Climatic Changes: A rude awakening (Part III)

Dissapearing mangroves and coastlines

The first mention of climate refugees have started circulating. This was given off by the foreign minister of Bangladesh, Dipu Moni at Tromsoe, North Norway at the Meltic Ice and Arctic Counsell conference. Because of its geographical location and the fact that it is mostly a low lying delta, Bangladesh risks devastating impacts from the rising sea levels caused by climate change. Already Bangaldesh accounts for 60% of the 250,000 deaths worldwide on account of cyclones. (as per 1980 - 2000 statistics). Moni urged rich nations to help the densely populated country of 150 million people, possibly by opening their borders to international environment/climate refugees! U.N. Climate Panel projected in 2007 world sea levels would rise by between 18 and 59 cms (7-23 inches) this century and listed Bangladesh among the most vulnerable countries to climate changes. Millions of Bangladeshis reside less than a metre above sea level making them susceptible to rise sea water levels.Rising seas and storms would bring more salinity to farmland, affecting crops and changing the types of fish able to survive, thereby multiplying the crisis.

In another independent study, it has been found that the living along Maharashtra coastline are being threatened and fast disappearing due to various human activities including government activities. Jat Sangli (Botanist) and Current Science (Journal) are putting together a plan conserve some of the endangered and critically endangered species of mangroves along the Maharashtra coastline as they are the shoreline protectors and habitat for a variety of animals. Maharashtra is one of the important states of India with unique mangrove diversity along its 720 kilometers coastline, distributed in about 55 estuaries in five districts. There are about 24 typical mangroves along with ten halophytes, 12 borderline species and 15 associates in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts alone and the rest of the districts show more or less similar composition. Lack of awareness in locals about how to maintain the eco-system and the mangroves is seen as the first obstacle and for start, the beginning is in education of the locals on issues such as eco disasters associated with loss of mangroves on the coastal belts.

Read more about Mangrove conservation here

Climatic Changes: A rude awakening (Part I)

The Death of Life Giving Rivers

A series of 5 articles published on the Times of India, 30th April 2009, was my rude awakening of how the environment against us dies, subject to the insensitive activities of human kind. These articles speak about silent changes in the environment, and yet these changes will at some point of time dramatically impact our lives, probably alter them forever.


Availability of fresh water from perenial rivers such as Ganga, Yellow and Niger has been severely compromised owing to the change in climatic patterns. Climatic changes and Global warming are impacting the water cycle in two opposite manners:
1. Increasing the glacial melts in the Polar regions thereby increasing the water level of the seas. This is expected to denude coastal areas of India and Bangladesh, not to mention New York City, San Francisco and London.
2. Global warming is also impacting the rainfall pattern and increasing the rate of evaporation thereby changing the flow leading to floods or longer dry spells impacting inhabitants, mostly in developing countries.
3. The state of the world's rivers and threat to freshwater are not entirely on account of climate change. Water pollution is another matter of grave concern. Effluents, garbage, sewage and other liquid and solid wastes that are deliberately pumped into rivers have been turning waters toxic as well as killing off aquatic life.
Thousands of litres of oil was spill into the Sutlej due to a industrial accident some time back. Besides polluting the river and cutting off oxygen suppkly to the river eco-system, the spill has compromised the Ropar wetlands, home to migratory birds.
4. And if all this is not enough, there are cases where the rivers are being killed off for supposedly "developmental" activities as is happening in Delhi where the Yamuna suffers because of the fact that our competent administration and authorities have not been able to handle the Common Wealth games preparations well. Read Post


How can we help? Increase awareness, be actively involved in saving this heritage, make your small attempts to make a large difference. I for once am joining the Jal Biradari in Delhi to save the Yamuna!

Of Economy, Environment and Human Development: Failure of the GDP concept!

Gross Domestic product (GDP) as a progress indicator/paradigm was a part of the post 1940s era world reconstruction. Over the last 70 years GDP has become a construct for mesauring guman progress and all economic policy making is directed squarely at increasing/maximizing GDP! GDP as a part of national accounts was created by Richard Stone and James Meade with support from John Maynard Keynes as a means to keep track of the economic activity in a state.

However, the challenges faced by the world have now grown from economic/financial to environmental in nature. Then there are challenges on the human development side of things as well. Unfortunately, both the environment and the socio demographic human state is not measured as a indictator of progress. For example, the rich oil producing countries in middle east are the richest in nature and yet most parts of it have people living in the 17th century with no access to basic amenities. Likewise, China is a model for economic growth and yet its Human rights index and environment development index is amongst the poorest!

Interestingly Richard Stone, in his Nobel Memorial Speech in 1984 had himself stated that apart from economic growth, the analysis of a society's progress has to be based on socio demographic as well as the environmental phenoma. To be quoted "...environmental issues, such as poluution, land use and non renewable resources offer plenty of scope for accounting". Unfortunately, the world has continued to pay attention to the economic activity side stepping the environmental and human issues.

Given the socio demographic and environmental issues faced, the world today needs to create additional metrices such as Human Developmental Index and Carbon Footprint. There is a possibility that three metrics may not be preffered, in which case GDP has to be recaliberated to reflect genuine values to things like air and water pollution, deforestation, land degradation, use of alternate energies, health, education, crime etc. The result would be a new GDP number that would truely reflect value generated/consumed by human activities. A striking instance of how the new GDP calliberation would affect the old GDP system is the case of Uttar Pradesh. In just accounting for water quality in rivers in UP, 17.5% of the old GDP would be reduced! Imagine China going from a 11% GDP growth economy to 3% economy GDP growth economy because of the heavy inductrial pollution and bad human development indicators! US would go negative by two digit decimals!

What this would also mean is viability studies that are more rounded. For instance the economic surplus because of a new dam could get negated fully and more by the deficit in the ecological shifts and change in population demographics! That would provide an excellent allround development metric. It is time to move towarsd this sooner!