Converging MDGs into the SDGs

Terra reen
`50
Subscriber’s copy
VOLUME 7
ISSUE 5
August 2014
CONVERGING MDGs
INTO THE SDGs
A R EVIEW
in conversation
Subrata Burman
Senior Operations Officer
International Finance Corporation
special highlights
Universal Primary Education: INDIA
Jency Samuel
Seen, Over-seen, and the Unseen
Sudebi Thakurta
EARTH
M AT T E R S
A
JUST RELEASED
Publication
In the Shadow of
the Leaves
Anjana Basu
This story is told in a simple lyrical style, set in a
imple, idyllic location. It symbolizes dreams and
he spirit of adventure which is locked up inside
hildren and which very often find their eventual
elease. And slowly, simply, through the nuances
modern fairy tale is crafted.”
Anjana Basu
Rituparno Ghosh, Filmmaker
nergy and Resources Institute
2014 • ISBN: 9788179935385
Pages: 200 • Binding: Paperback
Size: 120 × 180 mm • Price: `250.00
The Energy and Resources Institute
Rohan and his mother are holidaying in the Kumaon Hills. Rohan should be practicing Maths, he has
failed in his exam, but he is spending time reading Jim Corbett’s Man-eaters of Kumaon and wandering
in the hills with fearless Manjul, who herds cows. Rohan admires the way she jumps streams like a little
cat and her knowledge of the woods. Peace and tranquility, in the hills, is lost when they hear that a tiger
has been killing cattle in the nearby villages.
A mysterious man with a moustache materializes at night and seems to spellbind the children and tigers.
Rohan is convinced that it is Jim Corbett’s ghost. Manjul disagrees. Whoever the mysterious man is, he is
on a mission—save the tiger from poachers and herd it back into the National Park.
The result is a story of mystery and magic.
Reviews:
“This story is told in a simple lyrical style, set in a simple, idyllic location. It symbolizes dreams and the
spirit of adventure which is locked up inside children and which very often find their eventual release. And
slowly, simply, through the nuances a modern fairy tale is crafted.”
Rituparno Ghosh, Filmmaker
About the Author:
Anjana Basu was born in Allahabad and started school in London. She works as an advertising consultant
in Kolkata. She has a book of short stories, published by Orient Longman, India, to her credit. The BBC
has broadcast one of her short stories and her poems have featured in anthologies brought out by various
publishers. In the US, she has been published in Gowanus,The Blue Moon Review, and Recursive Angel,
to name a few. In Canada, she has appeared in The Antigonish Review. The Edinburgh Review and The
Saltzburg Review have also featured her work. In 2003, her novel Curses in Ivory was published.
In 2004, she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in Scotland where she worked on her second
novel, Black Tongue which was published in 2007. In February 2010, her children’s novel Chinku and the
Wolfboy was published. Her novel Rhythms of Darkness came out in October 2011.
Anjana Basu has also worked on scripts with director Rituparno Ghosh for ‘Antarmahal’ and ‘The Last
Lear’ and has subtitled several of his films including ‘Unishe April’, ‘Dahan’ and ‘Chokher Bali’.
The Energy and Resources Institute
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T
The eight MDGs
which covered a
range of priorities
and essential
initiatives have
indeed brought
the challenge of
ending poverty
into mainstream
national, subnational, and
international efforts
to improve the lot of
human society.
he United Nations (UN) as an organization often receives considerable
criticism for being ineffective and slow in dealing with global problems.
Such criticism may be justified in some cases, but in several areas, the
UN has shown remarkable vision and foresight. Even in periods of crisis, this
organization has done outstanding service to humanity, which no other entity
in the world would have been able to substitute. One particular area where the
UN has made a unique contribution is in the formulation and pursuit of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There are no doubt some flaws and
shortcomings in the conceptualization and implementation of the MDGs, but
they were certainly an extremely effective instrument by which the problem
of poverty across the globe received due attention, and by which some of
the specific areas in which interventions were required to end poverty were
adequately articulated. The eight MDGs which covered a range of priorities
and essential initiatives have indeed brought the challenge of ending poverty
into mainstream national, sub-national, and certainly international efforts to
improve the lot of human society. At the time when the MDGs were being
formulated, some of us outside the system tried very hard to see that energy
and its scarcity for the poor would be included as an MDG.
At the beginning of the century, there were about 1.4 billion people who
had no access to electricity and almost double the number using biomass,
often of very inferior quality, for cooking purposes. However, energy scarcity
which is both a symptom and a determinant of poverty was not included as
an MDG.
In 2015, the UN General Assembly will articulate and adopt a set of
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by which human society would be
enabled to move towards a pattern and pathway of sustainable development.
Two issues need to be kept in mind in this regard. Firstly, the SDGs should
not be formulated in isolation of the MDGs. Secondly, the SDGs should apply
not merely to the developing countries but should also enable, motivate,
and induce changes in the developed world where issues of consumption
and production need a totally revised approach. Given the fact that the SDGs
will come into existence in 2015, a debate and informed discussion on the
subject at this point of time would be of great value. The intergovernmental
Open Working Group established to carry forward the activity of establishing
the SDGs and submit its report to the UN General Assembly has laid down
certain conditions which would characterize the MDGs. These are broad
and comprehensive and require the goals embedded in the SDGs as action
oriented, aspirational, easy to communicate, and global in nature.
There are great expectations as well as concerns related to the SDGs, but
overall their adoption represents a major step forward towards sustainability in
the world.
R K Pachauri
Director-General, TERI
TERRAGREEN
| AUGUST 2014 |
1
Editor-in-chief
R K Pachauri
Editorial Board
Leena Srivastava
Rajiv Seth
Sangeeta Gupta
MAILBOX
Publishing Head
Anupama Jauhry
Editorial Team
Hemambika Varma
Arpita Dasgupta
Aparna Mir
Shweta Singh
Shilpa Mohan
Design and Illustration
Santosh Gautam and Vijay Nipane
Image Editor
Shilpa Mohan
‘The Butterfly Effect’ is indeed a very
inspirational story about a woman who
fought all odds to save Luna. Such stories
motivate us to do our share of work to
save environment. I really enjoyed reading
the cover-story. The role of media in
highlighting the measures taken to check
the climate change is well explained by
the author. The article by Maneka Gandhi
is a harsh reality. Strong laws should be
made to protect the female dog feeders.
I congratulate the team of TerraGreen for
including such interesting articles in the
magazine.
Production
R K Joshi
Aman Sachdeva
Marketing, Sales & Distribution
effort by a woman became a national rage
and brought about a change in society.
No doubt, as mentioned in the article
also, Carson’s writing instigates us to take
environmental issues seriously and makes
us realize our responsibility towards our
surroundings. The only thought that
comes to our mind after reading this
article is, if Carson can, we also can.
Samridhi Ujjwal Verma
Chandigarh
Mrinal Saha
Assam
I found the article ‘The Hands That
Rocked the World’ very motivating and
inspirational. The issue that was raised
in the article was so trivial for us that it
completely skipped our observation. But
Rachael Carson distinguished herself
by bringing this ‘trivial’ matter to the
limelight. Her this observation clearly sets
her apart from us. We are so preoccupied
nowadays that we fail to notice that
something is missing in our surroundings.
It is very motivating to see that how a little
The articles in the last issue of TerraGreen
were very interesting. It really true about
the concretization of land in our country. I
feel that the government needs to protect
our trees because they are so important
to us. In school also we have planting tree
sessions and we water them also. If we, as
school students, can do this, why not our
ministers and politicians?
Bhavnna Singh
Class 8, Delhi International Public School,
New Delhi
Gitesh Sinha
Kakali Ghosh
Lutfullah Syed
Rahul Kumar
Avinash Kumar Shukla
Prashant Sharma
Sanjeev Sharma
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erip | TERRAGREEN | AUGUST 2014
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VOLUME 7
COVER STORY
ISSUE 5
AUGUST 2014
26
4
News
26
8
Comment
Consumerism in Cinema
Cover Story
Converging MDGs into the SDGs: A Review
34
Special Report
Universal Primary Education: Where Does
India Stand?
38
Perspective
India: Women Rue Their Lost Green Paradise
43
Terra Youth
48
Maneka Speaks
50
Pioneer
54
Breakthrough
56
Green Events and Wake-up Call
8
World View
Water Wonders
12
Environmental Research
Superfast Deep Earthquake
14
Feature
Energy Security and the Future of
Renewable Energy in Europe
22
In Conversation
Subrata Burman, Senior Operations Officer
International Finance Corporation
FEATURES
14
SPECIAL
REPORT
34
PERSPECTIVE
38
TERRA
YOUTH
43
CONVERGING MDGs
INTO THE SDGs
A REVIEW
26 | TERRAGREEN | AUGUST 2014
With 2015 looming ahead, it is now time to review what the eight MDGs,
decided almost 15 years ago, have come to. As the MDGs give way to the
SDGs, intended to guide future global action on health, poverty, hunger,
climate, and other development challenges, it is time to ask, what have we
as a nation been able to achieve? Manipadma Jena takes us through
this very important journey and the road ahead.
TERRAGREEN
| AUGUST 2014 | 27
Photo: WWF-India
E
ven before the sun touches the
hilltops, Dasru Jaseika the tribal
priest-healer strides up a specific
hill on the Niyamgiri hill range followed
by only his dog. Sweeping aside the
shrub cover, he intensely searches the
undergrowth; with the first showers of
monsoon, the herb’s new leaves unfurl and
creep luxuriantly hugging the earth. The
dog sensing his master’s disappointment
starts sniffing at the undergrowth with
renewed urgency. Jaseika, the medicineman of the Dongria Kondh tribal people
in Bathudi village in Rayagada province
in the State of Odisha, in eastern India, is
in search of an indigenous herb that has
been used as a contraceptive for women
since generations, its identification kept
secret with the tribal healers.
But, all that Jaseika returns with is a
bundle of small wood. It should have been
28 | TERRAGREEN | AUGUST 2014
raining over a month now, the hill streams
should have been gurgling downhill in
fulsome note, but Niyam Raja, their God,
presiding over all of nature, wind and rain,
food and disease is, perhaps, angry. If the
herb roots fail to revive this monsoon, it
will die as many medicinal plants have
perished in recent years.
Only in recent years is the global
community taking cognizance of and
what the forest people know since
centuries that forests are critical food
and nutritional security for the world’s
poorest communities. Medicinal plants
are a critical part of their food and health
basket. “The forests’ socio-economic data
collection must focus on people, not only
trees,” says a key message of UN FAO’s
recently released report State of World’s
Forests 2014, seeking to get benefits from
forests recognized in the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
the proposed post-2015 framework to
replace the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs).
The eight developmental goals
including eradication of extreme poverty
and hunger, achieving universal primary
education, promoting gender equality
and women empowerment, reducing
child mortality, improving maternal
health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and
other diseases, ensuring environmental
sustainability, and developing a global
partnership for development started in
2000 and which expire in 2015, will pass
the baton to the SDGs, intended to guide
future global action on health,
poverty, hunger, climate, and other
development challenges.
Releasing the MDG progress report in
2011, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
had said, “Let us strive to connect the
dots among water, energy, food, gender,
global health, and climate change, so that
solutions to one can become solutions
to all.”
In 2014, when nay-sayers have all but
acceded that climate change is indeed
not anymore knocking at the door but is
already within the living room, the single
solution that Ban Ki-moon spoke of could
well be environmental sustainability. To
take the example of forests alone, seen till
now as an environment-only issue, are in
fact a single cross-cutting solution to many
sustainable development challenges.
“Forests are important throughout
the development agenda,” said Peter
Holmgren, Director General of the Center
for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR) earlier. “They’re important for food
security, for protecting the environment,
for climate change, for the green economy
— so we can’t really place forests in one
box. We need to figure out how forests can
contribute across the range of SDGs.”
Forests maintain water supplies, help
mitigate climate change, and provide
billions of the world’s poorest people
with income, food, and medicine. Global
development frameworks in recent years,
the MDGs among them, have tended to be
sector bound, addressing specific issues
through rather narrow views, for better
monitoring perhaps, but development
dynamics are complex, often overlapping
in cause and impact.
The UN Global MDG Report 2014 finds
targets already met on reducing poverty,
increasing access to improved drinking
water sources, improving the lives of slum
dwellers, and achieving gender parity
in primary school. The Report says that
many more targets are within reach by
their 2015 target date. If trends continue,
the world will surpass MDG targets on
malaria, tuberculosis, and access to HIV
treatment, and the hunger target looks
within reach. Other targets, such as access
to technologies, reduction of average
tariffs, debt relief, and growing political
participation by women, show
great progress. Among the short-fallings is
a failure to address the environment in an
integrated and cross-sectoral way.
India: Environmental
Sustainability
In India, the country with the world’s
second largest population, largest number
of farmers and rural population, also has
the largest food insecure people, about
one-quarter of the world’s total, according
to The Millennium Development Goals India
Country Report 2014. Of its
18 targets, India is seriously lagging in
eradicating hunger, child and
maternal mortality, and access to
improved sanitation.
India MDG Report Card
2014
Does lack of basic sanitation or over half
of India’s 1.21 billion people defecating in
the open have anything to do with India’s
stubbornly high malnutrition figures?
Seems it has.
New research on malnutrition which
leads to childhood stunting quoted by a
New York Times (NYT) report titled ‘Poor
Sanitation in India May Afflict Well-Fed
Children With Malnutrition’, suggests that
a root cause may be an abundance of
human waste polluting soil and water,
rather than a scarcity of food. According
to the report, a child raised in India is
far more likely to be malnourished than
one from the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Zimbabwe or Somalia, the planet’s
poorest countries! Stunting affects 65
million Indian children under the age of
five, including one-third of children from
the country’s richest families. Owing to
the widespread open defecation, Indian
children are exposed to a ‘bacterial brew’
that often sickens them, leaving them
unable to attain a healthy body weight
no matter how much food they eat.
These children’s bodies divert energy
and nutrients away from growth and
brain development to prioritize infectionfighting survival. When this happens
during the first two years of life, children
become stunted. “What’s particularly
disturbing is that the lost height and
intelligence are permanent”, say doctors
quoted in the report.
CONVERGING
MDGs INTO
THE SDGs
A REVIEW
According to the
report by the New
York Times, a child
raised in India is
far more likely to
be malnourished
than one from the
Democratic Republic
of Congo, Zimbabwe
or Somalia, the
planet’s poorest
countries!
TERRAGREEN
| AUGUST 2014 | 29
Manipadma Jena spoke to Tim
Hanstad, CEO of Landesa, the
Washington-based non-profit
organization that is partnering
with local governments to secure
land rights for the world’s poorest
people.
Excerpts
The connection between insecure
land rights and conflict has been
well documented around the
world. Across India, 12 per cent of
all murders are related to conflicts
over land. On a provincial level, few
weeks go by without newspapers
reporting conflicts between
communities who are battling over
land. This is not unique to India.
Not only are most wars between
countries fought over land, but
also, as we all intuitively know,
high rates of landlessness or the
inequitable distribution of land,
leads to instability within countries.
Our history books talk about
devastating civil conflicts from
Mexico and Russia, to China, and
Vietnam – each of these bloody
conflicts was fought by hungry
peasants eager for their share of
the land.
India has an estimated 20
million rural families who are
completely landless. Many a times
that number have land, but hold it
insecurely. If India is to sustainably
address the challenges of nutrition,
food security, education, and
security, it must address land rights
— particularly women’s land rights.
This is why we believe so
strongly that land tenure for
women and men need to be
specifically called out in the post2015 sustainable development
framework. Providing impoverished
rural people with access and secure
rights to land is central to reducing
poverty, empowering poor people
and communities, and promoting
both broader economic growth
and social harmony.
30 | TERRAGREEN | AUGUST 2014
The percentage of underweight
children under three years of age are
accepted as the key MDG indicator for
malnourishment or food insecurity.
Census 2011 recorded 35.6 million
under-3 children were underweight.
Though malnutrition is a complex issue,
the baffling slow degree of decline —
less than a percentage point, for both
the cases of stunting and underweight
children between 1999 and 2006 —
could point to the NYT’s environmental
factor. The India MDG 2014 report says it
is possible only to bring down under-3
underweight children to 33 per cent. It will
not be possible to achieve the 26 per cent
target by 2015.
In the 2011 Census of India, 53 per
cent households had no toilets, a 10 per
cent improvement on the 63.5 per cent in
2001. The 2015 target is likely to be met
in urban areas where 2 in 10 households
lack toilets but cannot be achieved in rural
areas where 7 in 10 households still lack
basic sanitation.
The 2014 Union Budget has made a
strong pitch for total sanitation but has
realistically kept the deadline for 2019,
even if missing 2015 by a wide margin.
India’s poor score on nutrition
intake for both adults and children is
unfortunate despite the fact that India’s
foodgrain production has been growing
over the last decade, according to the
OECD–FAO Agricultural Outlook 2014–23.
Agricultural output has grown on the
back of deep subsidies on fertilizers,
pesticides, seeds, water, electricity, and
credit as well as market support prices.
However, many of the farm-targeted
subsidies, especially for water, thermalbased power, chemical pesticide, and
fertilizers are, in sustainable environment
parameters, already in the red alert zone
and need to be addressed. This is because
Target 9 that aims to integrate sustainable
development into the country’s policy
and programmes is only moderately
on-track to achieve the MDG of ensuring
environmental sustainability.
Though the 2014 budget shows that
the new NDA government has seized
the issue by having issued soil health
cards and instituted organic farming
research, promising to take a relook
at the urea subsidy policy — the only
chemical fertilizer now being subsidized
and hence used irrationally on crops by
farmers. Schemes slide into tokenism
when not implemented in conviction
and spirit. We need more research with
a focus on climate smart farming, and
much more application of it in farm
fields. We also need to go back to our
farming roots, document local adaption
and mitigation practices including more
research in traditional locally adapted
seeds. Convention strategies and business
as usual will fall short in these climateimpacted times.
Green Energy
India’s industrial development model is
an energy guzzler and desperately needs
much more energy — 1,200 GW by 2050
to ensure sustain industrial growth. The
per capita consumption of electricity in
India in 2011 was 778 KWh, while in the
European Union, it is 6,200 KWh. While
realistically, India will be compelled
to build on thermal power despite
environmental fallouts not only because
it has abundant resources but also due
to low capacity of alternate energy. With
at least 25 per cent of the population
without access to electricity — and those
having electricity in rural areas have poor
quality and erratic access — renewable
is the answer to much of the rural energy
challenges. Community managed and offgrid electricity lost in transmission or theft
— an unsustainable 32 per cent in India
— could also come under control.
It is estimated that 628 million people
in the Asia Pacific region — almost half
the world’s energy poor — do not have
access to electricity, says the United
Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Universal
access to modern energy means far
more than merely providing kilowatt
hours. It means providing predictable
energy in rural regions in environmentally
sustainable ways for small businesses,
improved health services, women to use
in the evenings productively to earn that
extra income, but most of all a strong
motivation for children to study in school
The Gathering storm: Climate
change, armed violence, security,
and MDGs
In July 2014, like many villages
which often empty of inhabitants,
migrating for fear of violence
from Left Wing Extremists (LWE),
families from Chitrakonda — the
block worst affected in Malkangiri,
in the heart of the contiguous Red
Corridor covering forested swaths
of southern Odisha, Chhattisgarh,
and Andhra Pradesh — fled en
masse but not unexpectedly; the
armed rebels caught up and shot
dead one of them accusing him of
being a police informer.
and at homes.
Stemming OutMigration making
Villages Economically
Sustainable, Disastersafe
How efficiently will India able to stem,
if not entirely stall, rural to urban
migration is still too conjectural, but
intra- and inter-state migration owing
to growing numbers and severity of
natural disasters is a given, and is already
occurring. While urban housing for the
poor under the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY)
has commenced, it is doubtful that it can
provide adequately to the high rate of in-
migration into cities in the coming years.
Therefore, slums are set to grow. India
remains unprepared for climate change
including extreme weather related
migration from underdeveloped areas
into cities. Also, the housing for the poor
must be disaster resistant. Extreme heat
of 2014 has been a climate disaster and
worst-hit were the migrant workers living
in polythene covered make-shift shacks
in cities, many of which have transformed
to ‘heat-islands’.
While Target 11 for environmental
sustainability calls for a significant
improvement in the lives of at least 100
million slum dwellers by 2020, which is
just six years away, we are off track with
the government stating, ‘the pattern not
statistically discernible’ which means that
it has no real count of urban slum-dweller
strength and hence would not be able to
plan accurately, a gap that can set back
sustainable urban development beyond
the 2015 deadline.
Over a year back, each of the 11 Kondh
tribal households in Balinaikaguda forest
village in Odisha’s Rayagada province got
two 9-watt compact fluorescent lamps
(CFLs) and one solar street lamp. After
this, all of the nine primary school-going
children were made to congregate under
the street lamp and do their school tasks,
watched over by mothers while they
cooked by their doorways.
After examination results were
announced mid-summer, the school
teacher passing by the mothers
working in the millet fields, enquired if
Photo: WWF-India
CONVERGING
MDGs INTO
THE SDGs
A REVIEW
Extreme heat of 2014
has been a climate
disaster and worsthit were the migrant
workers living in
polythene covered
make-shift shacks
in cities, many
of which have
transformed to ‘heatislands’.
TERRAGREEN
| AUGUST 2014 | 31
Khetramani Batraka who all knew had
migrated to Chennai city was back, and
tutoring the kids. Twenty-six-year-old
Batraka after failing his eighth standard
examinations had quit school. He was the
most educated person in Balinaikaguda.
Since Batraka had not helped, credit
for the children’s improved performance
went to the streetlight, by default.
It is no coincidence that forested
habitats of India’s highest tribal
population — Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh,
and Odisha — constitute the hotbed
of LWEs. Exploitation, deprivation and
perceived injustice over decades, and
failure of institutional mechanisms to
address community grievances owing
to large-scale corruption are factors that
Non-official sources
record that from 2004
to 2014 there have
been more than 362
LWE attacks, 707
killings, and 337
persons injured.
32 | TERRAGREEN | AUGUST 2014
have built up providing the impetus for
armed conflict with the government.
According to a Home Ministry report in
2013, 106 districts in nine Indian states
are LWE affected. Further, non-official
sources record that from 2004 to 2014
there have been more than 362 LWE
attacks, 707 killings, and 337 persons
injured.
India’s size, its linguistic and religious
diversity, as well as challenges, posed
by high levels of poverty and socioeconomic disparity and the fact that it
is a democracy where no mean levels of
corruption inhibits deliverables to the
weakest section are all a volatile cocktail
for rebellion and even armed conflict.
Since 1979, insurgency in India,
from Assam, five north-eastern states,
Kashmir, and Punjab, all started with,
broadly speaking, sustained unaddressed
grievances — a sense of inequity.
This is precisely where climate change
will find an open door; “Challenges of
a changing climate may exacerbate
tensions [over resources and] aggravate
pre-existing pressures in hotspots
where conflicts already exist, amplify
the fragility of post-conflict countries
and drive both internal and crossborder conflicts,” says a 2014 report
‘The Gathering Storm: Climate Change
Security and Conflict’ from the UK-based
environment and human
rights group Environmental Justice
Foundation (EJF). EJF says that every
1 °C rise in temperature has been
estimated to cause a 14 per cent increase
of intergroup conflict and a 4 per cent
increase of interpersonal violence.
With the possibility of global average
temperatures rising by 2–4 °C this
century, it concludes,“amplified rates of
human conflict could represent a large
and critical impact of anthropogenic
climate change.” EJF further says,“that
while climate change may not be the
sole cause of conflict in future, it will
increasingly play a prominent role as
a ‘threat multiplier’.” Some of the key
factors will be human migration, carrying
capacity, and extreme climate disasters.
Environmental-related migration
between and within states may increase
existing tensions or conflict, or create new
ones, primarily affecting underdeveloped
states. Weak infrastructure, resource
scarcity and poverty, and income
disparity increase the risk of migrationrelated conflict.
Carrying capacity is defined by climate
scientists as the maximum number of
people an area can support without
deteriorating living conditions. Climate
change will alter the carrying capacity
of many vulnerable areas of the world
either as a result of land degradation —
flooding, drought, and soil erosion — or
the pressures of migration. It is already
happening in Bangladesh and Darfur.
There is already growing evidence to
support the theory that the current
conflict in Darfur is partly due to land
degradation as a result of climate change.
Less than a generation ago, Africans and
Arabs lived peacefully and productively
in Darfur. More recently, desertification
and increasingly regular drought cycles
have diminished the availability of water
and arable land, which has in turn, led to
repeated clashes between pastoralists
and farmers.
Most countries, India included, are
not adequately prepared, either in
policy, infrastructure or awareness, for
extreme climate disasters. Cyclone,
floods, earthquakes are now on the
radar, but drought, because of its slow
advance is still not receiving the advance
preparations it warrants. Climate change
will bring new natural disasters, such as
extreme heat events and pest attacks
too. In fact, an interesting research by
scientists Solomon Hsiang and colleagues
and currently very relevant, claims civil
conflicts are associated with the global
climate.
Their 2011 research analysed whether
civil conflicts might be linked to the El
Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the
dominant mode of inter-annual variability
in the modern global climate. Using
data collected between 1950 and 2004
from tropical countries, the study found
that the probability of new civil conflicts
breaking out in El Niño years is double
than seen in cooler La Niña years. Overall,
these findings suggest that the ENSO may
have played a part in initiating 21 per cent
of all civil conflicts since 1950. This study
represents the first demonstration that the
stability of modern societies is associated
with the global climate.
Closer home, we need keep in mind
that South Asian countries are linked not
just by trade, but with each other through
rivers, glaciers, monsoons, and land;
hence, bilateral ties would be increasingly
impacted by climate change effects.
Developments already underway are
sharing water with Bangladesh and China;
border infiltration by Pakistan, Bangladesh,
China; and oil drilling rights won recently
in Bay of Bengal by Bangladesh. Innovative
thinking, technology, cooperation,
understanding of geography, acting
holistically, and refining negotiation
strategies keeping in view possible climate
impacts are key to preempt conflict arising
out of climate change. Also, needed are
South Asian regional models of integrated
risk management.
demography of India. Its population’s
average age will be 29 years in 2020
and have a dependency ratio of just
0.4 per cent. This has been seen by
many as a decisive advantage, a youth
dividend, which will keep India growing
when other economies slow down.
The optimism however is based on the
assumption that all these young people
will be gainfully employed. Between 2010
and 2030, India will add 241 million new
people to its workforce or a high
12 million per year. This youth window of
opportunity will last a brief 15 to 20 years
and we must lay a sustainable foundation
for prosperity.
Given India’s industrial slow growth
over this decade and unemployment at
over 9 per cent, creating employment
for this gigantic number is going to be a
major challenge. Can this youth dividend
be capitalized on by providing skill-based
entrepreneurship based on a sustainable
green framework from India’s vast rural
areas. Decentralized green energy is
key to establish local-level, smaller,
community-managed infrastructure for
agriculture, horticulture and floriculture,
and poultry and meat industries as well
as small manufacturing hubs. Budget
2014 already gives an indication in this
direction.
Climate change has brought in
new priorities and urgencies since
the MDGs were formulated in 2000.
A REVIEW
Natural disasters are now a reality and
new ones are hitting with full force like
extreme heat. Disasters threaten to pull
apart in a single blow, economic equity
that is painstakingly built. Economic
growth engines, industries, mining,
manufacturing have now to keep a wary
eye on carbon emission, pollution, using
dirty electricity. If viewed conventionally,
development goals will now be defined
by constraints as it were, and that is
what precisely we need to change —
the way we view development. It is the
‘green’ vision that holds the potential to
converge the MDGs into the SDGs into a
single coherent post-2015 development
framework.#
Manipadma Jena is a senior international
environmental journalist in India. She writes for
the London-based Thomson Reuters Foundation
and for Rome-based Inter Press Service (IPS)
news agency. Winner of the Best Media Reporting
Award in 2012 from the Asia-Pacific Climate
Change Adaption Forum in Bangkok, she has
been Fellow with UNEP, the World Bank-South
Asia, UNCCD, and CSE, among others. She
specializes in researching and writing on climate
change adaption and has covered climate change
related high-level international events in Asia.
A passionate photographer, Manipadma often
travels to indigenous Indian communities to
photograph their ways of life and has transcribed
collected oral folktales into a book.
Conclusion: Laying
Sustainable Foundation
During a Brief
Demographic Youth
Window
Migration for livelihood brings us to
an important phenomenon that is the
CONVERGING
MDGs INTO
THE SDGs
Women in Koraput show their land
tenure title of an acre of land
The views expressed by the author are his own
and do not reflect those of TERI.
TERRAGREEN
| AUGUST 2014 | 33
Gitesh Sinha
Email: [email protected]
<Extn 2718>
Kakali Ghosh
Email: [email protected]
<Extn 2736>
Sangeeta Paul
Email: [email protected]
<Extn 2734>
Postal Regn. No. DL(S)-17/3328/2014-16
RNI No. DELENG/2008/24157
ISSN No. 0974-5688
Posted on 5–6 August 2014
By Lodhi Road Post Office
No. of Pages 56 without Cover
Subscr
An Imprint of TERI
The
ry
Sto
of
Benita Sen
What’s common between a cardboard box and the tissues inside it? They
are both made of paper! But have you ever wondered where paper comes
from? The Story of Paper takes you on a paper trail, from mulberry bark
and bamboo fibres to the textbook on your desk! However, producing more
and more paper is harming our planet and causing pollution, because
making paper involves cutting too many trees and using a lot of water and
electricity. So we need to think sharp and be paper smart!
About the Author:
Benita Sen
Benita Sen is a journalist and children’s author. She has written dozens
of books – fiction and non-fiction – for young people. Some of her stories
have won prizes, and they have been published in English textbooks.
She loves to interact with children and conducts workshops on crafts and
environmental issues.
Other titles in the series
• The Story of Clothes
• The Story of Computer
• The Story of Food
• The Story of House
• The Story of Transport
COMIC FRAMES WITH
FUNNY CHARACTERS
AND SPEECH BUBBLES
T HE S TO R Y O F PAP ER
paper everywhere
Guess what else paper gets into?
Here’s a riddle for you.
BRAIN TEASER
Float me, fold me, rip me, shred me...
I let you do it all.
Write on me, read from me,
Or just roll me into a ball.
Who am I?
Let us sail
together!
The answer is PAPER!
How
are you
sailing
faster?
We don’t give much
thought to paper,
maybe because it is
present almost
everywhere. Can you
make a list of
things made from
paper that you
can see around you
right now?
Because
I’m made
from an
old sailing
book!
1.
WRITING ACTIVITY
2.
3.
PAPER TRAIL
Cartons in which you
pack your stuff when you are shifting
home are made from paper. This is
because it makes these boxes lighter
and cheaper than, say, a metal box.
4.
5.
The toothpaste you use
came inside a paper pack
that kept the tube safe
and in shape. The poster
of your favourite
superhero, singer,
or sportsperson is
Paper plate
printed on paper,
and glass
and the receipt that
the shopkeeper
gave your mom
when you bought
Diary
this book was
written on or
printed on paper.
Carton
Poster
ILLUSTRATIVE
VISUALS
Carry bag
Toothpaste
pack
SUITABLE CAPTIONS
Notebook
If you look carefully,
you will find paper being
used in many different things and for
many different purposes. The calendar
hanging in your room, the bag your
mother gets groceries in, the newspaper your father reads every
morning, your school diary, books, notebooks, and even the labels
on them are all made of paper!
Paper filters
r, air, oil,
are used to clean wate
cine.
and even to purify medi
PAPER TAG
4
GREEN KNOWLEDGE
BYTES
5
FUN-FILLED FACTS SUPPORTING
THE BODY TEXT
SPECIFICATIONS Size: 180×240 mm • 24 pages • Paperback • Ages: 6 years and above • Price: `95.00
For orders and enquiries, please contact:
The Energy and Resources Institute
Attn: TERI Press, Darbari Seth Block, IHC Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi – 110 003
Tel.: 24682100/41504900, Fax: 24682144, E-mail: [email protected]
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