Jyotirao Phule On Watershed Management

Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) was a social reformer from Maharashtra who worked for the emancipation of the lower castes and for improving the lives of peasant agriculturists. In Shetkaryacha Asud (The Cultivator's Whipcord), written in 1883, he describes the plight of poor farmers and offers some advice on improving yield through land management practices. 

An excerpt- 

The essence of leaf, grass, flower, dead insects and animals, is washed away by summer rain, therefore our industrious government should, as and when convenient, use the white and black soldiers and the extra manpower in the police department to construct small dams and bunds in such a way that this water should seep into the ground, and only later go and meet streams and rivers. This would make the land very fertile , and the soldiers in general, having got to working in [the] open air, will also improve their health and become strong. 

.....Therefore the government should maintain these bunds in good condition, especially the backwaters. The government should conduct surveys of all the lands in its territory, employing water specialists, and wherever it is found that there is enough water to be drawn from more than one source, these places should be clearly marked in the maps of the towns, and the government should give some awards to farmers who dig wells without its assistance. Also the government should allow the farmer to collect all the silt and other things extracted from rivers and lakes, as in the older times, and it should also return all the cow pastures to the villages, which it has included in its 'forest'. 

Phule covers many of the interventions that are recommended by watershed management specialists today. The last line of the passage I have quoted is telling. Preventing villagers from using what was traditionally considered 'village commons' has always been contested by the people. Phule also called for the destruction of the "oppressive Forest Department". The conflict between agriculturists, forest dwellers, pastoralists, and the forest department continues to this day. 

This essay, translated from Marathi to English by Aniket Jaaware, has been republished in Makers of Modern India, a compilation of essays written through the 19th and 20th century by influential Indian political activists and social reformers. The collection is edited and introduced by historian Ramachandra Guha.

Joshimath Sinking

By now, the unfolding tragedy in the mountain town of Joshimath in the Uttarakhand Himalaya is national news. Land subsidence is destroying homes. Many families have been left with no choice but to leave and resettle elsewhere. 

Journalist Kavita Upadhyay has written a good explainer on Joshimath's predicament. 

How heavy, unplanned construction and complex geology is sinking Joshimath.

And yesterday, News9 Plus with Kartikeya Sharma invited Kavita Upadhyay, along with another journalist Nivedita Khandekar, and geologist Hars Vats, to discuss not just Joshimath but also the vulnerabilities of Himalayan towns across the mountain arc. 

Their conversation is on Spotify- Joshimath Sinking. 

Repeated warnings by geologists were ignored for decades. As Sunita Narain points out in this Down To Earth article, engineers and technocrats with little understanding of the environmental and ecological issues are in charge of passing plans for big power projects. For Joshimath, all the relief measures are probably too late to make the town safe again, but if the destruction of this important historic town does not usher in a national soul searching about the way in which the Himalaya are being developed for tourism and hydropower, then I fear there will be much more pain and suffering in the future. 

Books: Animal Minds, India Language History, India Governance

 New on my book shelf:

1) This came highly recommended from science Twitter. Peter Godfrey-Smith has surveyed a wide section of the animal kingdom and writes about the evolution of sensory experiences in different species. Sponges, corals, worms and octopus all manipulate the environments in specific ways. Disparate evolutionary pathways to be sure, but they all inform us about the origins of our mental capacities. 

 

 

 

2) I had a brief introduction to this book over a chickoo milkshake when the author M. Rajshekhar had visited Pune couple of years ago. He has spent several years traveling across India, surveying both big cities and the rural regions. His Ear to the Ground project resulted in scores of articles on India's everyday economy and the general failure of governance in this country. Its good to see some of his work distilled into this book.

 

 

 

3) Live History India has a really good interview with Peggy Mohan about her new book on India's language history. This is always a fascinating topic, as it tells us so much about population history, their origins, migrations, and intermingling. There is a section on Marathi too, and I'm looking forward to learning about that.

Readings: Chamoli Debris Flow Disaster, Uttarakhand

The Himalaya are geologically and ecologically fragile. Despite this, the Indian government has repeatedly ignored advice from its scientists and has gone ahead with major infrastructure projects, which have not been assessed rigorously for the inevitable impact they will have on the surrounding environment, people and livelihoods.

The February 7 2021 Chamoli debris flow that destroyed two dams and killed scores of people with hundreds still missing is the latest example of how the natural tendency of Himalayan slopes to fail combines with steel and concrete to cause enormous damage. 

Here is a short list of readings of this event and Himalaya infrastructure projects.

1) Dr. Dave Petley has put together a sequence of events based on crowd sourcing satellite imagery. This was a remarkable example of experts collaborating to pinpoint the location and cause of this debris flow within just a day. 

The catastrophic landslide and flood in Chamoli in Uttarakhand: the sequence of events.

 2) M. Rajshekar explores the messianic drive of the Central and the Uttarakhand government to build dams in the Himalaya. 

Modi said he would revive Ganga but his government is doing the opposite by reviving dams. 

3) R.Shreedhar, an experienced earth scientist working in the Himalaya writes a fine essay about the neglect of science and the political economy of Himalaya dam building.

The Science and the Political Economy of the Rishi Ganga Flood.

4) The title of this essay by Nivedita Khandekar says it all.. "We have learnt nothing from the 2013 Uttarakhand Disaster".

We have learnt nothing from 2013 Uttarakhand disaster.

 

Readings: India Dams, Geology Videos, Parsis in India

 Sharing some readings.

1) Neeraj Wagholikar, Parineeta Dandekar and Himanshu Thakkar weigh in on the dam building epidemic that is afflicting India. These three experts cover issues of environmental governance, destruction of fisheries and livelihoods, and a perspective on their irrigation potential and economic logic.

The deep political drive to push through permissions to build dams is best highlighted by an example of a malign recommendation in a report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on energy published in January 2019. It seems to view in favor Himachal Pradesh's suggestion to the committee to help declare large hydropower projects as linear projects, thus enabling them to bypass Gram Sabha consent. The statement reads, “If it is done, then, to a large extent, the problem of FRA, which the Secretary also mentioned, will get resolved because the stringent provisions of FRA will get diluted. It is not our purpose to subvert them. Our only purpose is to get them more liberalised.” 

FRA is the Forest Rights Act which gives local forest dwellers a say in the site selection of infrastructure projects. 

Makes you despair and shake in anger, doesn't it?

India, Dammed.

2) Geology fans! I highly recommend Rice University Professor Cin-Ty Lee's YouTube Channel. He has a very informative collection of short videos on rocks and minerals and geologic processes. 

Here is one of my favorites.. Isostacy and what controls the elevation of mountains?

Email subscribers who can't see the embedded video, can view it here - Elevation of Mountains.

3) Like Sugar in Milk.. was the memorable assurance given by the Zoroastrian refugees to the King of Gujarat. We will assimilate in Indian society. And they have in many ways, while maintaining a distinct identity. 

What does genetics tell us? Fine post by Razib Khan.

Endogamy and Assimilation. Parsis in India.

Ganga Water: Future Availability

The Ganga river basin is being modified by the building of infrastructure to trap and divert water. There are many environmental repercussions resulting from this dam and canal construction. That is not the topic of this note.
 
Will there be enough water available for these different projects?

First, the Inland Waterways project will need water to be released from upstream dams to maintain a certain water depth in the navigable channel in the summer months. Second is the River Linking Plan, based on the rationale that there is excess water in the Gangetic system. The plan envisages transferring Ganga system water during the summer months to the southern Peninsular rivers. And third, the Uttarakhand dam building companies will try to keep as much water locked up behind dams for power generation in the summers.

Over and above the water requirements of these projects, environmental regulations will require a  certain amount of water flow to be maintained throughout the year in the river. This will be detrimental to the river linking and power generation projects.

Each of these massive waterworks will be competing for a limited amount of Ganga water during the same time of the year. This allocation problem will lead to water disputes, both, among the managers of these projects, and across different States. As a result, these projects are unlikely to operate optimally.

I haven't come across an official water budget analysis projected 100 years into the future, that takes into account water availability and the impact that these three projects will have on each other.

History Of India Land Use Changes- 1880 To 2010

Notable Effort:

In India, human population has increased six-fold from 200 million to 1200 million that coupled with economic growth has resulted in significant land use and land cover (LULC) changes during 1880–2010. However, large discrepancies in the existing LULC datasets have hindered our efforts to better understand interactions among human activities, climate systems, and ecosystem in India. In this study, we incorporated high-resolution remote sensing datasets from Resourcesat-1 and historical archives at district (N = 590) and state (N = 30) levels to generate LULC datasets at 5 arc minute resolution during 1880–2010 in India. Results have shown that a significant loss of forests (from 89 million ha to 63 million ha) has occurred during the study period. Interestingly, the deforestation rate was relatively greater under the British rule (1880–1950s) and early decades after independence, and then decreased after the 1980s due to government policies to protect the forests. In contrast to forests, cropland area has increased from 92 million ha to 140.1 million ha during 1880–2010. Greater cropland expansion has occurred during the 1950–1980s that coincided with the period of farm mechanization, electrification, and introduction of high yielding crop varieties as a result of government policies to achieve self-sufficiency in food production. The rate of urbanization was slower during 1880–1940 but significantly increased after the 1950s probably due to rapid increase in population and economic growth in India. Our study provides the most reliable estimations of historical LULC at regional scale in India. This is the first attempt to incorporate newly developed high-resolution remote sensing datasets and inventory archives to reconstruct the time series of LULC records for such a long period in India. The spatial and temporal information on LULC derived from this study could be used by ecosystem, hydrological, and climate modeling as well as by policy makers for assessing the impacts of LULC on regional climate, water resources, and biogeochemical cycles in terrestrial ecosystems.

See this comparison

Source: Tian et al. 2014

The massive increase in cropland density over the Indo-Gangetic plain and the diminishing of forest over the Himalayan belts, Central India and Western Ghats is brought out starkly. The forests of the north east though appear to be in a better shape somewhat than other parts of India.

The paper makes a good point that deforestation was higher during colonial times and early days of Independence. The British saw forests as a resource to be exploited, a legacy that continued  after Independence as well. Post 1980's, Forest protection policies did put the brakes on massive deforestation. This however hides some details. Two year surveys of forest cover and forest health by Forest Survey of India reveals that denser canopy forests are being degraded, prime forest land continues to be diverted for development, and the band aid and balancing the book trick that is known as compensatory afforestation is not always meeting its goals and occasionally ends up causing more damage to the environment.

The article comes with lots of details about methodology used and a good reference list.

Open Access

India And Climate Change- Productivity Challenge

This is a serious essay. But this passage made me laugh out loud-

Because any imaginable path of development involves making massive amounts of steel, ramping up production at Jharia is a top national priority. Achieving Modi’s billion-ton target, company officials tell me, will require the colliery to increase its output by about 15 percent a year.

The men and women who must accomplish this huge task work in a landscaped headquarters that during my visits is full of people standing around in hallways and lobbies without obvious purpose. One morning I interview an able young engineer. Jammed into the other half of his office are a half dozen older men, one of them his supervisor, drinking tea and telling stories. The interview lasts nearly two hours. During that time the other men do not move. Phones do not ring. Email alerts do not ping. Keyboards lie untouched. The office door opens only to admit flunkies with tea on a tray. Leaving the engineer’s office, I wonder if the activists who protest India’s coal expansion plans would be comforted by this scene. Increasing productivity is going to be no easy task.

Charles Mann writes about the two paths- one solar and the other coal- that India seeks to take to develop and at the same time manage its carbon emissions. The preferred pathway according to Charles Mann's assessment is tilting towards coal.

I  kinda agree. The current government is coming up with innovative ways to speedily access India's coal deposits. One aspect of the damage by the increasing reliance on coal that he did not bring up (besides air pollution) is the destruction of some of India's best forest land in the eastern part of the country. Environmental parameters that are used  to define inviolate forest areas are being  diluted to ease the handover of forest land to mining. That means destroying biodiversity and also means a threat to water security and water quality. Even if the next generation of coal power plants are cleaner, India will pay dearly in environmental costs of lost forest cover and degraded water supply.

I am not  trying  to make light of the challenges that India faces, but with nuclear energy taking a backseat because of large capital costs and a whole different set of environmental fears and no prospect of  a quick ramping up of natural gas from conventional and shale gas reservoirs (reserves may not be enough anyway),  I don't see how reliance on coal can be reduced in the near future.

Low Emissions Due To Ecofriendly Lifestyles? India's Climate Roadmap

India has submitted its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is a sort of a road map the country will take with regards to future carbon emissions, mitigation and adaptation.

On page two I came across this gem:

Even now, when the per capita emissions of many developed countries vary between 7 to15 metric tonnes, the per capita emissions in India were only about 1.56 metric tonnes in 2010. This is because Indians believe in nature friendly lifestyle and practices rather than its exploitation.

What a load of bollocks!

Anyone familiar with the reality of life in India will recognize this as a specious attempt to explain away the low per capita emissions.

Emissions in India are low not because of nature friendly lifestyles but because of deep poverty. Hundreds of millions of people don't have access to enough energy... and the energy they are forced to exploit like burning cow dung, charcoal, wood and rubbish to sustain themselves is deeply injurious to their health.

On the other end of the spectrum, emissions from the increasingly affluent classes living mostly in cities are beginning to catch up with the developed world.

Nagraj Adve and Ashish Kothari critique the road map. It is not "nature friendly".

Assessment Of India Coastal Erosion

Some data points on changes in India's coastline due to erosion and accretion over 15 years (1989-91 to 2004-2006)

Assessment of coastal erosion along the Indian coast on 1 : 25,000 scale using satellite data of 1989–1991 and 2004–2006 time frames 

The  long  stretch  of  coastline  on  either  side  of the Indian  peninsula  is  subjected  to  varied  coastal  processes  and  anthropogenic  pressures,  which  makes  the coast vulnerable to erosion. There is no systematic inventory  of  shoreline  changes  occurring  along  the  entire  Indian coast  on 1:25,000  scale, which is required for  planning  measures  to  be  taken  up  for  protecting the coast at the national level. It is in this context that shoreline  change  mapping  on  1:25,000  scale  for  the entire Indian coast based on multi-date satellite data in GIS  environment  has  been  carried  out  for  1989–1991 and  2004–2006  time  frame.  The present  communication discusses  salient  observations  and  results  from  the shoreline   change inventory.   The   results   show   that 3829 km (45.5%) of the coast is under erosion, 3004 km (35.7%)  is  getting accreted, while  1581 km (18.8%)  of the coast is more or less stable in nature. Highest percentage  of  shoreline  under  erosion  is  in the Nicobar Islands (88.7), while the percentage of accreting coastline  is  highest for  Tamil  Nadu  (62.3)  and Goa  has the highest   percentage   of   stable   shoreline   (52.4).   The analysis shows that the Indian coast has lost a net area of  about  73 sq.km  during  1989-1991  and  2004–2006 time  frame.   In Tamil Nadu,   a   net  area   of  about 25.45 sq.km has increased due to accretion, while along the Nicobar Islands  about  93.95 sq. km  is  lost  due  to erosion.  The  inventory  has  been  used  to  prepare a Shoreline Change Atlas of the Indian Coast.

Background geological processes keep reshaping coastlines, but this short time frame assessment seems to have captured several anthropogenic disturbances. And one big natural event- the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami appears to have caused considerable erosion in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Understanding Aquifers For Sustainable Groundwater Management

This essay  (open access) is a timely reminder from Rajiv Sinha from IIT Kanpur on the role basic geology plays in sustainable groundwater management plans.

He gives the example of the Haryana and Punjab plains where recent decades has seen large amounts of groundwater withdrawal, so large that it can be captured by satellite borne instruments measuring  changes in the earth's gravity field.  Aquifers in this region occur mostly in bodies of sand of Pleistocene and Holocene age. These sands are remnants of river channels which have built large alluvial fans, aprons of sand and finer sediments in front of the Himalayan foothills. They form lenticular bodies surrounded by finer sediment which may not be prolific aquifers. Understanding this spatial heterogeneity of aquifers is crucial for coming up with a workable aquifer management plan.

He recommends the following -

1) Replace state boundaries with aquifer boundaries
2) Integrate all available groundwater data from the Central Groundwater Board (CGWB) and State Groundwater Boards into an integrated database for water-level characterization
3) Update the ways in which subsurface aquifer data are combined and analysed
4) Registration of all tube well locations
5) Update training for subsurface aquifer analysis and characterization

Besides basic sedimentological and stratigraphic studies to delineate aquifer boundaries, Sinha makes another extremely important  point. Data needs to be shared by institutions, and research findings made by Universities and other Research Institutes need to be translated into effective management plans by the respective State Groundwater Boards (groundwater comes under State control in India). This means a culture of strong institutional  linkages  and of transparency and openness needs to evolve. This has been India's stumbling block in the past. I have witnessed enough frustration expressed by some of my groundwater researcher friends here in the Deccan Basalts that their research has long been ignored by State Groundwater Agencies. This does remain a challenge, but hopefully new groundwater policies recommended by the Center and realized by the State Governments via their Groundwater Agencies (example: see this interview on Maharashtra Groundwater Act and for links to the Act. ) will provide new impetus for research and collaboration in understanding aquifers as a crucial component of sustainable groundwater management plans.

Field Photos: Hillslopes And Landslides Kumaon Himalayas

During my recent trek in the Goriganga valley, I noticed steep hillsides and plenty of landslides. There are a number of geological attributes of this region that makes hill slopes susceptible to fail.

The rocks dip steeply - in this region towards the north. These are medium to high grade metamorphic rocks. They are foliated, that is made up of platy and flaky minerals like biotite, muscovite, chlorite and amphiboles.  Because of this, slabs of rock cleave off the plane of foliation. The picture below shows a phyllitic rock with a pervasive north dipping foliation. You can see large slabs of rock flaking off the surface forming small rock falls.

Some layers of rocks are fractured. The picture below shows bands of calc-silicates i.e. clay bearing limestones which have been metamorphosed. The rocks are shattered by intersecting fractures, and blocks fall off the main body of rock. Something else (tremor, heavy rains) must have triggered this major rock fall.

Sometimes soil, shrubs and tree covered slopes may give way like the one pictured below. Again, heavy rains or tremors may trigger this failure.

Add to these natural properties that make the rocks susceptible to breaking, and hillslopes unstable, is the increase in road building activity. Blasting rock faces with dynamite and bulldozers and heavy vehicle traffic result in constant vibrations and small tremors. We started our trek a little north of Dhapa. The picture below shows roads being hacked out of very steeply sloping hillsides.

 Another view of a rock cut in a precipitous hill slope, with a great backdrop of north dipping high grade metamorphic rocks.

Small landslides and rock falls are common along these road sections. Here is a picture of remediation measures being taking; in this case a stone wall..

 
A view of a large slump between the villages of Kuri (on the left) and Jimia (on the right).

A view of two landslides with a terrifying look down towards the river Goriganga. The major rock fall in calc-silicate rocks I described above and across the valley, along a road being built between Munsiyari and Milam glacier.

Debris from landslides choke streams and rivers. The picture below shows  ponding in the Ramganga river due to excess sediment brought in by numerous landslides along this stretch of road.

The river bed has to be dredged. Here a channel in the Ramganga river bed has been excavated. Sand miners are also busy at work.

Another look at that scary rockfall in the calc-silicate gneisses, with a rough path through it.

Geology Ignored In The Planning And Building Of Himalayan Dams

In Current Science K.S Valdiya explains (Open Access):

It will be obvious from the distribution of dam locations (Figure 1; Tables 3–6) based on information culled from reports of Central Electricity Authority, Uttara-khand Hydroelectricity Nigam, Uttarakhand Renewable Energy Development Authority, etc. that the existing hydroelectric projects and those that are under construction or planned are sited close to the terrane-defining thrusts known to be active. The sites were chosen presumably in the narrowest stretches of the river valleys, little realizing that the otherwise wide valleys with gentle valley sides become narrow with steep to nearly vertical walls due to uplift of the ground and attendant accelerated riverbed erosion as explained earlier. The ground rises as a conse-quence of upward movement on active faults/thrusts (Figure6). Moreover, the belts of active faults are made up of deformed rocks –many-times folded, sheared, shattered an even crushed rocks. These rocks understandably easily break-up, fall -off, creep and slide or slump down when excavated or shaken by earthquakes and explosions,and sink under loads. These incidences are bound to pose a threat to the various structures built in the project areas.

The development of hydroelectric projects not only entails excavations for the head race dams and associated coffer dams, diversion tunnels, main tunnels for carrying water to turbines, and multitudes of adits, but also for thenetwork of roads, for residential colonies for work force,and for power generators. Obviously, a dam site–nomatter if it is just a small one–is excessively subject to tampering with the natural balance in a zone of very weakened rocks.

Reactivation of the active thrusts is bound to impact the stability of the engineering structures. One of the impacts could be the displacement or disruption of the structures due to sudden release of stress that the thrust movements entail. The effects on the tunnels associated with dams would be far more severe – there would be dis-ruption or offsetting of tunnel, roof collapse, sudden on-rush of interstitial groundwater with crushed material,and severe damage to tunnel lining. The very making of a tunnel is like opening an underground drainage and thus altering the groundwater regimes of the mountains, resulting in drastic lowering of groundwater table and at tendant drying up of springs and dwindling of surface flow in streams.

Figure 1 is self-explanatory. Needless to state that a large number of existing and planned hydroelectric projects are bound to encounter serious problems, particularly if and when movements take place on the thrusts in the proximity of the project locations.

Uttarakhand has plans for 180 big and small hydroelectric projects with 95 dams in the middle and upper reaches of the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi rivers in the vicinity south of the Main Central Thrust. K.S Valdiya suggests that the sites should be chosen preferably north of the Main Central Thrust in regions with much lower population density which will lead to less environmental, social and economic problems. The current government has indicated that it will lean towards rapid environmental clearances for infrastructure projects, so just how much attention will be given to warnings like this one?

An Ecologist's Passionate Plea To Protect The Western Ghats

In March 2010 the Ministry of Environment and Forest, India,  constituted the Western Ghat Ecology Expert Panel to study and recommend protection for the ecologically sensitive Western Ghat region. The panel was headed by Dr. Madhav Gadgil. It came up with the idea of a  graded approach to protection, essentially sequestering some areas from any mining and other development,  limited development in other areas and so on. Central to their philosophy of protection was that the voice of the local people be heard. All decisions regarding development would be taken only after extensive consultations with the people of the villages being affected by various developmental projects.

The Indian government, both Central and various State bodies did not like this plan. They undertook what is becoming a depressingly familiar route. They constituted another committee termed "High Level Working Group" to relook the original recommendations. Predictably, the new report by this high level group guarantees protection for a much smaller region of the Western Ghats and does not see a role for village level committees to participate in decisions regards protection and development.

Dr. Madhav Gadgil has come out strongly against this new report headed by Dr. K. Kasturirangan and has written an open letter to him in The Hindu:

An excerpt-

India’s cultural landscape harbours many valuable elements of biodiversity. Fully 75 per cent of the population of lion-tailed macaque, a monkey species confined to the Western Ghats, thrives in the cultural landscape of tea gardens. I live in the city of Pune and scattered in my locality are a large number of banyan, peepal and gular trees; trees that belong to genus Ficus, celebrated in modern ecology as a keystone resource that sustains a wide variety of other species. Through the night I hear peacocks calling, and when I get up and go to the terrace I see them dancing.

It is our people, rooted in India’s strong cultural traditions of respect for nature, who have venerated and protected the sacred groves, the Ficus trees, the monkeys and the peafowl.

Apparently, all this is to be snuffed out. It reminds me of Francis Buchanan, an avowed agent of British imperialism, who wrote in 1801 that India’s sacred groves were merely a contrivance to prevent the East India Company from claiming its rightful property.

It would appear that we are now more British than the British and are asserting that a nature-friendly approach in the cultural landscape is merely a contrivance to prevent the rich and powerful of the country and of the globalised world from taking over all lands and waters to exploit and pollute as they wish while pursuing lawless, jobless economic growth. It is astonishing that your report strongly endorses such an approach. Reality is indeed stranger than we can suppose!

And here is another article by Dr. Gadgil and Ligia Noronha on the subversion of the Gadgil report. 

 

Health Impact Study Of India Coal Power Plants

Do check out this New York Times interview with Dr. Sarath Guttikunda on the impact of India's coal power plants on health and environment. Dr. Guttikunda founded Urban Emissions, an air pollution research firm based in New Delhi and is also affiliate associate research professor at the Desert Research Institute, the environmental research arm of the Nevada System of Higher Education. He blogs at Urban Emissions.

Why are such studies important?

From the interview:

From epidemiological studies and the recent Global Burden of Disease assessments, it is evident that outdoor air pollution is one of the key sources of disease and death in India.

In order for the public to demand action on controlling the air pollution, we feel that the information is the key element. We need to know the status of air pollution and contributions from various sources like transport, power plants, industries, household fuels, and others.

We feel that this study is important on two fronts. First, it presents data on emissions, concentrations and health impacts of the coal power sector. While this may seem basic, it is unfortunate that this sort of information has not been published previously and we hope that it presents policy makers with evidence as to air pollution and health impacts of the sector. Second, it shows that despite the air pollution it causes, there are minimal regulations in place to address the air pollution impacts.

If the study convinces policy makers of the need to put in place stringent standards and enforce them – then it may be a start to a broader conversation on our energy needs and the environmental and health costs of supplying them.

111 coal plants currently meeting about 60% of our electricity needs, but around 455 new ones planned according to the World Resources Institute.  Dr. Guttikunda says that with so many new plants a mere tightening of emission standards may not be sufficient to negate the health impacts of these plants. An alternate cleaner energy source needs to be available in really large amounts to avoid building so many new coal plants.

Nuclear power.... natural gas... solar... wind..?  There will be no silver bullet solution to India's energy needs.  We'll have to end up using an energy mix. That will include coal for several decades at least.

India Energy Report- Some Rambling Thoughts

The latest from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. For those who follow the energy sector, nothing terribly new here, but it is a useful document to keep bookmarked for quick reference.

Meanwhile, Swaminathan Aiyar takes an optimistic look at the future of methane hydrate deposits which he thinks can provide significantly to India's energy needs. These deposits are formed when methane is trapped within a crystalline cage of water molecules. They occur in cold deep sea sediments and also onshore in permafrost settings.There are estimates that resources in sediments in India offshore basins on both the west and east coast may be around 1800-1900 trillion cubic meters.

My take is that whatever the estimates, we may be decades away from successfully exploiting them. Of more relevance over the short to medium term is onshore shale gas. Estimates for those vary wildly from an earlier EIA estimate of about 63 trillion cubic feet to a revised USGS estimate of only 6-7 trillion cubic feet to a figure often quoted in the India media of about 500 trillion cubic feet to 300-1200 trillion cubic meters! These disparate estimates only underscores the need for a more detailed exploration of Indian sedimentary basins.

Geologist Robert Young On Rebuilding After Superstorm Sandy

The complicated decision on whether to and how much to rebuilt coastlines after destruction from a major storm lies at the intersection of geology, climate change, sea level rise, preserving communities and livelihoods, and the economics of insurance risk and the real estate market.

Geologist Robert Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines and professor of coastal geology at Western Carolina University speaks passionately and authoritatively about these issues in a talk hosted by Tom Ashbrook on OnPointRadio.

As he says; The map of the coastal U.S. 50 years on will look very different from now and we need a national plan to get from here to there. Its good to hear a geologist at the center of this discussion.

Listen: After Big Storms: Rebuild Or No?

India Still Not Serious About Environmental Impact Assessment

Last year I compiled comments made by the then new Minister of Environment and Forest (MoEF) Ms. Jayanthi Natarajan. Here is the list from an article that appeared in The Hindu (emphasis mine):

....Jayanthi Natarajan has assured the corporate world that steps will be taken for promoting growth and “one window” fast clearances for big projects.

at the same time, said she would “do everything” to protect the environment. ...

She said that there will not be “any change” once clearance is given to a project....

Asked whether she could assure speedy clearances for such projects, Ms. Natarajan said she will do so but environment should be protected at “all cost” in all its “dimensions.”  

Dismissing the perception that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed her as a result of a compromise to appease corporate India, Ms. Natarajan said, “My actions will show that there can be no compromise on either issue that I will always act for the best welfare of the country.

That these supreme examples of fence sitting and contradictions is not just a list to chuckle at but reflects how the MoEF actually takes on the task of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of developmental projects is painfully brought out by Parineeta Dandekar in an InfoChangeIndia article on the ongoing efforts to dam the Chenab river in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

From the article: 

While other rivers like the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi, as well as smaller streams and tributaries in Himachal have been almost completely dammed, the Chenab is the last comparatively free-flowing healthy river in the state.

As things stand now, if all projects are implemented, less than 10% of the river will be seen flowing at all. Dams are being constructed bumper-to-bumper in a very tight sequence, where water from one hydro project meets not the river but the reservoir of the next hydro project in line. This conversion of a living river into a series of puddles, alternating with dry stretches and bypassed by tunnels, will have a profound impact on the ecology, biodiversity, hydrology, sociology and water availability of the region.

And the impunity with which even the most basic norms of a fair and transparent EIA process are being seemingly violated:

The MoEF sanctioned TORs for cumulative impact assessments of the Chenab in February 2012. Surprisingly, this critical task has been entrusted to the Directorate of Energy, Government of Himachal Pradesh. Can there be any agency with greater conflict of interest than the Directorate of Energy for this study? Can we expect this department to conduct the study in an unbiased manner? Even as the directorate put out a request for proposals for contractors to carry out the study, it did not mention that the consultant had to be an independent agency with a credible track record, as specifically instructed by the EAC.

The MoEF seems to have meekly accepted the Himachal Pradesh chief minister's demand for delinking environmental clearances from cumulative impact assessment studies, without any questions asked. Indeed, the EAC and MoEF have been according clearances and TORs to projects on the Chenab with great efficiency....

and this self defeating exercise:

In rare cases where consultants have showed courage and integrity by recommending that certain projects be dropped, their reports have been ridiculed and 'saviour' committees have been appointed to look into the reports again to make 'all ills go away', like the B K Chaturvedi Committee which is now looking at the WII study which recommended dropping 24 projects planned in the upper Ganga. The MoEF decided to dump the recommendation of the Teesta cumulative impact study when it stated that no projects should be built upstream of the Chungthang.

A case where political compulsions are going too far... and here is another study (press release) on the likely impact on ecology and social disruptions due to this frenzy of dam building activity in the Himalayas.

On The Use Of The Word SUSTAINABLE

From xkcd comics:

 From the extrapolation it looks like that by the year 2109 we haven't yet figured out a way to live "sustainably", which is why people are desperately repeating the word "sustainable"!

By the way, the trend up to 2010 in the figure isn't just made up. The increase in the word "sustainable" from 1960 to early part of this century is true. Here's the usage frequency of the word from 1900 to 2005 as depicted by Google Ngram.  I have plotted it along with three other terms- climate change, global warming and sustainable development to understand why it might have increased.

The increase in the word sustainable begins in the 1970's as the environmental movement made its mark and books on that topic began to appear, while climate change and global warming start being used more and more from the mid-late 1980's onwards.

India's New Environment Minister Makes Plenty Of Promises

Mr. Jairam Ramesh is out. His place as India's Minister of Environment and Forests has been taken by the equally voluble Ms. Jayanthi Natarajan. Here are some snippets of her statements as reported by The Hindu (emphasis mine):

....Jayanthi Natarajan has assured the corporate world that steps will be taken for promoting growth and “one window” fast clearances for big projects. 

at the same time, said she would “do everything” to protect the environment. ...

She said that there will not be “any change” once clearance is given to a project....

Asked whether she could assure speedy clearances for such projects, Ms. Natarajan said she will do so but environment should be protected at “all cost” in all its “dimensions.”  

Dismissing the perception that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed her as a result of a compromise to appease corporate India, Ms. Natarajan said, “My actions will show that there can be no compromise on either issue that I will always act for the best welfare of the country.

If you are looking to write an essay on how many wishy-washy statements and contradictions can be crammed in one paragraph,  then this will be a good example to use.