Environmental Concerns for India

 

 By the end of 2021, it is being observed at the most difficult of times with India battling with the probable third wave of Covid-19 which has caused devastation in past, along with struggling economy and another national issue, but in the field of healthcare there is a silent killer in which has been ignored for a long time and still ignored and that’s environment

Evidence shows that the country has not augured well on environmental norms. Water and air continue to be as polluted, and forest degradation continues, as India seems to can't care less about it.

Even as India battles these crises, the key to the future lies in ecosystem restoration. Ecosystem restoration basically means reviving old water bodies, building natural forests, providing space to wildlife, and reducing water pollution to restore aquatic life. Healthier ecosystems, with richer biodiversity, yield greater benefits such as more fertile soil, bigger yields of timber and fish, and larger stores of greenhouse gases.

India needs to work on its water and air quality which is deteriorating and the impact of the climate crisis on people and agriculture is clearly visible and list of such concerns is pretty long, but for now, here are the 7 major environmental concerns for India.

Air Pollution

Of the 6.67 million deaths due to air pollution in 2019, 1.67 million were in India, the second-highest after China, according to a Lancet report. According to a CSE report, deaths because of particulate matter 2.5 pollution have increased by 2.5 times in the past decade, with air pollution rising in most places in India, especially the Indo-Gangetic plains.

Just five states — Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, and Rajasthan — account for half of the deaths due to air pollution in 2019. The economic cost was equivalent to 1.36% of India’s GDP.

The only positive news is that in the past two decades, household air pollution has reduced by about 40% due to the use of cooking gas instead of firewood.

Air pollution has been the 4th major cause of death in India, and the situation is getting worse day by day. As the arrival of winter around in the mouth of October and November in major cities air is unbreathable and something immediately should be done about that 

Water

About 80% of surface water in India is polluted due to dump sewage and garbage, and an alarming percentage of groundwater is contaminated by various organic and inorganic sources, said a study Water Sources and Challenges in India published in March 2020.

Water bodies in most places are shrinking and according to the minor irrigation (MI) census, water bodies declined by about 8% between 2001 and 2006 and another 10% were not in use because of poor quality of water.

Less than half of the country’s 1.3 billion people receive safe drinking water, though, to be sure, the Jal Shakti ministry has ambitiously and actively been working on its mission of connecting every home with tap drinking water by 2024.

Contrary to general belief, the water quality of India’s 19 major rivers did not improve significantly during the Covid-19-induced lockdown. While Ganga and four other rivers became dirtier, the water quality in another seven rivers remained unchanged, showed the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) report. Discharge of untreated or partially treated sewage and no freshwater discharges from the upstream are the main reasons for pollution levels in rivers.

According to the CPCB report, India’s major rivers such as Ganga, Yamuna, and the Godavari have not seen any significant improvement in water quality despite the government spending a huge amount of money for setting up effluent treatment plants to prevent sewage from flowing directly into rivers.

Water is contaminated and dirtier and freshwater resources shrinking day by day isn't a good sign for the future. Even after the government's huge investment and highly marketed plans and schemes still, there isn't any significant improvement in the condition of major rivers.

Agriculture

Environmental degradation is a major cause of concern for Indian agriculture, with the rising use of insecticides and pesticides, which are contaminating soil and groundwater.

According to the Jal Shakti ministry, around half of groundwater in agriculture-rich districts of Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan is contaminated. Groundwater is also depleting in these states because of excess use. A study done by the University of Michigan published in March 2021 said that depleting groundwater will cause a fall in agricultural produce, especially in wheat growing states such as Haryana and Punjab by 20% by 2025.

The impact of the climate crisis is clearly visible on agriculture, with IMD reporting an increase in extreme weather events such as hailstorms, excess rain, and storms. These factors, various studies have found, have contributed to high farmer suicides in India. 

Even though the government of India has launched a mission for organic farming, only two percent of India’s 140 million hectares of farmland is used for organic farming. Organic farming is the highest in Sikkim (100%) followed by Andaman and Nicobar Islands (60%) but is very low in agriculture rich states of Punjab (0.4%) and Haryana (0.7%), said CSE’s state of the environment report.

This water contamination isn't just reducing agricultural produce but also affecting its quality. Excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides and contaminated water and soil makes fruits and vegetables less nutritious and infectious and poisonous to an extent.

Energy

To save the environment, India has tried to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy and has met almost 55% of its ambitious target of installing 175 GW of renewable capacity by 2022. With one year remaining, the country is unlikely to meet the target, primarily because of small hydro and biomass projects.

The country is, however, lagging in meeting its solar (35% met) and wind energy (69% met) targets. India has decided to develop 39 solar parks but is yet to operationalize even one of them. Of the 40,000 MW target for rooftop solar by 2020, India has only 4,324 MW, according to the ministry of new and renewable energy.

India’s target of providing around-the-clock electricity is still elusive, even though agreements about this were signed with all states in 2019. Despite stiff resistance from across the world, India’s dependence on thermal continues with 60% of electricity generated from coal-based power plants. India will continue to depend on high carbon-emitting coal for its electricity for at least another 30 years.

India has also refused to agree to the net-zero emissions aim being propagated by the developed world before the Glasgow climate change conference to operationalize the Paris climate agreement. Net-zero would mean India will have to set a target to phase out the usage of coal. Navigating the diplomatic challenge where India resists the target for its economic goals, but continues to shift to renewables, will be a challenge.

Industries

There is an eight percentage point increase in polluting industries between 2019 and 2021, with a 35% increase of such industries in Uttar Pradesh and 12% in West Bengal. Any industry which discharges wastewater more than 100 kilolitres a day and/or 429 hazardous chemicals used by the industry as specified under the Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemical Rules of 1989 under Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 are considered polluting industries.

According to Jal Shakti Ministry, industries in Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Delhi, Bihar, and Arunachal have poor compliance with environmental norms. With the rise in hazardous industries between 2017-18 and 2019-20, total waste generation has gone up by almost 7 %. Almost 50% of the hazardous units are in five states and generate 65% of the total waste, says the CSE report.

Unsustainable cities

Many Indian cities are environmentally unsustainable. Only 28% of sewage generated in India is treated to remove environmentally hazardous effluents before being released to water bodies. In the last 15 years, India’s sewage treating capacity has increased by only 15%. 10 states in India, including Bihar and Assam, have almost negligible facilities for treating sewage. The water bodies have shrunk by about 20% in the last 20 years. This is just one facet of a larger decline in environmental standards across various parameters in Indian cities.

Climate crisis

The year 2020 was the eighth warmest year on record, and 2016 was the warmest ever, followed by 2009. 12 of the 15 warmest years were recorded during the past 15 years (2006-2020), and 2011-20 was the warmest decade on record.

This is a warning for India, with the average yearly temperature in 2020 being 25.78 degrees Celsius.  CSE report highlighted that the poorest and populated states of India such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh were most vulnerable to the climate crisis. The vulnerability index is based on 14 indicators which include the social-economic condition of people and the ability of states to adapt to climate change.

 India is the fourth-worst climate-induced disaster hit the country in the world, according to Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), and has suffered several disasters such as floods, storms, and cyclones in 2020 and 2021 May. India is also prone to other sudden and slow-onset hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, storm surges, and droughts, and the reason being environmental degradation and climate change caused by industrialization and carelessness of people and authorities.

This list of climate concerns doesn't end here other severe issues are equally serious and important like melting glaciers, wildlife extinction, forest fire, soil erosion, and destructing biodiversity. We have blinded ourselves with fantasies of luxury and development that we have forgotten to care about mother nature. Looking at future predictions in the case of global warming our major goal should be to control that, not just as a country but as a whole world. We need to stop just making targets and forgetting about them but work on fulfilling them.