📰 39 Indians, abducted by IS in Iraq, are dead: Sushma
DNA tests on remains from mass grave confirmed identities, Minister tells RS
•External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday informed the Rajya Sabha that the 39 Indians, who had been abducted in Iraq in 2014, are dead.
•In her suo motu statement in Parliament, Ms. Swaraj said that while it was not immediately known when the Indians were killed, their bodies had been recovered from a mound in Badush, around 30 km from Mosul. The identities of the deceased were established after the bodies were exhumed from a mass grave and matched with DNA samples collected from family members in September last year.
•Strands of long hair, a kada (metal bangle worn by Sikhs), a few ID cards and shoes, which were not of Iraqi brands, were also recovered from the mound after the bodies were exhumed, the Minister said. The help of the Martyr’s Foundation, an Iraqi government-run agency, was sought to establish the identity of the deceased, she said.
Singh to bring remains
•Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh would travel to Iraq to bring back the mortal remains of the Indians, she said.
•“I had said I would not declare anyone dead without substantive proof. I had said that whenever I got proof, I would first inform Parliament if it was in session or apprise the country within 10 minutes on Twitter. Today, I have come to fulfil that commitment. I had said that closure would be done with full proof. And when we will, with a heavy heart, give the mortal remains to their kin, it will be a kind of closure,” Ms. Swaraj told Rajya Sabha.
•The group of 40 Indian workers, mostly from Punjab, and some Bangladeshis were taken hostage by fighters of the Islamic State (IS) when the outfit captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2014. A member of the group, Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur, managed to escape to Erbil and contacted Indian authorities. He later claimed that the other hostages were taken to a jungle, lined up and shot dead. The government had then rejected his claims.
📰 Criterion for giving minority tag to educational groups tweaked
More institutions will now fulfil the requirement
•Making it easier for educational institutions to get the minority tag, the Department of Primary and Secondary Education has tweaked the eligibility criterion to set up minority education institutions.
•The older rules required a school to have 25% of the total number of students in an academic year belonging to a specific religious or linguistic minority community. But, the Karnataka Educational Institutions (Recognition of minority educational institutions terms and conditions) draft rules issued on Monday state that the institution can have 25% students belonging to any number of religious or linguistic minority communities.
•The other criterion of two-thirds of the management members having to be of a particular minority community remains unchanged.
•As of now, there are 1,873 religious minority institutions and 248 linguistic minority institutions across the State. With this move, several institutions will have a chance to get the minority tag as they fill up 25% of seats from different minority communities.
•Explaining how this benefits institutions, a Department of Public Instruction official said: “Earlier, we received applications from institutions that claimed to be a Malayali minority institution. But, they did not show 25% students from the same community, so they failed to be accorded the minority status. The same schools can now show 15% of their students from Malayali community, 5% from Telugu community, and 5% from Urdu community and still be called minority institution.”
Move opposed
•The move has also met with criticism from the Opposition as well as minority communities. D.Z. Gulshad Ahmed, president of the Karnataka Unaided Minorities Schools Management Association, said the new eligibility criterion will be “misused” by school managements to get minority status. “If a school is a Muslim minority institution, they should have at least 25% of students from that community. If not, how does the community benefit?” he asked.
•Academics also pointed out that the new rules would help a large number of schools “escape” from reserving 25% of their seats for students from weaker and disadvantaged backgrounds under the RTE Act.
•Justifying the move, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait said the population of linguistic minority communities was less and the move would benefit institutions run by them.
📰 SC gives State a month to submit revised seniority list
•The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied the Karnataka government six months to implement its February 9, 2017, judgment to revise the promotion list of employees after invalidation of a law granting reservation in promotion to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe employees.
•A Bench headed by A.K. Goel gave the State a month to set the record straight after senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, on behalf of the State, submitted the revised seniority list of departments. “If the directions are not complied with, the Chief Secretary has to appear personally before the court on April 25,” Justice Goel said.
•The court was hearing a petition seeking contempt action against the State authorities.
•The court also brushed aside arguments made by the State that status quo should be maintained as the validity of the M. Nagaraj verdict of 2006, which formed the basis of the February 9 verdict, was recently referred to a Constitution Bench. The apex court observed that mere reference of the Nagaraj judgment to the Constitution Bench “does not put a cloud of suspicion on our judgment”.
•Senior advocate Rajiv Dhavan, appearing for the aggrieved employees whose promotions have been put on hold, contended that there was “undoubted lassitude” on the part of the State. “Please summon the Chief Secretary and the MD of power corporations... everything will be done,” he said.
•Mr. Dhawan said the forthcoming State Assembly elections were also a cause for the government to drag its feet. Mr. Rohatgi sought an adjournment till July.
•In January this year, the Supreme Court slammed the State government for not complying with its February 9 judgment.
•In its judgment, the court had held that the “exercise for determining inadequacy of representation, backwardness, and overall efficiency is a must before a State decides to provide reservation with consequential seniority under Article 16 (4A) of the Constitution for SC/ST persons in government service”. It had then given Karnataka three months to revise its seniority list.
•However, the State responded by passing the Karnataka Extension of Consequential Seniority to Government Servants Promoted on the Basis of Reservation (To posts in the Civil Services of the State) Bill, 2017. This Bill is awaiting the President’s assent.
📰 Separate freedoms
Why did the court extend the deadline on linking Aadhaar to various services, but refuse to grant one for welfare plans?
•Last year, before a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India , the Central government posited a frightening thesis. The Constitution, it argued, does not recognise a fundamental right to privacy. One of the main planks of this submission revolved around a notion that privacy was a purely elitist concern, that a liberty of this kind, whenever and wherever it can be promised, will always be overridden by the government’s duties in a welfare state. The court, however, decidedly thought otherwise. Indeed, its categorical rejection of the government’s arguments was a cause for much celebration. The court showed us, at least in theory, that it was willing to treat every citizen with equal dignity, care and respect, that the inviolability of rights was not conditional on a person’s position in society.
Protecting privacy
•“The refrain that the poor need no civil and political rights and are concerned only with economic well-being has been utilised through history to wreak the most egregious violations of human rights,” wrote Justice D.Y. Chandrachud in his opinion on behalf of himself and three others. Privacy, he added, could never be a privilege doled out only to a select few. “Every individual in society irrespective of social class or economic status is entitled to the intimacy and autonomy which privacy protects… The pursuit of happiness is founded upon autonomy and dignity. Both are essential attributes of privacy which makes no distinction between the birth marks of individuals.” Justice R.F. Nariman, in his separate opinion, was equally dismissive of the government’s arguments. There can be no “antipathy whatsoever between the rich and the poor,” he wrote, on the existence of a fundamental right to privacy.
•In its reach, however, the judgment in Puttaswamy went even further. Not only did the judges see a general guarantee of privacy as foundational, and as subject only to the limits on freedom expressly provided by the Constitution’s language, but, even more significantly, a clear majority on the bench also placed their faith in a system that saw fundamental rights as unassailable, in a system where an individual will not be waiving her liberties simply by accepting grants and benefits from the government. In other words, the court acknowledged that the state wasn’t doing anyone a favour by providing them benefits and subsidies — these were as much an entitlement that sprang from the Constitution as the other freedoms flowing from the document’s text.
Selective extension
•Now, therefore, we must ask ourselves this: what brought about a volte-face in the Supreme Court’s thinking, in its interim order delivered on March 13, in the ongoing battle over the validity of the Aadhaar programme? Here, the court extended the government-mandated deadline on linking Aadhaar to different services, including one’s banking and mobile phone accounts, until it delivers a final judgment. But, markedly, it refused to grant a similar extension for notifications made under Section 7 of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016. These notifications make a person’s entitlement to a host of welfare schemes, including subsidy programmes, conditional on the individual possessing an Aadhaar number. Aren’t citizens enrolled to receive benefits from government entitled to the same freedoms as others?
•Originally, the state told us that by providing every Indian a unique identity number, by collecting biometric information from us, including our fingerprints and iris scans, the government can ensure an equitable distribution of benefits to the poor. But there were many problems with this vision. For one, it lacked any legislative backing, and was, therefore, clearly introduced without due process. What’s more, the state displayed a complete lack of care or concern for a person’s right to privacy, in commencing a project which it couldn’t have even been sure would satisfy its purported objectives. After all, the government had barely conducted any disinterested study before the project was piloted to examine its costs and benefits. As a result, several petitions were filed in the Supreme Court, questioning the project’s constitutional validity.
•However, when these cases came up for hearing before a three-judge bench, in 2015, the government argued that the Aadhaar programme couldn’t be questioned, because the Constitution, in any event, didn’t guarantee any right to privacy. Faced with this astonishing claim, the court, later that year, referred the cases to a larger bench, to answer what ought to really have been a rudimentary question: does the Constitution recognise a fundamental right to privacy? While making this reference, though, the court also delivered a brief interim order.
•The production of an Aadhaar card, it wrote, cannot be made mandatory for obtaining any benefits otherwise due to a citizen. Additionally, Aadhaar could only be used for a specific list of purposes, such as the enforcement of schemes under the Public Distribution System. In October that year, a bench modified this order to include certain other schemes for which Aadhaar could be used, but, at the same time, was careful to clarify that the project was entirely voluntary and that no person could be compelled to enrol in the programme.
Clause on subsidy
•In the meantime, in March 2016, even as these petitions were pending before the Supreme Court, the Union government introduced in the Lok Sabha a draft legislation, in the form of a money bill, with a view to legitimising the creation of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs the Aadhaar programme. This law, the Aadhaar Act of 2016, describes enrolment with the UIDAI as voluntary. But, in Section 7, it authorises both the Central and State governments to make Aadhaar mandatory for anyone wishing to receive a subsidy, benefit or service, for which expenses are borne from the Consolidated Fund of India. Although this clause, at the same time, demands that the government must accept alternate proofs of identity from persons without an Aadhaar number, since the law’s enactment the state has notified more than 130 schemes in which beneficiaries of different welfare measures have been mandated to enrol with the UIDAI. These programmes include schemes that affect access to the public distribution system, to mid-day meals for children, to pensions for the elderly, to public health care, to food subsidies under the National Food Security Act, to maternity benefits, and to an array of other such necessities.
•Simultaneously, the government has also made a series of declarations under various different laws, directing individuals to secure an Aadhaar card and to link this number with their income tax PAN, bank accounts, financial services such as mutual and provident funds, and insurance policies, among others. Now, although the deadline for seeding Aadhaar with these services expires on March 31, much like the deadline for linking Aadhaar for the purposes of the schemes notified under Section 7, the benefit of the Supreme Court’s interim order, delivered last week, will enure only to the former.
•The consequences of this classification are enormous. It creates a fait accompli on Aadhaar for economically and socially deprived persons alone. Every day stories abound on denial to individuals of one benefit or another — access to rations, to food, to health care and to pensions — because of a failure in biometric authentication. Given the substantial concerns raised over the efficacy of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication, why, we might be tempted to ask, did the court separately rank notifications under Section 7?
•Does the court’s order tell us that rights are not sacrosanct; that individuals seeking benefits from the state exist purely at the government’s mercy? Is the court reneging on the glorious promises it made last year? Regrettably, the order offers no explanation. Indeed, there can be no rationale for this classification. The court has every power to now amend its interim order. Unless it does so, the social contract, undergirding the Constitution, faces the grave threat of being reduced to rubble.
📰 Centre wants ‘humane’ AFSPA
Minister, however, says there is no plan to withdraw the Act in Kashmir
•In a first admission that Centre was keen to water down the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), 1958, Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir informed the Lok Sabha that it was considering a proposal to make the Act more “operationally effective and humane.”
•The AFSPA is in force in several northeastern States.
•In a written reply in the Lok Sabha, Mr. Ahir said: “There is no proposal under consideration of the Government of India to withdraw the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990. However, a proposal is under consideration to make the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 more operationally effective and humane.”
•The decision came after the Home Ministry decided to reduce the number of Central Armed Police Force personnel deployed in the northeastern States.
Army opposed move
•The Army had opposed any such move and several rounds of meetings had taken place with the Home Ministry. Home Minister Rajnath Singh had suggested that certain “tweaking” was required as far as deployment of Central forces was concerned. An official said the insurgency-related incidents in Northeast had come down to 308 in 2017, the lowest since 1997.
•Another official said there was no final decision to repeal the AFSPA as of now, but the Jeevan Reddy Committee report, which recommended so, was taken into account. The Centre appointed a five-member committee headed by Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy in November 2004 to review the AFSPA.
•The committee recommended that the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, should be modified to specify the powers of the armed forces and the Central forces. The Home Ministry was of the view that additional Central forces would be sent to the northeastern States and the respective State governments would deploy the State police for regular law and order and patrolling duties. In 2017, no insurgency-related incidents were reported in Tripura and Mizoram and no security forces were killed in Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram.
📰 SC/ST Act being used for blackmail, says top court
Issues guidelines against arbitrary arrests of employees
•The anti-atrocities law, which protects Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from casteist slurs and discrimination, has become an instrument to “blackmail” innocent citizens and public servants, the Supreme Court observed in a judgment on Tuesday.
•The past three decades have seen complainants — who belong to the marginalised sections of society — use the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 to exact “vengeance” and satisfy vested interests, a Supreme Court Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit said in their 89-page judgment.
•“Innocent citizens are termed accused, which is not intended by the legislature. The legislature never intended to use the Atrocities Act as an instrument to blackmail or to wreak personal vengeance,” the Supreme Court observed.
False complaints
•Instead of blurring caste lines, the Act has been misused to file false complaints to promote caste hatred, the apex court said. The current working of Atrocities Act may even “perpetuate casteism” if it is not brought in line and the court needs to intervene to check the “false implication of innocent citizens on caste lines.”
•“The Act cannot be converted into a charter for exploitation or oppression by any unscrupulous person or by the police for extraneous reasons against other citizens. Any harassment of an innocent citizen, irrespective of caste or religion, is against the guarantee of the Constitution. This court must enforce such a guarantee. Law should not result in caste hatred,” the Supreme Court held.
•The 1989 Act penalises casteist insults and even denies anticipatory bail to the suspected offenders. The law is therefore used to rob a person of his personal liberty merely on the unilateral word of the complainant, the court said. Justice Goel wrote that anticipatory bail should be allowed if the accused is able toprima facie prove that the complaint against him is malafide.
•The court referred to how public administration has been threatened by the abuse of this Act. Public servants find it difficult to give adverse remarks against employees for fear that they may be charged under the Act.
Issues guidelines
•Issuing a slew of guidelines to protect public servants and private employees from arbitrary arrests under the Atrocities Act, the Supreme Court directed that public servants can only be arrested with the written permission of their appointing authority. In the case of private employees, the Senior Superintendent of Police concerned should allow it.
•Besides this precaution, a preliminary inquiry should be conducted before the FIR is registered to check whether the case falls within the parameters of the Atrocities Act and if it is frivolous or motivated.
📰 Centre clears Rs. 1,400 cr. for Polavaram
•The Union Ministry of Finance has directed NABARD to release Rs. 1,400 crore from the Long Term Irrigation Fund (LTIF) to fund the Polavaram Project, State Water Resources Principal Secretary Shashi Bhushan Kumar has said.
•The Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation (MoWR, RD&GR) Ministry in a letter dated February 26 asked the Finance Ministry approval for borrowing the fund under LTIF from NABARD for Rs. 1,794.37 crore to fund the project.
•The Finance Ministry however gave NABARD permission to release Rs. 1,400 crore as LTIF.
Amount still due
•Mr. Kumar said that funds to the tune of Rs. 1,800 were still due under the ‘approved Detailed Project Report’ of Rs. 16,010.
•With the release of Rs. 1,400 crore, another Rs. 400 crore would still be due, he said.
•The funds that need to be channelled through the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) and the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) would reach the State government within the next 10 days, Mr. Shashi Bhushan Kumar said.
Funds released
so far for project
•NABARD through LTIF has so far released Rs. 2,000 crore as funds for the Polavaram Project that had been declared a National Project in two instalments of Rs. 1,000 crore each on July 20 and October 3, 2017.
📰 India to take up U.S. tariffs bilaterally
Trump administration’s action will invite scrutiny on whether it is WTO compatible: Minister Prabhu
•India will take up the issue of the U.S. imposing tariffs on steel and aluminium imports on a bilateral level, Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Tuesday.
•“We are obviously not the largest exporter of steel or aluminium to the U.S.,” Mr. Prabhu said at a press conference following the conclusion of an informal mini-ministerial meeting of the WTO, which was attended by 53 countries.
•“But still, as far as we are affected, we will definitely take it up with the U.S. with whom we have a huge trade surplus and we have a very good political relationship. We will take up this matter with them bilaterally.”
•U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced a 25% import tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminium.
•“What the U.S. has raised, whether it is WTO compatible or not, whether it is violating some rules or not, is something the country will have to individually look into,” Mr. Prabhu added. “This is a unilateral action [by] the U.S., and any trade related action is subjected to scrutiny on whether it is WTO compatible or not.”
•WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo also expressed his concerns about the actions taken by the US, warning that this could lead to escalation and retaliatory tariffs being imposed by other countries.
‘Potential for escalation’
•“The WTO does not as an institution take a stance, but I have said publicly that I am very concerned [about the U.S.’ decision],” Mr. Azevedo said. “And I think the institution itself could say the same because such measures, for whatever reason, have a very real potential for escalation because of the possibility of responses from other partners with trade restrictive measures as well, and that is something we should avoid.”
•“This is what we heard today, with many countries saying they are concerned by this and highlighting the potential for escalation,” he added. “We have to proceed very carefully and try to work within the framework of the WTO.” He also urged member countries to follow up verbal commitments to multilateral trade through action.
•“Members committed to continuing negotiations on various issues including on the ones where we made no progress under the Doha round,” Mr. Azevedo said. “But... just pledging support for the system is not enough. We need to match words with deeds.”
📰 New telecom policy almost ready: Sinha
‘Will be brought in next House session’
•Union Minister Manoj Sinha said on Tuesday that the new telecom policy (NTP) was almost ready and would be brought in the next session of Parliament after Cabinet nod.
•“The new telecom policy is almost ready, and, this month, we will place it on the Department’s website for public comments. We will bring it in the next session of Parliament,” the telecom minister said on the sidelines of ‘Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana’ award ceremony.
Growth roadmap
•The NTP 2018, being crafted by the Department of Telecom, is expected to present a growth roadmap for the Indian telecom sector, which has been reeling under severe financial stress.
•The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had earlier suggested that the sector should be able to address global requirements and attract investments of about $100 billion by 2022 under the new policy.
•The regulator had also recommended that NTP 2018 should facilitate ease of doing business through simplification of licensing and regulatory frameworks, rationalisation of taxes, levies and related compliances and facilitating availability of resources, including spectrum.
📰 ‘Move out, move up approach could ease India’s farm crisis’
Farmers must shift to cities or climb value chain: IFPRI chief
•Indian must adopt policies that facilitate sections of farmers to ‘move out’ of rural areas to urban areas and the remaining ones to ‘move up’ in the farming sector to tackle the current agrarian crisis, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said.
•“India needs a ‘move out, move up’ approach to deal with the agriculture crisis,” Shenggen Fan, Director General, IFPRI told The Hindu in an interview ahead of the release of the annual global food policy report.
Productivity conundrum
•“It is important to address farmers’ problems. Most of the hungry people in the world are farmers. The first response is to increase productivity and production. But there is a problem there. When every one is producing more, the prices will go down and we have seen that in India, China and everywhere…For India, some farmers have to move to cities and urban centres. Those who stay behind will be able to increase the holding and move to producing high value food, that will create new opportunities. That is the ‘move out, move up’ approach,” he said.
•Mr. Fan said non-farm opportunities in rural areas must also increase if farmers have to come out of poverty.
•“We have statistics showing that the higher the non-farm income, the lower the poverty rate,” he said, naming food processing, input supplies, trade and marketing, making construction materials for urban centres etc. as such non-farm opportunities that are possible in rural areas, where farmers could work part-time or seasonally.
•Mr. Fan, who grew up in China said the Chinese transformation was based on this approach of ‘move out and move up’ but there is more resistance to this approach in India.
Resistance in India
•“Policy makers in India do not appreciate this much, it appears to me. They want to keep people in rural areas. This is not fair to them as they would continue to struggle. The policies should facilitate move out and move up,” he said. He said India has been investing in rural and urban projects separately, but investment in the linkage between urban and rural economy is inadequate.
•Talking about the future of agriculture, he said as urban people get prosperous they will demand better, more nutritious food in the future. This would encourage agriculture that is now grain focused, to shift to vegetables, fruits, good dairy products and meat.
•“It is a great opportunity for small holders. Some agriculture entrepreneurs may come to rural areas from cities and use GPS, drones, laser technology etc. to produce healthier food in more efficient ways, from relatively smaller holdings,” said Mr. Fan.
•Pointing out that the ownership of future agriculture technologies will have implications for the future of farmers, Mr. Fan said India must increase its investment in research. “Indian agriculture scientists must work hard to develop and own new technologies. The country should own them rather than multinationals, so that your farmers will benefit. You should invest more in this research,” he said. According to Mr. Fan, the spread of the Internet has led to a “lot of misinformation on GMOs” in countries liked India and China, and the “governments and the researchers have the responsibility to spread accurate information” to help farmers.
•Mr. Fan said anti-globalism could be detrimental to food security and countries such as India and China must continue to argue for “free and fair trade” and the free movement of people around the world.
📰 Rajasthan loses two tigers in two days
A cat each from Ranthambore and Sariska have died
•Rajasthan has lost two male tigers in separate incidents in the Ranthambore National Park and the Sariska Tiger Reserve since Monday. A 13-year-old tiger died when it was tranquillised near Ranthambore on Tuesday, while a four-year-old died after it was caught in a snare in Sariska on Monday.
•On Tuesday, a tiger strayed from the Ranthambore National Park and went too close to a village in Khandar area of Sawai Madhopur district, where villagers began attacking it. A team of forest officials rescued the big cat after tranquillising it, but the animal died shortly after it was shifted to the forest area.
•The tiger at the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Alwar district died on Monday night after being caught in a snare laid by a farmer on an agricultural field adjacent to the forest area. The death of this radio-collared male, ST-11, comes close on the heels of the mysterious disappearance of a female tiger from Sariska, ST-5.
•The farmland where the tiger got trapped is located in Kala Medha village of Indok area, where ‘Nilgais,’ or blue bulls, often stray into the farmland and destroy crops. The farmer, Bhagwan Sahay Prajapat, was arrested after he surrendered to the forest authorities.
‘Not poaching’
•Rajasthan’s Chief Wildlife Warden G.V. Reddy told The Hindu that the death of the Sariska tiger was not a case of poaching. “The Forest Department is investigating the matter. The tiger died of strangulation when it got entangled in the metal wire of the snare,” he said.
•ST-11 was the first tiger born in Sariska after the relocation of some big cats from the Ranthambore National Park to Sariska.
•The tiger was born to ST-10 and grew up in the Decera lodge and Rampur areas of the forest reserve. It was fitted with a very high-frequency (VHF) radio collar for effective tracking in May last year.
•The Forest Department has sought the help of scientists of the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, for tracking the ST-5, which went off the radar on February 24.
📰 Awash in water crises
Business-as-usual approaches to water security are no longer sufficient
•As World Water Day draws closer (March 22), this year’s World Water Development Report makes it clear that nature-based solutions — which are also aligned with the principles and aims of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — can offer answers to our most pressing water-related challenges. Business-as-usual approaches to water security are no longer viable.
•Nature-based solutions hold great promise in areas which also include sustainable food production, improved human settlements, access to drinking water supplies and sanitation, water-related disaster risk reduction, and helping to respond to the impact of climate change on water resources.
Water hotspots
•The water-related challenges we face today are immense. The world’s population is expected to increase from 7.6 billion (2017) to between 9.4 and 10.2 billion people (2050), with two-thirds of them living in cities. UN estimates are that more than half of this anticipated growth will be in Africa (1.3 billion) and Asia (0.75 billion). Therefore, those most in need of water will be in developing or emerging economies.
•Climate change is also impacting the global water cycle with wetter regions generally becoming wetter and drier regions drier. An estimated 3.6 billion people now live in areas that could face water scarcity for at least a month in a year, with that number increasing to 4.8 and 5.7 billion by 2050. The International Water Management Institute estimates that total demand could increase from 680 billion cubic metres (BCM) to 833 BCM by 2025, and to 900 BCM by 2050.
•By 2050, countries already facing water scarcity challenges may also be forced to cope with the decreased availability of surface water resources. India faces major threats to its water security, with most water bodies near urban centres heavily polluted. Inter-State disputes over river resources are also becoming more intense and widespread.
Deteriorating water quality
•Along with water scarcity, there is the issue of water quality. Since the 1990s, water pollution has worsened in most rivers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). An estimated 80% of industrial and municipal wastewater is released without any prior treatment, with detrimental impacts on human health and ecosystems. Given the transboundary nature of most river basins, regional cooperation will be critical to addressing projected water quality challenges.
•A Central Pollution Control Board report indicates that almost half of India’s inter-State rivers are polluted. Sewage from 650 cities and towns along 302 polluted river stretches in the country increased from 38,000 million litres per day (MLD) in 2009 to 62,000 MLD in 2015. It found that the untreated sewage and industrial waste was a major cause of pollution in 16 of 40 inter-State rivers in the country.
•Nature-based solutions can address overall water scarcity through “supply-side management,” and are recognised as the main solution to achieving sustainable water for agriculture.
•Environmentally-friendly agricultural systems like those which use practices such as conservation tillage, crop diversification, legume intensification and biological pest control work as well as intensive, high-input systems. The environmental co-benefits of nature-based solutions to increasing sustainable agricultural production are substantial as there are decreased pressures on land conversion and reduced pollution, erosion and water requirements.
•Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment can also be a cost-effective, nature-based solution that provides effluent of adequate quality for several non-potable uses (irrigation) and additional benefits that include energy production. Such systems already exist in nearly every region of the world. Natural and constructed wetlands also biodegrade or immobilise a range of emerging pollutants. Recent experiments suggest that for some emerging pollutants, nature-based solutions work better than “grey” solutions, and in certain cases may be the only viable option.
•Watershed management is another nature-based solution that is seen not only as a complement to built or “grey” infrastructure but also one that could also spur local economic development, job creation, biodiversity protection and climate resilience.
•Nature-based solutions are closely aligned with traditional and local knowledge including those held by indigenous and tribal peoples in the context of water variability and change.
Case of Chennai
•Chennai in Tamil Nadu is a textbook example of how nature is being ignored in urban development-posed challenges. Unplanned urban development and unwieldy growth with no hydrological plan are causing many problems. Earlier, when there was heavy rain in catchment areas in the Chennai region, lakes, ponds, tanks, rivers and inter-linked drainage systems helped replenish groundwater, hold back some water and release the excess to the ocean. With development, a number of tanks and lakes in and around Chennai have been encroached upon by various stakeholders. Major rivers and canals such as the Cooum, Adyar and Buckingham Canal which are meant to carry excess rainwater to the Bay of Bengal now serve as the city’s drainage outlets. The Pallikaranai marsh which acted as a sponge to soak up excess rainwater is now an over-run.
•Nature-based solutions are crucial to achieving our Sustainable Development Goals. Adopting them will not only improve water management but also achieve water security.
📰 World’s last male northern white rhino dies in Kenya
45-year-old Sudan was a symbol of efforts to save his sub-species
•Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, has died in Kenya at the age of 45, after becoming a symbol of efforts to save his sub-species from extinction, a fate that only science can now prevent.
•When Sudan was born in 1973 in the wild in Shambe, South Sudan, there were about 700 of his kind left in existence.
•At his death, there are only two females remaining alive and the hope that in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) techniques will advance enough to preserve the sub-species.
•Sudan, elderly by rhino standards, had been ailing for some time, suffering from age-related infections, according to his keepers at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where he lived under protection from potential poachers. The rhino’s condition worsened significantly in the last 24 hours and the veterinary team made the decision to euthanise him.
‘Great ambassador’
•“We at Ol Pejeta are all saddened by Sudan’s death. He was a great ambassador for his species and will be remembered for the work he did to raise awareness globally of the plight facing not only rhinos, but also the many thousands of other species facing extinction as a result of unsustainable human activity,” said Richard Vigne, Ol Pejeta’s CEO. Rhinos have few predators in the wild due to their size.
•However, demand for rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine and dagger handles in Yemen fuelled a poaching crisis in the 1970s and 1980s that largely wiped out the northern white rhino population in Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad.
•A final remaining wild population of about 20-30 rhinos in the Democratic Republic of Congo died out during the fighting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and by 2008 the northern white rhino was considered extinct in the wild.
•In the 1970s, Sudan was shipped to the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic.
•He did manage to sire two females while at the Czech zoo. His daughter Najin, 28, and her daughter Fatu, 17, are the two females left alive at Ol Pejeta.
IVF techniques
•Scientists have gathered Sudan’s genetic material and are working on developing IVF techniques to preserve the subspecies.
•The plan is to use sperm from several northern white rhino males that is stored in Berlin, and eggs from the two remaining northern white females and implant the embryo in a surrogate southern white female, said Ol Pejeta.
📰 India joins Europe’s satellite data sharing pool
Can exchange earth observation information
•India has joined Europe’s mega global arrangement of sharing data from earth observation satellites, called Copernicus.
•Data from a band of Indian remote sensing satellites will be available to the European Copernicus programme, while designated Indian institutional users will in return get to access free data from Europe’s six Sentinel satellites and those of other space agencies that are part of the programme, at their cost.
•The space-based information will be used for forecasting disasters, providing emergency response and rescue of people during disasters; to glean land, ocean data; and for issues of security, agriculture, climate change and atmosphere, according to a statement issued by the European Commission here.
•The agreement was signed in Bengaluru on Monday by Philippe Brunet, Director for Space Policy, Copernicus and Defence, on behalf of the EC and by P.G. Diwakar, Scientific Secretary, Indian Space Research Organisation.
•The multi-billion-euro Copernicus is Europe’s system for monitoring the earth using satellite data. It is coordinated and managed by the EC.
Range of applications
•The free and open data policy is said to have a wide range of applications that can attract users in Europe and outside. The Copernicus emergency response mapping system was activated on at least two Indian occasions — during the 2014 floods in Andhra Pradesh in October 2014 and after the 2013 storm in Odisha.
•“Under this arrangement, the European Commission intends to provide India with free, full and open access to the data from the Copernicus Sentinel family of satellites using high bandwidth connections. Reciprocally the Department of Space will provide the Copernicus programme and its participating states with a free, full and open access to the data from ISRO’s land, ocean and atmospheric series of civilian satellites (Oceansat-2, Megha-Tropiques, Scatsat-1, SARAL, INSAT-3D, INSAT-3DR) with the exception of commercial high-resolution satellites data,” the EC said.
•The arrangement includes technical assistance for setting up high bandwidth connections with ISRO sites, mirror servers, data storage and archival facilities.
