A tale from the banks of Ganga:-
Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town.
About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faecal sludge and septage in storm water drains running across the town. These 27 drains eventually discharge the untreated sewage into the Ganga and its tributary, the Jargo. On the way, they contaminate the groundwater and farmlands.
Such rampant discharge of untreated sewage into the Ganga prompted the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to issue show cause notices on May 18, 2016, to Chunar and four other municipalities —Mirzapur, Bhadohi, Fatehpur and Hastinapur—in Uttar Pradesh. NGT had asked the municipa lities to submit their plans to prevent untreated sewage flowing into the river.
Officials are since scrambling to abate the flow of sewage into the Ganga. “We have identified 10 ha along the Ganga to set up a sewage treatment plant (STP) with a capacity of treating 8 million litres of sewage a day (MLD). At present, Chunar generates 6 MLD of domestic sewage which goes directly into the river untreated,” says Shamsher Singh, sanitation inspector of Chunar Municipal Corporation. “We also plan to set up pumping stations at four places. These will intercept the drains and send the sewage to the proposed STP,” Singh says. But there is a problem. The town is surrounded by hills, which makes transportation of sewage to the proposed STP difficult. For instance, a huge drain passes through Aawas Colony, located at the foot of a hill. The municipal council plans to set up a pumping station along the drain. But it is not sure whether the station will be able to pump the sewage across the hill to the proposed STP.
Chunar, Mirzapur, Bhadohi, Fatehpur and Hastinapur are not the only towns along the Ganga struggling to manage their faecal load. Researchers with Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) say a major portion of the sewage generated by all the settlements along the 2,500-km-long bank of the Ganga ends up in the river—without any treatment.
The sheer volume of the untreated sewage flowing into the Ganga can be gauged from the fact that 25 per cent of the 400 million people living along it depend on on-site sanitation; there are at least 18 million septic tanks and 10 million pit latrines around the main stream of the Ganga, according to the Census 2011. More often than not people dispose of faecal sludge from these tanks and pits without any treatment.
The Report:-
A report on the pollution load in the Ganga, prepared by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2013, states that more than 6,087 MLD of wastewater flows into the Ganga from 138 drains. Experts say domestic sewage is a major constituent of this wastewater. The five states through which the main stream of the Ganga flows— Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal—have the capacity to treat only 1,208 MLD of sewage. Not to mention the Ganga is also a receptacle of 501 MLD of industrial wastewater.
The situation is only going to get worse with the implementation of Swachh Bharat Mission, the flagship programme of the Union government that aims to achieve an open defecation-free India by October 2, 2019. Under the mission, the government plans to construct 1.52 million toilets in rural areas along the Ganga and 1.45 million toilets (this includes private and public toilets) in cities that dot the river banks. These toilets will be built with four on-site sanitation technologies—septic tank, twin pits, biotoilet or biodigester.
This means by 2019, over 30 million tanks or pits would have been dug along the Ganga.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation by CSE shows these tanks and pits will produce 180 MLD of faecal sludge and septage. In the absence of a proper management system, this waste will eventually find its way into the Ganga. Pollution concentration in 180 MLD of septage is equivalent to that of 6,000 MLD of sewage.
The finding of CSE is alarming because the impact of the increasing number of toilets with- out any provision to treat the sludge is palpable across the Ganga. The level of faecal coliform, which indicates the extent of excreta in water, is increasing in the Ganga, and goes beyond the acceptable limit as the river crosses Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, states the CPCB report. “High coliform levels make the water unsuitable for bathing and drinking,” says Javier Mateo Sagasta, senior researcher with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), India.
“Unfortunately, faecal sludge and septage management do not find a mention in sanitation programmes like Swachh Bharat Mission,” says Suresh Kumar Rohilla, programme director of urban water management unit at CSE.
The load of faecal sludge and septage from millions of toilets, which are being installed along the Ganga under Swachh Bharat Mission, may defeat the government’s ambitious Namami Gange (National Mission for Clean Ganga).
Though the mission has identified varied projects, right from modernisation of ghats to construction of toilets and STPs in 118 target towns and cities, to arrest pollution in the river, it too gives faecal sludge and septage management a miss. “We plan to set up STPs to take care of sewage as well as faecal sludge,” says Shashi Shekhar, secretary with the Union Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. As of now, Namami Gange focuses on treatment of sewage, that too only from class-1 cities (that have over 100,000 population).
So far, the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) is the only programme that requires cities to submit sewage and septage management plan. But it fails on two counts. First, AMRUT is restricted to class-1 cities. Second, it monitors urban local bodies’ performance based on their sewerage coverage. This discourages the authorities to prepare septage management plan.
“All Central, state and local programmes should recognise faecal waste management as a priority action area along the ongoing efforts to achieve healthy and clean cities in the Ganga basin,” says Rohilla. This is particularly important because a survey of cities along the Ganga shows that the authorities have miserably failed to manage their faecal waste.
Between October and November, CSE researchers visited 10 small- and medium-sized cities in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal that provide a snapshot of settlements across the Ganga basin. And the findings are startling. Of the 10 town and cities surveyed, only two (Ramnagar and Bijnor) have sewer lines. But they defeat the purpose as the authorities are yet to set up STPs. At least 60 per cent households in all the 10 towns and cities have toilets with on-site sanitation. But faecal sludge from these facilities are randomly dumped in vacant land, open drains, landfills and near water bodies. In West Bengal’s Bansberia and Bongaon cities, the authorities are in a fix. Almost all households in these cities have built toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission. “We have no idea how to dispose of the enormous volume of sludge these tanks and pits will produce in the coming years,” says Jagabandhu Saha, an official with Bongaon municipality.
Te tale of Lose-lose situation:-
In Uttar Pradesh’s Ramnagar town, 60-70 per cent households are connected to the sewer lines. Between November and June, when people in the region grow wheat, the irrigation department diverts the untreated sewage to farmers after diluting it. In fact, the irrigation department has set up a sewage pumping station and laid pipelines for this purpose. The urban local body has a vacuum tanker for cleaning out the septic tanks and pits. But it has been used only five to six times in two years as most septic tanks are inaccessible and emptied manually. More often than not, the faecal sludge is dumped in nearby fields and low-lying areas, from where it finds its way into the Ganga.
The situation is similar in the state’s Gangaghat town. Since the only vacuum tanker owned by the urban local body is too big to enter the narrow lanes, people contact private septage haulers from Kanpur. Residents say the tankers on their way back dump the untreated sewage at Railway Khanti, a low-lying area, or in the Chamak Ganga, a tributary of the Ganga whose flow has now been blocked due to construction activities. Years of dumping of faecal sludge has turned Railway Khanti and the Chamak Ganga into sewage pools.
Census 2011 states that some parts of Chunar are connected to sewer lines, but CSE researchers could not find any.
In Bijnor, people depend on five private septage haulers for emptying the tanks. Farmers have tied up with these tankers to provide them sludge, which they use as manure. The town is now shifting towards managing faecal waste in a centralised manner. The authorities have laid sewer lines and are setting up an STP. “Pollution in the Ganga can be fixed only through effective management of STPs,” says I P Singh, executive officer of Bijnor urban local body, adding that small STPs are cost-effective and efficient.
In Bihar’s Katihar and Buxar cities, municipal corporations provide vacuum tankers to clean out the septic tanks, but their responsibility ends there. The vacuum tanker of Katihar dumps the faecal sludge in a landfill at Udama Rakha. Since the landfill does not have a protective lining to check percolation of leachate, septage increases the risk of groundwater contamination. In Buxar, the vacuum tanker dumps the faecal sludge in open drains or on vacant land in nearby Darapur and Ahrauli villages.
When CSE researchers visited Bodhgaya, sewer lines were being laid in the town. But since households are yet to be connected to the network, its urban local body continues to clean the septic tanks and dump the septage on agricultural fields, often without the consent of the farmer.
Though Bongaon is likely to achieve open defecation-free status by the end of December 2016, people here have constructed large pits instead of septic tanks. This increases the risk of groundwater contamination with faecal matter. The municipa lity dumps septage in landfills, located next to a pond. This heightens the contamination risk of both groundwater and surface water.
In two of the cities surveyed, efforts are under way to manage the faecal sludge. Consider Bihar’s Muzaffarpur city. Most households here have toilets with on-site sanitation, and a fertiliser company is cashing in on it. Sona Ganga Fertilizers procures about 8 per cent of the septage from Muzaffarpur. It then dries and composts the waste and sells the biocompost to farmers.
A similar initiative is under way in Bansberia in partnership with the municipality. The municipality collects septage from 47 per cent of its households and transports it to the faecal sludge treatment plant (FSTP), set up under public-private partnership in 2006. A private company, Greenery Biocompost and Animal Farming, which runs the FSTP, recycles the sludge and converts it into biocompost. The company sells 50 kg of the biocompost for Rs 850.
These initiatives show the economic value of faecal sludge and septage, which can be converted into soil conditioners, unlike sewage. In the process, they create employment and encourage resource recovery and recycle. But in the absence of funding, guidelines and expertise, most urban local bodies turn a blind eye to the potential of faecal sludge and septage.
There is enough evidence to show that faecal sludge and septage management (FSSM) is not only economical as compared to centralised sewerage system but can also be implemented quickly to make cities clean and healthy.
IWMI’s recent study analyses the cost of faecal waste management in all 2,367 cities in the five states along the Ganga. It says effective management of faecal sludge and septage generated in these cities will cost US $2.8 billion (about Rs 18,900 crore), whereas laying sewerage networks and STPs will cost six times more—a whopping $17.4 billion (about Rs 117,400 crore). Besides, installing the sewerage system takes seven to eight years, whereas setting up an FSTP takes one to two years.
Sewerage system is also resource intensive. Unlike septic tanks, sewer networks involve large amounts of water. It can be laid by only those cities that supply 135 litres per capita a day—a dream for even most class-1 cities. “Using water to flush faecal matter is just a waste of precious resource,” says Rohilla. Since sewerage systems require electricity for pumping sewage to running STPs, they are not reliable in small towns and cities that face frequent power outages. On the contrary, FSTPs require little electricity as most are based on natural systems (see ‘Triple bonanza’).
| Triple bonanza
Faecal sludge management is not only cost-effective but also generates livelihood opportunities. Some technologies do not even require electricity Black soldier fly larvae: The technology uses larvae of a benign fly species, Hermetia illucens, to feed on the faecal matter. As the larvae grow and proliferate, they drastically reduce the volume of the waste within a couple of days and convert the dangerous pit material into a potentially useful soil conditioner or fertiliser. Once the larvae attain the prepupae stage, they can be harvested, processed to remove any possible pathogens and sold as animal feed. Because of high fat and protein content, there is an increasing demand for these animal feed. The technology is gaining ground in South Africa’s Ethekwini municipality. The country, which launched a sanitation programme similar to Swachh Bharat Mission in the 1990s, is innovating ways to dispose of the huge loads of faecal sludge and septage. Planted and unplanted drying bed: At a faecal sludge treatment plant, sludge is dried naturally in a sealed shallow pond with several layers of fliters and with evaporation facility. While this simple method can produce soil conditioners, one can plant wetland plants on the bed for efficient drying-up. It has an added advantage: the filters do not need to be desludged after each drying cycle. Fresh sludge can be directly applied onto the previous layer as the plants and their root systems maintain the porosity of the filter. Compared to unplanted drying beds, planted drying beds (also called humification beds), require desludging only once every five to 10 years and the removed sludge is a nutrient-rich soil conditioner. While Ghana has experimented with unplanted drying bed, planted drying bed is popular in Bangkok. |
Small wonder, several developing countries in Asia are taking steps to strengthen septage management. Consider the Philippines. About 40 per cent of the country’s population (including 85 per cent of the people in capital city Manila) use toilets that have septic tanks. Septage management is a main component in its Clean Water Act of 2004. The health department has also issued a manual guiding implementation of septage management programmes. Cities, such as Marikina and Dumaguete, have issued ordinances requiring regular desludging of septic tanks and have set up new FSTPs. In Malaysia, desludging at regular intervals is a must under federal law.
While India can follow in on the footsteps of these countries, it must ensure that people install on-site sanitation technologies suitable to the region’s geology. For example, people in Goa say none of the four sanitation technologies promoted under Swachh Bharat Mission is suitable for the region. The state receives heavy rainfall, has riverine areas, a high water table and a long sandy coastline. This makes it easy for faecal matter to seep through these twin pits and contaminate the groundwater. Septic tanks with soak pits also do not work as the partially treated effluent leaches through the soak pits. Biodigesters and biotoilets maybe suitable for the region, but they are expensive and people lack skills to construct, operate and maintain these toilets.
Connecting health issues with pollution in river
FSSM has its advantages. It is effective in unplanned areas—a common phenomenon in all towns in the Ganga basin. It can work seamlessly with sewers. For example, local urban bodies can include faecal sludge management alongside sewerage plan in Master Plans, City Development Plans and Swachh City or City Sanitation Plans.
All they need is guidance to upgrade on-site sanitation systems as per prescribed standards and bye-laws, to regularise private vacuum tankers and to operate and maintain FSTP. They should also be encouraged to tie up with private companies in managing faecal sludge. In Bangladesh, non-profit WaterAid Bangladesh and its partners the Bangladesh Association for Social Advancement are working with the Shakipur municipality to run a co-compost plant that uses both faecal sludge and organic waste to make compost.Researchers with the IWMI say cities that have sewerage systems in place should set up a plant that can treat both sewage and faecal sludge.
Cities that do not have a sewerage system and have a water supply level above 80 litres per capita a day (lpcd) should have a simplified sewer system to convey effluents from septic tanks, which can then be treated in a decentralised manner. The faecal sludge can be treated at FSTP. Co-composting can also be considered. Cities that have less than 80 lpcd water supply can treat faecal sludge by using microphytes in wetlands. They can also consider co-composting if the municipality collects solid waste.
“More than anything else, public awareness should be created,” says Nagendra Kumar, an official with Gangaghat Nagar Palika Parishad. “We cannot achieve anything without the cooperation of people,” he says. Agrees Rohilla. Ganga can be cleaned and city-wide sanitation can be achieved only if the government, civil society and people recognise faecal sludge management as a complementary solution along with the sewerage system. The need of the day is to connect water, sanitation and public health issues with abatement of pollution in river.
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.