📰 Understanding India’s ethanol blending policy
Why does the government want to increase the percentage of ethyl alcohol in petrol? From where does India source its ethanol?
•The story so far: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to the National Policy on Biofuels, 2018, to advance the date by which fuel companies have to increase the percentage of ethanol in petrol to 20%, from 2030 to 2025. The policy of introducing 20% ethanol is expected to take effect from April 1, 2023.
What is the history of ethanol-blending in India?
•Since two decades, India has been moving towards putting in place an ecosystem to have more ethanol blended into petrol for use vehicles, particularly two and four wheelers. Government records suggest about 75% of India’s 220 million vehicles are two wheelers and 12% four wheelers. Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is a hydrocarbon that when burnt can generate heat and power engines.
•However, it takes much more ethanol to power a vehicle’s engine than petrol. It also leaves residual by-products that can corrode and damage the vehicle which is why, while vehicles can be run on ethanol, they need to be tuned accordingly so that they don’t compromise on efficiency and usability. On the other hand, the gains are potentially significant as ethanol can be sourced from sugarcane, molasses, maize, which given India’s agricultural base, can substantially reduce India’s dependence on petroleum.
•Since 2001, India has tested the feasibility of ethanol-blended petrol whereby 5% ethanol blended petrol (95% petrol-5% ethanol) was supplied to retail outlets. In 2002, India launched the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme and began selling 5% ethanol blended petrol in nine States and four Union Territories that was extended to twenty States and four UTs in 2006. Until 2013-14, however, the percentage of blending never crossed 1.5%.
•In 2015, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways notified that E5 [blending 5% ethanol with 95% gasoline] petrol and the rubber and plastic components used in gasoline vehicles produced since 2008 be compatible with the E10 fuel. In 2019, the Ministry notified the E10 fuel [blending 10% ethanol with 90% gasoline]. The rubber and plastic components used in petrol vehicles are currently compatible with E10 fuel. Financial incentives for distilleries coupled with policy support has seen average blending touch 5%. Standards for E20, E85 and even E100 fuel have already been laid. This includes standards for ethanol blended diesel. Since 2020, India has been announcing its intent to achieve 10% blending by the end of 2022 and 20% blending by 2030. The Centre has also targeted 5% blending of biodiesel with diesel by 2030.
What does switching to E20 entail?
•A NITI Ayog Committee report of June 2021 lays out a comprehensive picture of ethanol blending, the challenges and a roadmap. India’s net import of petroleum was 185 million tons at a cost of $55 billion in 2020-21. Most of the petroleum is used by vehicles and therefore a successful 20% ethanol blending programme could save the country $4 billion per annum, or about ₹30,000 crore. To achieve such savings, the committee estimates an ethanol demand of 1,016 crore litres based on expected growth in vehicle population. Because electric vehicles are also likely to increase, this should partially offset demand for ethanol leading to a requirement of 722-921 crore litres in 2025.
•This however is an “optimistic” projection as the NITI report itself notes. India’s current ethanol production capacity consists of 426 crore litres from molasses-based distilleries, and 258 crore litres from grain-based distilleries. This is expected to increase to 760 crore litres and 740 crore litres respectively and would suffice to produce 1016 crore litres of ethanol required for EBP and 334 crore litres for other uses. This will require six million tonnes of sugar and 16.5 million tonnes of grains per annum in ESY 2025.
How does this affect engines?
•When using E20, there is an estimated loss of 6-7% fuel efficiency for four wheelers which are originally designed for E0 and calibrated for E10, 3-4% for two wheelers designed for E0 and calibrated for E10 and 1-2% for four wheelers designed for E10 and calibrated for E20. Car makers have said that with modifications in engines (hardware and tuning), the loss in efficiency due to blended fuel can be reduced. To compensate the consumers for a drop in efficiency from ethanol blended fuels, tax incentives on E10 and E20 fuel may be considered. The test vehicles worked well in several test-situations, the report noted.
What is the international experience?
•Flex Fuel Engine technology (FFE), or vehicles that run entirely on ethanol, are popular in Brazil and comprise nearly 80% of the total number of new vehicles sold in 2019. The cost of flex fuel vehicles (four-wheelers) could cost about ₹17,000 to ₹25,000 more than the current generation of vehicles.
•The two-wheeled flex fuel vehicles would be costlier by ₹5,000 to ₹12,000 compared to regular petrol vehicles. The global production of fuel ethanol touched 110 billion litres in 2019, or about an average growth of 4% year per year during the last decade. The U.S. and Brazil make up 92 billion litres, or 84% of the global share, followed by European Union (EU), China, India, Canada and Thailand.
•The prices of ethanol produced in India are higher compared to U.S. and Brazil, because of the minimum support prices that the government provides.
What are the environmental costs of ethanol blending?
•Because ethanol burns more completely than petrol, it avoids emissions such as carbon monoxide. However, tests conducted in India have shown that there is no reduction in nitrous oxides, one of the major environmental pollutants. A report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) says that for India to meet its target of 20% ethanol blended in petrol by the year 2025, it will need to bring in 30,000 additional sq km of land to come under maize cultivation. Half that land can be used more efficiently to produce clean electricity from solar energy, they contend.
•For India, sugarcane is the cheapest source of ethanol. On average, a ton of sugarcane can produce 100 kg of sugar and 70 litres of ethanol but that would mean 1,600 to 2,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of sugar, implying that a litre of ethanol from sugar requires about 2,860 litres of water.
Court confirms Gujarat High Court ruling that government can’t levy IGST on ocean freight imports
•The Supreme Court on Thursday, in a judgment championing the importance of “cooperative federalism” for the well-being of democracy, held that Union and State legislatures have “equal, simultaneous and unique powers” to make laws on Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the recommendations of the GST Council are not binding on them.
•The apex court’s decision came while confirming a Gujarat High Court ruling that the Centre cannot levy Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) on ocean freight from Indian importers.
•“The recommendations of the GST Council are the product of a collaborative dialogue involving the Union and the states. They are recommendatory in nature… The recommendations only have a persuasive value. To regard them as binding would disrupt fiscal federalism when both the Union and the states are conferred equal power to legislate on GST,” a Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud held.
•The court emphasised that Article 246A (which gives the States power to make laws with respect to GST) of the Constitution treat the Union and the States as “equal units”.
•“It confers a simultaneous power (on Union and States) for enacting laws on GST… Article 279A, in constituting the GST Council, envisions that neither the Centre nor the states are actually dependent on the other,” Justice Chandrachud interpreted.
Cooperative federalism
•He said the Centre and the States were “autonomous, independent and even competing units” while making GST laws. “Cooperative federalism is treated like a marble cake federalism due to the integrated approach of the federal units,” he compared.
•The judgment said that though the Centre may have a larger share of power in certain instances to prevent chaos and provide security, the States still wielded power.
•“India is a multi-party system. It is possible that the party in power in the Centre may or may not be in power in other States… Even if the States have been given lesser power [in certain situations], they can still resist the mandates of the Union by using different forms of political contestations permitted by the Constitution… It is not imperative that one of the federal units [Centre or the States] must always possess a higher share of power over the other units,” the court stated.
•“The federal system is a means to accommodate the needs of a pluralistic society... Democracy and federalism are interdependent to each other. Federalism would only be stable in a well functioning democracy. Additionally, the constituent units of a federal polity checks the exercise of powers of one another to prevent one group from exercising dominant power,” the court stated.
•In the GST Council, the States and the Centre have to function in a “harmonious” manner. The discussions in the GST Council cut across party lines and impacted federalism and democracy as a whole. But harmony, necessary for the well-being of the nation, and its fiscal security could be achieved not just by collaboration but also “contestations” between the Centre and the States. Contesting discussions between the Centre and the States could also further the cause of federalism and democracy, the Bench reasoned.
•After all, the court said, “Indian federalism is a dialogue between cooperative and un-cooperative federalism where the federal units are at liberty to use different means of persuasion, ranging from collaboration to contestation”.
•The judgment also resolved a prolonged battle the government has been raging against companies to implement its IGST on ocean freight on reverse charge basis.
•The issue had gained significance following news reports of fresh tax queries raised on ocean freight even as the dispute was pending in the top court.
Relief for importers
•Ending the controversy in favour of the importers and providing them great relief, Justice Chandrachud held that since “the Indian importer is liable to pay IGST on composite supply comprising of the supply of goods and supply of services of transportation, insurance, etc, in a Cost Insurance Freight [CIF] contract, a separate levy on Indian importers for the supply of services by the shipping line would be in violation of the Central GST Act”.
•At the centre of the controversy were two notifications issued on June 28, 2017, levying the IGST on ocean freight. The Gujarat High Court declared the levy ultra vires to the IGST Act in January 2020. It said they lacked “legislative competency”. It had concluded that the IGST on ocean freight under the provisions of the notifications was “not permissible in law”.
•‘Ocean freight’ is the cost of moving goods internationally to India. An agreement is entered into between two foreign parties in this regard. The agreement is usually between an exporter, a foreign entity, and a shipping line to transport goods to India.
Importers’ complaint
•The importers had complained that the IGST was being levied on them twice on the very same transaction by segregating portions of it. “The fact is that importers, at the time of import, in addition to the customs duty, also pay IGST under IGST Act on the imported goods on the value as determined under the Customs Tariff Act. This value includes the value of ocean freight. In case of goods purchased on CIF basis, the cost itself is the sum of cost, insurance and freight basis… Thus the government, through the 2017 notifications, has sought to levy IGST again,” they had submitted.
•The Centre had argued in the apex court that the government was well within its rights to prescribe the manner of collection of tax under the IGST Act. The liability to pay the GST on service of import ocean freight received from a foreign shipping line can be placed on any registered person in India. Import of goods and the service of transportation of imported goods were distinct activities between two separate set of persons. The same transaction (ie, import of goods) may involve two or more taxable events - customs duty on the import aspect and GST for the transportation service rendered aspect). Overlapping of two aspects did not take away the power to levy tax on both aspects.
‘Judgment may change the landscape of provisions under GST’
•“This judgment may change the landscape of those provisions under GST which are subject to judicial review,” said Abhishek A. Rastogi, partner at Khaitan & Co, who argued for the petitioners before Gujarat High Court and the Supreme Court.
•“As the court has gone ahead to categorically hold that the GST Council recommendations have only persuasive value, there will be pragmatic approach to the provisions which are subject to judicial review by way of challenge to the constitutionality of such provisions based on GST Council recommendations” he noted.
•“The Supreme Court has held that GST on ocean freight paid in case of import of goods is unconstitutional. As a corollary, the Indian importers who had paid such tax will be eligible to refund. Further, those importers who had not paid the tax on import of services will now not be required to pay tax because of this Supreme Court ruling,” Mr. Rastogi told The Hindu.
•Generally, the value of imported goods includes the Cost, Insurance and Freight components and Customs Duty and GST are levied on that value, explained Vivek Jalan, partner, Tax Connect Advisory Services.
•“However, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs also sought to levy GST at 5% on the value of imported goods considering 10% of the value of imported goods as deemed ocean freight. This meant a levy of 0.5% GST on the value of imported goods as services, along with Customs duty and GST itself which is around 28% and is charged as goods,” he elaborated.
📰 Crushing lives: On the need to enforce rules in quarries
Strict enforcement of rules in quarries alone can prevent environmental and human costs
•Working in hazardous sites such as quarries, where explosives and heavy machinery are deployed, is fraught with risks. But human casualties in accidents caused at such sites due to greed-induced exploitation, violation of safety and operational norms, and collusion with regulators, involve an element of culpability. The death of three workers at the privately owned Venkateshwara Stone Crusher Unit, at Adaimithippaankulam in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, bears tragic testimony to this. Here, a falling boulder trapped six workers and their heavy vehicles under debris in a 300-feet deep stone quarry on Saturday night. The management, according to the State Director of Mining and Geology, was served a closure notice last month and instructed to suspend operations, after violations. Yet, the operations went on illegally until the fateful night, which brought officials, politicians and rescuers to the site. Perhaps, a random inspection in the interregnum could have prevented the loss of lives. The preliminary inquiry suggests the crusher unit, which has facilities for the manufacture of M-Sand and blue metal, had compromised safety along the vehicle path. The breach in the mandated 10 feet distance between the upper vehicle path and the immediate lower path is believed to have caused the falling boulder to plunge deeper into the quarry, aggravating the tragedy.
•The Revenue Secretary has announced a comprehensive safety audit exercise in all stone quarries. Given that a political nexus, quarry operations and the grant of licences are inseparable, such crackdowns have rarely been effective. The plundering of natural resources including in the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats due to excessive blasting and mining has been well documented by committees, either appointed by the government or by the courts. For instance, former IAS officer U. Sagayam, as the Madras High Court-appointed Legal Commissioner, had estimated ₹16,000 crore loss to the exchequer due to illegal granite mining in the Madurai region alone. There has been a mushrooming of unlicensed quarries too. Just last year the High Court had ordered the closure of 64 unlicensed stone quarries in Tiruppur district, based on the findings of an advocate-commissioner. The revenue loss aside, it is impossible to fix a cost to the resultant irretrievable damage to the environment and risk exposure to humans. The big sharks have been targeted mostly when a ruling party has an axe to grind. There is now a spurt in the quarrying volume in the Tirunelveli-Kanniyakumari region to meet the huge demand from Kerala, where an estimated 80% of quarried materials is transported. It calls for the enforcement of restrictions on such inter-State transport of minerals. Immediate responses to tragedies usually have a short life. Only a genuine administrative will to sustain the enforcement of rules in quarries is of real consequence.
📰 Bridging the health policy to execution chasm
India’s States need to act quickly in setting up a public health and management cadre for a healthier society
•In April this year, the Union government released a guidance document on the setting up of a ‘public health and management cadre’ (PHMC) as well as revised editions of the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) — for ensuring quality health care in government facilities. For a country where politicians take pride in inaugurating super-specialty hospitals and where the health focus has traditionally been on medical care or attention on treating the sick, these two developments to strengthen public health services are welcome.
A background, the fallout
•The ‘public health and management cadre’ is a follow up of the recommendations made in India’s National Health Policy 2017. At present, most Indian States (with exceptions such as Tamil Nadu and Odisha) have a teaching cadre (of medical college faculty members) and a specialist cadre of doctors involved in clinical services. This structure does not provide similar career progression opportunities for professionals trained in public health. It is one of the reasons for limited interest by health-care professionals to opt for public health as a career choice.
•The outcome has been costly for society: a perennial shortage of trained public health workforce. The proposed public health cadre and the health management cadre have the potential to address some of these challenges. With the release of guidance documents, the States have been advised to formulate an action plan, identify the cadre strengths, and fill up the vacant posts in the next six months to a year.
•The revised version of the IPHS once again underscores the continued relevance of improved quality of health services through public health facilities. This is the second revision in the IPHS, which were first released in 2007 and then revised in 2012. The regular need for a revision in the IPHS is a recognition of the fact that to be meaningful, quality improvement has to be an ongoing process. The development of the IPHS itself was a major step. Nearly two decades ago, in many countries including India, there was limited attention on ensuring quality. Increasing access to health services and improving the quality of care were perceived as a sequential process: first focus on increasing access and then a thought may be given to ensuring quality (which rarely happened).
Role and relevance
•The voices for having public health services and workforce in India have always been few and feeble. Understandably, the need for a public health cadre and services in India rarely got any policy attention. Arguably, the reason was that even among policymakers, there was limited understanding on the roles and the functions of public health specialists and the relevance of such cadres, especially at the district and sub-district levels. At best, epidemiologists were equated with public health specialists, failing to recognise that the latter is a much broader and inclusive group of specialists. However, the last decade and a half was eventful. The initial threat of avian flu in 2005-06, the Swine flu pandemic of 2009-10; five more public health emergencies of international concern between years 2009-19; the increasing risks and regular emergence and re-emergence of of new viruses and diseases (Zika, Ebola, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic fever, Nipah viruses, etc.) in animals and humans, resulted in increased attention on public health. In 2017, India’s National Health Policy 2017 proposed the formation of a public health cadre and enacting a National Public Health Act. Yet, progress on these fronts was slow as usual.
•The COVID-19 pandemic changed the status quo. For months together, everyone was looking for professionals trained in public health and who had field experience; they were simply far and few. It became clear that ‘epidemic’ and ‘pandemic’ required specialised skills in a broad range of subjects such as epidemiology, biostatics, health management and disease modelling, to list a few. In the absence of trained public health professionals at the policy and decision making levels, India’s pandemic response ended up becoming bureaucrat steered and clinician led. Every struggle in the pandemic response was a reminder that a clinician, no matter how skilled in the art of treating a patient, or a bureaucrat, no matter how experienced in administration, could not fulfil the role of the epidemiologists and public health specialists, who are specially trained to make a decision when there is limited information about a pathogen and its behaviour.
A continuing role in care
•A public health workforce has a role even beyond epidemics and pandemics. A trained public health workforce ensures that people receive holistic health care, of preventive and promotive services (largely in the domain of public health) as well as curative and diagnostic services (as part of medical care). A country or health system that has a shortage of a public health workforce and infrastructure is likely to drift towards a medicalised care system. In 2022, there is greater clarity on the role of the public health workforce, which is a remarkable starting point. However, the delay in policy decisions on a public health cadre is also a reflection of a long and tortuous journey of policy making in India. These two new cadres have come up late but the focus now has to be on accelerated implementation.
•The revised IPHS is an important development but not an end itself. In the 15 years since the first release of the IPHS, only a small proportion — around 15% to 20% — of government health-care facilities meets these standards. This raises a legitimate question on whether development (and revision) of such quality standards is ritualistic practice or whether these are considered seriously for policy formulation, programmatic interventions and for corrective measures. If the pace of achieving IPHS is any criteria, there is a need for more accelerated interventions. Opportunities such as a revision of the IPHS should also be used for an independent assessment on how the IPHS has improved the quality of health services.
Imperfect implementation
•Drafting of well-articulated and sometimes near perfect policy documents, even though in a delayed manner, is a skill which Indian policymakers have mastered well. However, the implementation of most such policies leaves a lot to be desired. The IPHS implementation in the last 15 years is one such example. It is difficult to predict the outcome of the PHMC guidance document; however, the past can guide the process.
•The effective part of implementation is interplay: policy formulation, financial allocation, and the availability of a trained workforce. In this case, policy has been formulated. Then, though the Government’s spending on health in India is low and has increased only marginally in the last two decades; however, in the last two years, there have been a few additional — small but assured — sources of funding for public health services have become available. The Fifteenth Finance Commission grant for the five-year period of 2021- 26 and the Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (PM-ABHIM) allocations are available for strengthening public health services and could be used as catalytic funding — which should be used in the interim — as States embark upon implementing the PHMC and a revised IPHS.
•The third aspect of effective implementation, the availability of trained workforce, is the most critical. Even the most well-designed policies with sufficient financial allocation may falter because of the lack of a trained workforce. As States develop plans for setting up the PHMC, all potential challenges in securing a trained workforce should be identified and actions initiated.
Helping States
•One, the level of interest among States in implementing the public health and management cadres needs to be explored and a centre of excellence in every State should be designated to guide this process. States which are likely to show reluctance need to be nudged through appropriate incentives. Two, the idea of mapping and an analysis of human resources for public health and then scaling up of recruitment are logical. However, it needs to be ensured that in an overzealous attempt to achieve numbers, the quality of training of the required workforce is not compromised. Setting up these two new cadres should be used as an opportunity to improve and standardise the quality of training in public health institutions. Three, it would take a few years before the PHMC becomes fully functional in the States. However, the implementation process needs to be started in the next few months to avoid the risk of it becoming a low priority. Four, the success of the PHMC would be dependent upon the availability and the equitable distribution of health staff for all other categories at government health facilities. Therefore, as new cadres are being set, efforts need to be made to fill vacancies of health staff in all other positions as well.
•Three years before the COVID-19 pandemic had started, the Indian government had committed, through NHP 2017, to achieve the goal of universal health coverage — which envisages access to a broad range (preventive, promotive, curative, diagnostic, rehabilitative) health-care services which meet certain quality standards, at a cost which people can afford. The public health and management cadres and the revised IPHS can help India to make progress towards the NHP goal. To ensure that, State governments need to act urgently and immediately.
📰 The child online safety toolkit
Can the toolkit be accessed by different countries and organisations? How does it aim to achieve a “safe and fulfilled” environment for children online?
•The story so far: The child online safety toolkit was launched earlier this week in an attempt to make the online experience safe for children. Scripted and put together by the Britain-based NGO 5Rights that works to ensure that children’s rights and needs are prioritised in the digital world, the toolkit provides a practical and accessible roadmap to create a digital world where children and young people “are safe and fulfilled”. This includes step by step instructions to help assess and inform policy development at all stages of the process. As such, any government can use the toolkit as a building block to work out its own culturally specific set of guidelines for online safety.
•The toolkit can be downloaded for free from childonlinesafetytoolkit.org and by contacting info@5rightsfoundation.com.
Why an online safety tool kit?
•Children want to be online and they need to be online. If two years of the pandemic have taught us anything, it is that a good portion of the future is going to be online. Education migrated almost entirely online for a significant period during the pandemic and children were linked to schools through their devices. While the merits or otherwise of such an arrangement has been discussed at length, it is undeniable that moving forward would entail significant involvement with technology, particularly going online.
•However, the two years we spent at home have also shown us how the world can come indoors online, in more ways than one, dragging along its predators and its risks as well. Earlier research conducted by 5Rights and its partner Revealing Reality indicated that “within 24 hours of a social media profile being created, children were being targeted with graphic content.” They went on to state that internet majors such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were enabling unsolicited contact from adult strangers who sometimes recommend unsavoury content — from “material related to eating disorders, extreme diets, self-harm and suicide as well as sexualised imagery and distorted body images.”
•As Baroness Beeban Kidron, founder and chair, 5Rights Foundation, says in the introduction to the toolkit: “In an increasingly connected world, the need for a safe and enabling digital environment for children has never been greater. Policy makers across the globe are working to define the rules of engagement between children and the digital world.”
•The prevalence of child sexual exploitation and abuse is also a major concern, offline, but certainly online too. In 2020, 65 million pieces of child sexual abuse material were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of the United States, while many more went undetected.
•The toolkit argues that guaranteeing online safety is not just about responding to risks and harms: it means actively designing a digital environment that is safe for every child. “With one in three people online under the age of 18, the centrality of digital technology in children’s lives means that it must be formed with their privacy, safety and rights by design and by default.” Safety online allows young people to thrive, and the toolkit will help build a digital world that young people need.
What does the toolkit provide?
•The child online safety toolkit claims that it is a hands-on, comprehensive guide to making the online world free from harm for children. It builds on existing international agreements and best practices, developed in consultation with international experts from a range of backgrounds. It has accessible worksheets and resources both online and in print to help make child online safety a reality
•Among other things, it contains — five things every policymaker needs to know to enshrine child online safety into law and practice, 10 policy action areas with detailed roadmaps and key practical steps needed to make child online safety a reality, a model policy that policymakers can adopt and adapt for their requirements, and downloadable worksheets to create a policy fit for practice. It also holds a glossary of key terms used in online safety and child online safety policy to best practice examples from various countries.
•The toolkit separates its obligations into ten subject areas to support the implementation of the following key international agreements and frameworks: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) General comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in the digital environment; the WeProtect Global Alliance Model National Response; and the International Telecommunication Union’s Guidelines on Child Online Protection. It also tapped into UNICEF’s Draft Policy Guidance on AI for Children, designed to promote children’s rights in government and private sector AI (artificial intelligence) policies and practices, and to raise awareness of how AI systems can uphold or undermine these rights.
What next?
•The authors say the toolkit is designed to be adaptable to any context. While national contexts may necessarily be different, it is essential that laws and regulations, to the greatest extent possible, use concepts, language and definitions that are aligned and allow for cooperation between law enforcement agencies, as well as cross-border cooperation and understanding.
•Ultimately, it depends on nations or organisations within nations entirely — if they want to pick up the toolkit to ensure a safe environment online for children, as well as deliver their commitments to various international conventions that they have signed.
📰 Pockets of hope, linking nature and humanity
It is important to increase the number of biosphere reserves in South Asia to ward off a doomsday ecological scenario
• Biodiversity is the living fabric of our planet. It underpins human well-being in the present and in the future, and its rapid decline threatens nature and people alike.
• According to the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released in 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the main global drivers of biodiversity loss are climate change, invasive species, over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and urbanisation.
The earth is under strain
•Because of our collective excesses, the ecological carrying capacity of planet earth has largely been exceeded. This trend needs to be redressed, with cleaner air, high quality drinking water, and enough food and healthy habitats to ensure that ecosystem services continue to benefit humanity without critically affecting nature’s balance. Whether we look at nature from an environmental, from a cultural or even from a religious point of view, it is our responsibility and clearly in our interest to respect the environment.
•In fact, the possibilities exist, and all is not lost. In the last 50 years or so, much has been accomplished for the protection of nature, including the establishment of conservation areas, and a number of international conventions have been signed and ratified.
Biosphere reserves are key
•One of the best mechanisms that has been created is the World Network of Biosphere Reserves, created in 1971 by UNESCO. Biosphere reserves are places where humans live in harmony with nature, and where there is an effective combination of sustainable development and nature conservation. They represent pockets of hope and proof that we are not inexorably headed towards a doomsday ecological scenario, provided we take appropriate action.
•In South Asia, over 30 biosphere reserves have been established. The first one was the Hurulu Biosphere Reserve in Sri Lanka, which was designated in 1977 and comprises 25,500 hectares within the tropical dry evergreen forest.
•In India, the first biosphere reserve was designated by UNESCO in 2000 within the blue mountains of the Nilgiris. It stretches across the States of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The network has gone from strength to strength, and it now counts 12 sites, with Panna, in the State of Madhya Pradesh, as the latest inscription in 2020.
•We need many more biosphere reserves and pockets of hope, and the region offers countless options.
Diverse systems
•South Asia has a very diverse set of ecosystems. To begin with, Bhutan, India and Nepal combined have thousands of glaciers, surrounded by lakes and alpine ecosystems.
•The Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve, established in 2018, is a good model. It includes some of the highest ecosystems in the world, with elevations up to 8,586 metres. The reserve is home to orchids and rare plant species. At the same time, more than 35,000 people live there. Their main economic activities are crop production, animal husbandry, fishing, dairy products and poultry farming.
•Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka all have extensive coastlines, with coral reefs and mangrove forests. These areas are exposed to extreme weather events (storms, floods, droughts), and sea-level rise.
•The Maldives are recognised as the lowest-lying country in the world, with a mere elevation of 1.5 metres above the high tide mark. Together with UNESCO, the archipelago has embarked on a plan to establish pilot sites for the conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems, and to enhance the population’s knowledge on climate change adaptation. Separately, three biosphere reserves have already been created in the Maldives.
Run on science-based plans
•UNESCO Biosphere Reserves have all developed science-based management plans, where local solutions for sustainable human living and nature conservation are being tested and best practices applied. Issues of concern include biodiversity, clean energy, climate, environmental education, and water and waste management, supported by scientific research and monitoring. The aim is to detect changes and find solutions to increase climate resilience.
•All biosphere reserves are internationally recognised sites on land, at the coast, or in the oceans. Governments alone decide which areas to nominate. Before approval by UNESCO, the sites are externally examined. If approved, they will be managed based on an agreed plan, reinforced by routine checks to ensure credibility, but all remain under the sovereignty of their national government.
•Some of the countries in South Asia do not yet have any or enough biosphere reserves. In most if not all cases, the political will is certainly there but there is a lack of know-how and financial resources. Of course, more financial support from richer nations and from the private sector would be desirable for establishing biosphere reserves in these countries.
The priority countries
•Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal are on the priority list of UNESCO, because they do not yet have any biosphere reserves. Their governments are already working on their first nomination files. Our organisation also believes that it would be important to increase the number of biosphere reserves in India, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
•The point is that if these pockets of hope can expand, with at least one biosphere reserve per country, and with more and larger sites covering the terrestrial surface, including coastal areas with their offshore islands, it will give the realisation to millions of people that a better future is truly possible, one where we can truly live in harmony with nature.
•On May 22 and on the occasion of the International Day for Biological Diversity, let us do what is right. Now is the time to act for biodiversity.
