Making Green Mainstream

The planning process for infrastructure development should be more sustainable, more green. Urmi A Goswami reports

The report by the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched in early May in Paris, is a global assessment of the planet’s health. The biggest threats--changes in land use, overfishing, pollution, and climate change—are all boxes that India can tick.

The report makes clear that human beings are responsible for wrecking the very ecosystems that sustain life on earth. “We have dramatically reconfigured the fabric of life of the planet,” said Eduardo Brondízio, cochair of the 2019 Global Assessment.

Representatives of 132 governments, including India, were involved in finalising and approving the assessment which highlights the interconnected and interdependent nature of the world. “We cannot tackle nature’s deterioration in isolation from climate change and our social goals, they are interconnected. It is time to include this in our thinking and policies,” emphasised Brondízio.

This basic message of the IPBES global assessment is critical for India. A country with a population of 1.3 billion and growing, a large majority of whom are directly dependent on nature for their livelihoods, India needs to ensure that its efforts to bridge the developmental deficits of its people, to urbanise and ensure sustained economic growth does not exact a high toll on the ecosystems and undermine the wellbeing of its people.

MAINSTREAM BIODIVERSITY
India is already experiencing the impacts—poor air quality, water stress, increased vulnerability to extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods and droughts. “The environment is where the symptoms become evident. However, the factors that have contributed to the situation need to be addressed and these may require dealing with sectors that are beyond environment,” explained Suneetha M Subramanian, research fellow at the UNU Institute of Advanced Studies, and one of the authors of the global assessment. The message for India is clear it must mainstream biodiversity and ecosystems in its planning.

“Mainstreaming” biodiversity and ecosystems will, according to experts, require a shift away from compartmentalised approach to issues or problems. This requires policy and planning processes to take into account the impact on nature and the manner in which nature would impact the outcomes of policies and programmes. “Agricultural policies are more than about crops, or species and varieties or food security. It must focus on farming systems, quality and usage of water, fertiliser use and soil quality, maintaining food cultures. Each of these choices in turn affect the other, and impact agricultural productivity and livelihoods. This makes it imperative to make socio-ecological factors the basis of planning,” explains Subramanian.

Addressing land-use change is critical for India, as it is urbanizing at a fast pace, and almost 70 per cent of the required infrastructure is yet to be built. Subramanian stresses on the importance of mainstreaming the protection and biodiversity into the planning process. “We have to ensure that land use changes that occur in response to demands of urbanisation are much more sustainable, more green,” she explains. This will require, Subramanian says, making changes in policies. “Take the smart cities programme, we have to integrate green in a way that brings the biodiversity angle into planning.”

Integrating green into urban planning and smart city policies is about much more than increased tree cover or open spaces and parks. It will must include efforts to reduce the impact of natural calamities on populations rather than making them more vulnerable, address issues of transportation and mobility, addressing the needs of migrant populations, take on board the hydrology of a region during planning.

LAND USE CHANGE
Land-use change has had the largest negative impact for terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. An example of how freshwater ecosystems have been altered by agricultural expansion is Punjab. The state now has a record number of black districts, so designated because the ground water level has fallen so low that it is not possible to extract any water. This is a direct consequence of the expansion of paddy cropping and the adoption of quick harvesting strains in Punjab and Haryana.

Keeping in mind the need to recharge the depleted ground water tables, improve soil and air quality, agricultural scientists stress on the need for the region’s farmers to diversify crops, to include the crops that are indigenous to the region such as maize, pearl millet, pulses, oilseeds.

Paddy production in Punjab and Haryana also provides a good example of broader impacts of human choices. Farmers here grow three crops a year of wheat and paddy, including that of strains of quick harvesting paddy allowing for two crops in a season. In practical terms it means farmers have limited time between harvesting one crop and sowing the next. Given time and other constraints, farmers opt for open burning of paddy stubble. The higher incomes from the extra paddy crop however comes at a high price—air that is unhealthy and makes large sections of population vulnerable to disease.

WETLANDS LOST
There are many other instances by which natural systems that sustain life have been endangered. The report states that 85 per cent of the global wetlands area has been lost. In December 2015, Chennai suffered the worst possible floods. While the proximate cause was excess rainfall, the situation was made worse because the wetlands had disappeared. While the move addressed the growing need for housing, it did so by interfering with natural water systems, resulting in a situation that endangered the well-being of people.

Sandra Diaz, co-chair of the 2019 Global Assessment stresses on the need to rethink the way development is understood and policies designed. “If we keep doing things the way we have been then we won’t be able to meet the objectives of human well-being.”

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
An important aspect of the report relevant for India is the focus on indigenous people and local communities—it being the first systematic inclusion of the contribution of indigenous people and local communities and how the changes are affecting them on the ground, and the policy options available.

“The IPBES report makes it clear that indigenous and local communities are at the forefront both of protecting vital ecosystems and in bearing the brunt of the attack on those systems. It is a shame that in India, the government and the forest bureaucracy are constantly weakening and sabotaging the Forest Rights Act,” says Shankar Gopalakrishnan, secretary of Campaign for Survival and Dignity, a platform for NGOs working for rights of tribal and forest dwelling populations.

The experts are clear as well that knowledge required to protect life on planet is available to us, what is required is more bold implementation that while addressing the direct causes of deterioration of the planet also confront the root causes for change “In India we have really good laws but we need to look at how to be more effective, synchronised, and coherent in implementation,” said Subramanian.

The choice, as Almut Arneth, lead coordinating author of the IPBES assessment puts it, is between “unsustainable and sustainable”.