Tuesday, August 11, 2009

India's land and air getting more polluted: Govt

About 45 per cent of India's land is degraded, air pollution is increasing in all its cities, it is losing its rare plants and animals more rapidly than before and about one-third of its urban population now lives in slums, says the State of Environment Report India 2009 brought out by the government.

The report, prepared by NGO Development Alternatives under the aegis of the ministry, says 45 per cent of India's land area is degraded due to erosion, soil acidity, alkalinity and salinity, waterlogging and wind erosion.

It says the prime causes of land degradation are deforestation, unsustainable farming, mining and excessive groundwater extraction.

On the bright side, the report shows how over two-thirds of the degraded 147 million hectares can be regenerated quite easily, and points out that India's forest cover is gradually increasing.

Presenting the salient features of the report to the media, Development Alternatives President (Development Enterprises) George C Varughese said one of its most worrisome findings was that the level of respirable suspended particulate matter -- the small pieces of soot and dust that get inside the lungs -- had gone up in all the 50 cities across India studied by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Central Pollution Control Board.

"In these 50 cities, with their population of 110 million, the public health damage costs due to this was estimated at Rs 15,000 crore in 2004," Varughese said.
The main causes of urban air pollution were vehicles and factories, he pointed out, appealing for a major boost to public transport.

While India still had some cushion when it came to water use, this scarce resource would have to be managed very carefully, the report says. It identifies lack of proper pricing of water for domestic usage, poor sanitation, unregulated extraction of groundwater by industry, discharge of toxic and organic wastewater by factories, inefficient irrigation and overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides as the main causes of water problems in the country.

While India remains one of the world's 17 "megadiverse" countries in terms of the number of species it houses, 10 per cent of its wild flora and fauna are on the threatened list, Varughese pointed out. The main causes, according to the report, were habitat destruction, poaching, invasive species, overexploitation, pollution and climate change.

The report points out that while India contributes only about five per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to climate change, about 700 million Indians directly face the threat of global warming today, as it affects farming, makes droughts, floods and storms more frequent and more severe and is raising the sea level.

In the section on urbanisation, the report points out that 20 to 40 per cent of people living in cities are in slums. Varughese said there were good projects to upgrade their lives and improve the environment at the same time, but the problem was that most of the money from schemes like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission was taken away by the big cities, "while the major problem is in about 4,000 small and medium towns".

7 comments:

Sam said...

And to think Canadas 3% of carbon imprint will save the world ....

What a waste of resoueces and money given to countries like India that refuse to fight pollution.

Canada already wone the global warming problem .... just consider the coolest seven years as proof .... and this year it is cooler than before.

Anonymous said...

Sam,

Uneducated people should not leave comments on people's blogs. Please censor yourself.

Sincerely,

Adnan Khashogi

Sam said...

Adna ZKhashogi

What are blog comments for?

You appear not like the truth, so why do you even try to comment on a subject you know nothing about.

I suggest you educate yourself with the facts of global cooling instead of following blindly the religion of Global Warming based on consenses rather than facts.

I find it hard to belive that India only contributes 7% of the problem. You probably never visited India, I assure you the air burns your eyes from pollution and I have never found a place in North Anerica that has as much pollution - not even Toronto during the garbage strike. India reuses to even take part in solving the so called problem by not wanting to cut its own emissions. When countries like the big polluters start cutting emissions I would start to think there is a problem. Too many hyprocrate enviroMENTALists have no clus to the truth.

Besides, the latest threat is continental Drift and according to them the world will end on Tuesday Aug. 18, 2009. Another theory - like climate Change/Global Warming fear mongering religion - that will be shot down by facts that you do not even consider because it will destroy your new religion

Sam said...

Adnan Khashogi,

Your new religion of Global Warming does not even want simple facts that MIGHT support the false claims and doesn't want their facts published:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/


NASA: Clean-air regs, not CO2, are melting the ice cap:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/09/arctic_aerosols_goddard_institute/

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/28/nasa_climate_theon/

Yet of course you MIGHT be uneducated, therefore you will say that the facts mean nothing, the UN says it is so therefore it must be true.

So far you have not tried to debate anything ... afraid you will lose because there is very little evadence to support your claims.

By-the-way; Before Gore's Inconvient Truth is shown in British schools there is a disclaimer that there are at least six proven facts that he is wrong in meny areas of his data. If you can't trust your god Gore, who can you trust? He is like you, does not even want to debate others because he is making billions on off-sets company that he created just for this "problem" that he created.

This joke is what you should worry about .... you only have a few days left ......

"Representatives from all continents will converge on the last geologically stable point on earth, the Island of Oahu, later this month for the "First International Conference on Anthropogenic Continental Drift.""

http://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1668

First and last Conference, I guess.

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