With a population of over 1.3 billion, India is soon set to dislodge China as the most populous country of the world. Today, our country is riddled with a number of environmental concerns which have only aggravated in the last few decades. Also, 1 out of 8 deaths in India is by air pollution. Intriguing fact is that we will never feel the pollution impact till our 50% lungs are damaged by indoor and outdoor pollution. Same is applicable to our liver also which is affected by water pollution and adulterated poor quality food. Climate change / destruction of nature (48.8%) is the most series global issue followed by large scale conflict/war(38.9%). ( by Business Insider)
In May 2016, Phalodi in Rajasthan recorded a temperature of 51 degrees Celsius – the highest ever in the country. The increasingly tormenting heat waves in the past years are but an indication that global warming and climate change are real challenges that the country is facing now.
With the Himalayan glaciers melting at an alarming rate, floods and other such natural disasters are occurring with increasing frequency. The number of forest fires, floods, earthquakes and such other calamities over the past five years has been unprecedented.
Humans activity has added the amount of CO2 in air in past 200 yrs equal to amount added by earth in past 4.5 billion years, in next 100 years it is estimated CO2 level will rise from 0.04 to 0.07%, without any effort on our part to reduce our carbon footprint, the temperature of the planet will increase by 4.1–4.8 degrees by the end of the century. Most people don’t even know that CO2 is a Green House gas not a polluted gas. In 1950, CO2 was 0.003% in air but in 2010 it became 0.004%, it was interesting how scientist proved that CO2 level was never above 0.003% in past 4 lakh years by analyzing air trapped in deep snow in poles.
Russia made new sea rout seeing snow melt opportunity at North Pole and Arctic (ABC NEWs 2017). Coal fired power plant produce 38% of global electricity, transportation is 2nd largest energy consuming (38%) thing after Industries. Coal fired power plant have much ionizing radiation effect than a nuclear power plant.
Air pollution is one of the worst scourges to have affected India. According to a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), by 2040 there are likely to be about 9 lakh premature deaths in the country due to the drastic rise in air pollution. Air pollution causes 8 million deaths per year globally by cancer and respiratory disorders.
Average life expectancy are likely to go down by about 15 months because of air pollution. India is also home to 11 out of 20 of the most polluted (in terms of air pollution) cities in the entire world.
According to the rankings of the 2016 Environmental Performance Index, India ranks 141 out of 180 countries in terms of air pollution. Delhi’s air is twice as bad as Beijing’s air.
Rapidly depleting levels of groundwater is one of the biggest threats to food security and livelihood in the country. According to news reports, excessive exploitation of limited groundwater resources for irrigation of cash crops such as sugarcane has caused a 6%-point decline in the availability of water within 10 meters from ground level.
The groundwater level in India has declined by 61 per cent between 2007 and 2017 and of the extracted water 89 per cent is used for irrigation, according to the census.
The north western and south eastern parts of the country responsible for most of the country’s agricultural production are worst hit and food crisis is a natural corollary. Industries and factories are discharging there harmful effluent directly into the ground water. ground water is also getting degraded by water pollution which cause severe water security issues and thousands of deaths daily.
Many of the problems that we see today can be directly attributed to land degradation, be it poverty, increasing incidence of extreme weather events, forced migration or loss of biodiversity, according to UNCCD, because land is fixed in quantity, there is ever-increasing competition to control land resources and capitalize on the flows of goods and services from the land. This has the potential to cause social and political instability, fuelling poverty, conflict and migration.
“According to studies, up to 40 per cent of conflicts that have occurred over the last 50 years have been due to competition to have access to natural resources - land, water, minerals, forest, among others. Unfortunately, very few -probably around a third of conflict resolution agreements -have a clause related to the root cause.”the UNCCD chief said.
Unrestrained use of plastics is another major concern for the country. According to data from the Plastindia Foundation, India’s demand for polymers is expected to go up from 11 million tonnes in 2012-13 to about 16.5 million tonnes in 2016-17. India’s per capita plastic consumption went up from about 4 kg in 2006 to some 8 kg in 2010. By 2020, this is likely to shoot up to about 27 kg. To understand the damage that this can cause to the environment, it is important to understand that plastics are one of the least biodegradable materials. An average plastic beverage bottle could take up to 500 years to decompose naturally. India generates 9.46 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, of which 40 per cent remains uncollected, 43 per cent is used for packaging and 40% of collected ones goes to landfill most of which is single-use, a new study has revealed. The study has been conducted by Un-Plastic Collective (UPC), a voluntary multi-stakeholder initiative to eliminate plastic pollution in nature and move towards a circular economy. In India, around 4-5% of municipal solid waste (MSW) material are postconsumer plastics in comparison to 6-10% in the US, Europe and other developed countries. India recycled 47% of its total plastic waste in contrast to China (11%), the US (3.5%), South Africa (15%), and UK (7%) Recent estimates predict a 10% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in plastics consumption over the next five years, reflecting a similar growth in the preceding five years. Its concern that there is no check on industries in how much they use recycled plastic and how much they use virgin plastic. 8 million tons of plastic enters sea every year, disturbing aquatic life. “Globally, over 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced since 1950, and about 60 per cent of that has ended up in landfills or in the natural environment.
Each year, the world loses 12 million hectares of land — enough to produce 20 million tonnes of food grains — due to overexploitation and climatic variations. Since intense modern agricultural practices have become the vogue, humankind has lost 2,000 million hectares of productive land. “A quarter of our land is now unusable. By the middle of the century we have to produce twice as much grains as today, as the global population is growing,” said UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw By 2050 world population will be around 10 billion and to feed this A 593 millionhectare land gap (an area nearly twice the size of India) is needed. (world resource e institute report) India is now ranking `103 among 119 countries in Global Hunger Index. Adulteration enhances the food security issues, 68% of milk in india is not suitable as per FSSAI standard in 2018. It is said that the degradation of land and marine ecosystems affects the well-being of 3.2 billion people globally and costs nearly 10 per cent of the annual global gross product in loss of species and ecosystem services. Averting further land degradation and reversing a part of it that has already happened helps not only global food security, but also aids in combating many other environmental issues, including deforestation, water and air pollution, and even climate change. A recent study has shown that if about 350 million hectares of degraded land — nearly a sixth of what is lost due to degradation — is restored between now and 2030, the global community can generate $9 trillion in ecosystem services and take an additional 13-26 gigatons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
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