By C Majaw
Today is World Environment Day and as usual there will be many speeches and exhortations from talking heads of countries and the UN. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres while delivering a speech at Columbia University, New York City said, “The state of the planet is broken. Humanity is waging war on nature. Nature is striking back and it is already doing so with growing force and fury. It is impeding our efforts to eliminate poverty and imperiling food security. And this is making our work for peace even more difficult, as the disruptions drive instability, displacement and conflict.” True the world is facing the severest environmental crisis in a decade. Every year on World Environment Day a particular theme is promoted depending on what aspect of the environment needs attention. This year the theme is “Reimagine. Recreate. Restore.’ as this year marks the beginning of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This is a powerful universal push to recover, augment and accelerate restoration process and arrest the loss and degradation that humankind has caused.
The health of the earth invigorates us and the sustainability of our ecosystem is fundamental to our human existence. It is the unsustainable human activities particularly mining and logging, damming of rivers, among others which are stressing the earth’s natural systems which support life on the planet. This blind race for over-exploitation of natural resources in the name of development has alienated human beings from nature physically as well as spiritually and this process is responsible for climate change.
Climate change is a potential threat and creates vulnerabilities. It has altered how we relate to other species on earth and exposed us to health hazards and our vulnerabilities for infections. We jeopardize the planet at our peril – because it is our home. As humanity’s footprint expands into wild places we are devastating species populations and we are also exacerbating climate change and increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases like Covid -19. Hence, we are very much digging our own graves.
Currently, a series of catastrophic events – wildfire, locust attacks, plagues and the Covid pandemic have shaken the world’s environmental conscience and thought, showing that biodiversity conservation should be non-negotiable and there should be strategic investment to preserve our health, our well-being and security. The loss of biodiversity is not only an environmental issue but a development, economic, ethical and moral one. It is also a self- preservation issue.
Human activities are altering natural habitats and reshaping life on the earth’s surface. Sea levels are rising every year at a faster rate. A report by the UNEP Emission Gap mentioned that even when the pandemic is contained the world is still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3 degrees Celsius this century far beyond the 2015 Paris Agreement goals.
More than two thirds or 68 percent of the world’s wildlife has disappeared over 36 years between 1970 and 2016, according to Living Planet Report (2020). Recurrence of unprecedented and massive wildfires predominant in the USA, Australia, Ukraine, Brazil and India has left billions of hectares of devastated forests, thereby, causing various species to become extinct while some are on the verge of extinction.
India is ranked 14th among the most climate change affected countries in the world with the estimated average temperature increasing by 0.6 percent between 2009 and 2018. The frequency, intensity and unpredictability of these extreme events have risen in recent decades. While India witnessed 250 extreme climate events in 35 years between 1970 and 2005, it recorded 310 weather events in only 15 years since then, as per one study. It is also found that an extensive shift in the pattern of extreme climate events such as flood -prone areas becoming drought prone and vice – versa in over 40 percent of districts according to a study by Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). In 2019 alone India had undergone 16 extreme flood events which affected 151 districts and over 9.7 crore people who are currently exposed to occasional floods. Six of India’s eight most flood-prone districts in the last decade – Barpeta, Darrang, Dhemaji, Goalpara, Golaghat, Sivasagar, are in Assam. The last 50 years also recorded a surge in the number of associated cyclonic occurrences. With the rise in sea levels and an increase in sea storms, these phenomena will become ever more numerous.
Over the last couple of years, the Indian monsoon has experienced rapid transition, since one or the other major states have been reporting either lower or excess rainfall. This is crucial for food crops such as rice, coarse cereals and pulses, as 48 per cent of the area under these crops is rain-fed. Besides, 68 percent of the area under non-food crops is also rain-fed. This shifting in monsoon pattern also harms the farmer’s income and in India nearly half of the population is reliant on agriculture. In addition, an increase in the number of flash droughts poses a major risk to crop production due to soil moisture depletion and intra-seasonal monsoon variation. It also has negative impacts on irrigation demands and groundwater availability. India has 18 per cent of the world’s population but has only 4 percent of the global water resources. This water scarcity has sent alarm bell ringing in some parts of the country.
Disruptions to the climate would also continue to increase inequalities within and between nations as well. Consequently, it leads to huge effects on livelihoods, standard of living, on the socio-economic and political spheres as well due to rapid industrialization migration and large scale urbanization. Moreover, it would also cause a loss to the country’s GDP too!
Historically, it is the developed countries that have been major contributors to carbon emissions (root cause of climate change) with the United States being the highest emitter, followed by the EU and China. Despite the fact that India’s contribution to green house emissions is low; the Indian government has undertaken multiple measures and initiatives through different national and international policies. Efforts have also been made by means of various targets and projections.
Fortunately, the re-entry of the US into the Paris Agreement signifies a dire and urgent need to fight the climate crisis. Henceforth, whatever actions the US ends up taking to get its greenhouse gas emissions under control will matter for the entire planet. It will put pressure on other governments that have dragged their feet when it comes to ratcheting up climate commitments. It has to be serious on all these fronts, to establish its credibility of coming back into the Paris Agreement.
Finally, I believe that it is our responsibility to shape our mother earth by strengthening cooperation. The imperative now is to change our behaviour, lifestyles and attitudes towards the environment and move into sustainable directions. It’s time our leaders act together without adhering to any ideological difference – that is not leaning left or right but moving forward We are the first generation to notice that we are destroying planet earth and we may be the last to heal our planet.
(The writer is a student of Political Science NEHU)