World’s greatest cities were founded on the banks of rivers (or other water sources such as lakes) to provide for not only drinking water but other basic amenities such as sanitation and transportation. What worked as a boon for our first urban dwellers has become a bane for our present cities.
While rivers flood due to natural causes from time to time, what has made this natural phenomenon a disaster is its increasing frequency and intensity due to interference by man.
Indian cities are growing at an unprecedented speed. Every day thousands migrate to urban areas in search for a better life creating pressure on the existing resources.
In the absence of an adequate infrastructure of drainage, sanitation and roads, there has been an increasing trend of urban flood disasters in India over the past several years. The most notable amongst them are Hyderabad in the year 2000, Mumbai in 2005, Kolkata in 2007, Srinagar in 2014 and Chennai in 2015. The issue is now once again making headlines due to last week’s floods in Mumbai.
While floods in a city indirectly affect almost every resident as communication and transportation are disturbed, low and middle-income groups are likely to be affected more. These groups are more vulnerable due to their limited capabilities to deal with a disaster because of poor quality and insecure housing; inadequate infrastructure; and lack of provision for health care, emergency services, and disaster risk reduction.
Impact Of Climate Change
Urban flood usually starts with very heavy and localised downpour which the existing infrastructure cannot manage. This severely disrupts public transport, electricity and communications and also plays havoc with the urban economy.
Heavy rainfall is always a complex geographical phenomenon and cannot be attributed to a single cause. For example, the 2015 flood in Chennai was explained associated the El Niño effect on the North East monsoon. The flooding of Mumbai in 2005 involved an interplay of four geographical factors, mainly the development of a low-pressure area over the northwest Bay of Bengal, intensification of the monsoon, strengthening of the Arabian Sea current of the monsoon, and the super positioning of a meso-scale off-shore vortex over northeast Arabian Sea (localised heavy clouds over the sea).
Global climatic changes have a profound and long term impact on natural phenomenon such as those mentioned above, thus disturbing their intensity, duration, frequency and spatial distribution. Climate scientists have long warned about changing monsoon rainfall patterns in India.
A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation’s climate change body has argued an increased risk of flooding and alterations in rainfall patterns due to global warming. As opposed to the situation a few decades back, there are now more incidences of high-intensity rainfall concentrated over a short span of time and area instead of a steady monsoon season.
Is Unplanned Growth The Real Culprit?
What makes the effects of global climatic changes even more severe is the inability of our cities to cope up with the changing situation. Most of the sewerage and drainage network is old and unable to deal with the new challenges faced by our cities. They cannot handle the volume of water and are often blocked due to structural faults or pollution due to unwanted materials (plastic and other non-biodegradable).
As new constructions come up on hitherto permeable land, the runoff into drains increases. With the land hunger increasing, most of the cities also see real estate development encroach upon floodplains, thus obstructing floodways and disturbing the natural flow the water body.
Urbanisation thus has five major hydrological effects:
(1) increased water demand, often exceeding the available natural resources
(2) increased wastewater, burdening rivers and lakes and endangering the ecology
(3) increased peak flow
(4) reduced infiltration and
(5) reduced groundwater recharge, increased use of groundwater, and diminishing base flow of streams.
Planning For Resilient Cities For Future
The Government of India is a signatory to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015.
We are thus committed to mainstream disaster risk reduction by investing in resilient infrastructure, urban planning, land use, etc. to not only reduce the risk of flooding but reduce the losses of lives and livelihoods in case it occurs. While India has adopted this voluntary framework almost two years back, changes on the ground regarding civic planning, infrastructure and disaster mitigation is yet to be seen.
Much of the blame for unpreparedness of Indian cities to deal with natural hazards is put on municipal corporations. While most of the municipalities have been shamefully negligent of their duties, they alone cannot be blamed. The planning and development authorities are under the state governments (urban planning is a state subject). As a result, those who plan the cities have no accountability and those who are elected have no authority. While globally, cities are driving responses to deal with climate change, devolution of power to the city mayor and municipalities remain a mere formality.
Thus what is needed is a locally driven strategy to combat climate change and disaster management. It’s time that environment and disaster management are mainstreamed into the urban planning process in acknowledgement of the reality of climate change. Currently, the response of our city governments is ad hoc, and responsive, i.e. steps are taken to fix the damage caused by a calamity rather than planning in advance.
Complex challenges like this require a multi sectoral approach which should be ideally designed with inputs from multiple stakeholders. There must be an integration of climate sensitive sectors such as water, roads, sewerage, housing and so on rather than the current fractured approach of various departments. Local level planning would also make the process more flexible to deal with on ground challenges.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]What is LEAF Coalition?
Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.