Open Forum
New Delhi, 25 August
2021
Earth’s
Ecosystem
HEED TO IPCC
WARNING
By
Dhurjati Mukherjee
The launch of the UN
Decade on Ecosystem Restoration advocates it’s time that every country,
including India, draw up a plan to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of
ecosystems. This is all the more necessary given the recently released 6th
Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
warning of grave future consequences as there is only 50:50 chances that the
safe limit of 1.50 C will not be crossed.
The fact that apart
from the well-publicised emissions, the ecosystem is being destroyed in various
other ways, specially the abase of the soil, exacerbated by overuse of chemical
fertilizers and pesticides resulting in severe difficulties for the poor and
the impoverished farming communities sections is a reality in most countries,
including India. Obviously keeping in view the need for enhanced production and
productivity increase, these steps are being taken.
The ideology that
humans are born to master and to enjoy nature has been clearly challenged and
outrightly rejected. Human race has to co-exist within the ecosystem that
includes every micro and microscopic plants, animals and organisms, as
everything in the earth’s ecosystem is independent and important for existence
of life itself.
Thus, ecosystem
restoration is undoubtedly the need of the day and various targets feature
prominently in global and national policy frameworks aimed at limiting ongoing
biodiversity loss and climate change. One may refer here to the Aichi
Biodiversity Targets for 2011-20, which was established under a key UN
biodiversity treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity, which pointed to the
ambition of restoring “at least 15% of degraded ecosystems” as also increasing
the coverage of protected areas to include “at least 17% of terrestrial and
inland water and 10% of coastal and marine areas”.
The IPCC report has
rightly warmed that destruction of ecosystems will raise sea levels, melt
glaciers and polar ice caps, disrupt weather and ecosystems and increase the
frequency of extreme weather events worldwide. The sea level rise in Asia is
increasing faster than the global average, the report stated. The report comes
amid consternation over extreme weather events of 30 years of warnings of the
IPCC. Experts believe that sustained reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases could limit climate change but it could take 20 to
30 years to see global temperatures stabilise.
Coming to the Indian
situation, it may be pertinent to refer to a recent report on drought 2021
released by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), which stated
that the Deccan plateau, comprising 43% of India’s landmass, is seeing the
highest frequency of droughts in India. It estimated the “impact of
severe droughts on India’s GDP to be about 2-5% per annum”, despite decreasing
contribution of agriculture in the country’s expanding economy. The study
titled ‘Global Assessment Report (GAR) on Drought 2021’ has looked into water
stress across the globe and resulting migration and desertification.
“The Deccan region
sees the highest frequency of over 6% of severe droughts in all of India”, the
report pointed out adding the cascading impact continues over the next several
years. For instance, the report referred to recent major droughts in Tamil
Nadu, which caused 20% reduction in the primary sector, 5% drop in industry and
3% reduction in the service sector. In fact, “drought is on the verge of
becoming the next pandemic and there is no vaccine to cure it, directly
affecting 1.5 billion people so far this century, and this number will grow
dramatically unless the world gets better at managing this risk”, observed Mami
Mizutori, head of UNDRR. Most of the world will be living with water stress in
the next few years, the report warned, cautioning policy makers to be better
prepared as industrialisation and urbanisation would only lead to ‘demand
outstripping supply’.
The impact of urbanisation
as also mechanisation of agriculture with usage of chemicals and fertilizers,
having increased at a very rapid pace, it is quite natural that land
degradation has become rampant. Moreover, with forest cover remaining stagnant,
at least in India, and most other countries, the damage to the ecosystem is a
world-wide phenomenon. Thus, the situation is quite challenging and calls for dedicated
efforts.
It is thus quite
appropriate that the present decade has been assigned the work of restoration
of the ecosystem. But the plan of action has not been clearly defined as also
the resources that would be needed, specially by the developing countries, to
carry out this work effectively.
Meanwhile, reports
indicate by 2030, the world’s forest cover will increase by roughly the area of
India but experts are of the opinion that the wrong types of trees are being
planted. In an article in Yale Environment 360: “45% of promised new
forests will be monoculture plantations of fast-growing trees like acacia and
eucalyptus…Such forests would often decrease biodiversity rather than increase
it, and would only hold a small fraction of the carbon that could be captured
by giving space for natural forests”.
However, it needs to
be pointed that “if degraded tropical forests were allowed to regrow, they
could capture up to 3 billion tonnes of carbon annually for as much as 60
years, potentially providing a bridge to a fossil fuel-free world”. This would
indirectly help the process of averting land degradation and reviving barren
land.
Restoring the natural
capital of the Earth’s ecosystem is the biggest challenge of the decade.
There is need for balancing biodiversity conservation with that of climate
change mitigation. Forests are usually the biomes with the highest potential to
sequester carbon. But in most countries, including India, the tropical forest
area is dwindling due to the logic advanced by capitalists and government
policy makers for development purposes. However, non-forest biomes such as
natural grasslands and scrublands can contain ecosystems in urgent need of
restoration to prevent the extinction of species found in those ecosystems.
The restoration
commitments that governments and corporations have for 2030 look impressive
like restoring 350 million hectares of degraded landscapes, protecting and
growing one trillion trees, expanding mangroves by 20% and sustainably managing
30 million square kms of ocean. But the question arises is that in an era of
fast industrialisation and mechanisation, how much of this will be
accomplished? As far as India is concerned, there is little hope as the balance
between development and environmental degradation is not being kept.
Experts have noted that
restoration can become effective if decision makers from local governments,
civil society organisations and small businesses get access to lessons that
past restoration projects have shown. Sadly, in countries like India, the top
heavy administration may affect grass-root work, but strong public incentives
and government policies are needed that provide technical expertise for the
ecosystem services.
Finally, it needs to
be emphasised that restoration is critical not only because it is home to
countless plant and animals but because the services provided are worth an
estimated $125 trillion every year to world economy. There is also a crucial
need to link the definition of progress and development with respect to
ecological and environmental sustainability in future decisions. Remember, what
the UN recently stated: development is socially and environmentally sustainable
when it facilitates the growth of various marginal communities and cultures and
when growth is fairly distributed in terms of quality of life, healthcare and
education. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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