📰 INCOIS launches ‘Digital Ocean’
Web based one-stop solution for all ocean data for varied users
•Union Minister for Science and Technology Harshvardhan on Monday launched the ‘Digital Ocean’ platform of Indian National Centre for Oceanic Information Services (INCOIS) here as a one stop-solution for all data related needs of a wide range of users, including research institutions, operational agencies, strategic users, academic community, maritime industry, and the public.
•“Digital Ocean (www.do.incois.gov.in) is expected to bring a sea-change in how the oceanographic data is served for a better understanding of oceans surrounding us. It will play a central role in sustainable management of our oceans and expanding our ‘Blue Economy’ initiatives,” informed INCOIS Director T. Srinivasa Kumar.
•Dr. Harshvardhan virtually unveiled the web platform in the presence of secretary of Ministry of Earth Science M. Rajeevan, Joint Secretary Vipin Chandra and others from New Delhi. This first of its kind platform for ocean data management has a set of applications that present heterogeneous oceanographic data with geospatial technology.
•“It will facilitate an online interactive web-based environment for data integration, 3D and 4D data visualization, data analysis to assess the evolution of oceanographic features obtained from multiple sources like on site monitoring devices, remote sensing and model data,” said the Director.
•INCOIS provides ocean information and advisory services to various stakeholders in the country, including Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) advisories, Ocean State Forecast (OSF), high wave alerts, tsunami early warnings, storm surge and oil-spill advisories, among others., using state-of-the-art technologies and tools to get real time information on oceanographic and marine meteorological data. The institute has been serving as the National Argo Data Centre and Regional Argo Data Centre of the International Argo Programme, he added, in a press release.
1,769 genome sequenced variant cases were matched with the same number of cases which are distinctly different from the new varian and studied
•Preliminary results from a cohort study found no statistically significant difference in hospitalisation and 28-day case fatality between cases with the new coronavirus variant (VOC 201212/01) and wild-type comparator cases. There was also no significant difference in the likelihood of reinfection between variant cases and the comparator group, says a second technical briefing report by the Public Health England.
•The preliminary assessment of outcomes of hospitalisation and case fatality caused by the new variant was performed by using a matched cohort study. In this, 1,769 genome sequenced variant cases were matched with the same number of cases which are distinctly different from the new variant. The median age of variant cases was 36 years and 35 for the wild-type cases. Over 51% of both the variant cases wild-type comparator cases were female.
•Fewer variant cases (16 cases) were admitted to hospital compared to wild-type comparator cases (26 cases) but the difference is not significant, the report says. For case fatality assessment, 1,340 people belonging to each group who have completed 28 days since the specimen date were compared. The study found that 12 of 1,340 (0.89%) people infected with the new variant died within 28 days compared with 10 of 1,360 (0.73%) people infected with virus not belonging to the new variant. The difference in case fatality between the two groups is “not significant”, the report says.
Reinfection studied
•Scientists also studied whether the new variant caused increased reinfection rates. A possible case of reinfection was considered if a PCR test was positive before 90 days of a previous infection with SARS-COV-2 virus. While only two reinfections were caused by the new variant, there were three reinfections in the other group.
Variant name
•Following risk assessment, the nomenclature of the new variant has been changed. While the variant was earlier called Variant Under Investigation (VOI), it is now known redesignated as Variant of Concern (VOC). As a result, the new variant, which was earlier called VUI 202012/01 on detection, has been re-designated on December 18 as VOC 202012/01.
📰 The tragedy of conservation
Isolating the indigenous people from their natural habitats in the Western Ghats to protect biodiversity is unproductive
•In 2012, 39 areas covering national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and reserved forests in the Western Ghats were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. These sites are crucial for their biodiversity value. Ten of them are in Karnataka.
•Since the time the Ministry of Environment and Forests began identifying the potential heritage sites, there has been unrest among the indigenous people. When the exercise began, they feared for their existence in lands that they had inhabited for decades. The restrictions on movement following the declaration of these territories as ecologically sensitive areas aggrieved them further.
•Against the backdrop of the enactment of the Forest Rights Act of 2006 in India and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2007 by the United Nations, the people residing in the Western Ghats did not anticipate that they would have to deal with the uncertainty about their future following the announcement of the World Heritage Site.
•The indigenous people of the Western Ghats, including the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, constitute 44.2% of the tribal population of 6.95% of Karnataka. The Western Ghats are also home to a sizeable population of communities like Gowlis, Kunbis, Halakki Vakkala, Kare Vakkala, Kunbi, and Kulvadi Marathi. In the context of the Forest Rights Act, they are treated as ‘other traditional forest dwellers’ since they have been living there for at least three generations prior to December 13, 2005 and depend on the forest or forest land for their livelihood needs. They eke out their living by collecting ‘minor forest produce’ such as cinnamon and kokum from the forest.
A dismal record
•Karnataka has a dismal record in implementing the Forest Rights Act compared to other States. According to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, as of April 30, 2018, the State had recognised only 5.7% of the total claims made. Notably, 70% of the claims were disposed off. There appeared to be clear inconsistency in the government’s approach in settling the claims made by the tribals versus the claims made by other traditional forest dwellers. The inconsistency reflected in their argument. According to them, tribal applications constituted 17.5% of the claims and nearly all of them were settled, while other claims were rejected as they were not backed by valid evidence. This means that claims made by other traditional forest dwellers were treated as inconsequential.
The wrong approach
•Assuming that denying tribals or other traditional forest dwellers their rights in the forest would serve the purpose of conservation is far from the truth. The Forest Rights Act is not about the indiscriminate distribution of forest land to anyone applying for it. As per the law, only those lands are recognised where people prove their occupation not later than December 13, 2005. Moreover, the combined stretch of land claimed by them is comparatively smaller by any account than what has been taken away for building dams, mining, laying railway lines and roads, power plants, etc. The government records also reveal that 43 lakh hectares of forestland were encroached both legally and illegally until 1980 when the Forest Conservation Act came into force. Sadly, there is no significant conservation even after this landmark law.
•Invariably, an approach adopted to isolate the indigenous people from their natural habitats to protect biodiversity is the root cause of conflict between them and conservationists. The latter think that resources have to be controlled and managed. However, this theory is fast proving unproductive. The Global Environment Outlook Report 5 mentions that there is decreased biodiversity across the globe even as ‘protected areas’ have been expanding. People living in nature’s surroundings are integral to conservation as they relate with it in a more integrated and spiritual way.
The way forward
•Declaration of the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site is as important in preserving the rich biodiversity of the region as the recognition of the rights of the people who depend on the forests. As confirmed internationally, preserving biodiversity requires the legal empowerment of the people living in those areas. The Forest Rights Act is an ideal instrument to push forward the objective. To realise it on the ground, the government must make an effort to build trust between its agencies in the area and the people who depend on these forests by treating them as equal citizens like everyone else in the country.
📰 Resilient supply chains as a pandemic lesson
An economy such as India can ill-afford the shocks of disruption or be held hostage by an over-reliance on imports
•A key lesson learnt by the world during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the importance of creating resilient supply chains that can withstand disruptions and ensure reliability for the global economy.
•Disruptions in supply chains can be natural or man-made. In Japan’s case, the Great Tōhoku Earthquake of 2011, followed by the Tsunami, led to a nuclear disaster (Fukushima Daiichi), causing a sharp drop in Japanese automobile exports to the United States.
Examples that hit home
•Man-made interruptions in supply chains are equally disruptive. Terrorist drone attacks on Aramco’s oil refineries at Abqaiq and Khurais in Saudi Arabia in September 2019 resulted in a drop of 5.7 million barrels of oil per day, triggering a steep plunge in Saudi Arabia’s stock market and a sharp spike in global oil prices.
•China has long practised “supply chain politics”. Japanese entrepreneurs learnt a hard lesson when the detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain in 2010 near the disputed Senkaku Islands resulted in the Chinese government cutting off exports of rare earths to Japan.
•When the novel coronavirus pandemic broke out, it had an immediate and telling effect on supply chains emanating from China. In India, several companies felt the disruption in the automotive, electronics and white goods sectors. India excels in the pharmaceuticals sector but the over-reliance on Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) from China still creates vulnerabilities in the value chain.
•Tensions with China led the United States government to impose restrictions on export of microchips to China’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), following assessment that there was an “unacceptable risk” that equipment supplied to it could be used for military purposes.
A new initiative
•Greater weaponisation of trade and technology is here to stay. It is in this context that India, Japan and Australia initiated the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) in September this year, focusing on automobiles and parts, petroleum, steel, textiles, financial services and IT sectors. The SCRI may be bolstered by the future involvement of France, though this might depend on the European Union’s position. The United Kingdom has also shown interest in the SCRI.
•Geo-politics and geo-economics can never be truly separated. This is what Henry Kissinger called the “principle of linkage” in his analysis of U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. When the Nixon administration came to power in 1969, the Soviet Union wanted access to some key western technologies in computing. Yet, it was unwilling to accommodate U.S. concerns on strategic and military issues. Kissinger clearly pointed out that to “separate issues into distinct compartments would encourage the Soviet leaders to believe that they could use cooperation in one area as a safety valve while striving for unilateral advantages elsewhere....”
•China has resorted to similar tactics, of maintaining advantageous trade and economic engagement, without relenting on strategic issues. China’s calls for “normal relations” with India are unrealistic given the continuing face-off in Ladakh.
Moves by Australia, Japan
•China has often used its economic leverage to weaken an opponent’s resolve on contentious issues. Facing such a dilemma, Australia has demonstrated strong political will in countering arbitrary Chinese sanctions imposed on its key exports of grain, beef, wine, coal and much else. This is a price that a democracy such as Australia finds worth paying, for demanding an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus and advocating a robust Indo-Pacific vision.
•Since the normalisation of diplomatic ties in the 1970s, Japan has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the Chinese economy. For many Japanese companies, global performance and profits are linked to manufacturing facilities and supply chains in China. Yet, they have shown an early capacity for risk mitigation through the “China Plus One” business strategy, aimed at diversification of investments to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), India and Bangladesh.
•In Phase-1 of Japan’s $2.2 billion Relocation Package announced this year, 89 Japanese companies availed subsidies to diversify out of China. Of these, 57 companies relocated to Japan, 30 to Southeast Asia and two to India.
•A sizeable number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) chose to relocate to Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. That in itself is hardly surprising since Japanese entrepreneurs are far more familiar with the cultural and business environment in ASEAN countries as compared to South Asia.
•However, companies in health care and medical devices, especially those manufacturing personal protective equipment (PPEs), would have benefited more by shifting to India which offers a much larger domestic market as well as lower manufacturing costs for global exports.
India’s vulnerabilities
•A large emerging economy such as India can ill-afford the shocks of disruption in supply chains. Nor can it allow itself to be held hostage due to an over-reliance on imports. For instance, the pandemic caused a breakdown in global supply chains in the automotive sector since most global manufacturers in China abruptly went offline. For India, which imports 27% of its requirement of automotive parts from China, this quandary was a wake-up call, given the sudden shortage of braking components, electrical components, interiors and lighting fixtures.
•What is noteworthy is that despite being the fourth largest market in Asia for medical devices, India has an import dependency of 80%. Among the biggest exporters to India in this field are China, the U.S., Germany, Singapore and Japan. This is clearly not sustainable. Given the renewed thrust in the health-care sector, this is the right time to fill gaps through local manufacturing.
•India’s electronics industry was worth $120 billion in 2018-2019 and is forecast to grow to $400 billion by 2025. Today, India is seeking to enhance its presence substantially in the global supply chains by attracting investments in the semiconductor components and packaging industry. The government is actively promoting domestic manufacture of printed circuit boards (PCBs), components and semiconductors, as the Indian electronics sector gradually shifts away from completely knocked down (CKD) assembly to high value addition.
Defence beckons
•Defence is among the key pillars of the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ policy. The government is providing a big boost to defence manufacturing under the ‘Make in India’ programme. It has identified a negative import list of 101 items. There is a tremendous opportunity for foreign companies to enter into tie-ups with reputed Indian defence manufacturers to tap into the growing defence market in India.
•The push for self-reliance through ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ is not an autarkic policy. It does not imply foreclosure of the Indian economy to foreign trade and participation in the global economy. On the contrary, it is aimed at strengthening India’s capacities to participate more vigorously without being prey to supply chain disruptions.
•India has the capacity and the potential to become one of the world’s largest destinations for investments, and one of the world’s largest manufacturing hubs, in the aftermath of the pandemic.
📰 The global angle to the farmer protests
It is not just domestic firms that are potential beneficiaries of the new farm laws; foreign agribusinesses are a danger too
•The farmers’ movement for the repeal of the three farm laws which affect them closely but have been rammed through without consulting them, has now entered its second month. It is of historic significance. It is not just about minimum support prices but also about the survival of the entire system of public procurement and distribution of foodgrains. Without ensuring the economic viability of foodgrains production in North India — the grain basket of the country — no continuity can be ensured for the public procurement and distribution system, which, despite its drawbacks, continues to provide a modicum of food security to vast numbers of our population.
Recreation of colonial times
•Northern industrial countries, namely the United States, Canada and the European Union (EU), cannot produce the tropical and sub-tropical crops in high demand by their own consumers while they have mountains of surplus grain and dairy products, the only goods their single-crop lands are capable of producing for climatic reasons. They must find export markets for these. For over two decades, they have put relentless pressure on developing countries to give up their own public procurement systems, insisting that they should buy their food grains from advanced countries, while diverting their food-crop-producing land to contract farming of export crops that these industrial countries want but cannot themselves produce. In short, they want a re-creation of the economic scenario of the colonial period.
•Dozens of developing countries, ranging from the Philippines in the mid-1990s to Botswana (Africa) a decade later, succumbed to this pressure. They paid the price when with rapid diversion of grain to ethanol production in the U.S. and the EU, world grain prices trebled in a matter of months from end-2007. Thirty-seven newly import-dependent countries saw food riots, with urban populations being pushed into greater poverty.
•Food security for the developing world is far too important a matter to be left to the global market, but the relentless attack on their public stocking of grain for ensuring food security continues. India had barely managed to pull back from the brink a decade ago: procurement prices were raised substantially after virtually stagnating during the six years preceding the 2008 price-spike, and grain output in Punjab grew again from near-stagnant levels as economic viability improved. But absorption of foodgrains did not improve as much owing to continued exclusion of many of the actually poor from ‘Below Poverty Line’ ration cards, while unemployment caused by the 2016 demonetisation followed by the 2020 pandemic has reduced aggregate demand by now to a historic low.
A case of unfair trade
•Our farmers have been exposed for no rhyme or reason to unfair trade, and to the volatility of global prices that has plunged them into unrepayable debt and distress — in one village in Punjab, there were as many as 59 widows of farmers forced into suicide. Trade with the North is unfair, because the advanced countries in the mid-1990s, converted their own price support measures to massive subsidies given as direct cash transfers to their own farmers, transfers that in a blatantly self-serving manner they wrote into the Agreement on Agriculture as ‘not subject to reduction commitments’. India along with other developing countries signed the Agreement with very little idea of the implications of the small print. For the U.S., the direct cash transfers it gives to its 2.02 million farmers, amounting to a huge half or more of its annual farm output value, uses up only 1% of its budget. For India, over 50% of the entire central government annual Budget would be required to give even a quarter of annual farm output value to our 120 million farmers, which is an economic impossibility and an administrative nightmare.
It’s about a reasonable price
•The farmers have made it amply clear that they do not want petty cash handouts; all they want is a reasonable price for the vital crops they produce for the nation, so that they can cover costs and live at a modest standard. In Indian circumstances, the price support system is in fact the only feasible one. While depletion of groundwater in Punjab is a real problem, the solution lies in introducing improved agronomic practices such as the System of Rice Intensification which economises water, not in reducing rice production. One does not cut off one’s head because of a headache.
•It is precisely the support prices for crops that had been deliberately put by advanced countries under completely arbitrary and absurd computation rules in the Agreement on Agriculture. The U.S. complained against India to the World Trade Organization in May 2018 that since the ‘reference price’ for calculating support was the 1986-88 average world price of a crop which they converted to rupees at the then prevailing ₹12.5 per dollar exchange rate, India’s support price per quintal for rice and wheat in 2013-14 should have been at the most ₹235 and ₹354, respectively! The actual support prices were ₹1,348 and ₹1,386, and the difference, over ₹1,000 per quintal, was then multiplied by the entire 2013-14 output of rice and wheat, and came to 77% and 67% of their output values (https://bit.ly/3mROANe). This, the U.S. claimed, was support provided in gross violation of the permitted 10%!
•Two months ago the U.S. sent fresh questions to India. Every kind of dishonest and absurd rule had been put into the Agreement on Agriculture to short-change gullible developing countries. Our farmers are among the lowest cost producers in the world, and the support prices in 2013-14 at the prevailing exchange rate of ₹60.5 per dollar were well below global prices, which means that actual support was negative.
Right assessment
•Current compression of global demand means that wheat and rice prices are at historic lows, advanced country farm subsidies are at historic highs and their desperation to dump their grain on our markets has intensified. While our protesting farmers have correctly identified domestic firms as potential beneficiaries of the new marketing laws that they oppose, foreign agribusiness corporations are as great a danger.
•Farmers have already experienced contract farming with foreign agribusinesses in Punjab and Haryana. They say clearly that they do not wish to deal with powerful, faceless private corporations that renege on price and quantity contracts when it suits them. Despite all its inefficiency and payment delays, they prefer to sell to government agents at the stipulated minimum support prices. They are absolutely correct in thinking that deregulation of markets as mandated by the new laws, and the entry of business firms, which will be not only Indian but also foreign, mean a severe undermining of the entire system of public procurement and minimum support prices.
The ‘green energy’ push
•There are many Indian intellectuals who argue that importing subsidised grain from the North will benefit poor consumers here. They forget that there is an increasingly powerful opinion advocating ‘green energy’ in advanced countries, pushing for even greater conversion of grain to ethanol; hence initial low-priced grain imports, if permitted today, will not only destroy our farmers but will soon give way to a scenario of price spikes and to urban distress as experienced earlier by developing countries forced into import dependence. Anyone with a concern for our own hard- working farmers and poverty-stricken consumers, must support the farmers’ demands against the machinations of both local and global business elites.
📰 The climate policy needs new ideas
It is not the rising prosperity of the poor that endangers the planet but the wasteful behaviour of the West
•2021 will be the year for a new global climate policy and India has the soft power to bring together the high and low emitters. Among the ‘major economies’, India will meet its Paris Agreement target for 2030. Its per capita emissions are one-third of the global average and it will remain within its share of ecological space.
•In an urbanised world, two-third of emissions arise from the demand of the middle class for infrastructure, mobility, buildings and diet. Well-being in cities is reflected in saturation levels of infrastructure with consumption, not production, driving growth as well as high urban per capita emissions. Infrastructure worldwide has used half of total materials, mainly construction, cement and steel, which have no substitute, and will need half of the available carbon space before comparable levels of infrastructure are reached globally around 2050. Peaking of emissions comes some 20-30 years after saturation of infrastructure has been achieved, with related high levels of well-being, as in the case of the West, before net zero emissions are considered. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was justifiably cautious at the Climate Action Summit and avoided commitments to cap emissions.
•Inequity is built into the climate treaty, which considers total emissions, size, and population, making India the fourth largest emitter, even though, according to the United Nations, the richest 1% of the global population emits more than two times the emissions of the bottom 50%. Clearly, net zero or carbon neutrality by 2050, and the cap on emissions it implies, applies only to countries with high per capita emissions, GDP and well-being.
Reversal in thinking
•The focus on physical quantities indicates effects on nature whereas solutions require analysis of drivers, trends and patterns of resource use. This anomaly explains why the link between well-being, energy use and emissions is not on the global agenda. New thinking must enable politics to acknowledge transformational social goals and the material boundaries of economic activity and not the latter without the former. Modifying unsustainable patterns of natural resource use and ensuring comparable levels of well-being are societal transformations and two sides of a coin interlinked with international cooperation to serve sustainable development.
•The vaguely worded ‘carbon neutrality’, balancing emitting carbon with absorbing carbon from the atmosphere in forests, for example, is a triple whammy for latecomers like India. Such countries already have less energy-intensive pathways that will not encroach on others’ ecological space, a young population, and are growing fast to reach comparable levels of well-being with those already urbanised and in the middle class.
•Industrialisation and urbanisation are not the problem ‘per se’; the problem is the way they were designed in the colonial context: keeping commodity prices low, overly resource-intensive, defining progress as material abundance, and assuming that technology would solve the ecological problem.
•By 1950, the contribution of the U.S. to total emissions peaked at 40%. It has declined to approximately 26%, the largest in the world. North America and Europe, with less than one-quarter of the world population, are responsible for almost half of global material use. The share decreased to one-fifth in 2010, when Asia with half the world population used its legitimate share of half of global resource use. But the ecological damage had already been done. China, with four times the population of the U.S., accounts for 12% of cumulative emissions, and India, with a population close to that of China’s, for just 3% of cumulative emissions that lead to global warming.
•Reconstruction in the West after World War II led to acceleration of material use, resulting emissions and sharp rise in global temperature around 1970, before growth commenced in Asia. Urban transformation requires huge amounts of iron and steel, cement, construction materials and energy for infrastructure. Before infrastructure reaches saturation levels and manufacturing stabilises, material use shapes ways in which countries build houses and transport infrastructure, and how they organise mobility and deliver manufactured goods, food and energy. With the population moving to cities, growth in per capita incomes drives consumption and vehicle emissions becomes the continuing driver of increasing levels of material use, far more significant than manufacturing.
•In each sustainability benchmark like housing size and density, public bicycle transport and eliminating food waste, India is doing better than the West. The rising prosperity of the world’s poor does not endanger the planet; the challenge is to change wasteful behaviour in the West, and these changes occur at decadal scales.
Soft power
•India must highlight its unique national circumstances. For example, the meat industry, especially beef, contributes to one-third of global emissions. Indians eat just 4 kg of meat a year compared to those in the European Union who eat about 65 kg and Americans who eat about 100 kg. Also to be noted is the fact that the average American household wastes nearly one-third of its food.
•Transport emissions account for a quarter of global emissions. They are the fastest-growing emissions worldwide and have surpassed emissions from generation of electricity in the U.S. Transport emissions are the symbol of Western civilisation and are not on the global agenda.
•Coal accounts for a quarter of energy use. It powered colonialism. Rising Asia uses three-quarters as coal drives industry and supports the renewable energy push into cities. India, with abundant reserves and per capita electricity use that is one-tenth that of the U.S., is under pressure to stop using coal, even as it aims to shift to electric vehicles and eliminate oil instead.
•India has the credibility and legitimacy to push an alternate 2050 goal for countries currently with per capita emissions below the global average — for example, the goal of well-being within ecological limits, the frame of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as multilateral technological knowledge cooperation around electric vehicles, energy efficiency, building insulation and a less wasteful diet.
•Emissions are the symptom, not the cause of the problem. India, in the UN Security Council, must push new ideas based on its civilisational and long-standing alternate values for the transition to sustainability.
