States’ climate action plans to be approved soon
The Union Environment Ministry will soon approve plans from various States to tackle climate change and an additional Rs.150 crore has been sought in this budget for the National Adaptation Fund.
Official sources said of the 31 States and Union Territories that had submitted plans, 23 were approved and the rest would be passed shortly. However, the Centre does not propose to fund any of these State action plans and it is basically an articulation of their vision. These will be linked to national climate change missions on adaptation and funds could also come from the Green Climate Fund. It’s more a wish list of the States’ intentions, the official said.
There has been criticism that the country’s adaptation plans are not adequately funded or coordinated. The Centre is also looking at fine-tuning coordination of the various national missions on climate adaptation and setting up a mechanism for that purpose.
Eight missions
After a review by the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, it was decided to scale up actions in adaptation and mitigation nationwide.
There are eight missions under the National Action Plan for Climate Change launched in 2008, but most of the missions got off the ground only in 2014 due to financial issues. It will be a while before there is some visible impact, the officials said.
Puducherry has, however, submitted its State action plan for funding to the World Bank. Some States, including Uttar Pradesh which is already affected by changing weather patterns, have not submitted their plans yet. Uttar Pradesh is working on the plan and recently had consultations with Central officials.
The government is considering dovetailing the State action plans with some of the national missions and some funds can be given to the States from the National Adaptation Fund. The fund is in the process of being approved by the Ministry of Finance and after that the States can apply for finance for climate action.
At Geneva, India opposes dilution of tasksIndia’s position underscoring the historical responsibilities of developing countries in the context of climate change was up against proposed dilutions to that concept notably by the U.S. and the European Union at the recent climate talks in Geneva.An Indian official said the meeting did not have any high ambition on targets though all countries took an active part in including various points in the draft treaty for Paris. The U.S. suggested doing away with the differences between developed and developing countries and one of the suggestions was that countries should be rated based on World Bank data.Finance, the hitchDeveloping countries have been demanding finance to deal with climate change from industrialised countries which has been a bone of contention for some time. The Green Climate Fund has only crossed $10 billion.
There is a need for consensus on cutting emissions by all countries and the idea of “evolving” responsibilities is being pushed by developed countries, according to official sources. The U.S. and others have been maintaining that all countries should aim at cutting emissions and not just the developed world.
At a recent interaction, the EU said Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) cannot be looked upon as the single principle to produce solutions. “We need to have a dynamic understanding of differentiated responsibilities and we are talking of an issue area where we discuss dynamics that are relevant over decades and decades,” said Ambassador João Cravinho, Head of Delegation of the European Union to India.
However, he clarified that CBDR was the cornerstone of international dialogue on climate change and the EU fully supported the notion. The EU joined the rest of the developed countries which are against going strictly by the principle of CBDR and in the recent climate talks in Geneva, the U.S. proposed a bifurcation approach which did not make a difference between developed and developing countries.
To keep talking of CBDR in the current context or in the years ahead in the same way would be a mistake, he felt, as the world economy would have changed so much. He called for a process that looked forward as the world could not rely forever on historical responsibility as a magic wand to address problems.
He said developing countries like China were now the largest emitters in the world and the question of differentiated responsibility should be relativised.
Done enough for farm self-sufficiency: CentreAffidavit filed in Supreme Court says food security attained is quite a feat
An affidavit filed by the Union Agriculture Ministry in the Supreme Court says the government has done enough and more to secure self-sufficiency in agriculture.
“The country has sufficient surpluses and is in a position of exporting to other countries,” says the affidavit filed on February 20 in response to a public interest litigation petition by the Consortium of Indian Farmers’ Association in 2011 seeking implementation of the recommendations made by the National Commission on Farmers’ Security in 2006.
“The only areas where production is deficient are pulses and oil seeds.” The government, it said, has initiated programmes such the National Food Security Mission to increase production of pulses and oilseeds to bridge the gap between domestic requirements and minimise imports. The level of food security attained is quite a feat, considering the scant geography of the country.
“India accounts for only 2.4 per cent of the world’s geographical area and 4 per cent of its water resources, but has to support 17 per cent of the world’s human population and 15 per cent of its livestock,” the affidavit said.
“[Despite this] India has not only ensured self-sufficiency in most agricultural crops but also built sufficient buffer stocks and is also in a position to export agricultural commodities to other countries. The government has taken all possible steps for implementation of the National Policy for Farmers, 2007 for development and growth of agriculture and allied sectors as well as for the betterment of farmers.”
The petition accused the government of sitting on the 2007 policy framed on the recommendations of the M.S. Swaminathan Commission. These recommendations were endorsed by the Working Group on Agriculture Production under the Prime Minister in December 2010.
The consortium highlighted how the BJP election manifesto had promised that profitability in agriculture would be enhanced by ensuring a minimum 50 per cent profit over and above costs.
The government defended that it had put forward various recommendations of its price policy adviser, the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices, to bring security to the agricultural sector and prevent farmers’ suicides.
Mystery continent holds key to mankind’s futureEarth’s past, present and future come together here on the northern peninsula of Antarctica, the wildest, most desolate and mysterious of its continents.
Clues to answering humanity’s most basic questions are locked in this continental freezer the size of the United States and half of Canada: where did we come from? Are we alone in the universe? What’s the fate of our warming planet? “It’s a window out to the universe and in time,” said Kelly Falkner, polar program chief for the U.S. National Science Foundation.
For a dozen days in January, in the middle of the chilly Antarctic summer, AP followed scientists from different fields searching for alien-like creatures, hints of pollution trapped in pristine ancient ice, leftovers from the Big Bang, biological quirks that potentially could lead to better medical treatments, and perhaps most of all, signs of unstoppable melting. Antarctica conjures up images of quiet mountains and white plateaus, but the coldest, driest and remotest continent is far from dormant.
About 98 per cent of it is covered by ice, and that ice is constantly moving. Temperatures can range from above zero in the South Shetlands and Antarctic Peninsula to the unbearable frozen lands near the South Pole. As an active volcano, Deception Island is a pot of extreme conditions.
There are spots where the sea boils at 100 degrees Celsius, while in others it can be freezing at below0 degrees Celsius. And while the sun rarely shines on the long, dark Antarctic winters, night-time never seems to fall on summer days.
While tourists come to Antarctica for its beauty and remoteness, scientists are all business. What they find could affect the lives of people thousands of miles away; if experts are right, and the West Antarctic ice sheet has started melting irreversibly, what happens here will determine if cities such as Miami, New York, New Orleans, Guangzhou, Mumbai, London and Osaka will have to regularly battle flooding from rising seas.
Antarctica “is big and it’s changing and it affects the rest of the planet and we can’t afford to ignore what’s going on down there,” said David Vaughan, science director of the British Antarctic.
Geologists are entranced by Antarctica’s secrets. On a recent scientific expedition led by Chile’s Antarctic Institute, Richard Spikings, a research geologist at the University of Geneva, wielded a large hammer to collect rock samples in the South Shetlands and the Antarctic Peninsula. Curious members of a penguin colony on Cape Legoupil watched as he pounded on slabs of black granite and diorite rising out of the southern ocean. By the end of the two-week trip, his colleagues had jokingly begun calling him “Thor.”
About 4,000 scientists come to Antarctica for research during the summer and 1,000 stay in the more forbidding winter. There are also about 1,000 non-scientists — chefs, divers, mechanics, janitors and the priest of the world’s southernmost Eastern Orthodox Church on top of a rocky hill at the Russian Bellinghausen station. But the church on the hill is an exception, a glimmer of the world to the north.
For scientists, what makes this place is the world below, which provides a window into mankind’s past and future. — AP
“In a minor incident off the West Coast of India, a fishing vessel hit the periscope of the submarine which was involved in an exercise. The exercise was being conducted in pitch dark conditions as required...” Navy spokesperson D K Sharma said.
He said that there was no major damage to the submarine and it has since returned to the Mumbai dock where repairs were on.
He said that all relevant authorities, including the Defence Ministry, were immediately informed about the incident.
Meanwhile, asked how could a fishing vessel hit the periscope when an exercise was on, defence sources said the exercise was about getting divers out without being noticed. — PTI
Ali Akbar Salehi, the director of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s brother and close aide Hossein Fereydoon along with U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz made their maiden appearance in the talks signalling that the deal is entering a sensitive stage. The two officials and their negotiators spent more than five hours on Saturday negotiating technical details of the nuclear talks.
The U.S. and Iranian diplomats along with negotiators from the P5+1 group have been meeting in Geneva since the last three days to smoothen out major bumps in reaching a nuclear deal.
The negotiations have mainly been over Iranian uranium enrichment and the pace of removing sanctions, which the U.S. wants to stagger over time.
The six nations are trying to broker a deal with Iran to end a more than a decade-long standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme in return for an easing of sanctions. — PTI
Fresh nuclear leak detected at Fukushima plantSensors at the Fukushima nuclear plant have detected a fresh leak of highly radioactive water to the sea, the plant’s operator announced on Sunday, highlighting difficulties in decommissioning the crippled plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Co said the sensors, which were rigged to a gutter that pours rain and ground water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant to a nearby bay, detected contamination levels up to 70 times greater than the already-high radioactive status.
TEPCO said its emergency inspections of tanks storing nuclear waste water did not find any additional abnormalities, but the firm said it shut the gutter to prevent radioactive water from going into the Pacific Ocean.
The higher-than-normal levels of contamination were detected at around 10 am, with sensors showing radiation levels 50 to 70 times greater than usual, TEPCO said.
Though contamination levels have steadily fallen throughout the day, the same sensors were still showing contamination levels about 10 to 20 times more than usual, a spokesman said. It was not immediately clear what caused the original spike of the contamination and its gradual fall, he added.
“With emergency surveys of the plant and monitoring of other sensors, we have no reason to believe tanks storing radioactive waste water have leaked,” he told AFP.
“We have shut the gutter (from pouring water to the bay). We are currently monitoring the sensors at the gutter and seeing the trend,” he said.
The latest incident, one of several that have plagued the plant in recent months, reflects the difficulty in controlling and decommissioning the plant, which went through meltdowns and explosions after being battered by a giant tsunami in March 2011, sparking the world’s worst nuclear disaster in a generation.
TEPCO has not been able to effectively deal with an increasing amount of contaminated water, used to cool the crippled reactors and molten fuels inside them and kept in large storage tanks on the plant’s vast campus.
Adding to TEPCO’s headaches has been the persistent flow of groundwater from nearby mountains travelling under the contaminated plant before washing to the Pacific Ocean. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently said TEPCO has made “significant progress” in cleaning up the plant, but suggested that Japan should consider ways to discharge treated waste water into the sea. — AFP
A top government official on Sunday said Athens would submit proposals that will take the struggling Greek economy “out of sedation.”
“We are compiling a list of measures to make the Greek civil service more effective and to combat tax evasion,” Minister of State Nikos Pappas told Mega channel.
Greece’s hard-left government is walking a tightrope between its commitments to European creditors and its electoral pledges to end austerity in a country struggling to recover from severe economic crisis.
The four-month extension would allow for a new reform deal to be negotiated during that time period.
Mr. Pappas, a close aide of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, said the talks would be “a daily battle...every centimetre of ground must be won with effort.”
While many said Athens had capitulated to European demands in the deal on the four-month extension, Mr. Tsipras insisted on Saturday Greece had achieved an “important negotiating success” which “cancels out austerity.”
In a televised address, Mr. Tsipras said his government had foiled a plan by “blind conservative forces” in Greece and abroad to bankrupt the country at the end of the month, when its European bailout had been scheduled to expire.
But while fears of a disastrous Greek exit from the eurozone receded, the Mr. Tsipras warned that the “real difficulties” lie ahead. He said his government would now focus on negotiating a new reform blueprint with Greece’s creditors by June. — AFP
MERS toll in Saudi Arabia up to 385Saudi Arabia’s Health Ministry said two more people died after contracting Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS, pushing the total number of deaths from the virus in the kingdom to 385.
The Ministry’s statement on Saturday says that 902 cases of MERS have been discovered in Saudi Arabia since the virus was first identified in 2012, though 490 people who contracted it have recovered.
Some 57 people have contracted MERS in the kingdom since the start of February.
The virus has affected people in other parts of the world, but has mostly remained centered in Saudi Arabia. - AP
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