ENVIRONMENT AND THE POOR

ENVIRONMENT AND THE POOR

Are not the poor one of the most endangered species on earth today?

U.S with less than 5% of India’s population, is responsible for one fourth of the damage caused to the environment…

Today 26 million people are displaced all over the world due to ecological degradation

and in India, the Narmada Project alone displaced 1,08,000 people from their own land….

We account for the highest malnourished children  in the world.Every fourth hungry person in the world is an Indian.

India is home for ½ the planets hungry people.
According to official statistics 260 million Indians still go to sleep hungry every night.

By 2000-01, the average Indian family of four members was absorbing 93 kg less food grains, compared to a 3 years earlier, a massive drop, a fall in average daily intake by 64 grams per head.

9 out of 10 pregnant women between 15 &49 suffer from malnutrition and anemia.
Half of all children under 5 suffer moderate or severe malnourishment or stunting.

In 1995-96 the Govt. acknowledged in the World Summit on Social Development that 39.9% are below the poverty line.

Since 1997, in India 2009 farmers have committed suicide in and around Ananthpur in Andhra Pradesh by drinking pesticide.

WATER AND THE POOR

Drinking water is the single biggest crisis being faced by India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

The pattern of consumption in this region:90% in Agriculture,4%  for domestic use, 6%  in Industry.

In 2050,when the population of the south Asian countries will be 2.35 billion, per capita water availability will be about 1,500 cubic metres (cum).

A WHO report says:

“one hospital bed out of four in the world is occupied by a patient who is ill because of polluted water…provision of a safe and convenient water supply is is the single most important activity that could be undertaken to improve the health of people living in rural areas of the developing world.”

In India and Pakistan, not only is surface water diminishing, but the ground water level is, also falling rapidly at the rate of 1-2 m per year

(The Hindu Survey of the Envt. 2003).

Contamination of water leading to jaundice and gastroenteric epidemics has been a seasonal fear in Ahemedabad, Delhi, Culcutta and Bangladesh.

Fifteen  million people die every year due to lack of water
                    (UNDP)
     Twenty two developing countries are considered water scare.
    70% of India’s water is polluted.

According to forecasts by the Agricultural Ministry by 2025, 11 river basins including Ganges will be water deficit.
     Delhi Govt. Spends Rs.13-17 to supply a liter of water
     In Tamil Nadu, in last 20 years water level has fallen  by 100 ft.   

Six out of ten bore wells dug in North Gujarat yield no water even at a depth of 1,200ft.

     Some residents of Chirapunji buy water at Rs. 7 per bucket.

India has over 100 million cases of diarrhea.
 
      Every 3 minutes, a child in India dies of diarrhea arising out of contaminated water.
    

Today farmers in India are realizing that they can no longer depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Along the Cauvery delta, the farmers are not able to raise or save any cash crops because there is not assurance of continued supply of water. Now in Karur district, only 550 acres of sugar cane is cultivated whereas early it was 6,000 acres. Farmers are destroying beetle vine, a two-year-old crop that has dried up in its first year itself. The drilling of bore wells only led them to despair, as they could not find water.  

Nearly 700 thousand children die of diarrhea diseases each year directly as a result of drinking unsafe drinking water or living in an unhygienic living conditions.
1.40 lakh pavement dwellers of Delhi do not have proper water facility.

In May 2003, some colonies of Hyderabad were getting water once in 3 days.

Women and girls in India, spend up to 4 hours a day fetching water from far…

Most of the developing countries depend on Agriculture as a main source of income and survival and even a slight shift in the climate will have a disastrous impact…

The year 2002 was the second hottest since record keeping began since 1880s. The global average temperature climbed to 14.52 degree Celsius.

Of roughly 700 natural disasters in 2002, 593 were weather related events. Big weather catastrophies have quadrupled since the 1960s.

With less than five per cent of world’s population, USA uses 26% of global oil, 25% of the world’s coal, and 27% of the world’s natural gas.

Floods, droughts, cyclones, and heat waves have  taken the life of over 30,000 in the last 4 years in India alone, most of them the poor.

In 1999- with two cyclones, 20,000 were killed in Orissa.

-India’s temperature is rising at 0.57 degree Celsius on an average- annually.

-Rainfall in winters may decline by 5-25 %. As a result 12.3% decline in Agricultural production.

-A one meter rise may displace about 7.1 million people in India, most of them poor.

-The entire population of Lakshadweep at risk.

According to a UN study, one-meter sea level rise will:-

-flood an area of 170,000 hectares, primarily agricultural land in Orissa and W. Bengal.

-Goa would lose 4.3 % of its total area.

In Tamilnadu Cauvery delta, samba crop failed in 70% of the cultivated area due to Karnataka’s refusal to releases water, absence of ground water and excessive drawing of ground water resulting in the incursion of sea water in the coastal areas and the poor precipitation during the north-west monsoon and the persistence of cold weather beyond Jan 15.

Palkad district in Kerala is facing one of the worst droughts in history. The Malmpuzha dam, the biggest irrigation dam in the state has failed to provide water in Palkad-Chittur areas for the second crop for the first since 1955 when it was commissioned.   

The reservoir built across Malampuzha river can store 266million cubic meters (mcm) of water, but it has had only about 19 mcm in the end of Feb 2004, barely enough to meet the drinking needs of Palkad town and six panchayats until June. (Frontline Mar 26, 2004) 

The three-year drought that Karnataka has been facing brought on primarily by the continuous failure of the southwest monsoon and it affected the water flow in the Cauvery Water Reservoirs. According to the figures released by the Karnataka state the normal area sown in the command area of the Cauvery river system are 4.5lakh hectares. In 2002-2203 the area sown was only 2.38 and in 2003-04 it is reduced to 2.10 lakh ha, which is only 46% of the normal area. According to official sources by last year by this time the Cauvery canals carried a flow of 1500 cusecs whereas this year the flow is just 50 cusecs (Frontline, Mar 26, 2004, p.40)

Along the Cauvery delta, the farmers are not able to raise or save any cash crops because there is not assurance of continued supply of water. Now in Karur district, only 550 acres of sugar cane is cultivated whereas early it was 6,000 acres. Farmers are destroying beetle vine, a two-year-old crop that has dried up in its first year itself. The drilling of bore wells only led them to despair, as they could not find water.

Nearly 700 thousand children die of diarrhea diseases each year directly as a result of drinking unsafe drinking water or living in an unhygienic living conditions.
1.40 lakh pavement dwellers of Delhi do not have proper water facility

HYV SEEDS AND THE POOR

High inputs:- Chemical fertilizers, Pesticides, Herbicides, Dams for intensive irrigation.

Resulting in: Green House effect, Destruction of soil fertility, Micronutrient deficiency, Soil toxicity

Water logging and sanitation, Desertification and water scarcity, Genetic erosion, Biomass reduction for fodder and organic manure, Nutritional imbalances with the reduction of pulses, oilseeds, millets, Pesticide contamination of food, soil, water, human, animal life etc.

According to the World Bank estimates, India loses a whopping $80 billion annually on account of sickness and death from pollution and economic attributable to resource degradation.

Pollution particularly affects those already suffering from malnutrition and infectious diseases, which lower their ability to resist chemical pollutants. For most children breathing in the air may be as harmful as smoking a pack of cigarette a day. In Delhi, the incident of bronchial astma in the 5-16 age group is 10-12% and air pollution is one of the causes.

 Pollution and asthma are linked. WHO estimates that 10-15% of five to eleven year old children suffer from the disease in the country. It costs an average Rs 333/- every month to buy a child’s medicine for asthma- a recent study done by the Pediatrics department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Asthma in Bangalore increased from 9% in 1979 to 29.5% in 1999. Studies show that the most vulnerable victims of asthma are the poor. (Down to Earth Mar 15, 2004, p.28)

The contaminated water and poor sanitation is causing almost 30,000 deaths around the world daily (Religion and Society vol. No 43, 1996). According to the National Institute of Communicable diseases about 5% of the water supply in 929 Jhuggi-Jhopri clusters was not potable or fit for drinking purposes. (Environmental Situation of Slums in India 2003, p.6).

U.N Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that 825 million people are still undernourished.

According to estimates India would need 400-500 million tones of food grains by 2050, and the other countries of the region would need about 200 million tones.

By 2050 south Asia will need to produce around 650 million tones of food grains (FAO Yearbook, Rome 1998).

Environmental degradation is often directly linked with socio-cultural injustices, and the groups mostly affected in very direct and disproportionate ways are the poor and the marginalized.” 
(GC 34, We live in a Broken World. P.39)