News Snippet
News 1: Decline in pre-primary enrolments continued in 2021-22
News 2: Child Welfare Police Officers a must in all police stations
News 3: Amur falcons and Nagaland
News 4: RISAT-2 satellite makes re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere
News 5: Mauna Loa eruption
News 6: Poppy cultivation and Afghanistan
Other important news:
- Bharat Stage emission norms
- Increasing tension in Korean Peninsula
- Impact of US Federal Reserve rate hikes
News 1: Decline in pre-primary enrolments continued in 2021-22
Background
The number of children entering pre-primary classes in 2021-2022 saw a further decline, resulting in 30% fewer students in this school section as compared to pre-Covid as younger students with less access to remote learning continue to bear the biggest brunt of learning loss during the pandemic, according to a report released by the Ministry of Education.
Findings
Enrolment in primary classes, which include classes 1 to 5, saw a drop for the first time, falling from 12.20 lakh in 2020-2021 to 12.18 lakh in 2021-2022. However, the total number of students from primary to higher secondary increased by 19 lakh to 25.57 crore.
Also for the first time since the pandemic, the report records a decline in number of schools due to closures as well as a lack of teachers. There were 20,000 fewer schools in 2021-2022 as the total number of schools dropped from 15.09 lakh to 14.89 lakh.
There were also 1.89 lakh or 1.98% fewer teachers as their number reduced from 96.96 lakh in 2020-2021 to 95.07 lakh in 2021-2022.
Computer facilities were available in 44.75% of schools, while Internet access was available only in 33.9% of schools. However, their availability has improved as compared to pre-Covid when only 38.5% of schools had computers and 22.3% had Internet facilities.
News 2: Child Welfare Police Officers a must in all police stations
Background
The Ministry of Home Affairs has asked the States/Union Territories to appoint a Child Welfare Police Officer (CWPO) in every police station to exclusively deal with children, either as victims or perpetrators.
Child Welfare Police Officer and Special Juvenile Police Unit
Acting on an advisory issued by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the Home Ministry referred to provisions under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, which calls for designating at least one officer, not below the rank of an Assistant Sub-Inspector, as CWPO in every station.
In a note to all Directors-General of Police, the Home Ministry said the Commission had further requested that a Special Juvenile Police Unit in each district and city, which is headed by an officer not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police, be established.
The unit would comprise CWPOs and two social workers having experience of working in the field of child welfare, of whom one shall be a woman, to co-ordinate all functions of police in relation to children.
National Commission for Protection of Child Rights
- The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights is an Indian statutory body established by an Act of Parliament
- The Commission works under the aegis of Ministry of Women and Child Development, GoI
- The Commission became operational on 5 March 2007.
News 3: Amur falcons and Nagaland
Background
Nagaland is undertaking the first avian documentation exercise going beyond the Amur falcons, the migratory raptor that put the State on the world birding map.
Amur Falcon
Amur Falcons breed in eastern Siberia and in winter in southern Africa, often congregating in huge roosts on passage through India. They feed mainly on insects that they either catch on the wing or pick from the ground.
Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals/Bonn Convention
- CMS brings together the States through which migratory animals pass, the Range States, and lays the legal foundation for internationally coordinated conservation measures throughout a migratory range.
- As the only global convention specializing in the conservation of migratory species, their habitats and migration routes, CMS complements and co-operates with a number of other international organizations, NGOs and partners in the media as well as in the corporate sector.
- Migratory species threatened with extinction are listed on Appendix I of the Convention. CMS Parties strive towards strictly protecting these animals, conserving or restoring the places where they live, mitigating obstacles to migration and controlling other factors that might endanger them.
- Migratory species that need or would significantly benefit from international co-operation are listed in Appendix II of the Convention. For this reason, the Convention encourages the Range States to conclude global or regional agreements.
- In this respect, CMS acts as a framework Convention. The agreements may range from legally binding treaties (called Agreements) to less formal instruments, such as Memoranda of Understanding, and can be adapted to the requirements of particular regions.
Central Asian Flyway
Flyways are the geographical area used by a single or group of migratory birds during their annual cycle
The Central Asian Flyway (CAF) covers a large continental area of Eurasia between the Arctic and Indian Oceans and the associated island chains.
The Flyway comprises several important migration routes of waterbirds, most of which extend from the northernmost breeding grounds in the Russian Federation (Siberia) to the southernmost non-breeding (wintering) grounds in West and South Asia, the Maldives and the Indian Ocean Territory.
The birds on their annual migration cross the borders of several countries. Geographically the flyway region covers 30 countries of North, Central, South Asia and Trans-Caucasus.
How many flyways pass through the Indian sub-continent?
1) Central Asian Flyway (CAF)
- This migration route covers over 30 countries for different waterbirds.
- It connects their northernmost breeding grounds in Siberia, Russia to the southernmost non-breeding grounds in West and South Asia, the Maldives and British Indian Ocean Territory.
2) East Asian Australasian Flyway (EAAF)
- It extends from Arctic Russia and North America to the southern limits of Australia and New Zealand.
- It covers large areas of East Asia, all of Southeast Asia. Importantly, it includes eastern India as well as Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
- This flyway region covers 30 countries of North, Central and South Asia and Trans-Caucasus.
- It covers at least 279 populations of 182 migratory waterbird species, including 29 globally threatened and near-threatened species.
3) Asian East African Flyway (AEAF)
- It extends from Arctic Russia to South Africa and Madagascar in Africa.
- In the Indian subcontinent covers the area from west of Tibetan plateau and Himalayas including central Asia and West Asia. North-western India is also covered.
What is Raptor MoU?
Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Birds of Prey in Africa and Eurasia is also known as Raptor MoU. Raptors MoU is an agreement under CMS. India is a signatory to Raptor MoU but it is not legally binding.
News 4: RISAT-2 satellite makes re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere
Background
ISRO’s RISAT-2 satellite, launched in 2009, has made an uncontrolled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. RISAT-2 satellite, weighing about 300 kg, made an uncontrolled re-entry in the Indian Ocean near Jakarta on October 30.
RISAT-2
- RISAT-2 was launched by the PSLV-C12 launch vehicle 13 years ago.
- ISRO said that though the initial designed life of the satellite was four years, due to proper maintenance of orbit and mission planning by the spacecraft operations team in ISRO and by economical usage of fuel, RISAT-2 provided very useful payload data for 13 years.
- RISAT-2, or Radar Imaging Satellite-2 was an Indian radar imaging reconnaissance satellite that was part of India’s RISAT programme.
- It is India’s first dedicated reconnaissance satellite.
- It is designed to monitor India’s borders and as part of anti-infiltration and anti-terrorist operations.
News 5: Mauna Loa eruption
Background
The ground is shaking and swelling at Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano in the world, indicating that it could erupt.
Where is Mauna Loa?
Mauna Loa is one of five volcanoes that together make up the Big Island of Hawaii, which is the southernmost island in the Hawaiian archipelago.
It’s not the tallest (that title goes to Mauna Kea) but it’s the largest and makes up about half of the island’s land mass.
It sits immediately north of Kilauea volcano, which is currently erupting from its summit crater. Kilauea is well-known for a 2018 eruption that destroyed 700 homes and sent rivers of lava spreading across farms and into the ocean. Mauna Loa last erupted 38 years ago.
It’s about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of Hawaii’s most populous island, Oahu, where the state capital Honolulu and beach resort Waikiki are both located.
Will Mauna Loa erupt like Kilauea?
Mauna Loa’s eruptions differ from Kilauea’s in part because it is taller. Its greater height gives it steeper slopes, which allow lava to rush down its hillsides faster than Kilauea’s. Its enormous size may allow it to store more magma, leading to larger lava flows when an eruption occurs.
Mauna Loa has a much larger magma reservoir than Kilauea, which may allow it to hold more lava and rest longer between eruptions than Kilauea.
Where will Mauna Loa erupt from?
Scientists won’t know until the eruption begins. Each eruption since 1843 started at the summit. Half the time, the volcano later also began erupting from vents at lower elevations.
The other half of the time it only erupted in the summit caldera. Scientists can’t tell far in advance when and where Mauna Loa will open new vents and erupt. Vents generally form along the volcano’s rift zone.
That’s where the mountain is splitting apart, the rock is cracked and relatively weak and it’s easier for magma to emerge. An eruption from vents on the southwest rift zone could hit residential communities, coffee farms or coastal villages on the west side of the island. Lava could reach homes in just hours or days.
It could take lava weeks or months to reach populated areas on this side of the mountain. Scott Rowland, a geologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said there’s no pattern when it comes to where an eruption will occur. “Just because the last one was on the northeast rift zone does not mean the next one will be down the southwest rift zone,” he said.
Will Mauna Loa explode like Mount St. Helens?
Fifty-seven people died when Washington state’s Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980 and blasted more than 1,300 feet (400 meters) off the top of the mountain. Steam, rocks and volcanic gas burst upward and outward.
A plume of volcanic ash rose over 80,000 feet (24,384 meters) and rained down as far as 250 miles (400 kilometers) away. Hawaii volcanoes like Mauna Loa tend not to have explosion eruptions like this.
That’s because their magma is hotter, drier and more fluid, said Hannah Dietterich, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Volcano Observatory. The magma in Mount St. Helens tends to be stickier and traps more gas, making it much more likely to explode when it rises.
The gas in the magma of Hawaii’s volcanoes tends to escape, and so lava flows down the side of their mountains when they erupt. Hawaii’s volcanoes are called shield volcanoes because successive lava flows over hundreds of thousands of years build broad mountains that resemble the shape of a warrior’s shield.
Shield volcanos are also found in California and Idaho as well as Iceland and the Galapagos Islands.
Volcanoes like Mount St. Helens are called composite or stratovolcanoes. Their steep, conical slopes are built by the eruption of viscous lava flows and rock, ash and gas. Japan’s Mount Fuji is another example of a composite volcano.
How do scientists monitor Mauna Loa?
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has more than 60 GPS stations on Mauna Loa taking measurements to estimate the location and the amount of magma accumulating beneath the surface. Scientists use tiltmeters to track long-term changes in the tilting of the ground, helping them identify when the ground is swelling or deflating.
A rapid change in tilt can indicate when an eruption will occur. There’s also a thermal webcam at Mauna Loa’s summit that will identify the presence of heat. And satellite radar can keep track of ground swelling and deflation.
Shield volcanoes
These are volcanoes shaped like a bowl or shield in the middle with long gentle slopes made by basaltic lava flows. These are formed by the eruption of low-viscosity lava that can flow a great distance from a vent.
They generally do not explode catastrophically. Since low-viscosity magma is typically low in silica, shield volcanoes are more common in oceanic than continental settings. The Hawaiian volcanic chain is a series of shield cones, and they are common in Iceland, as well.
Stratovolcano or Composite volcano
Composite volcanoes are steep-sided volcanoes composed of many layers of volcanic rocks, usually made from high-viscosity lava, ash and rock debris. These types of volcanoes are tall conical mountains composed of lava flows and other ejecta in alternate layers, the strata that give rise to the name.
Composite volcanoes are made of cinders, ash, and lava. Cinders and ash pile on top of each other, lava flows on top of the ash, where it cools and hardens, and then the process repeats.
Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’
The Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ or Pacific rim, or the Circum-Pacific Belt, is an area along the Pacific Ocean that is characterised by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.
It is home to about 75 per cent of the world’s volcanoes – more than 450 volcanoes. Also, about 90 per cent of the world’s earthquakes occur here.
Its length is over 40,000 kilometres and traces from New Zealand clockwise in an almost circular arc covering Tonga, Kermadec Islands, Indonesia, moving up to the Philippines, Japan, and stretching eastward to the Aleutian Islands, then southward along the western coast of North America and South America.
The area is along several tectonic plates including the Pacific plate, Philippine Plate, Juan de Fuca plate, Cocos plate, Nazca plate, and North American plate. The movement of these plates or tectonic activity makes the area witness abundant earthquakes and tsunamis every year.
Along much of the Ring of Fire, tectonic plates move towards each other creating subduction zones. One plate gets pushed down or is subducted by the other plate. This is a very slow process – a movement of just one or two inches per year. As this subduction happens, rocks melt, become magma and move to Earth’s surface and cause volcanic activity
News 6: Poppy cultivation and Afghanistan
Background
Driven by the demand for heroin and other opioids, mostly in the West, Afghanistan’s poppy farmers have figured out that in a broken country where there are no jobs, and the de facto government has no money, poppy guarantees survival.
Afghanistan’s illicit narcotics industry thrived under the puritanical first Taliban regime, it flourished — with some ups and downs mostly related to demand — through two decades of “democracy”, and it continues to do so under the new Taliban regime.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Report
The land under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in 2021 (October and November are the sowing season) increased by 32 per cent over the previous year.
The UNODC report says the 2021 harvest of 6,200 tonnes, 10 per cent less than in 2021, could be converted into 350-380 tonnes of export-quality heroin.
Eighty per cent of the world’s opiates come from Afghanistan.
With the Taliban back in power, Afghanistan’s situation is not very different from the 1990s. Still international outcasts and with no access to global funding, they are scrambling to raise money by levying taxes, as humanitarian aid keeps Afghanistan going.
Against this background, opiates are now “a crucial pillar of Afghanistan’s economy and permeate the rural society to the extent that many communities…have become dependent on the income from opium to sustain their livelihoods,” the UN report says.
The opiate economy, including local consumption and export, was valued at 9-14% per cent of the country’s GDP. With a shrinking GDP in 2022, it may now represent an even bigger share of the economy, the report says.
Regional concern
Russia and Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbours view drugs as a top concern, more perhaps than the threat of religious extremism, radicalisation, and terrorism. India has voiced concerns about it from time to time.
At the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation security meetings, the threat of terrorism and drug trafficking from Afghanistan are discussed as inter-related threats to regional and global security.
Golden Crescent and Golden Triangle
Golden Crescent
The Golden Crescent is the name given to one of Asia’s two principal areas of illicit opium production and this space covers the mountainous peripheries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, extending into eastern Iran.
Golden Triangle
The Golden Triangle is the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
Established: 1997
Headquarter: Vienna, Austria
The agency’s focus is the trafficking in and abuse of illicit drugs, crime prevention and criminal justice, international terrorism, and political corruption. It is a member of the United Nations Development Group.
Other important news
Bharat Stage Emission norms
These are the standards set up by the Indian government which specify the amount of air pollutants from internal combustion engines, including those that vehicles can emit. If these emit more pollutants than the prescribed limit, they don’t get a clearance to be sold in an open market.
Bharat Stage Emission Standards have been instituted by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), instituted within the Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change.
Vehicle emission norms were introduced in India in 1991 for petrol and in 1992 for diesel vehicles. Since 2000, Euro norms are followed in India under the name Bharat Stage Emission Standards for four wheeled vehicles. Bharat stage III norms have been enforced across India since October 2010.
Upgradation of emission norms
Upgrading the emission norms requires the manufacturing companies to upgrade their technology, which in turn increases the cost of the vehicle. Cost is one of the main reasons for the slow upgrade of emission standards.
However, there are also arguments that the increase in cost is made up by savings in health costs as the pollutants causing diseases are decreased with the upgrade in emission standards. Fuels also play a crucial role in meeting these emission norms. Fuel specifications have also been aligned to its corresponding European production norms.
Increasing tension in Korean Peninsula
Tensions escalated in the Korean peninsula as North Korea fired at least 20 missiles east and west of its southern neighbour, with one landing near South Korean territorial waters for the first time since the two countries were divided in 1953.
The escalation comes after North Korea warned against the recent joint military drills between the United States and South Korea, which it views as provocative and a rehearsal for an invasion.
The US and South Korea began their largest-ever joint drills on Monday, called Operation Vigilant Storm, during a period of national mourning in South Korea, following a deadly crowd surge in Seoul on Saturday in which over 150 people died.
Impact of US Federal Reserve rate hikes
Fed’s continuous rate hikes does not augur well for emerging markets including India. An increase in US interest rates results in an outflow of funds to US markets, putting their stock markets and currencies under pressure. Equity markets are likely to see increased volatility in the next few months.
RBI may not follow the Federal Reserve’s rate hike as it has to consider domestic factors, especially retail inflation, while reviewing the interest rates.
Recent Posts
- Floods
- Cyclones
- Tornadoes and hurricanes (cyclones)
- Hailstorms
- Cloudburst
- Heat wave and cold wave
- Snow avalanches
- Droughts
- Sea erosion
- Thunder/ lightning
- Landslides and mudflows
- Earthquakes
- Large fires
- Dam failures and dam bursts
- Mine fires
- Epidemics
- Pest attacks
- Cattle epidemics
- Food poisoning
- Chemical and Industrial disasters
- Nuclear
- Forest fires
- Urban fires
- Mine flooding
- Oil Spill
- Major building collapse
- Serial bomb blasts
- Festival related disasters
- Electrical disasters and fires
- Air, road, and rail accidents
- Boat capsizing
- Village fire
- Coastal States, particularly on the East Coast and Gujarat are vulnerable to cyclones.
- 4 crore hectare landmass is vulnerable to floods
- 68 per cent of net sown area is vulnerable to droughts
- 55 per cent of total area is in seismic zones III- V, hence vulnerable to earthquakes
- Sub- Himalayan sector and Western Ghats are vulnerable to landslides.
- Mainstreaming of Disaster Risk Reduction in Developmental Strategy-Prevention and mitigation contribute to lasting improvement in safety and should beintegrated in the disaster management. The Government of India has adopted mitigation and prevention as essential components of their development strategy.
- Mainstreaming of National Plan and its Sub-Plan
- National Disaster Mitigation Fund
- National Earthquake Risk Mitigation Project (NERMP)
- National Building Code (NBC):- Earthquake resistant buildings
- National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP)
- Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project (ICZMP)-The objective of the project is to assist GoI in building the national capacity for implementation of a comprehensive coastal management approach in the country and piloting the integrated coastal zone management approach in states of Gujarat, Orissa and West Bengal.
- National Flood Risk Mitigation Project (NFRMP)
- National Project for Integrated Drought Monitoring & Management
- National Vector Borne Diseases Control Programme (NVBDCP)- key programme
for prevention/control of outbreaks/epidemics of malaria, dengue, chikungunya etc., vaccines administered to reduce the morbidity and mortality due to diseases like measles, diphtheria, pertussis, poliomyelitis etc. Two key measures to prevent/control epidemics of water-borne diseases like cholera, viral hepatitis etc. include making available safe water and ensuring personal and domestic hygienic practices are adopted. - Training
- Education
- Research
- Awareness
- Hyogo Framework of Action- The Hyogo Framework of Action (HFA) 2005-2015 was adopted to work globally towards sustainable reduction of disaster losses in lives and in the social, economic and environmental assets of communities and countries.
- United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)-In order to build the resilience of nations and communities to disasters through the implementation of the HFA , the UNISDR strives to catalyze, facilitate and mobilise the
commitment and resources of national, regional and international stakeholders of the ISDR
system. - United Nation Disaster Management Team (UNDMT) –
- To ensure a prompt, effective and concerted country-level support to a governmental
response in the event of a disaster, at the central, state and sub-state levels, - To coordinate UN assistance to the government with respect to long term recovery, disaster mitigation and preparedness.
- To coordinate all disaster-related activities, technical advice and material assistance provided by UN agencies, as well as to take steps for optimal utilisation of resources by UN agencies.
- To ensure a prompt, effective and concerted country-level support to a governmental
- Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction (GFDRR):-
- GFDRR was set up in September 2006 jointly by the World Bank, donor partners (21countries and four international organisations), and key stakeholders of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR). It is a long-term global partnership under the ISDR system established to develop and implement the HFA through a coordinated programme for reversing the trend in disaster losses by 2015.
- Its mission is to mainstream disaster reduction and climate change adaptation in a country’s development strategies to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards.
- ASEAN Region Forum (ARF)
- Asian Disaster Reduction Centre (ADRC)
- SAARC Disaster Management Centre (SDMC)
- Program for Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER):-The Program for Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER) is a regional training programme initiated in 1998 by the United States Agency for International Development’s, Office of U.S Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) to strengthen disaster response capacities in Asia.
- Policy guidelines at the macro level that would inform and guide the preparation and
implementation of disaster management and development plans across sectors - Building in a culture of preparedness and mitigation
- Operational guidelines of integrating disaster management practices into development, and
specific developmental schemes for prevention and mitigation of disasters - Having robust early warning systems coupled with effective response plans at district, state
and national levels - Building capacity of all stakeholders
- Involving the community, NGOs, CSOs and the media at all stages of DM
- Addressing gender issues in disaster management planning and developing a strategy for
inclusive approach addressing the disadvantaged sections of the society towards disaster risk reduction. - Addressing climate risk management through adaptation and mitigation
- Micro disaster Insurance
- Flood Proofing
- Building Codes and Enforcement
- Housing Design and Finance
- Road and Infrastructure
A disaster is a result of natural or man-made causes that leads to sudden disruption of normal life, causing severe damage to life and property to an extent that available social and economic protection mechanisms are inadequate to cope.
The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) of the United Nations (U.N.) defines a hazard as “a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon or human activity that may cause the loss of life or injury, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.”
Disasters are classified as per origin, into natural and man-made disasters. As per severity, disasters are classified as minor or major (in impact). However, such classifications are more academic than real.
High Powered Committee (HPC) was constituted in August 1999 under the chairmanship of J.C.Pant. The mandate of the HPC was to prepare comprehensive model plans for disaster management at the national, state and district levels.
This was the first attempt in India towards a systematic comprehensive and holistic look at all disasters.
Thirty odd disasters have been identified by the HPC, which were grouped into the following five categories, based on generic considerations:-
Water and Climate Related:-
Geological:-
Biological:-
Chemical, industrial and nuclear:-
Accidental:-
India’s Key Vulnerabilities as articulated in the Tenth Plan, (2002-07) are as follows:
Vulnerability is defined as:-
“the extent to which a community, structure, service, or geographic area is likely to be damaged or disrupted by the impact of particular hazard, on account of their nature, construction and proximity to hazardous terrain or a disaster prone area”.
The concept of vulnerability therefore implies a measure of risk combined with the level of social and economic ability to cope with the resulting event in order to resist major disruption or loss.
Example:- The 1993 Marathwada earthquake in India left over 10,000 dead and destroyed houses and other properties of 200,000 households. However, the technically much more powerful Los Angeles earthquake of 1971 (taken as a benchmark in America in any debate on the much-apprehended seismic vulnerability of California) left over 55 dead.
Physical Vulnerability:-
Physical vulnerability relates to the physical location of people, their proximity to the hazard zone and standards of safety maintained to counter the effects.
The Indian subcontinent can be primarily divided into three geophysical regions with regard to vulnerability, broadly, as, the Himalayas, the Plains and the Coastal areas.
Socio-economic Vulnerability:-
The degree to which a population is affected by a calamity will not purely lie in the physical components of vulnerability but in contextual, relating to the prevailing social and economic conditions and its consequential effects on human activities within a given society.
Global Warming & Climate Change:-
Global warming is going to make other small local environmental issues seemingly insignificant, because it has the capacity to completely change the face of the Earth. Global warming is leading to shrinking glaciers and rising sea levels. Along with floods, India also suffers acute water shortages.
The steady shrinking of the Himalayan glaciers means the entire water system is being disrupted; global warming will cause even greater extremes. Impacts of El Nino and La Nina have increasingly led to disastrous impacts across the globe.
Scientifically, it is proven that the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, and in the next fifty to sixty years they would virtually run out of producing the water levels that we are seeing now.
This will cut down drastically the water available downstream, and in agricultural economies like the plains of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, which are poor places to begin with. That, as one may realise, would cause tremendous social upheaval.
Urban Risks:-
India is experiencing massive and rapid urbanisation. The population of cities in India is doubling in a period ranging just two decades according to the trends in the recent past.
It is estimated that by 2025, the urban component, which was only 25.7 per cent (1991) will be more than 50 per cent.
Urbanisation is increasing the risks at unprecedented levels; communities are becoming increasingly vulnerable, since high-density areas with poorly built and maintained infrastructure are subjected to natural hazards, environmental degradation, fires, flooding and earthquake.
Urbanisation dramatically increases vulnerability, whereby communities are forced to squat on environmentally unstable areas such as steep hillsides prone to landslide, by the side of rivers that regularly flood, or on poor quality ground, causing building collapse.
Most prominent amongst the disasters striking urban settlements frequently are, floods and fire, with incidences of earthquakes, landslides, droughts and cyclones. Of these, floods are more devastating due to their widespread and periodic impact.
Example: The 2005 floods of Maharashtra bear testimony to this. Heavy flooding caused the sewage system to overflow, which contaminated water lines. On August 11, the state government declared an epidemic of leptospirosis in Mumbai and its outskirts.
Developmental activities:-
Developmental activities compound the damaging effects of natural calamities. The floods in Rohtak (Haryana) in 1995 are an appropriate example of this. Even months after the floodwaters had receded; large parts of the town were still submerged.
Damage had not accrued due to floods, but due to water-logging which had resulted due to peculiar topography and poor land use planning.
Disasters have come to stay in the forms of recurring droughts in Orissa, the desertification of swaths of Gujarat and Rajasthan, where economic depredations continuously impact on already fragile ecologies and environmental degradation in the upstream areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Floods in the plains are taking an increasing toll of life, environment, and property, amplified by a huge population pressure.
The unrestricted felling of forests, serious damage to mountain ecology, overuse of groundwater and changing patterns of cultivation precipitate recurring floods and droughts.
When forests are destroyed, rainwater runs off causing floods and diminishing the recharging of groundwater.
The spate of landslides in the Himalayas in recent years can be directly traced to the rampant deforestation and network of roads that have been indiscriminately laid in the name of development.
Destruction of mangroves and coral reefs has increased the vulnerability of coastal areas to hazards, such as storm surges and cyclones.
Commercialisation of coastal areas, particularly for tourism has increased unplanned development in these areas, which has increased disaster potential, as was demonstrated during the Tsunami in December 2004.
Environmental Stresses:- " Delhi-Case Study"
Every ninth student in Delhi’s schools suffers from Asthma. Delhi is the world’s fourth most polluted city.
Each year, poor environmental conditions in the city’s informal areas lead to epidemics.
Delhi has one of the highest road accident fatality ratios in the world. In many ways, Delhi reflects the sad state of urban centers within India that are exposed to risks, which are misconstrued and almost never taken into consideration for urban governance.
The main difference between modernism and postmodernism is that modernism is characterized by the radical break from the traditional forms of urban architecture whereas postmodernism is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions.
Illustration of Disaster Cycle through Case Study:-
The processes covered by the disaster cycle can be illustrated through the case of the Gujarat Earthquake of 26 January 2001. The devastating earthquake killed thousands of people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses and other buildings.
The State Government as well as the National Government immediately mounted a largescale relief operation. The help of the Armed Forces was also taken.
Hundreds of NGOs from within the region and other parts of the country as well as from other countries of the world came to Gujarat with relief materials and personnel to help in the relief operations.
Relief camps were set up, food was distributed, mobile hospitals worked round the clock to help the injured; clothing, beddings, tents, and other commodities were distributed to the affected people over the next few weeks.
By the summer of 2001, work started on long-term recovery. House reconstruction programmes were launched, community buildings were reconstructed, and damaged infrastructure was repaired and reconstructed.
Livelihood programmes were launched for economic rehabilitation of the affected people.
In about two year’s time the state had bounced back and many of the reconstruction projects had taken the form of developmental programmes aiming to deliver even better infrastructure than what existed before the earthquake.
Good road networks, water distribution networks, communication networks, new schools, community buildings, health and education programmes, all worked towards developing the region.
The government as well as the NGOs laid significant emphasis on safe development practices. The buildings being constructed were of earthquake resistant designs.
Older buildings that had survived the earthquake were retrofitted in large numbers to strengthen them and to make them resistant to future earthquakes. Mason and engineer training programmes were carried out at a large scale to ensure that all future construction in the State is disaster resistant.
This case study shows how there was a disaster event during the earthquake, followed by immediate response and relief, then by recovery including rehabilitation and retrofitting, then by developmental processes.
The development phase included mitigation activities, and finally preparedness actions to face future disasters.
Then disaster struck again, but the impact was less than what it could have been, primarily due to better mitigation and preparedness efforts.
Looking at the relationship between disasters and development one can identify ‘four’ different dimensions to this relation:
1) Disasters can set back development
2) Disasters can provide development opportunities
3) Development can increase vulnerability and
4) Development can reduce vulnerability
The whole relationship between disaster and development depends on the development choice made by the individual, community and the nation who implement the development programmes.
The tendency till now has been mostly to associate disasters with negativities. We need to broaden our vision and work on the positive aspects associated with disasters as reflected below:
1)Evolution of Disaster Management in India
Disaster management in India has evolved from an activity-based reactive setup to a proactive institutionalized structure; from single faculty domain to a multi-stakeholder setup; and from a relief-based approach to a ‘multi-dimensional pro-active holistic approach for reducing risk’.
Over the past century, the disaster management in India has undergone substantive changes in its composition, nature and policy.
2)Emergence of Institutional Arrangement in India-
A permanent and institutionalised setup began in the decade of 1990s with set up of a disaster management cell under the Ministry of Agriculture, following the declaration of the decade of 1990 as the ‘International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction’ (IDNDR) by the UN General Assembly.
Consequently, the disaster management division was shifted under the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2002
3)Disaster Management Framework:-
Shifting from relief and response mode, disaster management in India started to address the
issues of early warning systems, forecasting and monitoring setup for various weather related
hazards.
National Level Institutions:-National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA):-
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was initially constituted on May 30, 2005 under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister vide an executive order.
SDMA (State Level, DDMA(District Level) also present.
National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC)
Legal Framework For Disaster Management :-
DMD- Disaster management Dept.
NIDM- National Institute of Disaster Management
NDRF – National Disaster Response Fund
Cabinet Committee on Disaster Management-
Location of NDRF Battallions(National Disaster Response Force):-
CBRN- Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear
Policy and response to Climate Change :-
1)National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC)-
National Action Plan on Climate Change identified Eight missions.
• National Solar Mission
• National Mission on Sustainable Habitat
• National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency
• National Mission for Sustaining The Himalayan Ecosystem
• National Water Mission
• National Mission for Green India
• National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture
• National Mission for Strategic Knowledge on Climate Change
2)National Policy on Disaster Management (NPDM),2009-
The policy envisages a safe and disaster resilient India by developing a holistic, proactive, multi-disaster oriented and technologydriven strategy through a culture of prevention, mitigation, preparedness and response. The policy covers all aspects of disaster management including institutional and legal arrangements,financial arrangements, disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness, techno-legal regime, response, relief and rehabilitation, reconstruction and recovery, capacity development, knowledge management, research and development. It focuses on the areas where action is needed and the institutional mechanism through which such action can be channelised.
Prevention and Mitigation Projects:-
Early Warning Nodal Agencies:-
Post Disaster Management :-Post disaster management responses are created according to the disaster and location. The principles being – Faster Recovery, Resilient Reconstruction and proper Rehabilitation.
Capacity Development:-
Components of capacity development includes :-
National Institute for Capacity Development being – National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM)
International Cooperation-
Way Forward:-
Principles and Steps:-
The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.