back, water scientists Michel Meybeck and Charles Vörösmarty warned that “the global impacts of human interventions in the water cycle…are likely to surpass those of recent or anticipated climate change, at least over decades.”
Granted, the UN declared 2005–2015 the International Decade for Action (Water for Life), ‘to enhance international cooperation in addressing the exploitation and degradation of water resources’. But even after half a decade, there is hardly any effective move for inter-governmental agreements to protect trans-boundary freshwater systems, or a commitment to cut down on use of pesticides and toxins that poison water worldwide. The world has been too busy fighting the perceived threats of global warming.
THE BOTTOMLINEBut even if the climate change debate is far from over, shouldn’t we anyway try to reduce air pollution? Won’t the mitigation methods prescribed to fight global warming anyway help the environment?
Yes, we should cut down emissions by all means. But we should set ourselves realistic targets. Pushing for high targets will always delay a global consensus. More importantly, reducing emissions requires making compromises – both individual (lifestyle) and economic. Since we and our economy can make only that much compromise at a time, higher emission targets may not leave room to set effective targets for reducing water usage or regulating contamination.
And, no, not all prescriptions to fight climate change are necessarily healthy. We should not encourage bio-fuel or jatropha cultivation, without assessing how it will affect our food security on a planet of finite land and water resources. We should not promote plantation of fast-growing trees, particularly in areas where rootstocks can bounce back, without assessing how monocultures damage soil quality and biodiversity. But yes, we should start asking questions.
A few years back, Professor Stott described the “climate angst” as “each successive generation’s craving for its own Noah myth”. Today, few remember the scare of global cooling in the early 1970s when alarmists started predicting the imminent collapse of the world. That climate hysteria lasted for about two decades till, in the late 80s, it was time for global warming.
Copenhagen 2009 comes two decades after the IPCC was established in 1988 and released its first report in 1990. With no real deal in sight (see next post below), perhaps it is time for the pundits to move on to the next climate scare.
Meanwhile, you may still refuse to go with the flow. The world may yet avoid water wars.
Mazoomdaar is an independent journalist and filmmaker
Hierarchy Begins at Home
Why rich bullies in the climate debate should not surprise us
Open magazine, 27 Nov, 2009
Alphonse Karr did not know about global warming but his now clichéd observation holds good for the climate deadlock. The flickering hope died out three weeks before Copenhagen. No, there will be no legally binding international deal on emission cuts. We won’t hear any definite word on other contentious issues, such as financing and technology transfer, either. Already, Copenhagen has been reduced to ‘setting the stage’ for the next climate summit at Mexico in 2010.
The green diehards are outraged. Yes, the global responsibility of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—possible only by compromising national economies and individual lifestyles—is supposed to be shared by all nations. But is it really surprising that many have found ways to appear more (or less) equal than others?
The contention is simple. Due to higher population density and inferior technologies, the developing countries (read China and India) will together account for more than two-thirds of the world’s GHG emissions by 2020. So the developed world (read the US) wants these countries to invest big in green technologies.
The poorer nations argue that they have a lot of catching up to do in terms of growth and that they cannot afford to saddle their economy. Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, they point out, may account for much of the global GHG burden, but per capita emissions in these poorer parts of the world are still negligible, compared to Europe (230 per cent) or North America (500 per cent). Therefore, the developing world wants the rich nations to mind their own emissions, and, help poorer nations financially to upgrade technology.
Taking a cue from former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, if we mark out the poorest countries on the globe, we also end up demarcating the areas with highest concentrations of biodiversity on earth. Conversely, to identify the areas with severe environmental degradation, we only need to highlight the richest nations on the map. Naturally, the Indian climate establishment and its negotiators do not want the developed world (read the US) to lecture them on emission cuts.
But it is difficult to escape a feeling of déjà vu at home. If we repeat the above exercise on India’s map, we only have to identify the poorest districts to get the forest map of the country. Much of prosperous India won’t show even a few specks of green from the sky. Not too long back, all these areas were forested, rich in biodiversity. Evidently, across the country, those assets have been exploited for economic growth.
Today, global warming or not, science tells us that we must save whatever little forests remain. Still, we do not limit mining or mega-constructions inside forests because these are economic activities that keep making us richer. Instead, we tell poor forest communities, people who did not or could not cut down their forests and make money like we did, to make livelihood sacrifices to secure the country’s ecological future.
Now, how different is that from the US telling India to cut down emissions no matter what to secure the earth’s future?
Recently, the Centre raised the compensation for those moving out of India’s prime forests to Rs 10 lakh per family. But what are such families, uprooted from their lives, supposed to use the money for? To buy land outside forests (because it was not provided free), spend for infrastructure (because little was built) and gamble at some alternative livelihood (because no vocational training was provided). In effect, they will end up giving the money back to our structured economy without finding so much as a foothold.
How different is that from the developed world’s strategy of offering aid to developing countries to fight global warming and then making them buy low-carbon technologies?
So, what is the only consensus at Copenhagen? Convenience.Again, take the example at home. While we want to shift a few thousand families from core critical forest areas, we have given land and other rights to millions living in the so-called non-critical forests across India. On paper, the idea is to allow them limited exploitation (as opposed to our plunder) of forest resources. But these marginal communities understand little of rights and less of responsibility. Between their poverty and the lures of a parallel (mafia) economy, much of these forests will be lost soon.
If we were indeed serious about conservation, we could have empowered these communities while giving them rights to exploit those non-core forests. Regular conduct-based incentive schemes would encourage and justify sustainable use of forest resources and, importantly, keep the mafia out. But such schemes dent the economy. So does absence of mafia.
So, past rhetoric notwithstanding, a number of world leaders and top climate negotiators have been quite candid in the last three weeks that no save-the-earth deal is going to be inked at Copenhagen. Of course, there are talks of raising two funds—one to protect poor countries from the worst impact of climate change and the other to reduce deforestation in the developing world. Also, the new market for clean technologies will get a boost. A lot of money will change hands. Few will need to change their lifestyles, or cut emissions directly.
Karr was right, after all. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Open magazine, 27 Nov, 2009
Alphonse Karr did not know about global warming but his now clichéd observation holds good for the climate deadlock. The flickering hope died out three weeks before Copenhagen. No, there will be no legally binding international deal on emission cuts. We won’t hear any definite word on other contentious issues, such as financing and technology transfer, either. Already, Copenhagen has been reduced to ‘setting the stage’ for the next climate summit at Mexico in 2010.
The green diehards are outraged. Yes, the global responsibility of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—possible only by compromising national economies and individual lifestyles—is supposed to be shared by all nations. But is it really surprising that many have found ways to appear more (or less) equal than others?
The contention is simple. Due to higher population density and inferior technologies, the developing countries (read China and India) will together account for more than two-thirds of the world’s GHG emissions by 2020. So the developed world (read the US) wants these countries to invest big in green technologies.
The poorer nations argue that they have a lot of catching up to do in terms of growth and that they cannot afford to saddle their economy. Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, they point out, may account for much of the global GHG burden, but per capita emissions in these poorer parts of the world are still negligible, compared to Europe (230 per cent) or North America (500 per cent). Therefore, the developing world wants the rich nations to mind their own emissions, and, help poorer nations financially to upgrade technology.
Taking a cue from former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, if we mark out the poorest countries on the globe, we also end up demarcating the areas with highest concentrations of biodiversity on earth. Conversely, to identify the areas with severe environmental degradation, we only need to highlight the richest nations on the map. Naturally, the Indian climate establishment and its negotiators do not want the developed world (read the US) to lecture them on emission cuts.
But it is difficult to escape a feeling of déjà vu at home. If we repeat the above exercise on India’s map, we only have to identify the poorest districts to get the forest map of the country. Much of prosperous India won’t show even a few specks of green from the sky. Not too long back, all these areas were forested, rich in biodiversity. Evidently, across the country, those assets have been exploited for economic growth.Today, global warming or not, science tells us that we must save whatever little forests remain. Still, we do not limit mining or mega-constructions inside forests because these are economic activities that keep making us richer. Instead, we tell poor forest communities, people who did not or could not cut down their forests and make money like we did, to make livelihood sacrifices to secure the country’s ecological future.
Now, how different is that from the US telling India to cut down emissions no matter what to secure the earth’s future?
Recently, the Centre raised the compensation for those moving out of India’s prime forests to Rs 10 lakh per family. But what are such families, uprooted from their lives, supposed to use the money for? To buy land outside forests (because it was not provided free), spend for infrastructure (because little was built) and gamble at some alternative livelihood (because no vocational training was provided). In effect, they will end up giving the money back to our structured economy without finding so much as a foothold.
How different is that from the developed world’s strategy of offering aid to developing countries to fight global warming and then making them buy low-carbon technologies?
So, what is the only consensus at Copenhagen? Convenience.Again, take the example at home. While we want to shift a few thousand families from core critical forest areas, we have given land and other rights to millions living in the so-called non-critical forests across India. On paper, the idea is to allow them limited exploitation (as opposed to our plunder) of forest resources. But these marginal communities understand little of rights and less of responsibility. Between their poverty and the lures of a parallel (mafia) economy, much of these forests will be lost soon.
If we were indeed serious about conservation, we could have empowered these communities while giving them rights to exploit those non-core forests. Regular conduct-based incentive schemes would encourage and justify sustainable use of forest resources and, importantly, keep the mafia out. But such schemes dent the economy. So does absence of mafia.
So, past rhetoric notwithstanding, a number of world leaders and top climate negotiators have been quite candid in the last three weeks that no save-the-earth deal is going to be inked at Copenhagen. Of course, there are talks of raising two funds—one to protect poor countries from the worst impact of climate change and the other to reduce deforestation in the developing world. Also, the new market for clean technologies will get a boost. A lot of money will change hands. Few will need to change their lifestyles, or cut emissions directly.
Karr was right, after all. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
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