case study on environmental issues pdf

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Seven case studies in carbon and climate

Every part of the mosaic of Earth's surface — ocean and land, Arctic and tropics, forest and grassland — absorbs and releases carbon in a different way. Wild-card events such as massive wildfires and drought complicate the global picture even more. To better predict future climate, we need to understand how Earth's ecosystems will change as the climate warms and how extreme events will shape and interact with the future environment. Here are seven pressing concerns.

The Far North is warming twice as fast as the rest of Earth, on average. With a 5-year Arctic airborne observing campaign just wrapping up and a 10-year campaign just starting that will integrate airborne, satellite and surface measurements, NASA is using unprecedented resources to discover how the drastic changes in Arctic carbon are likely to influence our climatic future.

Wildfires have become common in the North. Because firefighting is so difficult in remote areas, many of these fires burn unchecked for months, throwing huge plumes of carbon into the atmosphere. A recent report found a nearly 10-fold increase in the number of large fires in the Arctic region over the last 50 years, and the total area burned by fires is increasing annually.

Organic carbon from plant and animal remains is preserved for millennia in frozen Arctic soil, too cold to decompose. Arctic soils known as permafrost contain more carbon than there is in Earth's atmosphere today. As the frozen landscape continues to thaw, the likelihood increases that not only fires but decomposition will create Arctic atmospheric emissions rivaling those of fossil fuels. The chemical form these emissions take — carbon dioxide or methane — will make a big difference in how much greenhouse warming they create.

Initial results from NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) airborne campaign have allayed concerns that large bursts of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas, are already being released from thawing Arctic soils. CARVE principal investigator Charles Miller of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, is looking forward to NASA's ABoVE field campaign (Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment) to gain more insight. "CARVE just scratched the surface, compared to what ABoVE will do," Miller said.

Methane is the Billy the Kid of carbon-containing greenhouse gases: it does a lot of damage in a short life. There's much less of it in Earth's atmosphere than there is carbon dioxide, but molecule for molecule, it causes far more greenhouse warming than CO 2 does over its average 10-year life span in the atmosphere.

Methane is produced by bacteria that decompose organic material in damp places with little or no oxygen, such as freshwater marshes and the stomachs of cows. Currently, over half of atmospheric methane comes from human-related sources, such as livestock, rice farming, landfills and leaks of natural gas. Natural sources include termites and wetlands. Because of increasing human sources, the atmospheric concentration of methane has doubled in the last 200 years to a level not seen on our planet for 650,000 years.

Locating and measuring human emissions of methane are significant challenges. NASA's Carbon Monitoring System is funding several projects testing new technologies and techniques to improve our ability to monitor the colorless gas and help decision makers pinpoint sources of emissions. One project, led by Daniel Jacob of Harvard University, used satellite observations of methane to infer emissions over North America. The research found that human methane emissions in eastern Texas were 50 to 100 percent higher than previous estimates. "This study shows the potential of satellite observations to assess how methane emissions are changing," said Kevin Bowman, a JPL research scientist who was a coauthor of the study.

Tropical forests

Tropical forests are carbon storage heavyweights. The Amazon in South America alone absorbs a quarter of all carbon dioxide that ends up on land. Forests in Asia and Africa also do their part in "breathing in" as much carbon dioxide as possible and using it to grow.

However, there is evidence that tropical forests may be reaching some kind of limit to growth. While growth rates in temperate and boreal forests continue to increase, trees in the Amazon have been growing more slowly in recent years. They've also been dying sooner. That's partly because the forest was stressed by two severe droughts in 2005 and 2010 — so severe that the Amazon emitted more carbon overall than it absorbed during those years, due to increased fires and reduced growth. Those unprecedented droughts may have been only a foretaste of what is ahead, because models predict that droughts will increase in frequency and severity in the future.

In the past 40-50 years, the greatest threat to tropical rainforests has been not climate but humans, and here the news from the Amazon is better. Brazil has reduced Amazon deforestation in its territory by 60 to 70 percent since 2004, despite troubling increases in the last three years. According to Doug Morton, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, further reductions may not make a marked difference in the global carbon budget. "No one wants to abandon efforts to preserve and protect the tropical forests," he said. "But doing that with the expectation that [it] is a meaningful way to address global greenhouse gas emissions has become less defensible."

In the last few years, Brazil's progress has left Indonesia the distinction of being the nation with the highest deforestation rate and also with the largest overall area of forest cleared in the world. Although Indonesia's forests are only a quarter to a fifth the extent of the Amazon, fires there emit massive amounts of carbon, because about half of the Indonesian forests grow on carbon-rich peat. A recent study estimated that this fall, daily greenhouse gas emissions from recent Indonesian fires regularly surpassed daily emissions from the entire United States.

Wildfires are natural and necessary for some forest ecosystems, keeping them healthy by fertilizing soil, clearing ground for young plants, and allowing species to germinate and reproduce. Like the carbon cycle itself, fires are being pushed out of their normal roles by climate change. Shorter winters and higher temperatures during the other seasons lead to drier vegetation and soils. Globally, fire seasons are almost 20 percent longer today, on average, than they were 35 years ago.

Currently, wildfires are estimated to spew 2 to 4 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year on average — about half as much as is emitted by fossil fuel burning. Large as that number is, it's just the beginning of the impact of fires on the carbon cycle. As a burned forest regrows, decades will pass before it reaches its former levels of carbon absorption. If the area is cleared for agriculture, the croplands will never absorb as much carbon as the forest did.

As atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase and global temperatures warm, climate models show the threat of wildfires increasing throughout this century. In Earth's more arid regions like the U.S. West, rising temperatures will continue to dry out vegetation so fires start and burn more easily. In Arctic and boreal ecosystems, intense wildfires are burning not just the trees, but also the carbon-rich soil itself, accelerating the thaw of permafrost, and dumping even more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

North American forests

With decades of Landsat satellite imagery at their fingertips, researchers can track changes to North American forests since the mid-1980s. A warming climate is making its presence known.

Through the North American Forest Dynamics project, and a dataset based on Landsat imagery released this earlier this month, researchers can track where tree cover is disappearing through logging, wildfires, windstorms, insect outbreaks, drought, mountaintop mining, and people clearing land for development and agriculture. Equally, they can see where forests are growing back over past logging projects, abandoned croplands and other previously disturbed areas.

"One takeaway from the project is how active U.S. forests are, and how young American forests are," said Jeff Masek of Goddard, one of the project’s principal investigators along with researchers from the University of Maryland and the U.S. Forest Service. In the Southeast, fast-growing tree farms illustrate a human influence on the forest life cycle. In the West, however, much of the forest disturbance is directly or indirectly tied to climate. Wildfires stretched across more acres in Alaska this year than they have in any other year in the satellite record. Insects and drought have turned green forests brown in the Rocky Mountains. In the Southwest, pinyon-juniper forests have died back due to drought.

Scientists are studying North American forests and the carbon they store with other remote sensing instruments. With radars and lidars, which measure height of vegetation from satellite or airborne platforms, they can calculate how much biomass — the total amount of plant material, like trunks, stems and leaves — these forests contain. Then, models looking at how fast forests are growing or shrinking can calculate carbon uptake and release into the atmosphere. An instrument planned to fly on the International Space Station (ISS), called the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar, will measure tree height from orbit, and a second ISS mission called the Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) will monitor how forests are using water, an indicator of their carbon uptake during growth. Two other upcoming radar satellite missions (the NASA-ISRO SAR radar, or NISAR, and the European Space Agency’s BIOMASS radar) will provide even more complementary, comprehensive information on vegetation.

Ocean carbon absorption

When carbon-dioxide-rich air meets seawater containing less carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas diffuses from the atmosphere into the ocean as irresistibly as a ball rolls downhill. Today, about a quarter of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions get absorbed into the ocean. Once the carbon is in the water, it can stay there for hundreds of years.

Warm, CO 2 -rich surface water flows in ocean currents to colder parts of the globe, releasing its heat along the way. In the polar regions, the now-cool water sinks several miles deep, carrying its carbon burden to the depths. Eventually, that same water wells up far away and returns carbon to the surface; but the entire trip is thought to take about a thousand years. In other words, water upwelling today dates from the Middle Ages – long before fossil fuel emissions.

That's good for the atmosphere, but the ocean pays a heavy price for absorbing so much carbon: acidification. Carbon dioxide reacts chemically with seawater to make the water more acidic. This fundamental change threatens many marine creatures. The chain of chemical reactions ends up reducing the amount of a particular form of carbon — the carbonate ion — that these organisms need to make shells and skeletons. Dubbed the “other carbon dioxide problem,” ocean acidification has potential impacts on millions of people who depend on the ocean for food and resources.

Phytoplankton

Microscopic, aquatic plants called phytoplankton are another way that ocean ecosystems absorb carbon dioxide emissions. Phytoplankton float with currents, consuming carbon dioxide as they grow. They are at the base of the ocean's food chain, eaten by tiny animals called zooplankton that are then consumed by larger species. When phytoplankton and zooplankton die, they may sink to the ocean floor, taking the carbon stored in their bodies with them.

Satellite instruments like the Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua let us observe ocean color, which researchers can use to estimate abundance — more green equals more phytoplankton. But not all phytoplankton are equal. Some bigger species, like diatoms, need more nutrients in the surface waters. The bigger species also are generally heavier so more readily sink to the ocean floor.

As ocean currents change, however, the layers of surface water that have the right mix of sunlight, temperature and nutrients for phytoplankton to thrive are changing as well. “In the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a declining trend in phytoplankton,” said Cecile Rousseaux, an oceanographer with the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at Goddard. She used models to determine that the decline at the highest latitudes was due to a decrease in abundance of diatoms. One future mission, the Pre-Aerosol, Clouds, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite, will use instruments designed to see shades of color in the ocean — and through that, allow scientists to better quantify different phytoplankton species.

In the Arctic, however, phytoplankton may be increasing due to climate change. The NASA-sponsored Impacts of Climate on the Eco-Systems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment (ICESCAPE) expedition on a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker in 2010 and 2011 found unprecedented phytoplankton blooms under about three feet (a meter) of sea ice off Alaska. Scientists think this unusually thin ice allows sunlight to filter down to the water, catalyzing plant blooms where they had never been observed before.

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How Environmental Issues Affect Human Rights: A Case Study of Air Pollution in Canada

8 Pages Posted: 25 Feb 2020

Summer Okibe

Greenfield Chambers

Date Written: July 09, 2019

The effect of environmental issues on our human rights cannot be overemphasized. Air pollution in Canada and all over the world threatens basic human rights such as the right to health, a clean environment, and the right to life. Despite the adoption of numerous laws and regulations, air pollution is still a major environmental issue in Canada which has to be controlled. Air pollution is a breach of fundamental human right and the increase in air pollution has been seen to continuously lead to premature deaths in children living in Canada and all over the world. To this end, there should be binding laws controlling the issue and ensuring that the government is held accountable for the protection of human health against air pollution. There should be strong and impenetrable legislation made in that regard to maintain adherence to the law and as well as challenge the government when it defaults. This article focuses on throwing more light on the possible ways to curb air pollution and revive the people’s right to life and a healthy environment in Canada.

Keywords: air pollution, human right, environmental issues, Canadian laws

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Summer Okibe (Contact Author)

Greenfield chambers ( email ).

No 30 Chuba Okadigbo Strt, Apo Legislative Quarter FCT - Abuja Nigeria

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Case Studies in Environmental Statistics

• © 1998
• Douglas Nychka 0 ,
• Walter W. Piegorsch 1 ,
• Lawrence H. Cox 2

Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA

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Department of Statistics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

U.s. environmental protection agency, national exposure research laboratory (md-75), research triangle park, usa.

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Statistics (LNS, volume 132)

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Development and Reform of Environmental Statistics

Environmental Impact Assessments

• cluster analysis
• data analysis
• environmental monitoring
• organization
• regression analysis

Table of contents (8 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: problems in environmental monitoring and assessment.

• Lawrence H. Cox, Douglas Nychka, Walter W. Piegorsch

Modeling Ozone in the Chicago Urban Area

• Jerry M. Davis, Brian K. Eder, Peter Bloomfield

Regional and Temporal Models for Ozone Along the Gulf Coast

Design of air-quality monitoring networks.

• Douglas Nychka, Nancy Saltzman

Estimating Trends in the Atmospheric Deposition of Pollutants

• David Holland

Airborne Particles and Mortality

• Richard L. Smith, Jerry M. Davis, Paul Speckman

Categorical Exposure-Response Regression Analysis of Toxicology Experiments

• Minge Xie, Douglas Simpson

Workshop: Statistical Methods for Combining Environmental Information

Lawrence H. Cox

Back Matter

Editors and affiliations.

Douglas Nychka

Walter W. Piegorsch

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Case Studies in Environmental Statistics

Editors : Douglas Nychka, Walter W. Piegorsch, Lawrence H. Cox

Series Title : Lecture Notes in Statistics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2226-2

Publisher : Springer New York, NY

eBook Packages : Springer Book Archive

Copyright Information : Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 1998

Softcover ISBN : 978-0-387-98478-0 Published: 07 August 1998

eBook ISBN : 978-1-4612-2226-2 Published: 06 December 2012

Series ISSN : 0930-0325

Series E-ISSN : 2197-7186

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XI, 196

Topics : Statistics, general

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Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE)

Case Studies Show How Quasi-Governmental Organizations Could Strengthen Climate Adaptation Governance

Photo Credit: Parradee Kietsirikul from Getty Images

The politicization of climate issues and the unsynchronized efforts of stakeholders are hindering the effectiveness of climate adaptation governance in the U.S. According to a new  study published by Princeton researchers, the design characteristics of quasi-governmental organizations (QGOs) could provide insights on how to depoliticize climate information sources and foster multi-level stakeholder coordination.  

Quasi-governmental organizations are entities that have a combination of public and private characteristics, utilizing both for-profit and not-for-profit modes of operation. Though these organizations already play a role in overcoming non-climatic governance challenges — e.g. providing apolitical management in municipal utility services, or resolving port development policy conflict between states —there are few studies that look at how the design of quasi-governmental organizations could be used for climatic purposes.  

“The literature on quasi-governmental organizations is sparse — we know little about how their design characteristics vary and what this implies for their ability to overcome governance challenges,” explains lead author Paul Nix, a Ph.D. student at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. “Consequently, there is a significant research gap on QGOs that limits our ability to assess the U.S.’ projected institutional capacity to address climate adaptation.”

To close this gap in the literature,  Paul Nix ,  Adam Goldstein , and  Michael Oppenheimer examined six QGO case studies from a variety of fields and with varying organizational structures. Some of the key characteristics they studied for each organization included the structure and operation of their board of directors, board composition (i.e. public vs. private sector members), and the financial resources available to the organization.  

“The landscape of institutions in the climate adaptation domain is rich,” says Nix.  “Scholars have given much attention to emergent and experimental partnerships of different public and private sector actors, as well as to those actors individually. What makes QGOs unusual is that they sit in the space between the public and private sectors by simultaneously embodying characteristics of both.”

The results suggest that some quasi-governmental organizations are useful for overcoming politicization or for fostering multi-level stakeholder coordination, but none of the organizations examined in this study proved optimal for both at the same time.  

For example, the researchers studied the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commision (SFBCDC) and found that its diverse board of public and private actors would be the ideal circumstance for bringing stakeholders together, but it was likely politicized from past conflicts with local and state politicians. The Regents of the University of California (UC) provides a case with the opposite dynamic. The large size of their board and wide range of financial resources make their decision-making process less amenable to the political influence of a single person or organization. However, the UC Regents is not composed of as wide of a variety of decision-makers and stakeholders as the SFBCDC.  

“Our data suggests the socio-political context quasi-governmental organizations emerge from bears a mark on how legislators design these organizations,” says Nix. “However, we don’t yet fully understand legislators’ decision-making process with respect to this design, and therefore it’s hard to determine why some of our cases are either better at depoliticizing policy or fostering stakeholder coordination. More research is needed.”

Though more data is needed to fully understand how climate policy decisions would be impacted under quasi-governmental designs, co-author Michael Oppenheimer makes it clear that simply improving upon existing institutions is not likely to solve nuanced and complex climate issues.  

“The climate problem and its solutions are so pervasive and complex that we need not merely improved responsiveness from existing institutions,” says Michael Oppenheimer, director of the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment and Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. “Society must innovate by building new institutions like quasi-governmental organizations that can respond more quickly and effectively as new threats from climate change continually emerge over coming decades.”

The paper, “Models of Sub-national U.S. Quasi-Governmental Organizations: Implications for Climate Adaptation Governance,” was co-authored by Paul Nix (School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University), Adam Goldstein (School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Sociology, Princeton University), and Michael Oppenheimer (School of Public and International Affairs, Department of Geosciences, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University). The paper appeared in Climatic Change on June 10th, 2024. 

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5 Biggest Environmental Issues in India

In its latest climate assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that it is “now or never” to limit global warming to 1.5C. The consequences of global warming are felt everywhere in the world. However, some nations suffer more than others. In this article, part of our ‘ Environmental Issues ‘ series, we look art some of the biggest environmental issues in India right now and how the country is dealing with them.

1. Air Pollution

Undoubtedly, one of the most pressing environmental issues in India is air pollution. According to the 2021 World Air Quality Report, India is home to 63 of the 100 most polluted cities, with New Delhi named the capital with the worst air quality in the world. The study also found that PM2.5 concentrations – tiny particles in the air that are 2.5 micrometres or smaller in length – in 48% of the country’s cities are more than 10 times higher than the 2021 WHO air quality guideline level. 

Vehicular emissions, industrial waste, smoke from cooking, the construction sector, crop burning, and power generation are among the biggest sources of air pollution in India. The country’s dependence on coal, oil, and gas due to rampant electrification makes it the world’s third-largest polluter , contributing over 2.65 billion metric tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere every year.  

The months-long lockdown imposed by the government in March 2020 to curb the spread of Covid-19 led to a halt in human activities. This unsurprisingly, significantly improved air quality across the country. When comparing the Air Quality Index (AQI) data for 2019 and 2020, the daily average AQI in March-April 2019 was 656, the number drastically dropped by more than half to 306 in the same months of 2020.  

More on the topic: India’s Coal Dilemma Amid Record-Breaking Heatwave

Unfortunately, things did not last long. In 2021, India was among the world’s most polluted countries, second only to Bangladesh. The annual average PM2.5 levels in India was about 58.1 µg/m³ in 2021, “ending a three-year trend of improving air quality” and a clear sign that the country has returned to pre-pandemic levels. Scientists have linked persistent exposure to PM2.5 to many long-term health issues including heart and lung disease, as well as 7 million premature deaths each year. In November 2021, air pollution reached such severe levels that they were forced to shut down several large power plants around Delhi. 

In recent years, the State Government of the Indian capital has taken some stringent measures to keep a check on air pollution. An example is the Odd-Even Regulation – a traffic rationing measure under which only private vehicles with registration numbers ending with an odd digit will be allowed on roads on odd dates and those with an even digit on even dates. Starting from January 2023, there will also be a ban on the use of coal as fuel in industrial and domestic units in the National Capital Region (NRC). However, the ban will not apply to thermal power plants, incidentally the largest consumers of coal. Regardless of the measures taken to curb air pollution, as the World Air Quality Report clearly shows – the AQI in India continues to be on a dangerous trajectory.

More on the topic: 15 Most Polluted Cities in the World

2. Water Pollution

Among the most pressing environmental issues in India is also water pollution. The Asian country has experienced unprecedented urban expansion and economic growth in recent years. This, however, comes with huge environmental costs. Besides its air, the country’s waterways have become extremely polluted, with around 70% of surface water estimated to be unfit for consumption. Illegal dumping of raw sewage, silt, and garbage into rivers and lakes severely contaminated India’s waters. The near-total absence of pipe planning and an inadequate waste management system are only exacerbating the situation. Every day, a staggering 40 million litres of wastewater enter rivers and other water bodies. Of these, only a tiny fraction is adequately treated due to a lack of adequate infrastructure.

In middle-income countries like India, water pollution can account for the loss of up to half of GDP growth, a World Bank report suggests. Water pollution costs the Indian government between US$6.7 and $7.7 billion a year and is associated with a 9% drop in agricultural revenues as well as a 16% decrease in downstream agricultural yields.

Besides affecting humans, with nearly 40 million Indians suffering from waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera, and hepatitis and nearly 400,000 fatalities each year, water pollution also damages crops, as infectious bacteria and diseases in the water used for irrigation prevent them from growing. Inevitably, freshwater biodiversity is also severely damaged. The country’s rivers and lakes often become open sewers for residential and industrial waste. Especially the latter – which comprises a wide range of toxic substances like pesticides and herbicides, oil products, and heavy metals – can kill aquatic organisms by altering their environment and making it extremely difficult for them to survive.

Fortunately, the country has started addressing the issue by taking steps to improve its water source quality, often with local startups’ help. One strategy involves the construction of water treatment plants that rely on techniques such as flocculation, skimming, and filtration to remove the most toxic chemicals from the water. The upgrade process at one of the country’s largest plants located in Panjrapur, Maharashtra, will enable it to produce more than 19 million cubic metres of water a day , enough to provide access to clean water to approximately 96 million people. 

The government is also looking at ways to promote water conservation and industrial water reuse by opening several treatment plants across the country. In Chennai, a city in Eastern India, water reclamation rose from 36,000 to 80,000 cubic metres between 2016 and 2019. 

Finally, in 2019, Gujarat – a state of more than 70 million citizens – launched its Reuse of Treated Waste Water Policy , which aims to drastically decrease consumption from the Narmada River. The project foresees the installation of 161 sewage treatment plants all across the state that will supply the industrial and construction sectors with treated water.

3. Food and Water Shortages

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), India is the country expected to pay the highest price for the impacts of the climate crisis. Aside from extreme weather events such as flash floods and widespread wildfires, the country often experiences long heatwaves and droughts that dry up its water sources and compromise crops. 

Since March 2022 – which was the hottest and driest month recorded in 120 years – the North West regions have been dealing with a prolonged wave of scorching and record-breaking heat . For several consecutive days, residents were hit by temperatures surpassing 40 degrees Celsius, while in some areas, surface land temperatures reached up to 60C. There is no doubt among experts that this unprecedented heatwave is a direct manifestation of climate change .

The heatwave has also contributed to an economic slowdown due to a loss of productivity, as thousands of Indians are unable to work in the extreme heat. The agriculture sector – which employs over 60% of the population – is often hit hard by these erratic droughts, impacting food stability and sustenance. Currently, farmers are struggling to rescue what remains of the country’s wheat crops, piling on existing fears of a global shortage sparked by the war in Ukraine.

More on the topic: Water Scarcity in India

Already among the world’s most water-stressed countries , the heatwave is causing further water shortages across the nations. Even though water tankers are keeping communities hydrated, the supply is not enough to cover the needs of all residents. But heat is not the only factor contributing to water scarcity. In an interview with the Times of India , lead researcher at Pune-based Watershed Organisation Trust Eshwer Kale described the national water policy as very ‘irrigation-centric’. Indeed, over 85% of India’s freshwater is used in agriculture. This has led to a crisis in several states, including Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. The indiscriminate use of water for irrigation, coupled with the absence of conservation efforts and the huge policy gap in managing water resources has left over 10% of the country’s water bodies in rural areas redundant. A 2019 report predicts that 21 major cities – including New Delhi and India’s IT hub of Bengaluru – will run out of groundwater by 2030, affecting nearly 40% of the population. 

4. Waste Management

Among the most pressing environmental issues in India is also waste. As the second-largest population in the world of nearly 1.4 billion people, it comes as no surprise that 277 million tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) are produced there every year. Experts estimate that by 2030, MSW is likely to reach 387.8 million tonnes and will more than double the current value by 2050. India’s rapid urbanisation makes waste management extremely challenging. Currently, about 5% of the total collected waste is recycled, 18% is composted, and the remaining is dumped at landfill sites .

The plastic crisis in India is one of the worst on the planet. According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India currently produces more than 25,000 tonnes of plastic waste every day on average, which accounts for almost 6% of the total solid waste generated in the country. India stands second among the top 20 countries having a high proportion of riverine plastic emissions nationally as well as globally. Indus, Brahmaputra, and Ganges rivers are known as the ‘highways of plastic flows’ as they carry and drain most of the plastic debris in the country. Together with the 10 other topmost polluted rivers, they leak nearly 90% of plastics into the sea globally. 

To tackle this issue, in 2020 the government announced that they would ban the manufacture, sale, distribution, and use of single-use plastics from July 1 2022 onwards . Furthermore, around 100 Indian cities are set to be developed as smart cities . Despite being still in its early phase, the project sees civic bodies completely redrawing the long-term vision in solid waste management, with smart technologies but also awareness campaigns to encourage community participation in building the foundation of new collection and disposal systems. 

You might also like: 14 Biggest Environmental Problems of 2024

5. Biodiversity Loss

Last but not least on the list of environmental issues in India is biodiversity loss. The country has four major biodiversity hotspots , regions with significant levels of animal and plant species that are threatened by human habitation: the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Sundaland (including the Nicobar Islands), and the Indo-Burma region. India has already lost almost 90% of the area under the four hotspots, according to a 2021 report issued by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), with the latter region being by far the worst affected.

Moreover, 1,212 animal species in India are currently monitored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, with over 12% being classified as ‘endangered’ . Within these hotspots, 25 species have become extinct in recent years.

Due to water contamination, 16% of India’s freshwater fish, molluscs, dragonflies, damselflies, and aquatic plants are threatened with extinction and, according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) , freshwater biodiversity in the country has experienced an 84% decline. 

Yet, there is more to it. Forest loss is another major driver of biodiversity decline in the country. Since the start of this century, India has lost 19% of its total tree cover . While 2.8% of forests were cut down from deforestation, much of the loss have been a consequence of wildfires, which affected more than 18,000 square kilometres of forest per year – more than twice the annual average of deforestation. 

Forest restoration may be key to India’s ambitious climate goals, but some argue that the country is not doing enough to stop the destruction of this incredibly crucial resource. Indeed, despite committing to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030, Narendra Modi’s government faced backlash after refusing to sign the COP26 pledge to stop deforestation and agreeing to cut methane gas emissions. The decision was justified by citing concerns over the potential impact that the deal would have on local trade, the country’s extensive farm sector, and the role of livestock in the rural economy. However, given these activities’ dramatic consequences on biodiversity, committing to end and reverse deforestation should be a priority for India.

This article was originally published on June 17, 2022

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