Climate change, disasters, etc

Down To Earth • 15th September 2023

EU Parliament votes in favour of Critical Raw Materials Act 

The Critical Raw Materials Act was voted on in the European Parliament during the September 11-14, 2023, plenary session in Strasbourg, France. It was approved with a large majority of 515 Members of the European Parliament (MEP) backing it.German MEP Nicola Beer, the driving force behind the law, said in the parliament that the EU was 99 per cent dependent on China for rare earth metals.“We cannot allow that to be the case.”Such dependencies create a high risk of supply disruptions and increase...

Down To Earth • 22nd July 2023

CAG finds Chhattisgarh mining department underutilised District Mineral Fund Trusts, delayed projects

There was a delay of 17-50 months in identifying areas and people affected by mining in Chhattisgarh, an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found. The mining department’s District Mineral Foundation Trust  (DMFT) also sanctioned the works valuing at Rs 891.67 crore, without identifying the directly and indirectly affected areas, the report tabled in the Assembly July 21 further said. DMFT was setup by the Chhattisgarh government in 2015 as a nonprofit in all districts of Chhattis...

Down To Earth • 7th July 2023

United Nations International Maritime Organization agrees to reach net zero “by or around” 2050

Maritime countries upgraded their Greenhouse House Gas (GHG) emissions strategy to reach net zero “by or around” 2050 without specifying a definite year  and taking into account different national circumstances, at the conclusion of the summit of the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London on July 7, 2023.While a firm timeline was not decided, “The adoption of the 2023 IMO Greenhouse Gas Strategy is a monumental development for IMO and opens a new chapter towards marit...

Down To Earth • 15th June 2023

EU climate advisory board recommends reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90-95% by 2040 from 1990 levels

The European Green Deal’s current mandate stated that the region must become climate neutral by mid-century. European Green Deal, launched in 2019, is a set of policy initiatives to guide the EU towards reaching climate neutrality by 2050.It also has an immediate target of net greenhouse gas emissions reduction of at least 55 per cent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. The targets are legally binding under the European Climate Law, which established the advisory board.Along with an analysis conduc...

Down To Earth • 9th June 2023

Many provinces experiencing highest emissions since 2003: Scientist monitoring Canadian wildfires

Throughout Canada, more than 400 wildfires have led to mass evacuation across the country. While every year, Canada experiences a wildfire season between May and October, this level of destruction is unprecedented and is touted to be the worst in history.“Persistent hot and dry conditions are fanning the flames of Canadian wildfires. So far this spring, wildfires in Canada have scorched an area more than 10 times larger than average,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the...

Down To Earth • 25th May 2023

Critically polluted: Kolak fisherfolk in distress as chemicals from Vapi industries destroy river catch

The villagers suspected the coloured water is released into the river by the textile industries upstream. When the villagers inquired, representatives of industries they spoke to shifted the blame to the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) region located in the Vapi Industrial Area some 16 kilometers away.“Due to the abundance of fish available in the past, we could make do with low prices. Now,  with inflation coupled with fish population decline, the price of Rs 400 per / kg make...

Down To Earth • 24th May 2023

Critically polluted: Treated effluents from Vapi CETP don’t meet safety standards, find pollution control boards

In the inspection conducted from July-September 2022, it was observed that compared to the prescribed safety norms, the treatment of fixed dissolved solids (FDS), chloride and sulphate at Vapi CETP was not up to the mark and carried out with negligence at both the inlet and the outlet.Karthik M, senior principal scientist at National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), was part of the committee in 2018 that looked at the Vapi CETP’s contribution to pollution in the Daman Ganga...

Down To Earth • 22nd February 2023

New policy to help Indian communities displaced by annual river & coastal erosion drafted

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs had directed NDMA to draft a policy based on the 15th Finance Commission’s report for 2021, in which it had for the first time emphasised on rehabilitation and resettlement for people displaced by the river and coastal erosion, in view of the increasing threat due to climate change. Until now, most policies in the country only address displacement after sudden rapid-onset disasters such as floods and cyclones. Over the last two years, NDMA held national-level c...

Down To Earth • 11th January 2023

Grasslands, forests and glaciers decreased in the Kedarnath-Joshimath region over 3 decades

“In view of frequent extreme climatic-geomorphic events, temporally increasing population and tourist pressure, and temporally changing climatic conditions, it is vital to identify hotspots having dominant changes in land use/land cover to understand the possible source of potential disasters,” they added.In 1991, nearly 4,316 sq km was the total extent of the moderately dense forest area captured via satellite imagery. In 2020, it decreased to around 3,856 sq km and 10.6 per cent of this was ob...

Down To Earth • 9th December 2022

Over 60% of Indian firms can identify, manage climate-related market risks, finds study

Extreme weather events and natural disasters have become frequent in Asian countries due to climate change. Companies in India are increasingly aware of its financial impact, but a new analysis by a global advisory firm suggests that many lack the tools to manage climate risk. A large number of Indian companies listed on stock exchanges — 61 per cent — have the mechanisms in place to assess, identify and manage climate risk, found a new study by Willis Towers Watson (WTW). The firm has also laun...

Down To Earth • 5th December 2022

This Pune non-profit led by women bagged an award at COP27 for climate adaptation

Pune-based non-profit Swayam Shikshan Prayog was recognised for its efforts in helping women farmers in the Marathwada region adopt climate-resilient agricultural practices for over two decades at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27).The organisation partners with the government and agro-tech companies, but the KSS women are the educators on the ground. In 2015, they collaborated with the Government of Maharashtra to scale up Mah...

Down To Earth • 28th November 2022

Loss and damage from floods, storms cost India $7.6 bn in 2021: Report

India suffered huge economic losses from floods and storms in 2021 as climate change has made these events more frequent. The country was only second to China in the Asian continent in this regard, according to the recently released The State of the Climate in Asia 2021 report.Floods and storms accounted for 80 per cent of the natural disasters that struck Asia in 2021. Asian countries incurred financial losses worth $35.6 billion (nearly 2.9 lakh crores) in 2021 because of natural disasters. Fl...

Down To Earth • 16th November 2022

Triple tremors in Delhi: ‘We should always be prepared for a big earthquake’

Harsh Kumar Gupta: If you remember, we had an earthquake on the India-Nepal border on April 25, 2015 of 7.8 magnitude. Seventeen days later, the region experienced another earthquake of 7.3 on May 12 and the aftershocks continued for quite some time after that. One major problem in seismology is we cannot say for sure if some activity is an aftershock or foreshock. Furthermore, it cannot be ruled out that these are independent quakes on their own too. One cannot make any conclusions.For the Delh...

Down To Earth • 10th November 2022

COP27: Russian invasion of Ukraine released 8 million tonnes carbon till September, says report

Climate policy and carbon expert Olga Gassan-zade, a representative of the initiative said: “We made a detailed analysis to the extent we possibly can of the GHG impact of the war and military action itself. This included troop movements, fuel consumption, and military aircraft and also impact of explosives and ammunition in Ukraine.”At least 6,215 fires spread over a total area of 486,162 hectares were caused by the ammunition and bombs during the seven months of the study period or the first 2...

Down To Earth • 10th November 2022

Receding cryosphere: What latest WMO report warns us about

The global mean temperature is currently at 1.15 degrees Celcius above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels and the last eight consecutive years were the eight hottest years of humanity, said a new report.It was the first time that “no snow outlasted the summer season even at the very highest measurement sites and thus no accumulation of fresh ice occurred,” the WMO said.The lack of adequate winter snow and Saharan dust blowing over the Alps accelerated the same this year. Heat waves between May an...

Down To Earth • 3rd November 2022

Run-up to COP27: Extreme weather events drive mass migration in Odisha’s Kendrapara, Jharkhand’s Palamu, says study

Rapid-onset events, like floods, increased the odds of migrating by 687 per cent. At the same time, slow-onset events, like drought, increased the likelihood by 172 per cent, noted the study by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit.Some 60 per cent of the respondents in Kendrapara said rapid-onset events are a major climate stressor. At the same time, 87 per cent in Palamu stated that slow-onset events were the reasons for the same.Only 0.47 per cent of...

Down To Earth • 28th October 2022

Fewer cyclones in Bay of Bengal but frequency increased in Arabian Sea: Report

“One thing in the atmosphere that inhibits the growth of cyclones is called the vertical shear, which refers to how strongly the winds can change from the surface to the top of the atmosphere, for up to 10 kilometres or so. It determines if the cyclone, which is trying to grow like a tunnel, gets chopped off or not. If it does, then its energy gets taken away and it doesn’t grow into a strong cyclone,” Murtugudde said.The researchers found that 49.8 per cent of tropical cyclones occurred from Oc...

Down To Earth • 25th October 2022

Why cyclones like Sitrang stoke fear? Loss & damage worth billions due to Indian Ocean storms

The Indian subcontinent, however, is not new to this extent of damage due to cyclonic storms. Of the 17 strongest storms of each year between 2005 to 2021 formed over the northern Indian Ocean, 11 had devastating effects in India, with loss from each running into billions of dollars.A storm that hit the Nagaon district of Assam damaged several houses, according to ANI. The estimated maximum sustained wind speed of intensity along and off the North and South 24 Parganas, including the Sunderbans...

Down To Earth • 21st October 2022

How to assess disasters: 8 Indian states adopt global standards

An international framework for assessing losses and damages in the aftermath of a disaster is now being used to evaluate the financial and social cost of local disasters in eight states in India. The framework helps get recovery and reconstruction efforts right following a disaster. But this is not the first time PDNA has been conducted in India. It was first adopted during the Kerala floods of 2018 and again during the cyclone in Odisha in 2019, both unprecedented disasters.  However, until now...

Down To Earth • 13th October 2022

Hazards in waiting: Half the world still without early warning systems, flags UN report

The analysis was made with data from the Sendai Framework Monitor (SFM), an online tool where member countries report their progress on the targets outlined in The Sendai Framework (2015-2030). The framework is a global blueprint for disaster risk reduction and prevention. Of the seven targets in the framework, Target G aims to “substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to the people by 2030”. The fra...

Down To Earth • 11th October 2022

Climate crisis: Expect more extreme heatwaves in near future

The global mean temperature was close to 1°C  between 2017 and 2019. However, the global mean temperature was at 1.2°C in 2016 and 2020, according to data on the global surface temperature compiled by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration between 2016 and 2021.“Hot extremes” have become recurrent and more severe over the earth’s land since the 1950s, according to the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.No one is prote...

Down To Earth • 12th September 2022

Loss and damage from climate crisis needs urgent intervention from rich countries: UN chief

United Nations Secretary-General has urged the rich countries to step up their climate adaptation financing and sought urgent discussions on loss and damage due to the climate crisis. Antonio Guterres was visiting Karachi, Pakistan, which was devastated by floods recently. The condition in Pakistan is “an epic human tragedy”, Guterres said in a statement. “Climate change is not a problem of the future. It is a problem today,” he said. “And that is why I said in my intervention, and I repeat now,...

Down To Earth • 7th September 2022

Bengaluru floods: City’s stormwater drains are not good enough & government has known it for long

Recent images of water-logged Bengaluru may have led to much surprise, but that may be misplaced: A report nine years ago had flagged that India’s so-called 'Silicon Valley’ could go under even due to moderate rain — the stormwater drains of the Karnataka capital are just not up to the mark.Unlike the rest of Bengaluru, at an elevation of 3,020 feet, these areas are relatively flatter and have been at the epicentre of rapid development.Some 0.017 billion residential properties in Bengaluru have...

Down To Earth • 1st September 2022

Only 10 of 46 Least Developed Countries mention loss and damage explicitly in NDCs: Study

The LDC is a 46-member negotiating bloc of geographically and economically disadvantaged countries whose main ask is compensation for losses and damages incurred after storms, droughts, and floods at COPs. A key outcome of CoP26 was the establishment of the Glasgow Dialogues, a two-year exchange on ways to figure out how to fund L&D for low-income countries.Myanmar’s NDC has got whole sections detailing how L&D affects sectors such as agriculture or fisheries, cities and health. It also has an a...