📰 Is the Environmental Performance Index really faulty?
While the methodology has issues, this is an opportunity for India to study where it stands
•Last month, India protested against its ranking on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) of 2022, prepared by researchers at the Yale and Columbia Universities in the U.S. The report measures 40 performance indicators across 11 categories to measure the “state of sustainability around the world.” India was ranked last (180) with low scores across a range of indicators. The Indian Government as well as environment experts have pointed to the faulty methodology of the index that skews the results in favour of the Global North. Chandra Bhushan, Sharad Lele and Anant Sudarshan discuss the report in a conversation moderated by Sonikka Loganathan. Edited excerpts:
What are the issues with the methodology?
•Chandra Bhushan: Rating by its very nature is a subjective exercise. But a good rating is one that tries to reduce subjectivity, normalises all indicators, and then develops consensus around the subjective issues. The first step is to remove subjectivity as much as possible. Every rating will end up comparing apples with oranges, if you don’t normalise the indicators. So, the second step is to normalise indicators. Third, if there is subjectivity, you get experts to generate consensus around it. All three have not been done.
But this was a peer-reviewed study...
•CB: I’m not sure what kind of peer review was done because, if you look at the indicators, even a person with basic knowledge of ratings would tell you that the indicators have not been normalised.
Can you give us an example of where this lack of normalisation has impacted India’s rank in a category?
•CB: EPI has used tree cover loss as an indicator to rate deforestation in a country. Eritrea is the best country [as per the ranking]. The total dense forest cover in Eritrea is only about 50 hectares, which is similar to forest cover in one part of Lutyens’ Delhi. How do you compare absolute tree cover loss of a country with 50 ha dense forest with, say, India with millions of ha of dense forest and a tree cover loss of 1 lakh ha?
Is a rating the right way to be measuring environmental progress? What do you think of the government’s response?
•Sharad Lele: There is a difference between an index and a ranking. Indices have very limited value, even if you make them absolute, because they collapse the hugely complex issue of environment into one number. But relative ranking is useless. For example, you could have all countries between seven and nine out of 10. Some country will still end up at 180 because it is at 7.0 whereas others are 7.1 and above. What does that tell you about environment performance? Nothing.
•Now the government, instead of responding and quibbling about details, could have used this occasion to call for a meeting of people within the country who follow these issues, to ask questions about where we are, and put out maybe our own performance index in a much more nuanced manner that tells us something about where we are with respect to, say, five or 10 years ago.
•Anant Sudarshan: The EPI has a large data set with a huge amount of information on a whole range of indicators. This is more than just an exercise of coming up with one number— it’s a data collection exercise on a whole range of indicators. Certainly, it would be nice if something similar were produced by our Government. Nevertheless, if you look at every single one of the indicators you’ll find that India does quite badly on most. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most environmentalists. The point of a rating like this is that it puts together a lot of data and it reminds us that things are not going well on a wide range of environmental outcomes in India.
•CB: I also want us to understand how this rating was released and what message it gave out. Its message was: if you are big, if you are middle income or a poor country, if you are in Asia or Africa, you are bad environmentally. But if you are a rich country, you consume a lot, but your local environment is clean, you are the best in the world. I don’t think that’s right. If you want to solve environmental problems, consumption is what you attack. While recognising that India has problems, I am not willing to accept that the West is the paragon of environmental performance.
•SL: Ideally, in an EPI, you would look at outcomes. But in reality, you have very limited data on actual outcomes, so you start using proxies like actions taken towards those outcomes. The main indicator of climate change performance is whether the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is increasing or decreasing. We all know it is increasing. The world is doing terribly on climate change. How do you allocate this global performance index on climate change, or this outcome variable, to different countries? You would see who are the biggest polluters, and, on a per capita basis, it’s the Global North. Similarly, if biodiversity is construed to be a global common good and if a country has wiped out its biodiversity, why should it be getting higher marks because it then added one more protected area?
Speaking of biodiversity, how is Brazil ranked much higher than India, despite deforestation in the Amazon rainforest?
•SL: If you want to measure biodiversity performance, you would see how the biodiversity was last year and whether it has changed this year. Then you would ask whether there are flagship species that you could use as an indicator. Instead, the entire focus of the EPI is on habitat. With some combination of percentage and absolute values, you have the West doing well and South Asia doing badly. There’s a problem because habitat is being measured in terms of what percentage of the country is under protection. Brazil could be doing well because it’s a big country with a relatively low population density where a significant percentage is under protected area. But in a densely populated country like India, you are not going to be able to put a high proportion of area under strict protection.
India puts out the State of Forest report. But the definition of a forest is ever-changing, which is why India has seen an increase in forest cover, as per those reports. Can you contextualise this issue?
•SL: You used the word forest cover. The EPI uses the word tree cover. Therein lies the story of how India itself is playing around with this issue. We have not asked why we care about forest cover. There are different answers to this, but if you focus on the carbon sequestration benefits of forests, you wouldn’t care whether it is palm or eucalyptus or a natural species which is endemic to India, because it’s all carbon. On the other hand, if you care about biodiversity, you would want to look at forests as an association of species which are part of this landscape and not just a random species planted for the sake of making the place look green. So, why we care about forest cover determines what we measure. To take another angle, if you are a local person who is dependent on forest for livelihood, you would prefer an open canopy forest, and may be trimming the trees to get firewood without cutting down the whole tree. In that case, you would see very little tree crown cover, which is what the Forest Survey of India measures through satellites. So, when the EPI looks at tree cover, they are falling into the same trap. Should they look at tree cover or should they look at forest cover, which means natural forests? In the Indian context, this matters because natural forest cover has gone down, while plantations have increased, revealing the fault lines in this issue.
One solution we’ve seen grow in popularity is tree planting. Is this actually effective?
•CB: Planting trees has become like atoning your environmental sin. This is a very dangerous solution to the kind of environmental problems we have, because we are forgetting the role of different ecosystems.
•AS: One thing that is dangerous is letting only the government define the metrics it will use to measure success without independent scientific scrutiny. In India we’ve had this massive increase in what is called forest cover, which is all driven by plantations, while natural forests are dropping. In this indicator, EPI is using tree cover loss from satellite data, so India is doing better on this than it should by some metrics. But at least it’s a data point that’s being independently collected and that’s similar across countries. The criticism of Brazil for tree cover loss and thepraise of the Indian government for “forest gain” are really two different things. One is the rainforest disappearing there and one is plantations being added here. That’s a place where an independent index helps, because if we can agree on the indicators, we can get an objective basis of measurement.
•SL: There is a funny contradiction here. When it came to biodiversity, because you couldn’t measure the outcome very well, you put a lot of emphasis on process and said protected areas is the way to get to biodiversity conservation. When it comes to ecosystem services it is also well acknowledged that local community involvement and people’s rights is actually a better way to achieve sustainable enhancement of ecosystem services of all these areas. So how come there is no measure on how much you have decentralised rights over trees or forests, in local communities? If you took that as an indicator, we would be a real laggard in spite of having the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
India ranked 179 in air quality. How do we solve this?
•AS: We have failed to control air pollution so far. This is where these indices are useful. It’s not useful to compare India with London, but you could compare India with other countries at the same income level and the same population density, and there are many countries that are doing better. Once we notice this, we can ask, why are we doing worse? A large part of it is regulation. Ultimately air pollution is the sort of problem that gets solved through economy-wide regulation.
•CB: I agree that there is a regulatory problem with air pollution, but there is also a fundamental problem with the economy. No country has been able to solve air pollution without getting rid of biomass or solid fuel. India combusts around 2.2 billion tonnes of material, of which 1.6 billion tonnes are coal and biomass. Biomass is a problem of poverty and coal is the problem of energy access. The way India will reduce its air pollution is also the way it will solve its climate challenge. The reason why India will not be able to resolve a lot of its air pollution challenge is because of its energy mix. For example, tomorrow, if all the vehicles move to electric vehicles, we will be able to reduce air pollution, cumulatively, by 20%, but 80% of the problem will not be solved.
In preparation for the upcoming COP 27, what should India be doing, especially since we’ve seen an increased coal production target?
•CB: The Russia-Ukraine crisis could have been an opportunity for all of us to start investing massively in renewable energy. But fossil fuel companies have used this short-term deficit in energy supply as an opportunity to open new fossil fuel establishments. In India, fossil fuel consumption is going to increase in the short term. If we are smart, we will try and peak coal as quickly as possible. That would be our roadmap.
Health Ministry says men’s participation will be encouraged in family planning programme
•High teenage fertility in some areas remains a cause of concern in India even as the fertility rate has stabilised across the country, the Health Ministry said in its Family Planning Vision-2030 document released earlier this week.
•It added that participation of men will be encouraged in the family planning programme and that lack of access to contraceptives had been identified as a priority challenge area.
•“While multiple factors have been identified that explain low contraceptive use among married adolescents and young women, two most important factors are child marriage and teenage pregnancy. Over 118 districts reported high percentage of teenage pregnancies and are mostly concentrated in Bihar (19), West Bengal (15), Assam (13), Maharashtra (13), Jharkhand (10), Andhra Pradesh (7), and Tripura (4),’’ said the document.
•Additionally, over 44% of the districts in India reported high percentage of women marrying before they reach the age of 18. These districts were in Bihar (17), West Bengal (8), Jharkhand (7), Assam (4), two each in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Coincidentally, these districts also experience low rates of modern contraceptive use.
Population in India
•India is the second highest population in the world. The country’s population is expected to continue to grow until mid-century (due to population momentum), however, the population growth will decline substantially, said the document. India’s population has reached 136.3 crore (1.36 billion) and is expected to reach 147.9 crore (1.47 billion) by 2031 and further 152.2 crore (1.52 billion) by 2036, it added.
•Also the adolescent population will reach 22.9 crore (229 million) by 2031 and further 22 crore (220 million) by 2036.
•“The youth population in the age-group of 15-24 increased from 23.3 crore (233 million) in 2011 to 25.2 crore (252 million) in 2021 and will now decline to reach at 23.4 crore (234 million) in 2031 and further reach 22.9 crore (229 million) in 2036,’’ said the document.
•The government said male contraceptive methods were largely limited to condoms. Male sterilisation was at 0.3%. “The vision also included a plan to use the private sector for providing modern contraceptives. Private sector contributes 45% share of pills and 40% share of condoms. For other reversible contraceptives like injectables, the share is 30% and 24% for IUCD,” said the report.
A priority area
•The document notes that although there has been a steady decline in teenage childbearing, from 7.9% in the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) to 6.8% (in the NFHS-5), it remains a priority area that requires to be addressed, especially since India will continue to have one of the youngest populations in the world until 2030. It added that modern contraceptive use among married adolescents and young women, although increasing over time, has been rather low.
📰 There has never been a better time for sports in India: Modi
Prime Minister inaugurates the FIDE 44th Chess Olympiad in Tamil Nadu capital
•“In sports there are no losers. There are winners and there are future winners,” declared Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he inaugurated the FIDE 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai on Thursday. Highlighting India’s recent successes in the international sporting arena, Mr. Modi pointed out that sports brought the world together during the century’s biggest pandemic.
•Noting that the most prestigious tournament in chess had for the first time come to India — the home of chess — during the 75th year of freedom from colonial rule, Mr. Modi said there had never been a better time for sports in India. The country had its best ever performances in the Olympics, Paralympics and Deaflympics.
•“We achieved glory even in sports where we had not won earlier. Today sports is seen as a great profession of choice. India’s sporting culture is becoming stronger due to the perfect mix of two important factors — energy of youth and enabling environment,” he said.
•He said talented youngsters, especially from towns and villages, were bringing glory and it was heartening to see women at the lead of India’s sports revolution.
•“The post-COVID period made us realise the importance of fitness and wellness — both physical and mental. That is why it is important to encourage sporting talents and invest in sporting infrastructure,” he said.
•Applauding the organisers for managing the event within a short time, Mr. Modi said it was for the first time in three decades the tournament was being organised in Asia with the participation of the most number of players and teams. Besides, for the first time, the Olympiad had a torch relay, at 75 locations, travelling over 27,000 km.
‘T.N. chess powerhouse’
•The Olympiad has come to Tamil Nadu, the “chess powerhouse of India”, the Prime Minister said.
•“Tamil Nadu is home to the finest minds, vibrant culture and the oldest language in the world, Tamil,” he said.
📰 What numbers do not reveal about tiger conservation
India must not lose sight of the fact that there are other factors critical to ensuring the survival of this big cat
•Extinction. This ominous word has one meaning. The death of a species. And it is a word that we seem to hear so often these days, especially in the news. But the opposite is possible. Today (July 29), which is Global Tiger Day (also called International Tiger Day), the world and India can celebrate the recovery of at least one endangered species. India is now reporting increased tiger numbers, and a recent International Union for Conservation of Nature assessment suggests that tiger numbers have increased by 40% since 2005. This is cause for celebration. But is the rise in tiger numbers enough to prevent their extinction?
Genetics and connectivity
•Decades of research in ecology and evolution suggest that numbers are critical to avoid extinction. Populations that are smaller than 100 breeding individuals have a high probability of extinction. At the same time, for populations to persist, they should be part of larger landscapes with other such populations that are connected. Small and isolated populations face a high probability of extinction. This is because small populations are subject to chance/random events. These chance events may cause them to lose advantageous genetic variants, while other, detrimental genetic variants might increase in frequency. This process is called genetic drift. Also, individuals in small populations are more likely to be related, leading to inbreeding. This exposes the many slightly disadvantageous genetic variants that are present in all genomes. When expressed together, these detrimental genetic variants cause inbreeding depression, and reduced survival and reproduction of inbred individuals.
•A closer look at the distribution of tigers across their range shows that most tiger ‘populations’ are smaller than 100. On their own, most tiger populations do not have a high chance of survival. So why are we not seeing extinctions happening more often? Is this because tiger populations are connected to each other? We know that most tiger reserves in India are small and embedded in human-dominated landscapes. So, does the landscape between tiger reserves (agricultural fields, reserve forests, built-up areas and roads) allow tigers to move through them?
Research findings
•One way to answer this question is to use movement data sourced from radio-collared tigers, often difficult to come by for a rare and endangered species. Alternatively, tigers can be genetically sampled using their excreta/scat, hair and other biological samples from different tiger reserves and analysed in a laboratory. Genetic variants in tiger DNA can be identified and analysed and compared across tiger reserves. Sets of tiger reserves that show shared genetic variation are well connected — the inference is that the intervening landscapes facilitate connectivity or movement.
•On the flip side, sets of tiger reserves that share less genetic variation must have barriers or landscapes that impede movement and connectivity. For example, in our research we analysed tiger genetic samples in the central Indian tiger landscape and investigated genetic sharing between populations. Our results were surprising. Most land-use types were not too bad for tiger connectivity, including agricultural fields. However, the presence of built-up areas and high traffic roads greatly impeded tiger movement. Using this understanding of connectivity, we were able to simulate scenarios for the future where we asked (given specific land-use change in the next 100 years), how our tiger populations might be affected? Would there be more extinction in the future? Or would they stay connected?
•Our results showed that extinction could be avoided if corridors were safeguarded. What was striking was that fencing tiger reserves and isolating them resulted in high extinction. We used these models to also predict the impact of impending development projects in central India — widening of certain highways, for instance, would make them barriers, thereby increasing extinction substantially. These results along with other studies were used in court to petition for (and win a mitigation measure) — having an underpass to allow wildlife movement and connectivity. In summary, as long as we manage landscapes outside tiger reserves to allow tiger movement, and protect prey and tigers inside tiger reserves, tigers are sure to survive in landscapes such as central India.
In Similipal and Rajasthan
•But what about tiger populations that are already isolated? People have always wondered why black tigers were found only in the Similipal tiger reserve in Odisha. Our recent work on pseudo-melanistic or black tigers found in Odisha has demonstrated the genetic effects of isolation. Genome sequences of a litter of zoo tigers that included pseudo-melanistic cubs revealed that a single spelling mistake (or mutation) in a specific gene causes these tigers to look this way.
•After we found the causal genetic variant, we travelled through Similipal and collected tiger excreta/scat. We looked for this specific genetic variant in tiger DNA and found that it was common only in Similipal, where 60% of the tigers carried at least one copy. Other analyses have suggested that the tigers in Similipal form a small and isolated population. All our results pointed to genetic drift, or random events that have lead to this genetic variant that causes pseudomelanistic coat colour becoming common only in Similipal.
•On the other side of India, in Rajasthan, genome sequences from wild tigers reveal that individuals in the Ranthambore tiger reserve show inbreeding. While we do not see adverse effects of inbreeding as yet, individuals are related and carry potentially disadvantageous genetic variants, which might affect the survival and the reproduction of tigers in Ranthambore in future. In short, we are seeing the genetic effects of isolation and small population size in wild tigers at some locations.
Strategies for the future
•While we celebrate the recovery of tiger populations only by looking at numbers, we must not lose sight of other factors that are critical to their continued survival, such as connectivity. Special attention is needed for populations that are becoming isolated and facing the genetic consequences of such isolation. The future of such populations may depend on genetic rescue or even the introduction of novel genetic variants. We are fortunate that novel genome sequencing technology provides an opportunity to understand tigers much better in the context of their conservation. The future of tigers will require a ‘dialogue’ between such data and management strategies in order to ensure their survival. India is lucky to have so many wild tigers and we must work together to save them.
📰 Narrow view
SC verdict on PMLA fails to protect personal liberty from draconian provisions
•The Supreme Court’s verdict upholding all the controversial provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) falls short of judicial standards of reviewing legislative action. Undergirding every aspect of its analysis is a belief that India’s commitment to the international community on strengthening the domestic legal framework for combating money-laundering is so inviolable that possible violation of fundamental rights can be downplayed. The judgment repeatedly invokes the “international commitment” behind Parliament’s enactment of the law to curb the menace of laundering of proceeds of crime which, it underscores, has transnational consequences such as adversely impacting financial systems and even the sovereignty of countries. There is, no doubt, widespread international concern over the malefic effects of organised crime fuelling international narcotics trade and terrorism. Much of these activities are funded by illicit money generated from crime, laundered to look legitimate and funnelled into the financial bloodstream of global and domestic economies. A stringent framework, with apposite departures from the routine standards of criminal procedure, may be justified in some circumstances. However, experience suggests that money-laundering in the Indian context is linked or is seen as a byproduct of a host of both grave and routine offences that are appended to the Act as a schedule. These ‘scheduled’ or ‘predicate’ offences ought to be ideally limited to grave offences such as terrorism, narcotics smuggling, corruption and serious forms of evasion of taxes and duties. However, in practice, the list contains offences such as fraud, forgery, cheating, kidnapping and even copyright and trademark infringements. The Enforcement Directorate has also been manifestly selective in opening money-laundering probes, rendering any citizen vulnerable to search, seizure, and arrest at the whim of the executive.
•It is disappointing that the Court did not find the provision for forcing one summoned by the ED to disclose and submit documents, and then sign it under pain of prosecution, as violating the constitutional bar on testimonial compulsion. Nor was it impressed by the argument that the search and seizure provisions lack judicial oversight and are exclusively driven by ED officers. Provisions that allow prosecution for money-laundering even without the scheduled offence being established and amendments deleting safeguards have passed muster with the Bench, solely on the ground that these were for removing lacunae pointed out by international evaluators of the efficacy of the law. Save for an odd comment that the Special Court could examine the documents to decide on continuing detention, there is nothing in the judgment that will attenuate the law’s rigours. It rejects the plea to treat ED officers who record statements as police officers, thus protecting their evidentiary admissibility. At a time when the ED is selectively targeting regime opponents, the verdict is bound to be remembered for its failure to protect personal liberty from executive excess.
📰 Much needed bailout
BSNL needs state help to fulfil its social role in rural areas and in disaster relief
•The Cabinet’s decision to provide a ₹1.64 lakh crore lifeline to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. comes as a badly needed shot in the arm for the loss-making public sector telecommunications provider. Almost three years since the Government last announced a plan to revive BSNL and its smaller peer Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL), the Government seems to have belatedly realised that any further delay in adequately funding the main public sector telco in the “strategic sector” risks compromising its goals of bridging the digital divide and ensuring the evolution of an inclusive knowledge society. Nothing highlights the urgency of providing the crucial capital support to address the multiple financial, technology and spectrum needs confronting the erstwhile monopoly provider of telecommunication services than the accelerated erosion in its subscriber base in the 31 months since October 2019, when the earlier revival plan was approved. For a company that held the commanding heights of landline (wireline) connections until the opening up of the sector to private players and entry of wireless telephony in the 1990s, BSNL’s share of wireline connections fell sharply to 28.7% at the end of May 2022, from 46.6% in October 2019. On the significantly larger wireless front, BSNL’s already small share slid marginally to 9.85% as on May 31, with the number of subscribers declining by 45 lakh to 11.28 crore. The only consolation was that the number of its rural wireless subscribers shrank by just 11.4 lakh.
•The intervening period has also seen BSNL shrink its workforce, making it a far lighter ship and better placed to navigate the shoals of a competitive, and technologically rapidly evolving marketplace. From an employee base that exceeded 1.65 lakh, and consumed about 75% of its total income, the public sector enterprise had whittled down the number of regular employees on its rolls to 64,536 as on March 31, 2021, with the proportion of employee benefit expenses to total income more than halving to 36%. BSNL’s net loss also narrowed appreciably to ₹7,453 crore at the end of the fiscal year ended March 2021. Acknowledging the public sector telco’s “crucial role in expansion of telecom services in rural areas, development of indigenous technology and disaster relief”, the Government has earmarked welcome funds for each of the chosen focus areas including allocating spectrum, helping the provider upgrade its services and critically de-stressing its balance sheet.
