Invisible Demons

 

I have often wondered - if global warming and climate change is really a ticking time-bomb, why does it not bother most of us?

A part the answer to this question was found in an event I attended last week at the Max Muller Bhavan in New Delhi. 

MMB is the German cultural centre in the heart of of the city. In the pre-internet days it used to be considered a cool hangout for its cafe, library and cultural events. This particular event was in two parts - screening ofa documentary titled, "Invisible Demons" directed by Rahul Jain, followed by a panel discussion on Art, Activism and Climate Change. 

This is essentially about environmental pollution in north India, especially Delhi. The film starts in an arty format with a guy slowly fogging a DDA park in Delhi. This set the tone for the rest of the documentary - long lingering shots of the worst sights in the city: drains emptying into the Yamuna, turning its waters black and foamy; mountains of garbage dotted with rag-picking children; destitute families living on the streets of Delhi; endless traffic jams interspersed with shots of fishes packed in tanks and cattle crowded in pens; patients wheezing into a nebuliser and an endoscopic view of blackened lungs.

The film is meant to evoke disgust, and it does so quite effectively. The director too was glad to tell us that at every pre-screening event, the audience rushed to open the windows to let in some fresh air. The only hint of optimism in the the whole documentary is footage of an un-named young man showing the little forests he had created on the Yamuna floodplains. He is the well known Miyawaki forester, Shubhendu Sharma, but for 'artistic reasons' he remains un-named in the film.

I have seen plenty of poverty-porn coming from media houses sponsored by Western entities - the ones that find great delight in highlighting the worst from developing countries, without offering any viable solutions. This must be a new genre called environment-porn.

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LINKS & REFERENCES

- 18 Jan 2023 - Panel discussion on Art, Activism and Climate Change - Rahul Jain, movie director | Helene Bukowski, writer | Dr. Philipp Ackermann, German Ambassador | Philo Magdelene, Protect our Planet (PoP) movement

- Miyawaki Forests - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/they-grow-fast-and-easy-but-do-miyawaki-forests-meet-the-fundamental-principles-of-ecological-restoration/article65258901.ece

- Shubhendu Sharma, Forester, founder - Afforestt - https://blog.ted.com/shubhendusharma/

- Judith Chevalier, Env Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Chevalier

A River and its Froth

The Yamuna river presents a surreal sight these days.

From a distance it looks like a scene from one of the frozen continents where the arrival of spring has broken the grip of winter. Pure white blocks of snow and ice gently float down a river which meanders and disappears into a mist. 

There has, however, never been a snowfall in Delhi and the last bits of ice in Yamuna would have melted more than a thousand kilometres upstream, long before the river broke out of the Himalayas, on to the plains of North India. What we pretend not to see in Delhi is the effects of reckless industrial and household pollution.

It seems all that froth floating down the river comes from "excess phosphate in household and factory -use detergents and bars". Why are these pollutants not being removed at source? The answer lies in a mix of apathy and convoluted policies and rules.

The Central Pollution Control Board has set standards on the quality of effluent discharge but is unable to enforce them because there are simply not enough treatment plants. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS 4955, 4956, 8080 and 9458) specifies the minimum levels of phosphates to be included in detergents but leaves it to the industry to decide the upper limit!

While this reasoning sounds plausible it does not really add up. India is not self-sufficient in phosphates so it imports it in large quantities - especially for the fertiliser industry. According to PIB we imports nearly 5 million tonnes of rock phosphate, 2.5 million tonnes of phosphoric acid and 3 million tonnes of Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) annually.

Why would industries want to use excess phosphate when it is an expensive imported commodity? Or is the phosphate used by fertiliser manufactures different from the one used by detergent manufacturers?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/delhi-detergent-waste-chokes-yamuna-at-the-mouth-excess-phosphate-behind-deadly-froth-1191452-2018-03-17  

https://www.scoopwhoop.com/foam-covered-yamuna-delhi-pollution/

The Air We Breathe

Over the past one week, I have been analyzing the market for air purifiers in the NCR Delhi region. It is just the right time of the year for an assignment like this - the quality of air here takes a nosedive with the onset of winter.

Today the reports of suspended particulate matter - especially PM 2.5 - were particularly alarming. It peaked at over 715 mg/m3 when the prescribed limit is below 60 mg/m3!

Just before the festival of lights, Diwali, farmers in Northern India harvest their summer crops and prepare their fields for the winter sowing season. Since it is too expensive to physically remove the post harvest residue from the fields they just burn it.  A huge cloud of smoke then slowly drifts over Delhi and settles down with all the smoke from Diwali firecrackers, turning the national capital into a gas chamber.

This year, a one-off intervention by the Supreme Court resulted in a ban on the sale of firecrackers, so there was a marginal reduction in the smog and haze, but it still left most of us teary eyed, and with a niggling irritation in the throat.

Pollution is not bad news for everybody. There has been a spike in the number of companies selling air purifiers, big advertisements in the newspapers point to the fact that 15 odd companies are all set to make hay while the sun shines dimly through the smog.

According to the Philips salesman at GIP Mall in Noida, air purifiers have been flying off the shelves as Diwali gifts. The company is barely able to keep pace with the demand. From what one could see, in their enthusiasm to sell, their glib sales pitch is also barely in touch with scientific facts.

"We human being consume about four kilograms of food everyday", said the Philips salesman, "But do we know that we also breathe in about 24 kgs of air, with all the pollutants in Delhi?" I did not know that. Having been under the impression that the volume of air is measured in liters or cubic feet or cubic meters, I have been trying to figure out the actual volume of air consumed by us everyday.

The World Health Organisation and US-EPA has some clear figures on this. Considering the fact that the air contains 20-23% of oxygen, and that an average human being breathes in about 0.5 liters of air with each inhalation. At about 20 inhalations per minute, we are consuming no less than 6-8 liters of air while we are sitting around doing nothing. This jumps up to 60 liters/minute while running at 5 miles/hour. So it turns out that we are breathing in no less than 14,400 liters of air every day (0.5 * 20 * 60 * 24). This volume would take up all the space in a room measuring about 500 cubic feet!

The Philips salesman might have been talking through his hat, but there is no denying the fact that most of us are unaware of the sheer volume of contaminated air entering our lungs every day!

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LINKS and REFERENCES

*  WHO  Factsheet - Ambient air quality and health - http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/

* USA - California Env Protection Agency research - https://www.arb.ca.gov/research/resnotes/notes/94-11.htm

* YouTube video - How much oxygen does a person consume/day? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-QYVKYKyfg

* https://www.quora.com/How-much-volume-do-we-inhale-and-exhale-in-a-day

* Oxygen intake - https://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/respiratory/question98.htm

The Apathy Chronicles

Science may have found a cure for mos evils; but it has no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings." -- Helen Keller


Today's Indian Express has a telling cover story on the state of governance in India. It is a classic case of adopting the proverbial ostrich-like attitude: pretending that a problem does not exist, and hoping that, somehow, it will disappear on its own.

I just thought it would be interesting to list some of them to see if there is a pattern that could lead us to possible solutions.

First, the IE story today:

* AIR POLLUTION IN DELHI

The Central Pollution Control Board identifies a potential problem area and commissions an independent agency to examine the air quality in Delhi, through an exhaustive study involving 11,000 schoolchildren from 36 schools, across three years. Yet, despite detecting an alarming rise in pollution levels, everybody is still busy "studying the report".

Links:
- Landmark study lies buried - http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/landmark-study-lies-buried-how-delhis-poisonous-air-is-damaging-its-children-for-life/
- Chatterjee, Pritha (31Mar'15), IE: Seven years ago, everyone saw Delhi’s air take a deadly U-turn but no one did a thing


* THE NEW (RE)EMERGING DISEASES

Over past two decades, hospitals across India have been witnessing a sharp rise in new and re-emerging diseases: Chikungunya, bird flu, swine flu, monkey flu, Ebola, MDR TB and Malaria, etc., This year along we have lost over 2000 lives to H1N1 swine flu.
What have we done about it? The health ministry had figured well in advance that our total dependence on imported diagnostics and medicines would hamper containment efforts. So it decided to develop indigenous technology and succeeded in getting entrepreneurs to produce test-kits for a tenth the cost (Rs. 400 vs. minimum of Rs.4500/test). And then, amazingly, after handing out the necessary regulatory clearances, it does nothing to encourage states to adopt cheaper, more affordable diagnostics and medicines.
Predictably MNCs like Applied Biosciences are quite pleased with the state of affairs. While low-income patients balk at the cost of getting reliable tests and drugs, the MNCs are laughing all the way to bank, happy to serve just those who can afford it.

Links:
- Nagarajan, Rema (18Mar'15), ToI: Two Indian firms develop cheap H1N1 test kits, but find few takers
- Singh, Jyotsna (31Mar'15), DTE: When flu turns fatal - http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/when-flu-turns-fatal


* DELHI BUS RAPID TRANSPORT (BRT) SYSTEM

Inspired by Curitiba (Brazil) and Bogota (Colombia), and goaded by IITD academics, the Delhi government decided to ease the urban transport problem by building a BRT corridor in South Delhi. The first phase of construction (2008) was so haphazard and unplanned that vehicles kept crashing into unmarked barriers that had come up overnight, constriction of road space forced bikers on pedestrian pathways and VIPs appropriated the bus-lanes for themselves.
Now there is talk of just scrapping the whole project. So what if the project cost a few millions?

* PIPED WATER SUPPLY IN NCR DELHI

Why is it so rare to find 24x7 piped water supply in Indian cities? Because the amount of water that would be wasted from taps that are left open would leave us very little to supply the next day!
In suburbs like Noida, the municipality has fixed a "flat-rate" for monthly consumption of water. This amounts to a measly Rs. 25 to Rs.150 per month. Since there is no incentive or costs to careful use of this resource, enormous quantities of water overflow into the drains every day. Picture this: Everyday, Noida Jal processes and distributes about 100 cusecs (244 million litres/day) of water. Water is pumped from the holding stations to overhead waterttanks in each sector, and from here, it is supplied to users twice a day for about three hours.
Water quickly fills up the overhead tanks in all the buildings, and since the supply is not metered, most users have an overflow pipe that spills excess water into the drains. For at least an hour water just goes down the drains. Has there been any effort to calculate and control this huge, daily wastage of clean water? Who cares!

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LINKS:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Bus_Rapid_Transit_System
- BRT May be Scrapped - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Delhis-BRT-may-finally-be-scrapped-as-MLAs-put-pressure-on-govt/articleshow/46569844.cms

FDI and the Export of Polluting Industries

An interesting article was posted on Academia today - "Japan's Global Environmentalism: Rhetoric and Reality".

It was a bit dated (1998) but the topic dealt with a time-period when I worked with Japanese ODA, and of how Japan deliberately advocating high-tech solutions to environmental problems in developing countries simply in order to maximize purchases of capital-intensive technology and high-tech production services from Japan.

Numerous I-wish-I-knew-that-before points turned up, for instance -

• The disastrous and ultimately aborted Narmada Dam project of theWorld Bank was closely linked to hydroelectric facilities funded by Japanese ODA (Kuroda, 1992).
• Japanese environmental problems have been transferred along with FDI in mining and manufacturing operations to developing countries like Malaysia and the Philippines (Harada, 1991; Kojima, 1994;Nester, 1990; Ofreneo, 1993; Ui, 1989).
• Kawasaki’s transfer of its iron ore sintering plant to the Philippines after environmental lawsuits were filed by local citizens near the original location in ChibaCity, Japan (Yokoyama, 1992).
• Japanese-made pollution filters do not work because the energy inputs are from low-grade coal, instead of the higher-quality fuels domestic Japanese corporations use. Therefore, dirty industries have been transferred overseas without the environmentally cleaner—but more expensive—technology which would be used if these industries were located within Japan (Harada, 1991). 
• Japanese practice of dumping of hazardous waste in the oceans, and exports of waste to Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand (Kumamoto, 1994). 
• Japan is the only OECD country not to adopt the decision on the Control of Trans-frontier Movements of Wastes Destined for Recovery Operations (Hopp and Olson,1994). 
• 15% of Japan’s landmass has been slated for resort development as a consequence of the 1987 Resort Act (Beasley, 1992), and much of this land has been used for golf courses. Recently, high land prices in Japan have fueled the expansion of golf courses across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
• In the early 1990s some of the world’s highest rates of deforestation occurred in Sarawak, Malaysia, where over 66% of logs were being exported to Japan to fuel demand for logs and pulp(Thompson, 1993).
• In fact Japan leads the world in the importation of tropical hardwoods by a large margin (ITTO, 1995). Japan also has extensive FDI in wood chip and pulp production in Chile, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the USA.
• Instead of banning tropical hardwood imports or urging its Southeast Asian neighbors to ban exports, Japan’s solution instead has been to offer environmental aid for reforestation. Reforestation, however, usually consists of particular species of imported trees (primarily eucalyptus) which are most profitable for export (Ui, 1989: 396).
• In the Philippines, Japanese aid has modernized the fishing port and market facilities and most of the large commercial fishing operations are Japanese owned (Ofreneo, 1993). As a result of over-fishing and ocean pollution,small-scale Filipino fishermen’s annual catch has been reduced dramatically (Broadand Cavanagh, 1993).
• Mitsubishi was a major contributor to Indonesian deforestation (Hurst,1990) and currently owns large shares of interests in logging companies, saw mills,and dangerously polluting industries in Malaysia (Karan and Jasparro, 1998).

The complete paper, published in Political Grography is available here.

> Taylor, Jonathan (1998): Japan's Global Environmentalism: Rhetoric and Reality, Pergamon Political Geography, 18, 1999