NATIONAL SOLAR MISSION:

Starting in the late eighteenth century, fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas have been extracted from the earth and burned in engines to feed economic growth. But, with growing awareness of the risk of human-induced global warming, there is pressure on all countries to increase their reliance on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. The challenge that many developing countries, including India, now face is to redefine their strategies for development while embarking on a path that relies primarily on clean energy and still delivers growth. But can a low-carbon development pathway improve living standards such as access to clean drinking water, sanitation, education, health and life expectancy?

The National Solar Mission (NSM) is one of eight missions launched by India as part of The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), which identifies measures that promote India's development objectives while addressing climate change effectively.  It will also constitute a major contribution by India to the global effort to meet the challenges of climate change. The objective of the National Solar Mission is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy, by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible. The immediate aim of the Mission is to focus on setting up an enabling environment for solar technology penetration in the country both at a centralized and decentralized level. The first phase (up to 2013) will focus on capturing of the low hanging options in solar thermal; on promoting off-grid systems to serve populations without access to commercial energy and modest capacity addition in grid-based systems. In the second phase, after taking into account the experience of the initial years, capacity will be aggressively ramped up to create conditions for up scaled and competitive solar energy penetration in the country.

India has set the ambitious goal of achieving 22 GW (22,000 MW) of solar energy capacity by the end of the XIIIth Five Year Plan in 2022. This goal has several other targets: It aims at 20 GW of grid-connected capacity made up of large photovoltaic’s (PVs) and solar thermal power plants and smaller rooftop PVs; 2 GW has been set aside for off-grid solar plants; 20 million sq. m. of solar collectors for low temperature applications; and 20 million solar lighting systems for rural areas. The Mission will adopt a 3-phase approach, spanning the remaining period of the 11th Plan and first year of the 12th Plan (up to 2012-13) as Phase 1, the remaining 4 years of the 12th Plan (2013–17) as Phase 2 and the 13th Plan (2017–22) as Phase 3. At the end of each plan, and mid-term during the 12th and 13th Plans, there will be an evaluation of progress, review of capacity and targets for subsequent phases, based on emerging cost and technology trends, both domestic and global. The aim would be to protect Government from subsidy exposure in case expected cost reduction does not materialize or is more rapid than expected.

Solar lighting for the poor needs to be prioritized in the NSM as it brings immense socioeconomic benefits. There is also a natural alignment of PV with decentralized use that meets the needs of poor. We needed a transparent and an inclusive process to formulate the NSM but this has clearly not and happened has resulted in a loss to the poor and marginalized. There also needs to be better coordination between central government and state government policies so that we have a coherent policy on solar energy in the country as a whole. 

COMMANWEALTH GAMES 2010:

The 2010 Commonwealth Games will be the nineteenth Commonwealth Games, and the ninth to be held under that name. The Games are scheduled to be held in New Delhi, India between 3 October and 14 October 2010. The games will be the largest multi-sport event conducted to date in Delhi and as per the reports of Central Pollution Control Board it will adversely affect the air quality in the capital. The board’s member-secretary, SD Makhijani, said massive building work for October’s Games and the subsequent traffic congestion are to blame for a large increase in nitrogen oxides and particulate matter in the air in New Delhi.

Moreover New Zealand teams are planning a hit-and-run mission at October's Commonwealth Games in India, just because of Delhi's high pollution. A report by a leading sports scientist has warned New Zealand athletes to prepare offshore and fly to India as late as three days before their events, to minimise the effects of air pollution. Usually, athletes would spend a fortnight in the Games village before their events. As per the report by New Zealand Academy of Sport performance physiologist Paul Laursen, pollution levels in Delhi of 144 ppm (parts per million) compared to 88 in Beijing. The city has more than four million vehicles and nearly half run on diesel, leading to high levels of carbon monoxide in the air. Forbes magazine recently rated Delhi the 24th dirtiest city in the world.

The air pollution monitoring and forecasting system, which has been set up especially for the Commonwealth Games, threw up these statistics. Six venues, including Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Indira Gandhi Stadium and the Commonwealth games Village had moderately high levels of CO while the IGI Airport showed worryingly high levels, scoring 300 on the air quality index of 1-500. Laursen has investigated venues and facilities in Singapore, where Canada and Australia's Games' federations have already made bookings. He said that it’s best not to arrive soon. Regarding the effects of it he said that the Worst hit by the pollution will be endurance athletes competing outdoors and the competitors in the cycling road races.

Mineral water or plain water?

 

It’s the most common phrase you hear once the waiter has taken your order at any better than average restaurant in the country or anywhere in the world (Although in the west it would be “Bottled water or tap water, Sir”? And for a plethora of reasons ranging from paranoid health consciousness to not sounding cheap around your girl, you’re most probably going to end up saying “Mineral Water, please”, although you know that the restaurant’s tap water is also good purified water.  And each time you do so, you become an unwitting accomplice to an environmental disaster thinking it’s just one small piece of plastic. Don’t believe me?, Let me run you through the most likely
life cycle of this one small piece of plastic.

Plastic is basically a petroleumproduct, needless to say how environmentally damaging the oil extraction industry is. Oil’s deemed to be extracted for fuel purposes, only more drilling and processing is done to extract this particular component from the crude. Once this Polyethylene Teraphtalate is extracted it’s stored in the form of small pellets or miniature bricks (if I may) and shipped to various bottling companies where each pellet of plastic is heated and blown to acquire its
shape. It’s then filled with the beverage/water and shipped to distributors, then dealers and then retailers onto the supermarket shelves.

What happens next is the Devil........

Retailers sell these water bottles to consumers as well as businesses like restaurants and hotels. Once consumed, the empty bottle is as good as a purpose built pollution causing device. You’d be convinced in a restaurant that the bottle is safely disposed after use. Or when you use a plastic bottle on the road you make sure you throw it in a trash bin and feel like you’re being very considerate about the environment. But, little did you know that this plastic that you dump is going along with the rest of the trash straight into a landfill and is going to rot there for as long as 700 years. Or worse, it is dumped into the ocean where it travels all the way into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that stretches all the way from Hawaii to Japan, making all aquatic life deteriorate and die under this stretch. Same is the case with the restaurant that carefully disposes the plastic in a trash bin and is then taken into a landfill by the garbage disposal guys. 

Here are some quick global stats about water bottles:

1.       Every hour 250,000 plastic bottles are dumped (not recycled).

2.       Every year, over 1,000,000 tons of plastic reaches the Pacific Ocean alone.

3.       Every year 1,000,000 aquatic animals die due to the plastic dumped in the oceans.

4.       Only 10% of the bottles are recycled. The rest go into landfills or oceans.

Source: Container Recycling Institute (USA)

Here’s the point I’ve been trying to make: As long as your used plastic bottle is not put into a recycle bin that’s managed regularly by a recycling company, it’s as good as throwing it in the middle of the road (you wouldn’t do that, would you?) Another alternative is to reuse your plastic bottles at home for storing water in the refrigerator. However, the best option remains complete avoidance of bottled water.

It’s too hard to totally avoid plastic; however, once you’ve purchased it you have total control over its fate. It can become a cute little thing in your fridge or it could be out there in the pacific undergoing photo-degradation, disintegrating into fine polymer particles, being consumed by unwitting aquatic animals (which you might consume one day if you’re into seafood). You decide the bottle’s fate: Refill or Landfill

And the next time you go on a date to that classy upscale restaurant, you know what to say to the waiter.

POLLUTION EFFECTS ON HUMANS

There is no doubt that excessive levels of pollution are causing a lot of damage to human & animal health, plants & trees including tropical rain forests, as well as the wider environment. Pollution effects are indeed many and wide-ranging. Experts admit that pollution effects are quite often underestimated and that more research is needed to understand the connections between pollution and its effects on all life forms.

Adverse air quality can kill many organisms including humans. Ozone pollution can cause respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, throat inflammation, chest pain, and congestion. Water pollution causes approximately 14,000 deaths per day, mostly due to contamination of drinking water by untreated sewage in developing countries. An estimated 700 million Indians have no access to a proper toilet, and 1,000 Indian children die of diarrheal sickness every day. Nearly 500 million Chinese lack access to safe drinking water. 656,000 people die prematurely each year in China because of air pollution. In India, air pollution is believed to cause 527,700 fatalities a year. Studies have estimated that the number of people killed annually in the US could be over 50,000.

Oil spills can cause skin irritations and rashes. Noise pollution induces hearing loss, high blood pressure, stress, and sleep disturbance. Mercury has been linked to developmental deficits in children and neurological symptoms. Older people are majorly exposed to diseases induced by air pollution. Those with heart or lung disorders are under additional risk. Children and infants are also at serious risk. Lead and other heavy metals have been shown to cause neurological problems. Chemical and radioactive substances can cause cancer and as well as birth defects.

Other pollutants such as lead can interfere with the normal production of red cells and can induce anemia. Lead may damage the nervous system, impair mental function, impair memory, affect learning and cause behavioral changes. Benzene, nitrogen dioxide and small particulate matter can cause damage to the bone marrow and the immune system. Benzene was found to be linked to leukemia especially after long term exposure.

There is a lot to be done by politicians and governments for controlling this increasingly threatening situation. Public health actions should be undertaken based on pollution control measures with the primary target being the diminution of the death toll that we witness today.

SMOKE FREE SHIMLA

Shimla has become the second smoke free city in entire North India after the city beautiful, Chandigarh. It will soon become a hundred percent smoke-free town in the North India. This fact was revealed in the media workshop on ‘Smoke Free Shimla” and cigarettes and other tobacco product prevention act (COTPA) 2003. The Voluntary Health Association of India, an NGO, conducted a survey and found 97% of public places as totally smoke-free and as many as 3211 violators were challaned throughout the state.

Intensive awareness campaigns regarding abuses and ill effects of Tobacco have been conducted in 52 Senior Secondary and High Schools in Shimla according to Shri Narender Sharma, Executive Director, Himachal Pradesh Voluntary Health Association. According to him there is a great need to implement the section 6 of COTPA, which pertains to the banning of sale of tobacco related products within the 100 yards from educational institutions. As per the survey 94% public places in Shimla were found free from cigarette butts or other tobacco litters.

"As per the surveys about 95 percent citizens of Shimla agreed that smoking was harmful and a cause for economic hardship for themselves and their families and 53 percent smokers want to quit this bad habit," Dr. Gopal Chauhan, State Nodal Officer, Tobacco Control said. He said that Himachal Pradesh would soon be making the

policy to ban Gutka and other tobacco related products and even the transport department has issued the notification for authorising the official incharge to challan the person violating COTPA.

PUNJAB POLLUTION LEVEL TURNING DEADLY

Punjab, which is one of the richest states in India, is battling acute water pollution, particularly attributed to chemical toxicity. There has been an increase in the number of deaths due to cancer in the Malwa region, which has sent shock waves throughout the state. It was found that the water in Punjab has a shocking level of uranium content. Uranium poisoning in Punjab first came to existence in March 2009, when a South African toxicologist, Dr Carin Smit along with UK-based Defeat Autism, while visiting Faridkot city in Punjab, India, had hair and urine samples of 149 children affected with birth abnormalities including physical deformities, neurological and mental disorders, sent to Microtarce Mineral Lab, Germany. Though doctors expected heavy metal toxicity, what they were surprised to find was high levels of uranium in the samples, and in one case more than 60 times the maximum safe limit.

In June 2010, studies carried out amongst mentally retarded children in the Malwa region of Punjab, revealed 87% of children below 12 years and 82% beyond that age having uranium levels high enough to cause diseases, also uranium levels in samples of three kids from Kotkapura and Faridkot were 62, 44 and 27 times higher than normal. Subsequently, the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children, Faridkot, sent samples of five children from the worst-affected village, Teja Rohela, near Fazilka, which has over 100 children which are congenitally mentally and physically challenged, to the same lab.

A known environment law activist Sant Balbir Singh Seechewal, the man who brought to life so many rivers in the Majha area, stated that anti-pollution laws stay in the newspapers only and very little efforts are taken to prevent water and air pollution. According to Seechewal, there are many harmful chemicals, such as cyanide, that are flowing into the rivers, mostly from factories situated in Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Phagwara. Due to this, drinking water sources have become polluted and resulted in widespread prevalence of diseases like cancer in the Malwa region and the adjoining areas in Rajasthan. In Muktsar, you can just find the depressing statistics in the home district of the Punjab Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal. There were 1,074 deaths due to cancer between 2001 and November 2009. In Lambi, Badal’s home constituency, there were 211 cancer deaths during the same period.

MUMBAI 2010 – A pollution drain!

Mumbai Backwaters.

Mumbai is the most populous city in India, the second most populous city in the world and according to WHO, it is next only to Kolkata and Delhi as one of the top ten most polluted cities of the world. Mumbai, being the commercial capital of India has been a destination for all types of population groups such as literates, illiterates, skilled, unskilled and people from all walks of life. Currently, Mumbai’s population stands at 18 million, making it one of the most populous metropolises in the world.

A recent report on air pollution and its sources in mega cities prepared by National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and sponsored by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) revealed that construction activity, including paved and unpaved road dust is responsible for as much as 38% of the emission load of particulate matter. Power plants are the second biggest culprits accounting for 20.99% of air pollution, followed by landfill open burning at 10.84%. Heavy duty diesel vehicles contribute to 3.42% of emissions.

There are approximately 40,000 small and big industries in the city of which 32 have been classified as hazardous. Industries in the air polluting category include textile mills, chemical, pharmaceutical, Engineering and foundry units. Pollution particles contain microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can get deep into the lungs and cause serious health problems which includes increasing respiratory symptoms, coughing or suffocation, development of chronic bronchitis etc. The air in Mumbai also has higher values of particulate matter exceeding current standards all through the year, except during the monsoon.

If you take a walk down on a street in Mumbai, you are sure to find pollution that has never been seen before. This problem is something that needs to be tackled with great impetus and it is vital as well as essential that individuals should find a suitable way to solve this insidious problem.