Wednesday 5 December 2018

"Keep Oil in the Soil": Key to #StopSoilPollution

Soil sustains life! Yet, soil health across the planet is rapidly worsening and top soil loss is worryingly prevalent. This soil loss leads to food insecurity due to reduced soil fertility and reduced capacity to store water, desertification, biodiversity loss, and inability of the soil to perform its natural function as a powerful carbon sink. Soil pollution, bad agricultural practices such as excessive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides, overgrazing by farm animals and introduction of invasive animal and plant species, as well as deforestation all lead to soil degradation and soil erosion.

 This World Soil Day, December 5, 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sought to raise awareness about the dangers of soil loss and reduced soil health by calling for people to be part of the "Solution to Soil Pollution" and #StopSoilPollution.

One key way to #StopSoilPollution is to stop the use of fossil fuels. Extraction, fracking, refining and use of fossil fuels are all leading causes for soil pollution. Even exploration for fossil fuels is highly damaging to the soil in particular and the environment in general. Thus the fact that People's Demand for Climate Justice that mandates keeping fossil fuels in the ground, i.e., halting further extraction, is not just positive climate action but also essential to preserve the soil and #StopSoilPollution. Thermal power plants produce fly ash after burning coal that if left as is and dumped on lands can pollute soil, water and air as well as affecting the health of humans and their environment. Fossil fuel mines devastate the soil, environment and lives of communities near them, as do refineries. Hence, the call to "Keep Oil in the Soil" and "Coal in the Hole" must become a war cry of people's movements for climate justice and the environment.



Instead of "Smart Agriculture" the soil needs organic farming to regenerate.  Organic agricultural practices improves the health of the soil and enables the soil to be transformed into a powerful carbon sink. As seed warrior and activist and physicist Vandana Siva reiterates, regenerative organic agriculture has the capacity to trap current carbon emissions in just three years.


Organic farming is the epitome of natural climate solutions and climate justice. And its practice using ancestral methods and know-how and women farmer-- and smallholding farmer--friendly, keeps people not corporations at the heart of the climate solution. Thus organic agriculture builds soil health and helps

"Reject false solutions that displace real, people-first solutions to the climate crisis.


Chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides are produced from crude - that most insidious of fossil fuel guises. More use of fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides means more fossil fuel and emissions. Thus by promoting organic agriculture, the use of these fossil fuel derived chemicals is cut. The carbon emissions are cut and finally the organic soil performs the function of a powerful and natural carbon sink. Hence combined with a halt to all fossil fuel extraction, globally scaled-up practice of organic agriculture can save the soil and save the planet. Policies that ensure this twofer can help speed up achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement - ensuring that a world where global warming is kept under 1.5 degrees can become a reality faster.

Sunday 30 September 2018

Saluting River Champions on #WorldRiversDay2018

The last/fourth Sunday of September has been observed as World Rivers Day celebrating as Mark Angelo  (Canadian River Conservationist) puts it the "arteries of the planet....lifelines."

In Chennai - whose cityscape is dominated by the rivers Adyar, Cooum & Kosasthalaiyar the day began with the Reciprocity Foundation organized a sunrise Kutcheri [concert] by Carnatic singer Bombay Jayshree in the city with its UNESCO Heritage City tag thanks to our musical legacy of Kutcheris and a cleanup event of the River Adyar. 

Way back in February I had the privileged to attend a few of the events organized as part of the DAMed Art festival on the theme Embrace Our Rivers. Few that have stayed with me is the River Savaari - a bus tour of the River Cooum from its entry into Chennai to its estury leading into the Bay of Bengal - hosted by Arun Krishnamurthi of EFI. Now Arun and his EFI team and EFI volunteers are not just #RiverChampions but are champions of water bodies across the nation.

River Cooum flowing into Marina Beach/Bay of Bengal under the Napier Bridge

 More recently, and from up north I came across the NGO Help Us Green based out of Kanpur that's stopping flowers and temple offerings from ending up in River Ganga. The Ganga a.k.a. Ganges is in my mind the equivalent of India's aorta - the main artery - if we continue with Mark Angelo's analogy.


This year I also got to interact with the  dynamic Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan that's been working for decades to save the River Narmada and the communities along its banks. A true River Champion as well as a disadvantaged peoples' champion.

There was also news of Ms. Bachendri Pal who is leading a "Mission Ganga" expedition to raise awareness on cleanup. There was also reports of a long-time conservationist and river activist who has fasted before for the "Clean the Ganga" cause but now pledges to fast to death. 

With future global wars and current inter-state and cross-border/downstream conflicts happening over water especially river water, we need more river champions and serious policy and efforts to clean up dead and dying rivers. The Thames, once considered the dirtiest in Europe recently has been revived enough that a  Beluga Whale is visiting. 


The rivers of India and Asia that sustain millions need more care. We need them to be more than just the main conduits of plastic trash, industrial effluents, pesticides, insecticides, antibiotics and sewage into the sea. The planet will suffer a massive coronary if its arteries continue to be clogged like this. 

Let's all do our bit to Embrace and Save Our Rivers and enable and empower the river champions who as already doing this much-needed Herculean if not Sisyphean task. 



 

Friday 31 August 2018

Cleaning Up India’s Air Quality and Toxic Energy Mix


Our dependence on fossil fuels is killing us literally and figuratively. The toxic fumes from coal-powered thermal power plants and petrol and diesel–fuelled vehicles and generators which are the norm for power backup have created a toxic atmosphere the equivalent to smoking about 5 to 10 cigarettes daily. The average Indian city dweller has lung quality equivalent to that of a smoker according to many leading lung specialists across the nation. And health care costs a bomb. The soaring petrol and diesel prices also is breaking the back of the average citizen’s budget – killing a person figuratively under the financial burden. 


 petrol being sold at ₹ 78.52 per litre and diesel at ₹ 70.21 per litre Delhi. The petrol price has been increased by ₹ 0.22 per litre since Thursday and diesel price by ₹ 0.28 per litre in the national capital. The surge in fuel prices is largely due to rise in the cost of crude oil and high excise duty levied on transportation fuel in the country. The Brent crude oil is currently priced around $76.68 per barrel.

 -- NDTV Auto

The Indian power grid’s hunger for dirty coal is not only bad for global warming – triggering climate change – but also bad for our lungs. As Indian courts, activists and TV News channels debate the call for a ban on fire crackers in the NCR as wedding season and winter smog season approaches, the more obvious solution of shutting down and phasing out thermal power plants, promoting electric vehicles and electric public transport including electric buses, protecting urban green cover and forests, as well as curbing construction and demolition seems to have minimal support. Band-Aid to a severed artery rather than a necessary tourniquet to staunch it. 

 
 Source: Asian Power, 7 December 2017.

While Greenpeace India’s efforts promote rooftop solar and closing down or cleaning up power plants, it hasn’t yielded policy change at the national level. Even as the #MyRightToBreathe hashtag trends on Twitter, special exceptions continue for coal power plants from the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MOEFCC). While way back in 2015, the MOEFCC policy called for tighter norms on emissions from India’s 474 thermal power stations and adoption of high efficiency low emission (HELE) technologies such as supercritical and ultra-supercritical combustion technologies, till date the MOEFCC in practice still seeks to exempt power plants from pollution and emission control norms. This divergence in policy and practice is harming the planet and our health. India also continues to commission newer thermal power stations while other economies are decommissioning (China) or demolishing (Canada) them – no wonder India’s carbon emissions increasednions were still growing when tat ofontrol norms. In addition India continues to add to commissioning uding electric buses this past year when that of other top carbon emitters, even China, plateaued and even reduced!

 Source: The Hindu, 29 July 2018.

Thermal power stations are one of the biggest contributors to air pollution in India, as long as coal and other fossil fuels remain central to India’s energy mix, we will have an air pollution crisis and fail to take the climate action we committed to when we signed and ratified the Paris Climate Agreement. The energy mix is basically the primary energy sources proportion from which secondary energy such as usually electricity is produced. Coal, petroleum, and gas dominate India’s energy mix making both the energy mix, the Indian electricity grid toxic and retrograde to climate action. 
Air pollution from our fossil fuel dependence adds to national mortality and morbidity. The very young and the very old as well as those with preexisting respiratory problems are at great risk thanks to the predominantly toxic energy mix and electricity grid. Fatalities have increased even as India emerged on top of the charts of nations and cities facing down “bad air.” The cost of treatment and health costs even for the previously healthy thanks to the effect of smog, haze and poor air quality both indoors and outdoors add up to millions across urban India.

The grid’s fossil fuel habit fuels climate change and calamity as well. The record-shattering levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have already manifested in devastating natural disasters in India and across the globe. While we get battered by the monsoon cloudbursts, the temperate part of the world reels under the effect of unprecedented heat waves, forest fires as well as drought. The climate calamity is costing lives and billions of dollars yet fossil fuel companies and state-owned power companies still add to stranded assets continuing to explore for and extract fossil fuels from under prime forests and ecologically sensitive zones in addition to building more thermal power stations.
Take for example the clearance to  ONGC to explore for oil and natural gas biodiversity hotspots such as the Gulf of Mannar region, Sakkarakottai, Mel Selvannur, Keel Selvannur and Chitrangudi bird sanctuaries in the Ramanathapuram-Tuticorin stretch as well as prime watershed forests of the Eastern Ghats. This echoes the global trend of continuing seabed oil exploration, giving out fracking and Arctic drilling permits when the obvious solution to the climate change crisis remains “keeping oil in the soil and coal in the hole,” decarbonizing the economy and preventing the use of fossil fuel reserves.

India is now the third largest carbon emitter in the world after the United States and China. While we are adding to our renewable energy assets on track to add 175 GW of renewable energy sources of which 100 GW is solar power by 2022, our continued backing of coal power is hurting our climate commitments. With the skewed Dollar-Rupees exchange rate and the soaring crude prices that’s translating into horrendous fuel prices across India, the time is ripe for de-carbonization. Promoting innovation and “jugaad” to convert polluting and carbon guzzling internal combustion engines into electric or hybrid ones while manufacturing and adding electric vehicle, electric public transport and clean energy powered charging station network and infrastructure could create new jobs and boost the economy while protecting the environment thus ticking many of the Sustainable Development Goals hence improving our international standing. 

With previous WHO reports on the crippling health costs of air pollution (air pollution deaths costs global economy US$225Billion) and recent reports on how air pollution affects our brain activity and effectively affects our intelligence are economic, medical, and demographic imperatives to turning to cleaner power and energy sources. 



Taking fossil fuels out of the Indian energy mix, the electric grid and vehicles will result in a major detox as well as the obvious de-carbonization. Blessed as we are with abundant sunshine, wind and coastlines we should be betting wholly on solar power, wind power, tidal power and hybrid onshore and offshore renewable energy stations instead of obsolete and polluting thermal power for the sake of our health and that of the planet. The point of it being called an energy mix is the fact that a nation does not bet on only one energy source - here's hoping India diversifies to cleaner options as the mainstay of its energy mix.