Prelude :- Upon checking the newspapers and different website , we at UPSCTREE came to a conclusion that , today is a ‘Roll-on-News-Day’ , i.e. Newspapers have published the old news in a new avatar for today. If you check our 30 th OCT 2015 , you may find all the relevant news that are running in 31 Oct 2015 newspapers. ‘Roll-on-News-Day’ are good as it gives us space to focus on something important from preparation perspective.
We are publishing all environment related organization , such as – wetland international , bird-life international etc .UPSC has asked questions on this kind of organization every year . For eg- Birdlife International ( 2015 Prelims) ,Wetland International (2014 prelims).
1)BirdLife International:-
- BirdLife International is the world’s largest nature conservation Partnership. There are 120 BirdLife Partners worldwide – one per country – and growing.
-
Vision
The BirdLife Partnership wishes to see a world where nature and people live in greater harmony, more equitably and sustainably.
Mission
The BirdLife Partnership strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources.
Commitment
- To prevent extinctions in the wild
- To maintain and where possible improve the conservation status of all bird species
- To conserve the sites and habitats important for birds and other biodiversity
- To sustain the vital ecological systems that underpin human livelihoods, and enrich the quality of people’s lives
- In the process, BirdLife will empower people and contribute to the alleviation of poverty, and strive to ensure sustainability in the use of natural resources
- Histroy :-
- 1922 was the year that the birth of the world’s first true international conservation organisation, The International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP), the organisation which grew into the BirdLife International Partnership, was founded.1922 has been described as the 20th Century’s annus mirabilis, a miracle year for many reasons. It was the year that public radio hit the airwaves, especially in the USA and Europe. Suddenly, it became possible to reach huge audiences with new ideas and information and for people to take an active interest in the world beyond their provincial and national borders.It is world’s oldest international conservation organisation.
- Focus Areas:-
- Saving species
- Conserving sites
- Focusing on the marine environment
- Sustaining migratory species
- Climate Change
- Addressing Invasive Alien Species
- Providing Scientific support to policy
- Programmes:-
- Capacity Development
- Forest of Hope – BirdLife Partners have been working in tropical forest conservation for decades, in more than 50 countries. Around the world Partners are involved in numerous projects to conserve intact forest and restore degraded forest ecosystems, and promote sustainable forest use.
- Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) – The BirdLife Partnership has, since the late 1970s, been working collectively to identify, document and protect all places on earth of greatest significance for the conservation of the world’s birds. As a result, over 12,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) are now recognised. Fully 33% of IBAs lack any form of formal protection and a further 45% are only partially protected. Achieving adequate protection for these sites is among the most urgent of global conservation priorities.
- Invasive Alien Species :-
- Introduced species have been the primary driver of documented bird extinctions. They are implicated in the decline of more than half of all threatened bird species
- BirdLife Partners are designing, implementing and sharing techniques to control and eradicate invasive alien species at IBAs.
- At least four bird species have been saved from extinction by Partner action against invasive species.
- BirdLife’s Pacific Partnership has cleared thirty islands of invasive rodents. Bird populations are recovering, and people are benefiting from increased crop yields and reduced disease risk.
- Local Engagement and Empowerment Programme
- Changing the way the world’s fisheries operate, to reduce seabird mortality.Albatross Task Force, the world’s first international team of seabird bycatch mitigation instructors working at-sea on commercial fishing vessels.
- Migratory Birds and Flyways – Two thousand species of bird, 20% of all known species, make regular seasonal movements. Many travel thousands of miles between their breeding places and their wintering grounds. More than 40% of these migratory species are declining, and nearly 200 are now classified as globally threatened. They face many dangers: destruction and degradation of habitats, loss of critical stopover sites such as coastal wetlands, illegal hunting, poisoning and pollution, and collisions with badly-sited infrastructure like power lines and wind turbines
- Preventing Extinctions :- BirdLife is the global Red List authority on the threat status of birds.
2)Conservation International :-
- Conservation International (CI) is an American nonprofit environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Its goal is to protect nature as a source of food, fresh water, livelihoods and a stable climate.
- For more than 25 years, Conservation International has been protecting nature for the benefit of everyone on Earth.
- Theme– Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature. Our food, our water, our health, our jobs — they all rely on the health of the planet’s ecosystems.
- CI has helped establish 1,000 protected areas across 77 countries and protected more than 612 million hectares of land, marine and coastal areas.
- Conservation International was founded in 1987 with the aim of analyzing the problems most dangerous or harmful to nature and building a foundation dedicated to solving these issues on a global scale. This model:-
- detects the problems most threatening to nature,
- prevents the industry side of the world from being detrimental to nature,
- ensures the knowledge the institution has acquired over its first twenty five years is shared with governments and, in doing so,
- establishes policies within these countries that serve as a great benefit to people and nature.
- Criticism:-CI has been criticised for links to companies with a poor environmental record such as BP, Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto and Shell and for allegedly offering greenwashing services.
- Program – Nature is Speaking awareness Campaign
Receive Daily Updates
Recent Posts
Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.