Indian Express Editorial Analysis
07 December 2020

1) In a New Climate-

GS 3- Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

 


CONTEXT:

  1. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change seeks to limit global temperature rise this century to below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels with a striving to keep this rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
  2. All countries, including the largest GHG emitters, China, the US and EU, came on board with nationally determined commitments (NDCs).
  3. The agreement was touted as a major triumph for the US as it weakened the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, which had placed the onus for GHG reductions on the developed countries.
  4. Yet, within six months of taking over, Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the pact — the process was completed on November 4, ironically the day after he lost.

 

FALLING SHORT:

  1. Analyses indicate that an aggregation of the NDCs of countries do not add up to keep temperatures within the 2 degrees C limit.
  2. Much more action on GHG reduction, introduction of green technologies and adaptation are needed and the election of a climate-friendly president in the US, the largest contributor to the stock of GHG in the atmosphere, must be welcomed.
  3. It is expected that one of Biden’s first acts as President would be to bring the US back into the Paris fold.
  4. With Trumpism alive, Biden’s activism on climate may thus lean heavily on the other major emitters to take GHG reduction commitments.
  5. China today emits around 30 per cent of global GHGs but having worked on shutting coal-guzzling power plants in the past few years, Beijing has shown signs of tapering its emissions.
  6. The US follows at around 15 per cent, with Europe at 10 per cent. India is fourth at 7 per cent of the global total but with per-capita emissions that are less than half the global average.
  7. Interestingly, in global negotiations, Biden’s US and China may be on the same side.

 

INTENDED NATIONALLY DETERMINED CONTRIBUTIONS:

  1. Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are at the heart of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of these long-term goals.
  2. NDCs embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
  3. The Paris Agreement requires each Party to prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that it intends to achieve.
  4. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions.

 

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

  1. The Paris Agreement requests each country to outline and communicate their post-2020 climate actions, known as their NDCs.
  2. Together, these climate actions determine whether the world achieves the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement and to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of GHGs in the second half of this century.
  3. It is understood that the peaking of emissions will take longer for developing country Parties, and that emission reductions are undertaken on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, which are critical development priorities for many developing countries.
  4. Each climate plan reflects the country’s ambition for reducing emissions, taking into account its domestic circumstances and capabilities.
  5. Guidance on NDCs are currently being negotiated under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA), agenda item 3.

 

CHALLENGES:

  1. Of surveyed countries, 85% reported that they are challenged by the short time frame available to develop INDCs.
  2. Other challenges reported include difficulty to secure high-level political support, a lack of certainty and guidance on what should be included in INDCs, and limited expertise for the assessment of technical options.
  3. However, despite challenges, less than a quarter of countries said they had received international support to prepare their INDCs, and more than a quarter indicated they are still applying for international support.
  4. The INDC process and the challenges it presents are unique to each country and there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach or methodology.

 

OPPORTUNITIES:

The Climate and Development Knowledge Network prepared a guide for Least Developed Countries (LDCs), setting out an INDC approach that could provide economic and development opportunities.

It included:

  1. showing that economic growth is compatible with low-carbon and climate-resilient pathways, which will avoid lock-in to high carbon-intensive infrastructure
  2. highlighting the adaptation-related benefits of mitigation actions, as well as other co-benefits including poverty alleviation, health, energy access and security
  3. capturing the potential for mitigation within planned and potential adaptation activities
  4. encouraging other countries to take equivalent action, increasing global ambition and reducing climate impacts
  5. attracting financial, capacity-building, technology transfer and other types of international support.

 

INDIA'S CONTRIBUTION:

  1. India has committed to reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33-35 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving 40 per cent non-fossil-fuel installed electricity production capacity.
  2. It also established the International Solar Alliance with France. India is one of the few major climate stakeholders on track to over-achieve the targets it had committed.
  3. With civilisational links to nature, India is a strong proponent of global action on global warming.
  4. Such action is also critical, for India is acutely vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change.
  5. The link between GHG emissions, energy usage and GDP is, however, such that even with energetic induction of cleaner technologies and newer fuels plus renewable energy in the economy,
  6. India’s growth and development which are an absolute must for a better quality of life for 17 per cent of humankind, cannot be decoupled from rising GHG emissions.
  7. Under the Paris Agreement, India had committed to creating a cumulative carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030.
  8. Currently, India’s forest and tree cover is about 24 percent of its geographical area, according to India’s State of Forest Report 2017 and India has repeatedly highlighted that it wants to bring at least 33 percent of its total area under green cover.
  9. The draft of India’s National Forest Policy 2018 also mentions that to achieve the national goal for eco-security, the country should have a minimum of one-third of the total land area under forest and tree cover.

 

CONCLUSION:

  1. The Conference of Parties (CoP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under which the Paris Agreement was reached, could not be held this year because of COVID.
  2. It will now be held in Glasgow in late 2021 and is likely to be an energised exercise in stock-taking and pushing countries to enhance their commitments.
  3. The UN Secretary General has recently spelt out his intention to seek a goal of net-zero emissions of GHGs by 2050, with the central objective of the UN in 2021 to establish a Global Coalition for Carbon Neutrality.
  4. For India, engagement in global climate negotiations must be imbued with a strategic perspective and informed by the building of a GREEN (Growth with Renewable Energy, Entrepreneurship and Nature) coalition of countries with development imperatives and climate perspectives.

 

 

2) Clear the smoke - India must decriminalise the use of cannabis-

 GS 2- Govt. policies and interventions

 


CONTEXT:

India has voted, with other countries at UN, to no longer treat cannabis as a dangerous drug. Decriminalisation must follow.

 

INDIA’S STANCE ON CANNABIS:

  1. Till 1985, the recreational use of marijuana was not a criminal offence in India.
  2. The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, was brought in to fulfil India’s international obligations as a signatory to Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.
  3. Last week, India voted along with a significant majority of member-states at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) to remove cannabis and cannabis resin from the list of the most dangerous drugs.

 

 

DRUG POLICY OF INDIA, 1986:

The Indian government succeeded to formulate the Drug policy in 1986. The main objectives of the Drug Policy, 1986 are as under:

 

  1. Ensure availability of essential and life-saving and prophylactic medicines of good quality at reasonable prices
  2. Strengthen quality of  drug production and promote the rational use of drugs in India
  3. Create an environment to sort out new avenues for investments into the pharmaceutical industry.
  4. Encourage cost-effective production methods and pave ways for new technologies to better the usage of drugs
  5. Strengthen the indigenous capability for drug production.

 

 

INDIA’S SIGNAL:

  1. By doing so, the government has rightly signalled that the criminalisation of the recreational and medicinal use of cannabis must be done away with.
  2. It must now follow through with an amendment to the NDPS Act that reflects the spirit of its vote at the CND.
  3. The rationale for the legalisation of marijuana goes far beyond the legalities of India’s international obligations.

 

The NARCOTIC DRUGS AND PSYCHOTROPIC SUBSTANCES (NDPS) ACT:

  1. India is a participant of the UN Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971 and the Convention on Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988 that prescribes different control methods to achieve the dual objective –
    1. Limit the use of narcotic drugs and
    2. Psychotropic substances for medical and scientific purposes
    3. Prevent drug abuse
  2. The Narcotics administrative and legislative framework is in accordance with the spirit of the UN Conventions. The basic legislative instrument of the Government of India in this regard is the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.
  3. The Act lays down stringent provisions for the control and regulation of narcotic drug operations and psychotropic substance.
  4. The Act also invokes forfeiture of property gained from drug trafficking.
  5. Death penalty for those who are repeated offenders under the same cause. 

 

MARIJUANA – A COMMONLY USED DRUG IN INDIA:

  1. Culturally, marijuana has been a part of India’s religious and social fabric, used for medicinal purposes, in cuisines, at festivals and, of course, recreationally.
  2. As recently as 2019, the Magnitude of Substance Use in India report found that about 2.8 per cent of the population (3.1 crore individuals) reports having used any cannabis product within the previous year.

 

WHY SHOULD MARIJUANA BE DECRIMINALISED?

  1. That such a large number of people willingly admitted to using cannabis products in a government survey should signal both the prevalence and acceptability of the substance.
  2. Criminalising the use of such a widespread substance one whose effects on mental and physical health have been proven to be far less harmful than legal stimulants like alcohol and tobacco only serves to burden an overworked criminal-justice system and, in many cases, gives undue powers to police agencies like the Narcotics Control Board.

 

WAY FORWARD:

  1. As with alcohol and tobacco products, the use of cannabis must be regulated, taxed and monitored.
  2. Addiction, when it occurs, must be treated as and for what it is a mental health issue.

 

CONCLUSION:

  1. The international conventions which forced the promulgation of the NDPS Act were, in many ways, an off-shoot of the US’s war on drugs which began in the 1960s.
  2. After decades of incarcerating its own people, a majority of Americans voted recently to legalise cannabis. There is no need for the world’s largest democracy to repeat the oldest democracy’s mistakes.

 

 

3)Make Punjab great again-

 

G S 3

 

Issues related to direct and direct subsidy and minimum support price

 

 


CONTEXT:

Recently there was huge agitation among farmers of Punjab and Haryana because of new farm law. Some aspects of Punjab, as a state, must know.

 

INDIA’S GRAIN PRODUCTION HISTORY:

  1. Punjab gives a special contribution to the green revolution of the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.
  2. There was a huge shortage of grain in india in 1965. At that time India heavily dependent on PL 480 whom it imports from the US. Its amount was almost 10 million metric tonnes against rupees payment.
  3. At that time, the country did not have enough foreign exchange to buy wheat at global markets.
  4. The entire foreign exchange reserves of the country at the time could not help it purchase more than 7 MMT of grains.
  5. In India, it is against this backdrop that the minimum support price (MSP) system was devised in 1965.
  6. While Today, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has huge stocks of grains — it touched 97 MMT in June this year.
  7. On other hand, India’s buffer stock norm is 41.2 MMT.
  8. The economic cost of that excess grain, beyond the buffer stock norm, was more than Rs 1,80,000 crore.
  9. This is the situation of the current grain management system based on MSP and open-ended procurement.
  10. India’s foreign exchange is 575 billion dollars.
  11. On other hands, Schumpeter’s process of creative destruction of the old and inefficient-  is fundamental law behind the development of countries around the world. According to this, When situation change, societies to need to change in ways that can lead to higher levels of development, else they stagnate in a low-level equilibrium trap. This rule also not the exception for India.

 

WHAT ABOUT PUNJAB:

  1. In 1966, when Haryana was carved out of Punjab and a part of its territory was transferred to Himachal, it had the highest per capita income.
  2. Punjab, as a state, remained a frontrunner in that respect till almost the early 2000s.
  3. But, thereafter, Punjab started sliding down very fast in the overall ranking of major states of India — if smaller states are included in the ranking, Punjab’s position fell to 13th in 2018-19. There are several reasons- lack of industrialisation to not catching up even concerning the modern services sector like IT, financial services.

 

PUNJAB: COMPARISON WITH OTHERS:

  1. Punjab’s agriculture is blessed with almost 99 per cent irrigation.
  2. While all-India average of irrigation is a little less than 50 per cent.
  3. Maharashtra’s irrigation cover is just 20 per cent.
  4. The average landholding in Punjab is 3.62 hectare (ha). While the all-India average of landholding is  1.08 ha.
  5. In Bihar, the figure of landholding is just 0.4 ha.
  6. Punjab’s fertiliser consumption per ha is about 212 kg while an all-India level of 135 kg/ha. Productivity levels of wheat and rice in Punjab stand at 5 tonnes/ha and 4 tonnes/ha respectively, against an all-India average of 3.5t/ha and 2.6t/ha.
  7. In Punjab, the total farm families are just 1.09 million,
  8. The total farm families in an all-India total of 146.45 million.
  9. The subsidy provision to Punjab farmers through free power by the state government (2020-21 budget) amounts to Rs 8,275 crore. The fertiliser subsidy —through the central government — to Punjab was about Rs 5,000 crore in 2019-20. The overall subsidy, from just power and fertilisers, therefore, would amount to roughly Rs 13,275 crores. That means each farm household in Punjab got a subsidy of about Rs 1.22 lakh in 2019-20. This is the highest subsidy for a farm household in India.
  10. The average income of the Punjab farm household is the highest in India, it is almost two-and-a-half times that of an average farm household in the country.
  11. But to assess the real contribution of farmers/states to agriculture and incomes, the metric is the agri-GDP per ha of gross cropped area of the state.  it captures the impact of productivity, diversification, prices of outputs and inputs and subsidies.
  12. On that indicator, Punjab has the 11th rank amongst major agri-states.
  13. States in South India like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have a much more diversified crop pattern of high-value crops/livestock — poultry, dairy, fruits, vegetables, spices, fisheries.
  14. Even West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh also score over Punjab in this respect.

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR PUNJAB:

  1. If Punjab farmers want to increase their incomes, they need to gradually move away from MSP-based wheat and rice to high-value crops and livestock, the demand for which is increasing at three to five times that of cereals.
  2. Punjab needs a package to diversify its agriculture
  3. The Centre and the state can pitch in, on a 60:40 ratio.
  4. When farmers diversify their farm output and double their incomes, they will not be stuck in the MSP trap.