A comprehensive report on the distribution range, abundance trends and conservation status of birds in India indicates a worrying decline in the populations of 79 per cent of the species.
“The State of India’s Birds 2020” report, which was released at the 13th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, provides worrying data about the status of birdlife in the country.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]
While it is obvious even to a lay observer that wildlife in India is gradually on the decline, it is disturbing when this observation is confirmed by a scientific study.
The report was put together after a massive national exercise. More than 15,000 birdwatchers contributed over 10 million observations which became the database for the report. Birdwatchers uploaded their data to eBird, an online repository of bird sightings.
These data were collated with supporting information such as taxonomic grouping, habitat, endemicity and diet, to create a detailed picture of each species. Using these inputs, the report has assessed the distribution of 867 species of Indian birds, trends in the abundance of birds that occur in India and their conservation status. By collating the data, the report was able to zero in on “species that are high in conservation concern, and those that are doing relatively well”.
The report says that hundreds of Indian bird species are on the decline. Over the past decades, 50 per cent of the Indian species have declined primarily owing to habitat destruction, hunting and the pet trade.
“The State of India’s Birds” is a pioneering report. It has assessed the status of Indian birds not usually covered by conservation efforts or data. It has used citizen science as its database. It is an outcome of the collaboration between concerned citizens and researchers from 10 national research and conservation organisations. It is the “first comprehensive assessment of the distribution range, trends in abundance and conservation status of most of the bird species that regularly occur in India”.
The State of India’s Birds project was conceived in May 2018 to have an informed assessment of the conservation status of Indian birds from the large volume of information available on the eBird platform.
Worldwide, common and widespread species are on the decline. In India, a lack of information has meant that conservation attention has focussed only on a few species, usually large, charismatic and threatened species.
An existing data and conservation gap needed to be filled, and the report does exactly that. It evaluates the distribution range size of 867 Indian birds and their trends in abundance—both long-term trend (over 25 years, that is, the proportional change in the frequency of reported sightings since 1993) and the current annual trend (the past five years).
Using these three measures, plus information from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of global threat status, the report classifies the species into low, moderate and high categories of conservation concern for India.
The long-term trend shows that more than half of these species have declined in that time period. The short-term trend shows that nearly 80 per cent of the species have declined in the past five years.
In all 101 species have been classified as high conservation concern species, “59 based on their range size and abundance trends, and an additional 42 based on their IUCN Red List status”, requiring immediate attention. These include 34 species that are not considered threatened globally by the IUCN. As many as 319 species have been listed under moderate concern and 442 under low concern.
Raptors, migratory shorebirds and birds endemic to the Western Ghats have suffered the highest declines in the past 25-plus years, with the white-rumped vulture, Richard’s pipit, the Indian vulture, the large-billed leaf warbler, the Pacific golden plover and the curlew sandpiper seeing the greatest decline.
Over the decades, the population of raptors, including the species of eagles and harriers, has been badly hit. But it is vultures that have suffered the most severe population decline since the 1990s, largely owing to inadvertent poisoning caused by ingesting the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac used in the treatment of livestock. Of the nine vulture species found in India, seven have been in a critical decline caused by diclofenac.
The number of migratory shorebirds has been decreasing in the long term and the abundance of resident species of waterbirds such as geese, ducks and terns have also been on a sharp downslide. The cinnamon bittern, once widespread throughout the country during the monsoon, is now in steep decline and has been marked as “High Conservation Concern”. Hitherto common species such as the small minivet, the common greenshank and the oriental skylark have also declined as have birds that eat invertebrates.
Of continuing concern are the four species of bustards: the great Indian bustard, Macqueen’s bustard, the lesser florican and the Bengal florican. The report says: “All four have suffered continuous population declines because of historical hunting and widespread habitat loss, compounded with their slow growth and reproduction.
The largest of them, the great Indian bustard, is classified as “Critically Endangered” in the IUCN Red List 2019 and is in need of urgent conservation action. Surveys… suggest a 90 per cent decline in population size and distribution range over the past five decades.
More recently, the single viable great Indian bustard population in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, has been systematically monitored…. Studies identify mortality by collision with power lines to be the prime current threat.
The Bombay Natural History Society, BirdLife International, the Wildlife Institute of India and other organisations are undertaking in-situ conservation efforts such as working towards conservation-friendly energy infrastructure in the region. An effort is under way to breed the species in captivity in order to insure against extinction, and to enable reintroduction into the wild once threats are managed.”
Positive news
The data had some positive news as well. They show that the populations of the rosy starling, the feral pigeon, the glossy ibis, the plain prinia, the ashy prinia and the Indian peafowl have increased in the last 25-plus years.
Some globally near-threatened species, including the black-headed ibis and the oriental darter, have stable or increasing populations and, therefore, are classified as “low conservation concern” for India.
On analysis, the data showed that “48 per cent of the species have remained stable or increasing in the long term, while 79 per cent show declines in the past five years.
In some welcome news, the house sparrow was found to be roughly stable across the country as a whole, although declining in the major cities. In all, 101 species have been classified as of high conservation concern.… The groups that show the greatest decline are raptors, migratory shorebirds and habitat specialists (those that thrive only in a limited range of habitat conditions), among others.
The overall decline in species demands research into the causes, and action to protect the high concern species. This calls for attention from conservation policy, management and funding.”
The disappearance of the house sparrow has touched a chord in everyone’s heart. The report says: “Reasons for the suspected decline of this species are a matter of much speculation and are believed to include decreasing insect populations (a key part of the diet of sparrow chicks) and paucity of suitable nesting sites. The popular theory that radiation from mobile phone towers is a factor is not supported by current evidence.
Despite the widespread notion that the house sparrow is declining in India, the analysis presented in this report suggests that the species has been fairly stable overall during the past 25+ years.
“Data from the six largest metro cities (Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai) do indicate a gradual decline in their abundance in urban centres. However, the extremely large range of the species across the country, and the lack of evidence for either long-term or current countrywide decline results in it being classified as of low conservation concern.”
The report is a collaborative effort of 10 government and non-profit research and conservation groups, namely the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, the Bombay Natural History Society, the Foundation for Ecological Security, the National Biodiversity Authority, the National Centre for Biological Sciences-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research(NCBS-TIFR), the Nature Conservation Foundation, the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, the Wetlands International South Asia, the Wildlife Institute of India and the World Wide Fund for Nature India.
Their ubiquity makes birds an excellent indicator of the state of the natural environment. The fact that species are in decline is a red light not just for their own conservation but for the natural world at large. The report sees itself as “a significant step forward in our understanding of India’s rich and varied biodiversity and its conservation. It is also a step toward utilising more citizen science with a sound scientific approach in the conservation space.”
While conservation efforts have been going on for decades, they were not based on well-researched and detailed reports such as this. Conservationists hope that with these extensive data, conservation efforts will focus on protecting the 101 species of “high conservation concern”.
“The State of India’s Birds” clearly shows that there is huge citizen interest in nature and its conservation. That this has translated into accurate research is encouraging. It would be heartening if policymakers see the value of the report and respond with pro-environment policies.
Recent Posts
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.