The existence of India as we know is at stake. The environment, particularly the climate component of it, warrants serious concern. What is needed is mass action. Inaction may mean the end of the country
The Kerala floods of August and September and the droughts that had scorched several parts of India earlier in the year, once again underlined the fact that the environment — particularly the climate component of it — warrants serious concern. The prospects are frightening. According to a study in the journal Environmental Research Letters, prolonged heatwave conditions lasting up to eight months, could become the norm for the Gangetic plains by the 2070s if the emission of greenhouse gases is not reduced to limit the global temperature increase to two degrees. According to a study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology published in the journal Science Advances, vast areas in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh would become too hot for human survival by 2100.
Anxiety about the environment predates predictions about such a horrifying future. A number of preventive/corrective measures have been suggested and some of these have been implemented. One certainly could not have expected these to provide results overnight. The grouse is that even what could have been achieved has remained elusive. Two questions arise at this stage. What accounts for the continuing deterioration? What needs to be done to arrest the process?
The main reasons have been popular resistance to change and lack of governmental will. For example, it is known that post-harvest burning of plant stubbles in agricultural fields in North India is a major cause of air pollution in Delhi and the surrounding areas from roughly the time around Diwali to the end of winter. Nor is it a secret that it continues because farmers would not hear of ending it and Governments are unwilling to use compulsion.
Air pollution, in the whole of India and not just the northern part of it, is also caused by exhausts from cars, buses, vans and lorries which substantially increase an area’s greenhouse gas level. Measures have doubtless been taken to minimise this. On November 26, 2014, the National Green Tribunal banned cars older than 15 years from being driven in Delhi. On April 7, 2015, it extended the prohibition to diesel vehicles 10 years and older.
The other causes include exhausts from air-conditioners, the use of which is going up rapidly, and the display of fireworks and the explosion of crackers which become ubiquitous during Diwali and the days preceding and following but are becoming increasingly frequent during festive occasions like weddings, birthday parties and victory celebrations in an array of fields from sports events to elections to representative bodies like Parliament, State legislatures and municipalities.
The impact of the age-specific bans on petrol and vehicles diesel-driven, though more or less effectively implemented in Delhi, has not been significant because cars account for only a fraction of vehicular pollution, the main cause of which are exhausts from buses and lorries. Besides, no such ban is operative in most other parts of the country and polluted air from the neighbouring areas floats into Delhi skies with breeze. Instead of declining, the display of fireworks and explosion of crackers are increasing with growth injecting more money into the economy. Given the public’s mood, the trend is unlikely to be reversed in the near future. The same applies to the use of air conditioners. The increase in their numbers will continue given not just the growing affluence of the middle class but global warming pushing up temperatures.
The chances of a marked improvement in Delhi’s air quality in the near future thus appear dim. The same goes for most Indian cities. The argument that this does not warrant desperate concern because air pollution is primarily an urban problem, does not wash. Urbanisation is growing. According to a survey featured in the UN World Urbanisation Report 2018, about 34 per cent of India’s population now lives in cities against 11.4 per cent according to the 1901 census. A survey cited in the UN State of the World Population Report in 2007 stated that 40.76 per cent of India’s populations would live in urban areas by 2030.
Vehicular traffic in rural areas is increasing with development and, with it, pollution. Also, while there is an increasing switch-over to gas and electric stoves for cooking in urban areas, large sections in the rural areas use charcoal, coal, dried cow dung cakes and wood in inefficient stoves leading to emission of large quantities of particulate matters damaging to health and black carbon which conduces to global warming.
The basic cause of the Kerala floods was intense and incessant rainfall on an unprecedented scale. This was a result of extreme and unpredictable weather conditions created by global warming. The latter is a world-wide phenomenon and India, cannot counter the process on its own. Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s disregard for it and the US’ withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Accord, portend ill for the future of transnational efforts to cope with global warming. India can only do its best to contain the impact of the phenomenon on itself. The need for this is all the greater because, according to a World Bank report, temperatures are rising — and rainfall becoming erratic — throughout South-East Asia and the trend will continue for decades. Cities such as Kolkata, Mumbai, Dhaka and Karachi would be under a substantial risk of suffering from flood-related damages in the next century.
Governmental unwillingness to take essential but unpleasant measures will end if there is a growing pressure to act. The same goes for its vulnerability to corporate pressures to relax environmental norms to permit money-spinning projects in areas like reserved forests and animal sanctuaries. Norms, even where in place, are flouted in practice with full knowledge of the powers that be whose palms have been greased. Popular movements against power plants, mines and factories whose devastating effects on the lives of all those around, are murderously put down.
What is needed is mass action on the environment front. The chances of the various local ones coalescing into a national movement will have to overcome the hurdle of indifference of the middle class whose aspirations and patterns of living have changed substantially with increased incomes. On their part, Governments have to take measures like providing effective mass transit systems to taper off the use of private transportation and increased supply of electricity and gas to end polluting forms of cooking. All this will not be easy. But the price of inaction will mean the end of India as it now exists.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
