Sustainability Living – Role and responsibility of the UN and the World Media

The article below is my attempt to provoke and cajole the media both print and visual to be more responsible and take the lead in spreading awareness of the dangers of Climate Change. It is no more good enough to just report an event as it is happening. But being part of the society and having the might of the proverbial Pen need to be a little more responsible than the rest.

Cyclone Nilam -triggered rains kill 22 in Andhya Pradesh. PTI -Nov 05, 2012

Hyderabad: At least 22 people have died in rain-related incidents in Andhra Pradesh as heavy rains continued to batter several regions under the influence of ‘Cyclone Nilam’. Coastal Andhra Pradesh continued to bear the brunt of nature’s fury as villages and towns were inundated by swollen rivulets.

Standing crops, including paddy, were affected in 2,43,634 hectares. The death toll in rain-related incidents like wall collapse and drowning rose to 22, state disaster management commissioner T Radha told reporters here on Sunday. The government has set up 86 relief camps in which about 68,000 people were provided shelter, he said. 

Quoting form the article Growing Rice,written in the Blog Dobighazameen, 4 – 5 tonnes (one tonne = 1,000kgs) of rice is the yield expected from one hectare of well maintained paddy field. One hectare is about 2.5 acres.

Therefore if I go by what we can grow in the district of Pune,Maharashtra and apply it on the state of Andhra Pradesh; 2,43,634  hectares would have given us a rice yield of – 2,43,634 x 5 = 121,81,700,00 tonnes of Rice.

And this piece of extremely important information gets the place in page 9 of the DNA Newspaper. Which most would skip.

I have yet to read any newspaper which has actually translated this ” Standing crops, including paddy, were affected in 2,43,634 hectares.” into actual damage a common house-wife would understand while standing in the queue of  mofussil India in the hot summer. So I take this task with my limitations as a dyscalculia, please pardon if the change from numbers to words are inaccurate, although I have used an online soft-ware for that too. In Indian parlance we are looking at One Arab Twenty one Crore Eighty one Lakh Seventy thousand tonnes of rice if only paddy is taken into account. Aandhra Pradesh by the way sends large amounts of vegetables to the City of Mumbai.

That is1 Billion tonnes plus of food grain destroyed by just one Hurricane. As mentioned in my previous article,Hurricane Sandy & Cyclone Nilam – “Our cousins would be visiting soon”.the world will be facing more and more climate change induced disasters as mentioned in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report.

Being a lover of fried rice, I could connect to this loss of stupendous amount of rice, I don’t mention the 22 people who died, because none were related to me and its just another statistics hai na? (Hindi = isn’t it). Coming from a capitalistic self-centred society I’m as good as my neighbour is. After all I too need to maintain the famous Chalta Hai ( all is ok ) attitude, even if the next one hits my city Mumbai and living close to the Marine Drive have my hat blown off. Being a little economically well-off gives me this sense of security that no Hurricane / Cyclone can kill me. I get this comfort from the rich and the politicians who live around me.

I can as always give many more examples and statistics of how we should build resource efficient cities and follow the sustainable living methods, but what is most important and is becoming most urgent is the recognition by all Governments the need to Advertise! To spread the message in simple language which most literate but hardly educated populace can understand.

If I may so humbly suggest, it is the time for the UNSC to take cognisance of the matter; is the destruction of a Nation not a matter of utmost security concern? And use its vast economic resources to provide grant to the UNFCCC and UNEP to popularise the concept of Sustainable living and the dangers of not having done so.

In another article by Vivek Kaul in the DNA newspaper, Michael J Sandel one of the foremost political philosophers in his book What Money Can’t Buy:The Moral Limits of Markets argues that we have drifted from being a market economy to being a market society. “….We have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society. And the difference is this. A market economy is a valuable and effective tool for organising productivity activity. And market economy has brought prosperity and affluence to countries around the world. A market society is different. A market society is a place where almost everything is up for sale. It’s a way of life in which uses markets to allocate health, education, public safety, national security, environmental protection, recreation, procreation and other social goods”…. (Source:Do we want a society where everything is up for sale?)

Why else a National daily like DNA, could not find front page space to put as Headlines, the news of loss of lives and crops caused by Cyclone Nilam?  A loss which would lead to further inflation and death of the underprivileged in time to come in this corrupt and crony capitalist market economy?

And what is most painful is that India needs the endorsement for moral guidance from the west, as we debunk our traditional way of conducting business for the more “advanced” version.

 

Hurricane Sandy & Cyclone Nilam – “Our cousins would be visiting soon”.

In the video section of my blog you will find a time lapse video of Hurricane Sandy. Around 2:14 minutes into the video, the lights of New York go out. Till then it is business as usual. Single mindedly producing GHG by consuming humongous amount of electricity produced by coal / oil fired thermal plants.

An Article by Ryan Patterson, USCAN Operations Director says –Both Presidential campaigns were put on pause this week as Hurricane Sandy converged with extraneous weather patterns and battered the East Coast with unprecedented force, prompting National Wildlife Federation climate scientist Amanda Staudt to describe the effects of climate change as akin to ‘putting hurricanes on steroids.’ This fatal event contributes even more evidence to the annals of climate change data, and some media have connected the storm to climate disruption, such as Bloomberg Businessweek, which ran a front page article titled It’s Global Warming, Stupid and CNN, which ran a story called Experts Warn of Superstorm Era to Come. Unfortunately, top politicians have not followed suit and have failed to publically connect the dots to climate change, which is dispiriting at best and unethical at worst.

With less than a week to Election Day, it is important to think about how we found ourselves in the position where key decision-makers are not substantially addressing climate, despite broad efforts by climate change activists. I will argue here that a band of carbon billionaires have effectively influenced public opinion and national and state legislation on climate change using a three-pronged strategy that funds think tanks, Astroturf campaigns, and legislative outreach…..(Source: Climate Action Network).

In 1988, UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) came together to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has become the pre-eminent global source for scientific information relating to climate change.  The main international instrument on this subject, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992.  And its Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, was adopted in 1997. In 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002, to take stock of achievements, challenges and new issues arising since the 1992 Earth Summit. It was an “implementation” Summit, designed to turn the goals, promises and commitments of Agenda 21 into concrete, tangible actions. 2005 – 2014 is  the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development  and Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.

In 2012 with only 1 year 2 months to 2014, my Blog article What is Agenda 21 written to help propagate the great UN vision got a sum total of 5 HITS between 12th November 2011 to 6th March 2012.

Not that I did not try pasting the link to the article in my other blogs, especially the ones I title as Green Business Ideas. I doubt if even the kith and kin of CM Sheila Dikshit of New Delhi and Ex Mayor Shraddha Yadav of Mumbai, who were the signatories of the C40 Cities ( Urban Development Rules: How C40 -City rules can make a difference for India.) have even heard of these wonderful United Nations driven goals, leave alone the common people in my Country.

I have a decent 99 HITS to the C40 article, taking my efforts to spread sensible living to a mere 104 persons in total of 6 Billion people in this planet. I hope the UNFCCC has been doing better. Given it has been at it since 1988.

While Noble Rabindra Nath Tagore wrote – Jodi tor dak sune ….( A superb poem which tells you to walk alone towards the path of truth, irrespective of the following you get ). Unfortunately the time of the Mahathma Gandhi; who did walk alone; has changed.

Truth is what the Corporates tell you, through their selected mouth piece Politicians and media Barons. But Mother Nature has this silly habit of knocking down the tall claims made by tiny self-centred human. Every time. So when both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama chose not to mention the “C” word, Hurricane Sandy felt offended and came visiting and sent cousin Hurricane Nilam to India, to remind the Annex II countries not to feel to smug about the disaster hitting the most uncooperative Annex I country in the Kyoto Protocol.

In my (4 HITS received till date, clearly underscores how unimportant a news it is compared to Hollywood / Bollywood actors affairs, which get a media frenzy) article Sustainable Development is urgent : IPCC’s special report on Climate risks I presented the SEREX report a few points I would highlight below –

EXPOSURE AND VULNERABILITY

1.Exposure and vulnerability are dynamic, varying across temporal and spatial scales, and depend on economic, social, geographic, demographic, cultural, institutional, governance, and environmental factors (high confidence).

2.Settlement patterns, urbanization, and changes in socio-economic conditions have all influenced observed trends in exposure and vulnerability to climate extremes (high confidence).

DISASTER LOSSES
1.Economic losses from weather and climate-related disasters have increased, but with large spatial and inter-annual variability (high confidence, based on high agreement, medium evidence).

2.Economic, including insured, disaster losses associated with weather, climate, and geophysical events are higher in developed countries. Fatality rates and economic losses expressed as a proportion of GDP are higher in developing countries (high confidence).

3.Increasing exposure of people and economic assets has been the major cause of the long-term increases in economic losses from weather and climate-related disasters (high confidence).

4.Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and
population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded (medium evidence, high agreement).

The report touches on many aspects in great detail and was published as the 4th Assessment Report of IPCC last year. I would want people to pause at the digit 4th. The 5th report is on its way.

Wonder how much that would help the common persons who are lead as sheep to the slaughter house by the willy Politician – Corporate out to make a quick buck. After all disasters do help in the business of rebuilding. What fun! Too bad, loss of life and limb happens. But statistics show far greater people die in their sleep don’t they?

Exposure and Vulnerability; Disaster losses. one can almost feel the despair and frustration of all those who have burnt the proverbial mid-night oil to compile a Report, detailed and accurate as humanly possible to help the Leaders of this World to address Climate change with Vision and Statesmanship.

$1 trillion in infra at any cost, Singh tells his 77: Prime minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday told the 77 ministers in his cabinet the government’s target of $1 trillion investments in infrastructure over the next five years “must be met at any cost”.That translates into Rs53.71 lakh crore, or more than Rs10 lakh crore a year, over the 12th Plan period of 2012-17…….“To do so, we will have to overcome the constraints that currently deter or slow down this investment.” The prime minister listed fuel supply arrangements, security and environmental clearances and financing difficulties among the constraints and said the growing gap between demand and supply of energy had emerged as a major roadblock to development.
I can almost hear the chain saws gnawing at the last remaining forest cover, to reach for the coal beneath. “Development at any cost” the new Indian Mantra.

The Stern Review states that climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics.The Review provides prescriptions including environmental taxes to minimise the economic and social disruptions. The Stern Review’s main conclusion is that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change far outweigh the costs of not acting.The Review points to the potential impacts of climate change on water resources, food production, health, and the environment. According to the Review, without action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever. Including a wider range of risks and impacts could increase this to 20% of GDP or more. The Review proposes that one percent of global GDP per annum is required to be invested in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. In June 2008, Stern increased the estimate for the annual cost of achieving stabilisation between 500 and 550 ppm CO₂e to 2% of GDP to account for faster than expected climate change.

It is said that unless we stop and reverse the Global temperature rise by 2017, we shall be locked into a high carbon growth for the next 50 years with Climate related disasters and its related abatement cost dogging the civilization, with millions in life and property is lost.

Yet, the World Leaders blinded by myopic vision, site economic gurus who unfortunately are born of a flawed economic system, who go back to the time when that flawed system was in its nascent stage and showed false growth and prosperity. By this I mean the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The vast untapped resources were not yet exploited and thus the impact of “pollution” an unknown term then. And it had not manifested itself with the terrible consequences which we see now. While the Revolution is singularly responsible for the growth of Human understanding in every field, including the impacts of human induced climate change, applying the same economic measures and datum now is nothing short of foolhardy in the present circumstances.

Now is the time for us to search for leaders who would be able to stand tall and proud as Gandhi. Leaders not afraid to walk the path away from the beaten track. And should that be a problem then we still can walk the path  the Mahatma showed in his concept of a Sustainable Village or Gram Swaraj.

Visionaries are not born every day and civilization which forget the thoughts of visionaries do so at their own peril. While it is easy to catalogue the devastation of a Katrina or a Sandy or a Nilam, what is of profound importance now is that the United Nations must through its good offices bring around the USA, Canada, Japan and others who talk of not ratifying the KP-2 or any similar or better economic idea which might just be able to hold off the cousins of Sandy & Katrina from visiting too soon.

Perhaps UNFCCC-Doha may after all see the birth of a new Economic order born out of respect for the Ecology.

Related articles

• VIDEO: Cyclone Nilam hits Indian coast (bbc.co.uk)
• Sandy and Nilam: Why do these names stand for! (arindammohapatra.wordpress.com)
• Global Warming Meme Powers Hurricane Coverage (weeklyintercept.blogspot.com)

 

Green Business Ideas: Solar Net Metering can help provide solar power in the night.

In the Indian Express Newspaper on the 19th October, a news caught the eye of one of my friend and client, for whom I’m designing a Green township. Rooftops as Energy Farms– Gujarat has launched a pilot project where rooftops of homes and commercial establishments are being rented out to generate solar power that is fed into the state grid, translating into a source of income for property owners and greening electricity production.

The State of Gujrat, under CM Narendra Modi is quite tuned to the Climate change and understands the need to engage the common person in creating an energy surplus state. With each house-hold given the incentive of Rupee 3/- via the Grid interactive system. Starting with Gandhinagar, the program of giving ‘carbon credits’ to five more cities have been approved by the Gujrat government. One hopes the rest of India would follow this sensible way of boosting the energy issue, without courting controversy.

Net metering is an electricity policy for consumers who own (generally small) renewable energy facilities (such as wind, solar power or home fuel cells) or V2G electric vehicles. “Net”, in this context, is used in the sense of meaning “what remains after deductions” — in this case, the deduction of any energy outflows from metered energy inflows. Under net metering, a system owner receives retail credit for at least a portion of the electricity they generate. (Source: Wikipedia)

In simpler words, When your home is equipped with a renewable energy source (such as wind or solar power), it sends the excess energy that’s generated back into the grid to power other homes. While you’re away, your house is generating energy but you’re not using it. Net metering ensures the energy you generate at home doesn’t go to waste. An electrical converter called an inverter turns the DC (direct current) power coming from your renewable energy source into AC (alternating current) power, which matches the voltage of the electricity flowing through the power line. If you’ve generated more energy than you’ve used at the end of the year, your electric company may pay you back for the extra power. Net metering can be measured over the month or year. Annualized net metering provides a more accurate measurement because it takes into account your changing energy usage and production over the four seasons. ( Source:How Stuff Works).

This week Tamil Nadu opened up the GBI –The scheme of generation-based incentive (GBI), essentially aimed at covering domestic consumers, will be administered jointly by the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency (Teda) and the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco). Included in the recently unveiled Solar Energy Policy, the scheme envisages providing Rs. 2 per unit for the first two years; Re. 1 per unit for the next two years and 50 paise per unit for the subsequent two years.

While it is good to see that the state after state is awaking to the solar policy and even looking at giving a return, what they also need to look at is innovation. The most important factor is who would be the beneficiary of this GBI ? Will it actually elevate the suffering of the needy? Who guarantees that the surplus power thus created would eventually given back to the very locality which is providing the roof-tops? With states having shortfall in their generation, it would be easy to send the power for commercial use and thus encourage more commercial enterprises to set shop; having found assured power. This is most possible because commercial power brings in more profit to the electric company. The other profitable venture is from the rich residential area where the tariff is decent. However, the rich and the upper middle class in megalopolises, live in tall sky-scrapers where open roof-top is a premium. But they require system which is minimum 5KW. Here the price becomes steep even if space can be found even for most upper middle class consumers.

The roof-tops which is available & most need the power belong to the tier-II cities middle class and the rural poor, who are already finding hard to make ends meet. With, the cost per watt peak between INR 50/- to 120/-  which per Kilo Watt translates to One Lakh Twenty thousand, is not something every “Aam Admi” ( aam = common; it also denotes – Mangoes) can aspire to purchase and that is something our policy makers have not thought about. A person who uses only 5kwhr of power or 5units a day is not someone who could or need to spend Rupee 1.2 lakh or $ 2232. Therefore, it could be easy for the unscrupulous to capture vast rooftops, set up the solar and skim the poor roof-top owners. Imagine, the economically weaker section providing their collective roof-tops at the city fringes and receiving Paise Ten of every Rupee envisaged in the scheme, while the rest the “investor” pockets. It is not that such eventuality would not have been thought by the policy makers, but who would be monitoring? In the “scam a week” India of today, every utopian idea can get bastardized easily.

But, here is the way one may improve the concept and provide the power to one and all especially the middle class, who are a fairly large consumer as a group staying in class 1 cities like Pune, Bangalore and the likes where roofs; unlike Mumbai are still available in size large enough to cater to a decent solar power generation. One can also add New Delhi as the megalopolis which can afford and need the solar to stem the power outages in Summer.

There are already RESCO‘s who have been supporting my concept of OPEX Solar and the only thing they are interested is in banking the extra-generation and availing it when required from the DISCOM. Here they are wanting to put up the system which generate power during the day which is enough to cater to the needs of that very roof owner for a 24hour period.

The solution is simple. Say for example, a restaurant requires 100Kw and consumes 40KwHr during the daytime and 60KwHr in the night. As solar does not function in the night, ideally they would require a battery bank to store the power. However, if the surplus 60Kw is sent to the grid and in the evening the grid supplies that much power back to the establishment, then in effect the restaurant is running its operations on 100% Solar power. Same can be thought for residential areas which are large consumer of power.

The Grid can benefit in many ways –

1. It can charge a fee say between 2 to 5% ( similar to wheeling charges ) from the RESCO.

2. During the daytime when peak demand makes it difficult to manage, the extra solar power coming to it would ease the pressure and can be sold at commercial rate while eliminating the chance of a Grid collapse.

3. It would also help them not to short-change the rural and the urban poor, by being able to cut down on their load-shedding hours, which in certain places is 6 hours or more. Which would eventually help the countries growth.

What we require are policy which are driven from the Centre and applied equally by all states. The incentives which are envisaged are good. Let that be given to the RESCO’s who find it un-viable to provide the services to the rural and urban poor, whose tariff does not allow the companies to have a IRR which is acceptable. A decent  tariff is INR 7.50. Therefore if the state gives the extra INR 3.00 on the tariff of INR 4.50 which is the tariff in some places, almost all the roof of India would see a solar panel within 3 years.

 

India to connect all its Rivers

The DNA New Paper today had a fantastic news about how all the rivers of India can be connected to provide water in areas required by diverting the flood waters of one into the other. A fantastic read, given below but raises a few questions which I would like the world community to help answer, because just like air, water to is connected but finally at the Ocean. But if one looks closely at the estuaries, they have marine life unique to the confluence of the river that meets with the sea.  How will by connecting the rivers, the aquatic life and the surrounding fauna & flora of the downstream get affected? We all understand that the Indian sub-continent has various soil types, each with its unique chemical composition. While having canals taking water to great distances for irrigation may not have had any long-term negative effect. If we link two rivers which may have different aquatic life, whether the intermixing would be positive or otherwise need to be studied and if studied reported about.

Abridged text from the DNA paper-

“The perennial problems of drought and flood which ravage the country will be a thing of the past if all major rivers are inter-linked. By inter-linking the rivers, what we do is to transfer the surplus flood waters from Brahmaputra Mahanadi, Ganga and Godavari to water deficient rivers in south India through a network of canals. This will help us in boosting our agricultural production, increase the forest cover and bring down pollution,” Prabhu told DNA. S Kalyanaraman, former director of Asian Development Bank, who undertook 20 years research on ILR said the project would help in generating 40,000 MW clean and green energy. “We can bring in nine crore acres of additional wetland into farming and this will benefit 45 cr people,” said Kalyanaraman.

The normal annual Indian surface water resources are about 68,969 Thousand Million Cubic feet (TMC). Out of this we use only 8,814 TMC, that is 13%. The remaining 87 per cent, (that is about 60,155 TMC), is wasted into the sea every year, say Natarajan and Kallolikar. “The value of one TMC of flood water let into sea in terms of paddy and pulses is about Rs32.5 crore. The total irrigation potential that can be created by utilizing the entire floodwater let into sea is 241 million ha, the production of foodgrain is 1,477 million tones (1,326 million tones of paddy plus 151 million tones of pulse) and the value of total flood water in terms of paddy and pulses is about Rs20 lakh crore (value of paddy is Rs 13 lakh crore and the value of pulse is Rs7 lakh crore) per annum. The value of food grains wasted in the last 61 years in the independent India is Rs1, 220 lakh crore,” Natarajan and Kallolikar said in the paper they submitted to the Planning Commission emphasizing the need to inter link the rivers. Natarajan said if the flood waters of Godavari in Andhra Pradesh is diverted to Mettur Dam in Tamil Nadu, the dam would get filled in ten hours. “Tamil Nadu’s entire irrigation requirements could be met with this water,” he said.

The Indian Space Research Organisation has drawn a blue print for implementing the project with the help of images.

Resonating my thoughts,on 5th March Mr. Subratha Sihna editor in the DNA News paper, wrote in the analysis this piece, which I think almost all who work with water must look at with a degree of seriousness.

Based on a Public Interest Litigation, a Supreme Court division bench in the early 2000s had directed the Centre to implement the controversial river linking proposal involving more than Rs500,000 crore (approximately $110 billion) without bypassing any of the essential procedures in the process by 2016. There was an unprecedented outcry against the proposal from civil society — including a representation to the prime minister by 50 citizens of national eminence. The proposal was put on hold. The present bench of the Supreme Court, in fact, has revived the ‘the instrumentalist vision’ to complete the process; with the caveat of setting up a high-powered committee to ‘implement’ the project.
In unsuitable, arid or semi-arid, agro-climatic regions, excessive water transfer and usage have caused irreversible land degradation. About three-fourth of prime agricultural was lost by water logging, salinity and erosion by 1980. These irreversibly degraded tracts include the command areas of Tapi, Mahi, Chambal, Tawa, and Narmada in western UP and Rajasthan, providing a frightening preview of river linking, whose major thrust is on transferring water into inappropriate terrain. Basically, the concept of surplus or deficit is alien to river basins. Each drop has its use in preserving the river regime and environmental health of the basin.
Fundamental objections to river linking:
1. Linking of rivers violates the natural laws governing the life support system, and natural dynamics; and discounts the bounties provided by river systems.
2. The loss of flood plains and spill basins by human interference has caused devastating floods. River linking shall enhance this situation.
3. Man-made dams, reservoirs, and artificial lakes that are to be project ingredients would rob the rivers of their energy potential.
4. In fact, stupendous energy would be needed for the rivers to jump over the natural water divides and topo-barriers.
5.Rainfall and water availability is regulated by the monsoons, resulting in a highly bimodal annual river flow and moisture regime with consequential seasonal lows (droughts) and highs (floods). River linking shall certainly aggravate both droughts and floods by superimposition of the situation in each of the linked rivers.
6. Such linkages could possibly be thought of in more temperate latitudes with a more homogeneous annual moisture/flow regime. However, the Soviet experience of river diversion has even then been catastrophic, resulting on the devastation of the Aral Sea.
7. A river is not a mere flow channel, but a holistic system encompassing the whole basin — water divide, catchment, valley and outflow point. Any alteration shall affect the whole system and even induce microclimatic changes.
8. Inestimable loss of natural biodiversity, wild cultivars and plant gene banks shall inevitably follow river linking to disrupting the regional food chain operation.
9. Monsoonal rainfall on the degraded catchments shall cause excessive siltation-related problems in the linking systems.
10. Careful scrutiny of the state of environmental health of various rivers should have been first made before clean rivers are linked very filthy rivers.
11.River linking shall inevitably lead to an alteration of the seasonal water availability pattern; and the possibility of upsetting the evapo-transpiration balance.
12. An inevitable change in the cropping pattern from excessively irrigated lands after river-linking shall cause a major increase in methane and other gases that contribute to global warming.
13. Land degradation shall also be inescapably aggravated.
14. The colossal estimated cost will surely jeopardise the national economy for decades and force diversion of funds from the more essential needs of the vast majority of rural poor.
15. The inter-state and international ramifications of shared riparian systems would certainly open the floodgates for a civil war situation and serious discord with India’s neighbours.

Not only is any such proposal for inter-basin transfers totally repugnant to all natural and economic logic, but shall alter the subcontinent’s geographical configuration. In the ultimate analysis, the proposal shall signal the death knell of our river systems that provide the principal source of sustenance; and encompass social, cultural and religious traditions.

The Beneficiaries of River Linking:
The politically important consideration for drawing up the river linking plan was the emergence of major national and transnational industries and rapid urbanization in many of the ‘low water availability’ natural regions of the west and south. It was purported also to help the commercial farming lobby for sugarcane. A case of ‘mortgaging the nation’s future for a miniscule affluent population.

 

Green Business Ideas: Algae can help fishermen earn during lean catch periods.

Over fishing is a sad story repeated along the sea-coast everywhere. Documentaries showing the haggard faces of fishermen staring at an uncertain future, as the catch dwindles each year have won acclaim and awards. But barring a few who genuinely want the fishing communities to survive; the World at large is still oblivious to the problems. According to a 2008 UN report, the world’s fishing fleets are losing $50 billion USD each year through depleted stocks and poor fisheries management.

Unlike Currency you can not print fish when you want. The Economy unfortunately has to bow down to Ecology. But while the world grapples at what would be the model for ” Sustainable Capitalism” as opposed to ” Crony Capitalism“, a man has to earn his bread and put the meal on the table.

So, what does a fishing community do when there is no fish to catch?  All they need to do is harvest some algae for producing Bio-fuel. Marine Algae  is  used as food, medicine & fertilizer. Bio-fuel already is a nascent  industry which is well recognized though not reached its full potential but in the coming years as the World moves away from fossil fuel, it would gain prominence as another alternate to various other clean tech energy source. Moreover algae is a proven “carbon sink” and this alone would attract Carbon funding and thus help in poverty alleviation.

In India we are blessed with a long coastline. Along this coast line live some very poor fishing communities live who can benefit from alga-culture . Also in India we have the brackish water lakes like – Kaliveli Lake, Tamil Nadu; Kerala Backwaters, Series of lagoons and lakes in Kerala; Pulicat Lake, north of Chennai; The Rann of Kutch, Gujarat.

In the famous Aurovile, Pondicherry; India. How Spirulina farming can benefit the community can be seen. That such a beautiful “Sustainable Capitalism” will be found in Aurovile – a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity – was not a surprise. The Government of India along with the help of the States can set up training institutes where the marginalized fishermen  learn to “corral” the algae just like salmon farming. As there is a demand for marine algae in medicine; Spirulina is the most known. It has food and medicinal value which is well documented. The income generated by such activities, be it production of food or fuel; could help the people to cope with the pressures of living in the modern world.

But what is more important than helping the fishermen is Educating the consumers. Massive information campaign, especially by the famous restaurants around the World about why one should not order for “that fish” during certain season. And the menus should display – “this particular fish is from the cold storage & not a fresh catch. For fresh fish wait for the harvesting season.” Its time to live & let live.

In the Hindu Culture, during the season called “Shraavana” ( pronounced -shra -van ); no non-veterinarian eating community eats fish, meat, poultry or eggs. This season coincides with the monsoon season. It is a time for replenishment for all. A culture of sustainable living was part of the Ethos. Even plants and trees were venerated, each has a name and direct association with a Hindu God. One had to justify why a tree needed to be felled, and a collective decision was taken by the village council in fair and transparent manner, should even one person object.  However, in our race towards modernity we have lost the touch of reality. I am sure that there would have been similar laws in the ancient Europe and Americas. Laws bulldozed over by the mighty corporations and inventors of the bottom trawling net, which scrapes out every living thing right up-to the bottom of the sea floor.

We many presume that we have become more advanced and developed than our ancestors; however Nature is proving it wrong in every turn ! The result is for all to see.

Related articles

• The Ancient Romans Once Trained Dolphins to Help them Fish (todayifoundout.com)
• What I talk about when I talk about F***ing (greenpeace.org)
• super strawberry spirulina smoothie! (thebearandtheblackberry.wordpress.com)
• Algae Biofuel Closer as NATO and NASA Step Into the Slime (greenprophet.com)