India slips to 89th rank on global talent competitiveness:-
The report is released every year on the first day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting.
Reflecting an acute shortage of skilled labour force and difficult business conditions, India has slipped 11 places to rank 89th on a global index of talent competitiveness, a list which has been topped by Switzerland.Last year, India was ranked 78th on the index that measures a nation’s competitiveness based on the quality of talent it can produce, attract and retain.
Switzerland is followed by Singapore, Luxembourg, the US and Denmark in the top five positions on the annual Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI)
In both China and India skill shortage in vocational talent shows up clearly in the GTCI scores, as it also does in South Africa
This gap in terms of vocational skills, however, is not limited to BRICs and emerging economies: GTCI data shows that it extends to a number of high-income countries, such as Ireland, Belgium or Spain
ISRO successfully launches India’s fifth navigation satellite IRNSS-1E
IRNSS:-
IRNSS is an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide position information in the Indian region and 1500 km around the Indian mainland.
IRNSS would provide two types of services, namely Standard Positioning Services available to all users and Restricted Services provided to authorized users.
As of now, 5 satellites are launched out of total 7. The last two satellites are scheduled to be launched this year, which will make the IRNSS functional.
Significance of IRNSS:
Once fully operational, the National Space Agency is aiming to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign navigational systems such as the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS.
Applications of IRNSS:
- Terrestrial, Aerial and Marine Navigation.
- Disaster Management.
- Vehicle tracking and fleet management.
- Integration with mobile phones.
- Precision Timing.
- Mapping and Geodetic* data capture.
- Terrestrial navigation aid for hikers and travelers.
- Visual and voice navigation for drivers.
*Geodesy is the science of accurately measuring and understanding three fundamental properties of the Earth: its geometric shape, its orientation in space, and its gravity field— as well as the changes of these properties with time
Cabinet approves policy on Promotion of City Compost
The policy primarily seeks to promote the use of city compost.
City Compost :-
Given the huge no. of inhabitants of cities, and particularly Indian cities, they produce a large volume of organic waste.However in the absence of any plan for organic waste management in large scale , these organic waste are dumped in landfills.If properly utilized this can benefit in creating city compost from organic waste there by lending a hand to organic farming.One key issues in this regard is to have a proper municipal solid waste management system where waste is segregated at source .
Benefits:-
- Compost from city garbage would keep the city clean.
- Composting can reduce the volume of waste to landfill/dumpsite by converting the waste into useful by-products.
- It also prevents production of harmful greenhouse gases (especially methane) and toxic material that pollutes groundwater apart from polluting the environment.
- City Waste composting would also generate employment in urban areas.
Project Green Port :-
The Ministry of Shipping has started ‘Project Green Ports’ which will help in making the Major Ports across India cleaner and greener
Details of the Project :-
It will operate in two verticals :- Green Ports Initiatives’ related to environmental issues and second is ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’.
Green Port Initiatives include twelve initiatives which will be implemented under strict time bound fashion in order to achieve the targets. Initiatives are preparation and monitoring plan, acquiring equipments required for monitoring environmental pollution, acquiring dust suppression system, setting up of sewage/waste water treatment plants etc.
Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan,it has 20 activities with certain time-line to promote cleanliness at the port premises. Some of the activities include cleaning the wharf, cleaning and repairing of sheds, cleaning and repairing of port roads, painting road signs, zebra crossing, pavement edges etc.
New bird species found in India, first in a decade:-
The Himalayan Forest Thrush ( in Arunachal Pradesh particularly) is only the fourth new bird species to be described in India since Independence.
It was found that the species breeding in the forests of the eastern Himalayas had no scientific name, and so it was named Zoothera salimalii after Salim Ali, who made significant contributions to ornithology in India.
India – Sanitation and Bio-toilets :-
Background :-
Time and again, we keep reading news items on the problem of open defecation in our country. In fact, it has more or less come to be identified as a national trait or even a symbol much like the elephants and snake charmer of yore. India has the dubious distinction of being home to 60 per cent of all open defecators of the entire world. More than 62 crore people, or roughly half the population of the whole of India practice open defecation and this number does not appear to be going down anytime in the foreseeable future. Even urban India has to bear the brunt with 18 per cent defecating in the open, while in rural India, it is as high as 69 per cent.
The lack of toilet facility exerts a collateral damage on the education front too. Most of the schools in rural areas are co-ed with boys and girls attending classes together as they cannot afford to have separate schools and teachers for them. And in most secondary schools, the girl students simply drop out when they attain certain age mainly because there are no toilets in the premises where they can take care of personal hygiene.
One of the major reasons why the practice of open defecation still continues in our country is the lack of water. We often see reasonably well built toilets falling into disuse within weeks due to clogging because there is not enough water.
Quite apart from the aesthetic angle, open defecation poses a major public health hazard. The free and easy mixing of faecal waste with water sources such as streams, ponds and tanks especially during the wet season leads to heavy contamination of drinking water since modern water purification systems for domestic use are hard to come by in rural areas. No wonder, there is a never-ending malady of water-borne diseases like typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, intestinal worms and so on in the hinterland.
Benefits of Bio-toilet:-
It is against this backdrop that the bio-toilet enters the scene with a positive impact. In contrast to the septic tank or soak pit, it deploys what is known as the bio-digester tank as it helps digest the fecal matter using a modern biological principle. It does it with the help of anaerobic bacteria which, as the name indicates, grow and multiply in the total absence of atmospheric oxygen as it prevails inside the sealed tank. These bacteria fully digest the waste into water and bio-gas. In other words, the bio-toilet technology involves active digestion while the older methods rely on passive decomposition.
The bio-toilet offers other advantages as well. It is more compact as it occupies only one-third of the space taken by the septic tank or soak pit. The latter need periodic emptying and cleaning out every few months, while the bio-toilet needs no emptying as it ensures over ninety per cent decomposition of the waste matter. The bio-toilet thus, enjoys a maintenance free life of nearly 50 years while the septic tank needs annual repairs and needs to be replaced every five years.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]What is LEAF Coalition?
Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.