There is no end to the injustice that tribals face in this country. Here is a heart rending story about the travails of a tribal family residing deep inside rural India as related by Sujeet Kumar of India Abroad News Service -
Such is the state of medical care in Chhattisgarh that a woman had to walk 110 km for fifteen days to reach a government-run hospital to get her burnt hands treated.
In September, Phoolwati, 25, and her husband Roop Singh were burnt when the kerosene stove on which they cooked burst in their hut in Bakalo village within the jurisdiction of the Kapu police station in Raigarh district. Sans any medical treatment, Roop Singh battled his burn injuries for a week and then died. Phoolwati then found insects crawling inside her burnt hands and realised she had no option but to go to the district headquarters here and seek medical treatment. There was no government-run health facility nearby that could tackle her problem.
"I did not have a single paisa to get treatment from any private doctor or to get into a bus so that I could come here. So I had no option but to walk the 110 km to get admitted to Raigarh hospital. I had found several insects in my burn wounds and the problem was getting worse every day" Phoolwati said at the hospital at
Raigarh which is 240 km northeast of the Chhattisgarh state capital, Raipur. "During the entire 15-day journey I begged for food from local people alongside the road. Here a worker in a medicine shop brought me to the district government hospital. The doctor here removed all the insects. Now I feel my injuries have healed a little" the childless widow said in between sobs.
A. Tirki, the doctor who operated upon Phoolwati, said "Her wound was filled with dozens of insects when she came to me last week. I have cleaned up her wounds and hopefully within a fortnight she will recover. But she would surely have lost both her hands if she had reached the hospital even a week later."
The first anomaly here is that despite living in the forest Phoolwati and her husband were using a kerosene stove. This seems to indicate that they were unable to access firewood possibly due to the highhandedness of the forest department staff. The second anomaly is that there is no government health staff near her village who can provide first aid or probably even if there is that person demands money to do so. In fact the whole story requires even deeper probing to bring out the comprehensive nature of the failure of the Indian state with respect to tribals.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Making the Law Work
There is some good news at last. The rules regarding mandatory holding of public hearings where people to be affected by a development project can express their opinions regarding the environmental and social impacts of development projects are generally not followed. Even if public hearings are held they are doctored and public protest is ignored. Thus in a landmark event the organisation Jan Chetna in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh has succeeded in getting the National Environment Appellate Authority to stay an environmental clearance given by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to a proposed power plant on the grounds that the video recordinig of the public hearing clearly established that it was not held properly and officially cancelled. Such cancellation could take place only because of vehement public protest at the fraud being perpetrated as shown in the picture below provided by Jan Chetana.
The report of this great achievement as provided by the activist Ramesh Agrawal of Jan Chetna is as follows -
The National Environment Appellate Authority on 17th November 2009 stayed the Environment Clearance granted to the 1200 MW Athena Thermal Power Plant at village Singhatarai, Tehsil Dabhra, District Janjgir Champa, Chattisgarh. The decision came as a result of the Appeal filed by Jan Chetana and the "Villagers of Singhatarai" who challenged the environmental clearance on the ground that the Ministry of Environment and Forest approved the project without considering the fact that the Public Hearing held on 15.01.2009 was cancelled by the chairperson in view of the documents not being made available to the affected public and the procedure as contemplated in the EIA Notification not being followed. There was nothing on record to show that the Expert Appraisal committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests took note of the concerns expressed by the people and even took note of the decision of the chairperson (additional Collector) to declare the hearing null and void.
The NEAA went through the video recording of the Public Hearing for over an hour which was provided by Jan Chetana and was convinced that there was discrepancy in what was recorded in the minutes of the public hearing and what was spoken in public by the A.D.M. Janjgir-Champa S.K.Chand. The video recording clearly showed large scale opposition of the public to the project. The picture below shows the Collector on the dais and activists recording the proceedings on video camera.
The Expert Appraisal Committee has been directed to look into the public hearing proceedings and take a decision. The NEAA stated that the Environmental Clearance could not have been granted without following the due procedure prescribed in the EIA Notification, 2006. It remains to be seen ofcourse what the Ministry of Environment and Forests does now with regard to once again holding the public hearing in a proper manner. But getting the NEAA to come out with such a ruling is in itself an achievement.
The report of this great achievement as provided by the activist Ramesh Agrawal of Jan Chetna is as follows -
The National Environment Appellate Authority on 17th November 2009 stayed the Environment Clearance granted to the 1200 MW Athena Thermal Power Plant at village Singhatarai, Tehsil Dabhra, District Janjgir Champa, Chattisgarh. The decision came as a result of the Appeal filed by Jan Chetana and the "Villagers of Singhatarai" who challenged the environmental clearance on the ground that the Ministry of Environment and Forest approved the project without considering the fact that the Public Hearing held on 15.01.2009 was cancelled by the chairperson in view of the documents not being made available to the affected public and the procedure as contemplated in the EIA Notification not being followed. There was nothing on record to show that the Expert Appraisal committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests took note of the concerns expressed by the people and even took note of the decision of the chairperson (additional Collector) to declare the hearing null and void.
The NEAA went through the video recording of the Public Hearing for over an hour which was provided by Jan Chetana and was convinced that there was discrepancy in what was recorded in the minutes of the public hearing and what was spoken in public by the A.D.M. Janjgir-Champa S.K.Chand. The video recording clearly showed large scale opposition of the public to the project. The picture below shows the Collector on the dais and activists recording the proceedings on video camera.
The Expert Appraisal Committee has been directed to look into the public hearing proceedings and take a decision. The NEAA stated that the Environmental Clearance could not have been granted without following the due procedure prescribed in the EIA Notification, 2006. It remains to be seen ofcourse what the Ministry of Environment and Forests does now with regard to once again holding the public hearing in a proper manner. But getting the NEAA to come out with such a ruling is in itself an achievement.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Train to Dahod
Many years ago in May 1985 I first took the train to Dahod from Ratlam on the Western Railway's trunk Delhi - Mumbai line on my way to Alirajpur to start my life among the Bhils. On that occasion I had marked with some concern that the hilly terrain through which the train passed was totally denuded. Even after I got off the train at Dahod and then took a bus to Alirajpur the same scenario was visible on both sides of the road. It was not until I reached Chhoti Gendra village deep inside Alirajpur district that I first saw some forested hills. Over the years through the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath a considerable amount of work has been done in community based afforestation and soil and water conservation and this is what I consider to be my best work. In 1994 I moved out of Alirajpur and began residing in Indore as the work of mobilisation spread to other areas. So I stopped travelling on the Ratlam to Dahod route as I used to do earlier.
Last month circumstances so transpired that I had to take the Dehradun Express from Ratlam to Dahod once again after fifteen years. This is the season when Bhils migrate in large numbers to Gujarat and the train was jam packed. I had to sit in the door to the compartment with another migrating Bhil and make the journey. Migration was there twenty five years ago also when I first travelled on this line but it was not to this extent. There is a local passenger train that runs between Kota and Vadodara on this line which used to suffice in providing transport to the migrating Bhils. However, nowadays the Bhils' livelihoods in their own villages have become much more precarious and the level of migration has become mind boggling. Consequently the general compartments of express trains also are filled with them.
However, there was a very soul satisfying upside to this slightly dangerous journey that I made sitting in the compartment doorway of an express train. At many places I noticed that the hills that were once barren had become covered with trees of around ten years'growth. The great thing about dry and denuded lands is that if there is some root stock left in them then with protection they regenerate and over time can afforest these lands. What had happened was that the Bhil farmers had begun protecting the hillocks that bordered their farms and so gradually they had become afforested. There are no NGOs or people's organisations working in those areas but these farmers must have internalised the rhetoric of protection that has been bandied about over the past decade and a half or so and then implemented it. I have always felt that if poor people are given enough freedom and opportunity they will find appropriate and sustainable solutions to their livelihoods and problems and this was a vindication of that.
Last month circumstances so transpired that I had to take the Dehradun Express from Ratlam to Dahod once again after fifteen years. This is the season when Bhils migrate in large numbers to Gujarat and the train was jam packed. I had to sit in the door to the compartment with another migrating Bhil and make the journey. Migration was there twenty five years ago also when I first travelled on this line but it was not to this extent. There is a local passenger train that runs between Kota and Vadodara on this line which used to suffice in providing transport to the migrating Bhils. However, nowadays the Bhils' livelihoods in their own villages have become much more precarious and the level of migration has become mind boggling. Consequently the general compartments of express trains also are filled with them.
However, there was a very soul satisfying upside to this slightly dangerous journey that I made sitting in the compartment doorway of an express train. At many places I noticed that the hills that were once barren had become covered with trees of around ten years'growth. The great thing about dry and denuded lands is that if there is some root stock left in them then with protection they regenerate and over time can afforest these lands. What had happened was that the Bhil farmers had begun protecting the hillocks that bordered their farms and so gradually they had become afforested. There are no NGOs or people's organisations working in those areas but these farmers must have internalised the rhetoric of protection that has been bandied about over the past decade and a half or so and then implemented it. I have always felt that if poor people are given enough freedom and opportunity they will find appropriate and sustainable solutions to their livelihoods and problems and this was a vindication of that.
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Link between Profits and Violence
The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) which is a government owned entity has built the two dams of Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar on the Narmada River and is running the hydro-electric power stations there. In the process the corporation has not adequately compensated and rehabilitated the people who have been displaced by these dams. Consequently it has been taken to task by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) both at the grassroots level through mass mobilisation and in the High and Supreme courts through litigation. It so happens that due to a dispute between the riparian states over the distribution of the water of the Narmada River a tribunal was constituted to arbitrate on this. The Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (NWDT) not only resolved the dispute over water but also made excellent provisions for the rehabilitation and resettlement of the displaced persons. The most important provision is that every affected family would be given a minimum of two hectares of irrigated land and if the family also had adult sons then they too would have to be given two hectares of irrigated land. This is where the NHPC economised in order to reduce costs and did not provide this land to the displaced persons. After a long legal battle the NBA won an order from the High Court that the NWDT award must be implemented in full and close to 12000 people still without proper rehabilitation must be given two hectares of irrigated land and other facilities.
When this order was ignored by the NHPC and the Government of Madhya Pradesh, the NBA launched an agitation by over ten thousand men and women affected by the Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar dams on the 28th of October 2009 in Khandwa. The Khandwa police in an unprecedented action has arrested all the key activists of Narmada Bachao Andolan from their offices and the dharna site, in front of the Khandwa Collectorate.
On 29th evening the demonstrators were cane charged brutally and Chittaroopa Palit and 18 other activists were arrested and on 30th October without any provocation police came in a Vajra vehicle and locked NBA’s office alleging anti-state activities. They arrested six of the activists, including senior activist Alok Agarwal, present at the office around 5:15 pm and then locked the office. After some time five policemen came and without any search warrant and probably copied files from the computer and took some documents from the office. After some time they released 5 people and unsealed the NBA office but kept Alok Agarwal in custody without mentioning the charges under which he had been arrested.
Now the NHPC over the last three years or so has earned a profit of over 1200 crores from its operations. The cost of implementing the order of the High Court should not be more than 700 crores given the prevailing cost of agricultural land in the region. So the NHPC can easily implement the order but it is not doing so because of the logic of making profits. In all dams built in this country there are two things in common - non rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced people and non completion of the canal network. Instead the money so saved by neglecting these crucial aspects of a dam are invested in making more new dams without rehabilitation and without canal networks. This has two negative consequences. First the ousted people settle down in the catchment area of the dam and especially around the rim of the reservoir and so aggravate the soil erosion in the catchment leading to higher silt loads and shorter life of the dam. Second the designed irrigation potential is grossly under utilised so much so that over the past decade or so despite new dams having been built there has been no addition to the irrigated acreage in India. The dam builders earn short term profits but in the long run there are huge social, economic and environmental losses that are borne by others. The cumulative injustice of such profit making then manifests itself in protest. The state responds by coming out in favour of the profit makers by using force to unjustly subdue these protests and lays the seeds of its illegitimacy in the eyes of those denied justice. Not suprprisingly such unjust violence by the state is increasingly begetting retaliatory violence both spontaneous and organised.
When this order was ignored by the NHPC and the Government of Madhya Pradesh, the NBA launched an agitation by over ten thousand men and women affected by the Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar dams on the 28th of October 2009 in Khandwa. The Khandwa police in an unprecedented action has arrested all the key activists of Narmada Bachao Andolan from their offices and the dharna site, in front of the Khandwa Collectorate.
On 29th evening the demonstrators were cane charged brutally and Chittaroopa Palit and 18 other activists were arrested and on 30th October without any provocation police came in a Vajra vehicle and locked NBA’s office alleging anti-state activities. They arrested six of the activists, including senior activist Alok Agarwal, present at the office around 5:15 pm and then locked the office. After some time five policemen came and without any search warrant and probably copied files from the computer and took some documents from the office. After some time they released 5 people and unsealed the NBA office but kept Alok Agarwal in custody without mentioning the charges under which he had been arrested.
Now the NHPC over the last three years or so has earned a profit of over 1200 crores from its operations. The cost of implementing the order of the High Court should not be more than 700 crores given the prevailing cost of agricultural land in the region. So the NHPC can easily implement the order but it is not doing so because of the logic of making profits. In all dams built in this country there are two things in common - non rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced people and non completion of the canal network. Instead the money so saved by neglecting these crucial aspects of a dam are invested in making more new dams without rehabilitation and without canal networks. This has two negative consequences. First the ousted people settle down in the catchment area of the dam and especially around the rim of the reservoir and so aggravate the soil erosion in the catchment leading to higher silt loads and shorter life of the dam. Second the designed irrigation potential is grossly under utilised so much so that over the past decade or so despite new dams having been built there has been no addition to the irrigated acreage in India. The dam builders earn short term profits but in the long run there are huge social, economic and environmental losses that are borne by others. The cumulative injustice of such profit making then manifests itself in protest. The state responds by coming out in favour of the profit makers by using force to unjustly subdue these protests and lays the seeds of its illegitimacy in the eyes of those denied justice. Not suprprisingly such unjust violence by the state is increasingly begetting retaliatory violence both spontaneous and organised.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Neither Water Nor Governance
The western Madhya Pradesh region is a naturally water scarce region due to four characteristics that are peculiar to it -
1. The average annual rainfall is low being around 700mm with the number of rainy days being around 50.
2. The soil is mostly clayey and so infiltration of rain water is low. Moreover such soils tend to get waterlogged if subjected to flood irrigation.
3. The underlying rocks are basaltic and sedimentary having low porosity and permeability and so their capacity to store water in underground aquifers is limited.
4. The average evapo-transpiration rate for the area is very high at about 2100 mm and so a considerable amount of the rainfall evaporates immediately. In the dry periods during the monsoons and later the moisture retained in the soil gets evaporated. A large amount of the water stored in surface storages big and small too gets evaporated.
Thus traditionally the agriculturists of this region had adopted practices that made the most use of the soil moisture and conserved the ecosystem to ensure a sustainable output. However, from the decade of the nineteen seventies a more intensive agricultural system was introduced involving the use of external inputs such as hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and higher irrigation either through canals from dams or through groundwater extracted with pumps. This has led to a growing shortage of water and the need for water governance to regulate its availability and use. The problems created by the external input system of agriculture and the lack of water governance in the western Madhya Pradesh region is illustrated here with the example of the basin of the Man River which is a tributary of the Narmada River.
The characteristics of the Man River basin which make it ideal for such a study of water governance are as follows -
• The basin spans the three distinct agro-ecological zones of the Malwa plateau, Vindhya hills and the Nimar plains.
• There is a serious problem of over extraction of ground water in the basin.
• There is a large dam in the basin affecting water governance drastically.
• There is a significant tribal population in the basin.
• The basin has a considerable reserved forest area which is mostly degraded.
The water availability is more or less related to the rainfall in the area and in more than half the years the rainfall is below the average values and these are the years when the kharif crop is also under water stress leading to lower than potential yields. The water use in agriculture in the kharif season in a normal year is well supplied by the rainfall and does not require the application of irrigation. In years of less than normal rainfall there is little scope for providing protective irrigation and effectively this results in water stress and lower yields.
Consequently what is more of a concern from the water governance point of view is the water used for the irrigated crops in the rabi season. An estimation of the rabi season water use revealed that while in 1989 the total water demand was 1100 million cubic meters this rose to 1321 million cubic meters by 2005.Thus there has been an increase in water demand over the period by 20%. This water demand was being met mostly by groundwater in the Malwa region and with groundwater and some lift irrigation from streams with return flow in the Vindhya region. In the Nimar region the component of lift irrigation is higher because of the enhanced flow in the Man river downstream of the Man dam due to seepage under the dam and from the canals. This water demand has to be compared with the average annual water being precipitated on the total geographical area which is about 3000 million cubic meters. Thus the water demand for irrigation in 2005 was 44% of the total annual precipitation and was mostly met from groundwater. Estimations done in hard rock areas show that natural recharge is never more than 11% of the total annual rainfall. Thus, the current level of extraction being four times higher, the groundwater aquifers have become over exploited and the surface storages too are not capable of meeting this theoretical demand leading to water stress and lower yields of crops in the Rabi season in recent years.
Thus a "tragedy of the commons" has been created. Normally in the case of a non-renewable resource the user has to trade off resource use between successive time periods to optimise production in the long run because more the resource is used the more is its extraction cost and more is its scarcity value. The water in the deep confined aquifers in dry hard rock regions is akin to a non-renewable resource because it has accumulated over thousands of years from the minimal amount of percolation into these aquifers that has taken place annually. Thus when this water is pumped out in large quantities in a particular year far in excess of the minimal recharge that is taking place, the water level goes down and in the next year the extraction cost will be greater and this will go on increasing with time. However, in a situation in which this extraction cost was rendered close to zero by electricity being made free and the water itself being a common property resource did not have any price attached to it and neither did its depletion result in a scarcity value, all the farmers tended to use as much water as they could get as in the long run the water would be finished even if a few farmers adopted a more conservationist approach.
Situations in which there are public goods with no well defined property rights as with groundwater either the state has to step in to regulate its use through fiscal or legal measures or there has to be communitarian command over its use as markets fail. However in this case the state too failed by adopting the opposite stance of subsidising the greater use of water.
The crunch came at the turn of the century when the Madhya Pradesh government as part of the conditions for getting a loan from the Asian Development Bank for restructuring its power sector had to begin charging farmers for electricity supplied to them at cost plus profit rates determined by the Madhya Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission. The ADB imposed this fiscal prudence on the government so as to ensure that it could pay back the loan that was being given. The prolonged bleeding of the Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board due to the free power supplied earlier had hampered the addition of new power generation capacity and so the quantity and quality of power supplied to rural areas also began to suffer. The shortfall had to be made up by purchasing power from the national grid and this too pushed up the cost of electricity further. In additon to this heavy withdrawals of water had led to the severe depletion of the confined aquifers and many of the tubewells had either gone dry or were yielding much less water. Most of the blocks in Western Madhya Pradesh were declared to be either critical or over exploited in terms of ground water resources.
On the surface water utilisation front too there are problems. There are a number of points on which the operation of the Man Dam as it stands today can be critiqued -
1. Inadequate and Poorly Constructed Canal Network
Contrary to the design the Right Bank Canal Network has been developed more than the Left Bank Canal Network. In both cases the main canals, the distributaries and the minors have been built less than the design length. Moreover the construction of the canals is very poor and in many stretches the proper trapezoidal section and dimensions as per the designs have not been adopted, even for the main canal. Moreover, even though it is claimed in the final cost estimate report that 18.42 km length of the main canal has been lined this is not the case in reality as only those sections of the main canal that have been constructed above the ground level through earth filling to maintain the level have been lined and this length is far less. In fact the total final cost of lining is a meagre Rs 2.7 crores. This together has led to the main canals being unable to take the design flows and consequently the actual flow in the Left Bank Canal varies between 2 - 3 cubic meters per second and that in the Right Bank Canal between 3 - 6 cumecs.
2. Seepage and Waterlogging
The Water and Power Consultancy Services (WAPCOS) was engaged by the Madhya Pradesh Government to study the problems that might beset the canal network in the form of seepage given the kind of soil through which the canals were to pass and suggest remedies. The report of WAPCOS submitted in 1980 assumes the following estimates for losses -
1. Lined System
a) Main Canal and Branches - 4 cusecs/million sq. ft.
b) Distribution System - 6 cusecs/million sq. ft.
2. Unlined System
a) Main Canal and Branches - 15 cusecs/million sq. ft.
b) Distribution System - 20 cusecs/million sq. ft.
The costs are then worked out for the canal system for different scenarios of unlined and lined systems. This is done by estimating the area of command for each scenario which goes on increasing as the system is progressively lined. Consequently even though the cost of lining goes up the cost per hectare comes down as the increase in the command area due to lining more than offsets the increased cost of lining as follows -
1. Wholly Unlined - Rs 13,675/Ha
2. Main Canals and Branches Lined- Rs 12,380/Ha
3. Lining upto 40 Ha blocks Rs 11,033/Ha
4. Lining upto 8 Ha blocks Rs 10,607/Ha
The Detailed Project Report of the Man Dam goes on to say on the basis of this - " In view of this and the recommendations of the World Bank in their Staff Appraisal Report no. 3260-IN of February, 1981, lining of the whole canals system upto 5 to 8 Ha blocks is proposed in the Man Project." Contrary to this, as mentioned earlier, only a small part of the main canals have been lined and so huge seepage losses are taking place. So great are these losses, given the poor construction of the canals, that as soon as the main canals are charged the drainage nullahs begin to flow with seepage water and they continue to do so throughout the irrigation season. This huge amount of water then flows to the tanks that have been constructred in the command area and overflows their waste weirs and finally reaches the Man river unutilised downstream of the dam.
Naturally the command area has shrunk considerably as there is not enough water flowing in the canals and in the 2007-08 season the "Elan" was for only 5000 Ha or one third of the design command. The actual irrigation took place in only 2765 Ha in 15 villages by the Right Bank Canal and 2153 Ha in 14 villages by the Left Bank Canal for a total of 4918 Ha. This in addition to the irrigation from water taken from the distributaries through field channels also includes the irrigation done from the seepage water collected in tanks. The incompleteness of the canal network and the meagre flow in the main canal itself, depleted by seepage, has led to the farmers using their own means to lift water from the canals quite audaciously as shown in the picture below where a pump has been installed by a farmer on the canal regulatory structure itself.
Moreover, the heavy seepage has also led to waterlogging in several farm plots close to the main canals. A survey was conducted in the 2007-08 irrigation season of the ways in which water was being drawn by the farmers and the number of farmers who had been affected by seepage. This revealed that there are considerable problems with regard to drawal of water from the canals what with drawal by motor pumps and siphons exceeding by 80.8% that being supplied directly. There are also a high number of farmers affected by waterlogging due to seepage. The proportion is as high as 30.1%. These farmers have had to either abandon this land or construct drainage channels to divert the seepage water. At least a thousand hectares or so of land is so affected by seepage and despite several petitions given by the affected people to the administration, no remedial action has been taken.
Not surprisingly there is tremendous competition for canal water towards the lower reaches where the flow becomes very low due to seepages and unauthorised drawals higher up. Regulatory structures have been broken by the farmers and they draw water at will as shown in the picture below where villagers have constructed temporary bunds on the canal to divert water into their distributaries at the cost of villagers downstream. These villagers maintain a day and night vigil at this point to ensure that villagers downstream do not break their bunds.
3. Unsuitability of Command for Flood Irrigation
60.2% of the command area consists of land that is unsuitable for flood irrigation without extensive land levelling and bunding work and yet the project was sanctioned without any provision in the budget for such land levelling work. In fact in addition to this considerable length of drainage channels also need to be built but this finds only cursory mention and a provision of a paltry Rs 9.42 lakhs in the original DPR of 1982. However, later this absurdly low provision also has been done away with in the final cost estimate of 2004. This omission has obviously been done to keep down the costs of the project and artificially improve the cost benefit ratio. Costs of afforestation and soil conservation in the catchment have also been ignored and the oustees of the dam have been denied proper rehabilitation. All these economisations have added to the problems of the dam as the silt load has gone up and the oustees have not only remained in the submergence area to practise drawdown agriculture but have also engaged in agitation and litigation under the banner of the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Thus, here the whole question of the appropriate method by which to ensure the presence of soil moisture in most of the lands in the command area during the Rabi season comes to the fore. Given that the final cost of the project in 2004 was Rs 176.75 crores (as compared to the design cost in 1982 of Rs 35.94 crores) and the additional irrigation achieved is only 4000 Ha (5000 Ha minus the 1000 Ha lost to waterlogging), the cost per hectare of irrigation provided turns out to be a whopping - Rs 4,41,875. This has to be compared with the alternative of the watershed plus approach which can ensure soil moisture for rabi cultivation at a cost of Rs 12,000 per hectare only, apart from social and environmental benefits of communitarian soil and water conservation work.
Thus prima facie it can safely be said that there is neither water nor governance in the Man River basin both with respect to surface and ground water.
1. The average annual rainfall is low being around 700mm with the number of rainy days being around 50.
2. The soil is mostly clayey and so infiltration of rain water is low. Moreover such soils tend to get waterlogged if subjected to flood irrigation.
3. The underlying rocks are basaltic and sedimentary having low porosity and permeability and so their capacity to store water in underground aquifers is limited.
4. The average evapo-transpiration rate for the area is very high at about 2100 mm and so a considerable amount of the rainfall evaporates immediately. In the dry periods during the monsoons and later the moisture retained in the soil gets evaporated. A large amount of the water stored in surface storages big and small too gets evaporated.
Thus traditionally the agriculturists of this region had adopted practices that made the most use of the soil moisture and conserved the ecosystem to ensure a sustainable output. However, from the decade of the nineteen seventies a more intensive agricultural system was introduced involving the use of external inputs such as hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and higher irrigation either through canals from dams or through groundwater extracted with pumps. This has led to a growing shortage of water and the need for water governance to regulate its availability and use. The problems created by the external input system of agriculture and the lack of water governance in the western Madhya Pradesh region is illustrated here with the example of the basin of the Man River which is a tributary of the Narmada River.
The characteristics of the Man River basin which make it ideal for such a study of water governance are as follows -
• The basin spans the three distinct agro-ecological zones of the Malwa plateau, Vindhya hills and the Nimar plains.
• There is a serious problem of over extraction of ground water in the basin.
• There is a large dam in the basin affecting water governance drastically.
• There is a significant tribal population in the basin.
• The basin has a considerable reserved forest area which is mostly degraded.
The water availability is more or less related to the rainfall in the area and in more than half the years the rainfall is below the average values and these are the years when the kharif crop is also under water stress leading to lower than potential yields. The water use in agriculture in the kharif season in a normal year is well supplied by the rainfall and does not require the application of irrigation. In years of less than normal rainfall there is little scope for providing protective irrigation and effectively this results in water stress and lower yields.
Consequently what is more of a concern from the water governance point of view is the water used for the irrigated crops in the rabi season. An estimation of the rabi season water use revealed that while in 1989 the total water demand was 1100 million cubic meters this rose to 1321 million cubic meters by 2005.Thus there has been an increase in water demand over the period by 20%. This water demand was being met mostly by groundwater in the Malwa region and with groundwater and some lift irrigation from streams with return flow in the Vindhya region. In the Nimar region the component of lift irrigation is higher because of the enhanced flow in the Man river downstream of the Man dam due to seepage under the dam and from the canals. This water demand has to be compared with the average annual water being precipitated on the total geographical area which is about 3000 million cubic meters. Thus the water demand for irrigation in 2005 was 44% of the total annual precipitation and was mostly met from groundwater. Estimations done in hard rock areas show that natural recharge is never more than 11% of the total annual rainfall. Thus, the current level of extraction being four times higher, the groundwater aquifers have become over exploited and the surface storages too are not capable of meeting this theoretical demand leading to water stress and lower yields of crops in the Rabi season in recent years.
Thus a "tragedy of the commons" has been created. Normally in the case of a non-renewable resource the user has to trade off resource use between successive time periods to optimise production in the long run because more the resource is used the more is its extraction cost and more is its scarcity value. The water in the deep confined aquifers in dry hard rock regions is akin to a non-renewable resource because it has accumulated over thousands of years from the minimal amount of percolation into these aquifers that has taken place annually. Thus when this water is pumped out in large quantities in a particular year far in excess of the minimal recharge that is taking place, the water level goes down and in the next year the extraction cost will be greater and this will go on increasing with time. However, in a situation in which this extraction cost was rendered close to zero by electricity being made free and the water itself being a common property resource did not have any price attached to it and neither did its depletion result in a scarcity value, all the farmers tended to use as much water as they could get as in the long run the water would be finished even if a few farmers adopted a more conservationist approach.
Situations in which there are public goods with no well defined property rights as with groundwater either the state has to step in to regulate its use through fiscal or legal measures or there has to be communitarian command over its use as markets fail. However in this case the state too failed by adopting the opposite stance of subsidising the greater use of water.
The crunch came at the turn of the century when the Madhya Pradesh government as part of the conditions for getting a loan from the Asian Development Bank for restructuring its power sector had to begin charging farmers for electricity supplied to them at cost plus profit rates determined by the Madhya Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission. The ADB imposed this fiscal prudence on the government so as to ensure that it could pay back the loan that was being given. The prolonged bleeding of the Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board due to the free power supplied earlier had hampered the addition of new power generation capacity and so the quantity and quality of power supplied to rural areas also began to suffer. The shortfall had to be made up by purchasing power from the national grid and this too pushed up the cost of electricity further. In additon to this heavy withdrawals of water had led to the severe depletion of the confined aquifers and many of the tubewells had either gone dry or were yielding much less water. Most of the blocks in Western Madhya Pradesh were declared to be either critical or over exploited in terms of ground water resources.
On the surface water utilisation front too there are problems. There are a number of points on which the operation of the Man Dam as it stands today can be critiqued -
1. Inadequate and Poorly Constructed Canal Network
Contrary to the design the Right Bank Canal Network has been developed more than the Left Bank Canal Network. In both cases the main canals, the distributaries and the minors have been built less than the design length. Moreover the construction of the canals is very poor and in many stretches the proper trapezoidal section and dimensions as per the designs have not been adopted, even for the main canal. Moreover, even though it is claimed in the final cost estimate report that 18.42 km length of the main canal has been lined this is not the case in reality as only those sections of the main canal that have been constructed above the ground level through earth filling to maintain the level have been lined and this length is far less. In fact the total final cost of lining is a meagre Rs 2.7 crores. This together has led to the main canals being unable to take the design flows and consequently the actual flow in the Left Bank Canal varies between 2 - 3 cubic meters per second and that in the Right Bank Canal between 3 - 6 cumecs.
2. Seepage and Waterlogging
The Water and Power Consultancy Services (WAPCOS) was engaged by the Madhya Pradesh Government to study the problems that might beset the canal network in the form of seepage given the kind of soil through which the canals were to pass and suggest remedies. The report of WAPCOS submitted in 1980 assumes the following estimates for losses -
1. Lined System
a) Main Canal and Branches - 4 cusecs/million sq. ft.
b) Distribution System - 6 cusecs/million sq. ft.
2. Unlined System
a) Main Canal and Branches - 15 cusecs/million sq. ft.
b) Distribution System - 20 cusecs/million sq. ft.
The costs are then worked out for the canal system for different scenarios of unlined and lined systems. This is done by estimating the area of command for each scenario which goes on increasing as the system is progressively lined. Consequently even though the cost of lining goes up the cost per hectare comes down as the increase in the command area due to lining more than offsets the increased cost of lining as follows -
1. Wholly Unlined - Rs 13,675/Ha
2. Main Canals and Branches Lined- Rs 12,380/Ha
3. Lining upto 40 Ha blocks Rs 11,033/Ha
4. Lining upto 8 Ha blocks Rs 10,607/Ha
The Detailed Project Report of the Man Dam goes on to say on the basis of this - " In view of this and the recommendations of the World Bank in their Staff Appraisal Report no. 3260-IN of February, 1981, lining of the whole canals system upto 5 to 8 Ha blocks is proposed in the Man Project." Contrary to this, as mentioned earlier, only a small part of the main canals have been lined and so huge seepage losses are taking place. So great are these losses, given the poor construction of the canals, that as soon as the main canals are charged the drainage nullahs begin to flow with seepage water and they continue to do so throughout the irrigation season. This huge amount of water then flows to the tanks that have been constructred in the command area and overflows their waste weirs and finally reaches the Man river unutilised downstream of the dam.
Naturally the command area has shrunk considerably as there is not enough water flowing in the canals and in the 2007-08 season the "Elan" was for only 5000 Ha or one third of the design command. The actual irrigation took place in only 2765 Ha in 15 villages by the Right Bank Canal and 2153 Ha in 14 villages by the Left Bank Canal for a total of 4918 Ha. This in addition to the irrigation from water taken from the distributaries through field channels also includes the irrigation done from the seepage water collected in tanks. The incompleteness of the canal network and the meagre flow in the main canal itself, depleted by seepage, has led to the farmers using their own means to lift water from the canals quite audaciously as shown in the picture below where a pump has been installed by a farmer on the canal regulatory structure itself.
Moreover, the heavy seepage has also led to waterlogging in several farm plots close to the main canals. A survey was conducted in the 2007-08 irrigation season of the ways in which water was being drawn by the farmers and the number of farmers who had been affected by seepage. This revealed that there are considerable problems with regard to drawal of water from the canals what with drawal by motor pumps and siphons exceeding by 80.8% that being supplied directly. There are also a high number of farmers affected by waterlogging due to seepage. The proportion is as high as 30.1%. These farmers have had to either abandon this land or construct drainage channels to divert the seepage water. At least a thousand hectares or so of land is so affected by seepage and despite several petitions given by the affected people to the administration, no remedial action has been taken.
Not surprisingly there is tremendous competition for canal water towards the lower reaches where the flow becomes very low due to seepages and unauthorised drawals higher up. Regulatory structures have been broken by the farmers and they draw water at will as shown in the picture below where villagers have constructed temporary bunds on the canal to divert water into their distributaries at the cost of villagers downstream. These villagers maintain a day and night vigil at this point to ensure that villagers downstream do not break their bunds.
3. Unsuitability of Command for Flood Irrigation
60.2% of the command area consists of land that is unsuitable for flood irrigation without extensive land levelling and bunding work and yet the project was sanctioned without any provision in the budget for such land levelling work. In fact in addition to this considerable length of drainage channels also need to be built but this finds only cursory mention and a provision of a paltry Rs 9.42 lakhs in the original DPR of 1982. However, later this absurdly low provision also has been done away with in the final cost estimate of 2004. This omission has obviously been done to keep down the costs of the project and artificially improve the cost benefit ratio. Costs of afforestation and soil conservation in the catchment have also been ignored and the oustees of the dam have been denied proper rehabilitation. All these economisations have added to the problems of the dam as the silt load has gone up and the oustees have not only remained in the submergence area to practise drawdown agriculture but have also engaged in agitation and litigation under the banner of the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Thus, here the whole question of the appropriate method by which to ensure the presence of soil moisture in most of the lands in the command area during the Rabi season comes to the fore. Given that the final cost of the project in 2004 was Rs 176.75 crores (as compared to the design cost in 1982 of Rs 35.94 crores) and the additional irrigation achieved is only 4000 Ha (5000 Ha minus the 1000 Ha lost to waterlogging), the cost per hectare of irrigation provided turns out to be a whopping - Rs 4,41,875. This has to be compared with the alternative of the watershed plus approach which can ensure soil moisture for rabi cultivation at a cost of Rs 12,000 per hectare only, apart from social and environmental benefits of communitarian soil and water conservation work.
Thus prima facie it can safely be said that there is neither water nor governance in the Man River basin both with respect to surface and ground water.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Dithering Between Climate Change and Corporate Greed
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for 2009 has been jointly awarded to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson and this reflects the utter confusion that mainstream economics is in at the moment. However, more of that later because first it must be noted that Elinor Ostrom is not only the first woman to get the Economics prize but what is more significant is that she is primarily a political scientist and so becomes the first person not beholden to either the Neo-Classical or Neo-Keynesian schools of economics and one who is distinctly not a mathematician constructing esoteric models, to have won the prize. Addressing the vexatious problem of managing common pool natural resources sustainably she has stressed on the importance of collective community action at the grassroots level to achieve this. Her theoretical and empirical work has strongly supported the promotion of grassroots community action in the developing world for natural resource management which not only improves livelihood options for the poor but also conserves the environment and mitigates climate change. Thus even without being an economist she has had a tremendous influence in one of the newer fields of economics - natural resource and environmental economics and it is for this that she has been given the prize. The first environmental economist and the only one before Ostrom to have got the Nobel Memorial Prize was Ronald Coase in 1991. He got it for his influential work advocating the creation of artificial markets for environmental goods or bads which are not normally traded due to the difficulty in assigning property rights to these public goods or bads. Basically what he said was that if there is a factory that is polluting a river which is affecting people living downstream then all the government has to do is assign property rights to pollution or non-pollution and then the polluter and non-polluter will work out an equilibrium agreement whereby both along with the environment will win in the end. This is the theory that with later sophistications has come to form the theoretical basis of the carbon trading mechanism that has been put in place through the Kyoto protocol. However, as has become evident this is too simplistic a theory and the real life downside of all market trading in which there is a lack of proper information, power of monopolies and downright scamming (the european carbon markets have been taken for a ride by scamsters for billions of dollars) apart from the reluctance of governments to assign proper prices to environmental bads has meant that overall it has not been as effective as it was touted to be. That is why Ostrom's work on collective action has gained in influence in recent years as realisation is dawning that collective action to protect and regenerate forests, soil and water along with promotion of organic agriculture is a better way out of the environmental and social mess that humans find themselves in at present. However, from a Marxist perspective, Ostrom's work is still deficient because it does not address the huge problem of the modern state not allowing collective action to flourish beyond the point where it begins to threaten its existence and the highly resource extractive modern developmental paradigm. Nevertheless Ostrom remains the most prominent theoretical cheerleader for grassroots collective action and so her getting the award is to be welcomed. Especially as it also implies an acknowledgement from the establishment of the value of traditional communitarian livelihoods of the tribals.
In stark contrast Williamson, the other awardee, is concerned with perfecting corporate governance mechanisms within a firmly Neo-Classical framework and seems to have got the prize due to the tremendous attention that has been focussed over the past year or two on the disastrous failure of corporate governance in Wall Street which has landed everyone in a rather hot and sticky soup. Thus, the mainstream economic fraternity seems unable to decide on which way to tread faced as it is with climate change on the one hand and corporate greed on the other, which both have together pulled the rug from under its feet rather rudely. Lets hope that out of this doubt and confusion will emerge wisdom.
In stark contrast Williamson, the other awardee, is concerned with perfecting corporate governance mechanisms within a firmly Neo-Classical framework and seems to have got the prize due to the tremendous attention that has been focussed over the past year or two on the disastrous failure of corporate governance in Wall Street which has landed everyone in a rather hot and sticky soup. Thus, the mainstream economic fraternity seems unable to decide on which way to tread faced as it is with climate change on the one hand and corporate greed on the other, which both have together pulled the rug from under its feet rather rudely. Lets hope that out of this doubt and confusion will emerge wisdom.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Anarchism as a Solution for Climate Change
The big debate regarding climate change hinges around whether or not consumption should be reduced. The proponents of economic growth aver that it is possible to use technology to reduce the production of green house gases while increasing the rate of energy use that is going on presently. That is if newer technology were developed that uses energy that is considerably cleaner and so produces less green house gases then economic growth would continue. Otherwise if economic growth slows down due to a cutback in energy use then there will be recession leading to unemployment and civil strife.
Others argue that the present mode of development itself is a resource guzzling one and it devours all kinds of resources not just energy which are mostly non-renewable. Moreover, the production system is highly centralised and so is the distribution system leading to inefficiencies in the form of energy wasted in transporting resources to the production sites and the products to the consumption sites. Centralisation also means that there are huge inequalities and inequities which have to be maintained through the use of force by a centralised state.
Anarchists say that a centralised state must necessarily be unjust however well its laws may be codified because of a lack of information arising from the distance between the rulers and the ruled. Justice here means that when some people like the Bhil adivasis are lesser ordained with skills in a particular situation then it is the responsibility of those that are better ordained to ensure that the former do not suffer due to their handicap. and if that is not possible then the system itself should be scrapped. Thus, anarchism posits a stateless and communitarian system based on trust and justice. Even if dismantling the present system may involve pain, if the people who are in power now decide to bear most of this pain by cutting down drastically on their own over consumption then the poor will not suffer so much.
Consequently instead of being concerned with only Climate Change, which is after all only a manifestation of a larger unjust and unsustainable system, Blog Action Day, must press for a more decentralised and participative developmental paradigm.
Others argue that the present mode of development itself is a resource guzzling one and it devours all kinds of resources not just energy which are mostly non-renewable. Moreover, the production system is highly centralised and so is the distribution system leading to inefficiencies in the form of energy wasted in transporting resources to the production sites and the products to the consumption sites. Centralisation also means that there are huge inequalities and inequities which have to be maintained through the use of force by a centralised state.
Anarchists say that a centralised state must necessarily be unjust however well its laws may be codified because of a lack of information arising from the distance between the rulers and the ruled. Justice here means that when some people like the Bhil adivasis are lesser ordained with skills in a particular situation then it is the responsibility of those that are better ordained to ensure that the former do not suffer due to their handicap. and if that is not possible then the system itself should be scrapped. Thus, anarchism posits a stateless and communitarian system based on trust and justice. Even if dismantling the present system may involve pain, if the people who are in power now decide to bear most of this pain by cutting down drastically on their own over consumption then the poor will not suffer so much.
Consequently instead of being concerned with only Climate Change, which is after all only a manifestation of a larger unjust and unsustainable system, Blog Action Day, must press for a more decentralised and participative developmental paradigm.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Community Involvement and Climate Change
Forests are the best carbon sequestering agents. The forests have to be growing ones and so require proper management so that older trees are cut down and there is a continuously growing stock of trees and second and third storey plants and grasses.Moreover such forests are also great conservers of soil and water. In a densely populated country like India even remote forested areas have human habitation. Once densely forested areas have in fact become denuded due to over exploitation for both commercial and domestic needs. Thus the conservation and regeneration of these forests requires active community participation. Where communities have actively engaged in the task of protecting forests and spent time and energy in doing so, as in the case of the women of Attha village in Alirajpur district shown below, the results in terms of conserved timber, grass, soil and water and carbon sequestration are immense.
This concept has now gained acceptance in the establishment also as one of the joint winners of The Noble Memorial Prize in Economics for 2009 is Elinor Ostrom. It must be noted that Elinor Ostrom is not only the first woman to get the Economics Nobel prize but what is more significant is that she is primarily a political scientist and so becomes the first person not beholden to either the Neo-Classical or Neo-Keynesian schools of economics and one who is distinctly not a mathematician constructing models, to have won the prize. Addressing the vexatious problem of managing common pool natural resources sustainably she has stressed on the importance of collective community action at the grassroots level to achieve this. Thus even without being an economist she has had a tremendous influence in one of the newer fields of economics - natural resource and environmental economics and it is for this that she has been given the prize. The first environmental economist and the only one before Ostrom to have got the Nobel memorial prize was Ronald Coase in 1991. He got it for his influential work advocating the creation of artificial markets for environmental goods or bads which are not normally traded due to the difficulty in assigning property rights to these public goods or bads. Basically what he said was that if there is a factory that is polluting a river which is affecting people living downstream then all the government has to do is assign property rights to pollution or non-pollution and then the polluter and non-polluter will work out an equilibrium agreement whereby both along with the environment will win in the end. This is the theory that with later sophistications has come to form the theoretical basis of the carbon trading mechanism that has been put in place through the Kyoto protocol. However, as has become evident this is too simplistic a theory and the real life downside of all market trading in which there is a lack of proper information, power of monopolies and downright scamming (the European carbon markets have been taken for a ride by scamsters for billions of dollars) apart from the reluctance of governments to assign proper prices to environmental bads, has meant that overall it has not been as effective as it was touted to be. That is why Ostrom's work on collective action has gained in influence in recent years as realisation is dawning that collective action to protect and regenerate forests, soil and water along with promotion of organic agriculture is a better way out of the environmental and social mess that humans find themselves in at present. However, from a Marxist perspective Ostrom's work is still deficient because it does not address the huge problem of the modern state not allowing collective action to flourish beyond the point where it begins to threaten its existence and also that of the highly resource extractive modern developmental paradigm. Nevertheless Ostrom remains the most prominent theoretical cheerleader for grassroots collective action and so her getting the award is to be welcomed at a time when such action has become imperative for mitigating climate change.
In stark contrast Oliver Williamson, the other awardee, is concerned with perfecting corporate governance mechanisms within a firmly Neo-Classical framework and seems to have got the prize due to the tremendous attention that has been focussed over the past year or two on the disastrous failure of corporate governance in Wall Street which has landed everyone in a rather hot and sticky soup. Thus the mainstream economic fraternity seems unable to decide which way to tread faced with climate change on the one hand and corporate greed on the other, both of which have together pulled the rug from under its feet rather rudely. Lets hope that out of this doubt and confusion will emerge some wisdom in addressing the problem of climate change.
This concept has now gained acceptance in the establishment also as one of the joint winners of The Noble Memorial Prize in Economics for 2009 is Elinor Ostrom. It must be noted that Elinor Ostrom is not only the first woman to get the Economics Nobel prize but what is more significant is that she is primarily a political scientist and so becomes the first person not beholden to either the Neo-Classical or Neo-Keynesian schools of economics and one who is distinctly not a mathematician constructing models, to have won the prize. Addressing the vexatious problem of managing common pool natural resources sustainably she has stressed on the importance of collective community action at the grassroots level to achieve this. Thus even without being an economist she has had a tremendous influence in one of the newer fields of economics - natural resource and environmental economics and it is for this that she has been given the prize. The first environmental economist and the only one before Ostrom to have got the Nobel memorial prize was Ronald Coase in 1991. He got it for his influential work advocating the creation of artificial markets for environmental goods or bads which are not normally traded due to the difficulty in assigning property rights to these public goods or bads. Basically what he said was that if there is a factory that is polluting a river which is affecting people living downstream then all the government has to do is assign property rights to pollution or non-pollution and then the polluter and non-polluter will work out an equilibrium agreement whereby both along with the environment will win in the end. This is the theory that with later sophistications has come to form the theoretical basis of the carbon trading mechanism that has been put in place through the Kyoto protocol. However, as has become evident this is too simplistic a theory and the real life downside of all market trading in which there is a lack of proper information, power of monopolies and downright scamming (the European carbon markets have been taken for a ride by scamsters for billions of dollars) apart from the reluctance of governments to assign proper prices to environmental bads, has meant that overall it has not been as effective as it was touted to be. That is why Ostrom's work on collective action has gained in influence in recent years as realisation is dawning that collective action to protect and regenerate forests, soil and water along with promotion of organic agriculture is a better way out of the environmental and social mess that humans find themselves in at present. However, from a Marxist perspective Ostrom's work is still deficient because it does not address the huge problem of the modern state not allowing collective action to flourish beyond the point where it begins to threaten its existence and also that of the highly resource extractive modern developmental paradigm. Nevertheless Ostrom remains the most prominent theoretical cheerleader for grassroots collective action and so her getting the award is to be welcomed at a time when such action has become imperative for mitigating climate change.
In stark contrast Oliver Williamson, the other awardee, is concerned with perfecting corporate governance mechanisms within a firmly Neo-Classical framework and seems to have got the prize due to the tremendous attention that has been focussed over the past year or two on the disastrous failure of corporate governance in Wall Street which has landed everyone in a rather hot and sticky soup. Thus the mainstream economic fraternity seems unable to decide which way to tread faced with climate change on the one hand and corporate greed on the other, both of which have together pulled the rug from under its feet rather rudely. Lets hope that out of this doubt and confusion will emerge some wisdom in addressing the problem of climate change.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Remembering Gandhi
Today is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's one hundred and fortieth birth anniversary. Gandhi has much to say to us in the fight against global warming and climate change. His basic dictum that "the earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed" has become even more relevant today than it was in his time. His suggestion that self sufficient village republics should be the primary focus of human development, though difficult to actualise today, gives some pointers towards how agriculture at least should be organised. Mechanised and chemical agriculture has become a liability at present as described in detail in the earlier post yesterday and so an alternative has to be sought. This alternative involves a combination of forest, soil and moisture conservation work with bio-diverse organic agriculture. Such an alternative can succeed only if it is practised by small communities by pooling in their human and natural resources. A sustainable internal input agriculture on these lines is more energy efficient and also results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than modern external input agriculture. A schematic diagram of sustainable agriculture is shown in the figure below.
Research has shown that organic arable production is about 35% more energy efficient, and organic dairy production about 74% more efficient per unit of output than non-organic production. Organic farming, by definition, prohibits the use of synthetic fertilizer, using instead a limited amount per hectare of organic matter and knowledge of soil biology. Since the pH of the soil is not disrupted by organic farming techniques, the use of energy–intensive lime is also minimal or non-existent; again contributing to lower CH4 and CO2 emissions compared to modern external input farming techniques. The use of organic matter also increases carbon content in the soil, storing up to 75 kgs of carbon per hectare per year. Organic farming uses nitrogen-fixing plants as cover crops and during crop rotation, which help to fix nitrogen in the soil rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. And finally, organic farming techniques maintain soil micro-organisms and so help in oxidizing atmospheric methane. The combined effect of all the different benefits of organic farming produces a Global Warming Potential of 36% that of modern external input farming.
Simultaneously this sustainable system being labour intensive and respectful of nature will take care of the problems of livelihood creation and conservation of natural resources and create an “economy of permanence” as outlined by the Gandhian environmental economist J. C. Kumarappa . This system respects both nature and the human being and prioritises leisurely decentralised communitarian living based on the collective local consumption and husbanding of renewable resources over the frenetic non-renewable resource guzzling pulls of globalised market led modern agriculture. Worldwide there is a burgeoning movement in ecological farming combined with local area watershed development that has come up as a reaction to the deleterious effects of modern agriculture. This movement is theoretically underpinned by the green ideology of development in harmony with nature and at its own leisurely pace. Many localised efforts have thrown up viable solutions to the intransigent problems created by unsustainable agricultural production. In the western Madhya Pradesh region too there have been successful localised experiments in this sphere for the development of sustainable dry-land agriculture backed up by local area watershed development involving the poor in project formulation and implementation by various NGOs like Samaj Pragati Sahayog, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme and Sampark and also government institutions like the Wheat Research Station of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research at Indore. The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has initiated a small people's movement in this direction. There are also many efforts being made by individual farmers to tackle the problem of unsustainability of modern agriculture and they are making innovative switches to sustainability on their own. What is needed now is an overarching mass movement to give direction to research, action and advocacy for the establishment of an environmentally, economically and socially just system of agriculture in the region that will simultaneously address the problem of global warming. The schematic diagram of the activities of this movement and the expected outcome is given below.
Research has shown that organic arable production is about 35% more energy efficient, and organic dairy production about 74% more efficient per unit of output than non-organic production. Organic farming, by definition, prohibits the use of synthetic fertilizer, using instead a limited amount per hectare of organic matter and knowledge of soil biology. Since the pH of the soil is not disrupted by organic farming techniques, the use of energy–intensive lime is also minimal or non-existent; again contributing to lower CH4 and CO2 emissions compared to modern external input farming techniques. The use of organic matter also increases carbon content in the soil, storing up to 75 kgs of carbon per hectare per year. Organic farming uses nitrogen-fixing plants as cover crops and during crop rotation, which help to fix nitrogen in the soil rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. And finally, organic farming techniques maintain soil micro-organisms and so help in oxidizing atmospheric methane. The combined effect of all the different benefits of organic farming produces a Global Warming Potential of 36% that of modern external input farming.
Simultaneously this sustainable system being labour intensive and respectful of nature will take care of the problems of livelihood creation and conservation of natural resources and create an “economy of permanence” as outlined by the Gandhian environmental economist J. C. Kumarappa . This system respects both nature and the human being and prioritises leisurely decentralised communitarian living based on the collective local consumption and husbanding of renewable resources over the frenetic non-renewable resource guzzling pulls of globalised market led modern agriculture. Worldwide there is a burgeoning movement in ecological farming combined with local area watershed development that has come up as a reaction to the deleterious effects of modern agriculture. This movement is theoretically underpinned by the green ideology of development in harmony with nature and at its own leisurely pace. Many localised efforts have thrown up viable solutions to the intransigent problems created by unsustainable agricultural production. In the western Madhya Pradesh region too there have been successful localised experiments in this sphere for the development of sustainable dry-land agriculture backed up by local area watershed development involving the poor in project formulation and implementation by various NGOs like Samaj Pragati Sahayog, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme and Sampark and also government institutions like the Wheat Research Station of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research at Indore. The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has initiated a small people's movement in this direction. There are also many efforts being made by individual farmers to tackle the problem of unsustainability of modern agriculture and they are making innovative switches to sustainability on their own. What is needed now is an overarching mass movement to give direction to research, action and advocacy for the establishment of an environmentally, economically and socially just system of agriculture in the region that will simultaneously address the problem of global warming. The schematic diagram of the activities of this movement and the expected outcome is given below.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Mostly Gas!
Agriculture as it is mostly practised today is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. It contributes 14% and is fourth after electricity and heat generation (22%), land use change and forestry (18%)and transport (18%). The main sources are methane from livestock, nitrous oxide from agricultural soils, and carbon dioxide - primarily from energy and fuel use. Importantly, these emissions often also represent the loss of valuable resources from farming systems - and therefore opportunities for enhancing productivity and livelihood opportunities. The main sources of agricultural green house gases arising from modern agriculutre are as follows -
1. Carbon dioxide emissions from the heavy use of gasoline-powered agricultural machinery that modern techniques require.
2. Carbon dioxide emissions from the deforestation and burning of land to convert it for intensive agriculture.
3. Loss of soil and forests as carbon sinks. Natural vegetation acts as a huge reservoir, soaking up atmospheric carbon, as does the soil. Destruction of the plants and the disruption of the soil that occurs when land is converted to agriculture decrease the availability of these sinks, meaning more carbon is left in the atmosphere. Modern farming techniques also increase soil erosion and the leaching of soil nutrients, which decrease the use of soil as a sink. Rough estimates are that man-made changes in land-use have produced a cumulative global loss of carbon from the land of about 200 thousand million tonnes.
4. The use of synthetic fertilizer releases huge amounts of Nitrous Oxide(N2O) – it is the single largest source of N2O emissions in the world. The application of fertilizers accounts for 36% of the total emissions of N2O. According to the IPCC, if fertilizer applications are doubled, N2O emissions will double, all other factors being equal. Since regular applications of fertilizer are an integral part of modern farming, and as the developing countries adopt more of these industrialized agricultural practices, this is a dangerous situation. Remembering that N2O has over 300 times the warming potential of CO2 and can stay in the atmosphere for about 120 years, the effect on global warming could be devastating.
5. Methane (CH4) released from animals and manure piles. Manure storage and treatment systems equal 9% of total CH4 emissions and 31% CH4 emissions from the agricultural sector. Most of the CH4 emissions come from the liquid-based manure management systems that are commonly found in modern livestock farms with large populations of animals.
Apart from this the indirect contributions of modern farming are even greater. The manufacture of synthetic fertilizer is one of the most intensive energy processes in the chemical industry, which itself is a primary energy user globally. Add into this the need for the fertilizer to be transported to the farmer, and we find that synthetic fertilizer is the largest producer of CO2 emissions in the agricultural industry – even considering all the tractors and equipment belching out exhaust fumes. The use of synthetic fertilizer tends to acidify the soil, which then requires the application of lime to balance the pH; manufacture of lime also produces CO2 emissions. Finally, synthetic fertilizers suppress the soil’s natural micro-organisms that break down methane in the atmosphere, which leads to higher levels of methane than otherwise. The soil micro-organisms are largely responsible for controlling soil temperature and water run-off, production of vitamins, minerals and a host of plant hormones, not to mention that soil micro-organisms provide much of a plant’s immune system so reducing their population is harmful. Thus modern agriculture is unsustainable from the point of view of its harmful contribution to global warming.
Simultaneously economically too this modern agriculture is proving to be unsustainable. The main problem with modern artificial input agriculture is that there is a natural limit to the artificial inputs that the soil can take and so the amount of fertilisers, pesticides and water to be applied goes on increasing while the yields go on falling and sometimes the crop fails altogether. Consequently the economic costs of providing the inputs go on increasing while the realisation of the value of agricultural products in the market does not keep pace with this rise in input costs. Inevitably, in the case of India, this leads to farmers falling into the clutches of moneylenders and becoming enmeshed in spiralling debt. Matters have been compounded by the reduction in the availability of cheap institutionalised credit and various kinds of government subsidies for fertilisers, water, diesel and electricity in recent years. The economic crisis in agriculture has now assumed serious proportions with thousands upon thousands of farmers having committed suicides, sold their lands, houses and even their kidneys.
Another problem arising from the adoption of modern agriculture has been that of the increasing scarcity of water. Most of the water needed for irrigation in India is being provided by groundwater extraction and this has led to a situation of "water mining" wherein water collected in the deep confined aquifers over hundreds of thousands of years have been used up in the space of a decade and large parts of the country are facing a ground water drought from the late nineteen nineties onwards. Presently there is less and less ground water available for not only irrigation but also for drinking and the cost of its extraction is continually going up.
Finally modern agriculture drastically reduces the agricultural bio-diversity with its stress on mono-cultures. For example in the western Madhya Pradesh region there has been a reduction in the acreage under coarser cereals and pulses which have been replaced by soybean. This combined with the greater monetisation of the rural economy has forced the marginal adivasi farmers to buy their food from the market instead of getting it cheaply from their farms and this has reduced their nutritional levels well below healthy standards. Thus they too have become sufferers of the problem of chronic hunger that today engulfs the poor in much of the developing world and even in the developed countries because the shrinking of livelihood opportunities has meant that they are not able to earn enough to buy wholesome and adequate food. Thus, it would not be wrong to say that modern agriculture mostly produces gas these days!
1. Carbon dioxide emissions from the heavy use of gasoline-powered agricultural machinery that modern techniques require.
2. Carbon dioxide emissions from the deforestation and burning of land to convert it for intensive agriculture.
3. Loss of soil and forests as carbon sinks. Natural vegetation acts as a huge reservoir, soaking up atmospheric carbon, as does the soil. Destruction of the plants and the disruption of the soil that occurs when land is converted to agriculture decrease the availability of these sinks, meaning more carbon is left in the atmosphere. Modern farming techniques also increase soil erosion and the leaching of soil nutrients, which decrease the use of soil as a sink. Rough estimates are that man-made changes in land-use have produced a cumulative global loss of carbon from the land of about 200 thousand million tonnes.
4. The use of synthetic fertilizer releases huge amounts of Nitrous Oxide(N2O) – it is the single largest source of N2O emissions in the world. The application of fertilizers accounts for 36% of the total emissions of N2O. According to the IPCC, if fertilizer applications are doubled, N2O emissions will double, all other factors being equal. Since regular applications of fertilizer are an integral part of modern farming, and as the developing countries adopt more of these industrialized agricultural practices, this is a dangerous situation. Remembering that N2O has over 300 times the warming potential of CO2 and can stay in the atmosphere for about 120 years, the effect on global warming could be devastating.
5. Methane (CH4) released from animals and manure piles. Manure storage and treatment systems equal 9% of total CH4 emissions and 31% CH4 emissions from the agricultural sector. Most of the CH4 emissions come from the liquid-based manure management systems that are commonly found in modern livestock farms with large populations of animals.
Apart from this the indirect contributions of modern farming are even greater. The manufacture of synthetic fertilizer is one of the most intensive energy processes in the chemical industry, which itself is a primary energy user globally. Add into this the need for the fertilizer to be transported to the farmer, and we find that synthetic fertilizer is the largest producer of CO2 emissions in the agricultural industry – even considering all the tractors and equipment belching out exhaust fumes. The use of synthetic fertilizer tends to acidify the soil, which then requires the application of lime to balance the pH; manufacture of lime also produces CO2 emissions. Finally, synthetic fertilizers suppress the soil’s natural micro-organisms that break down methane in the atmosphere, which leads to higher levels of methane than otherwise. The soil micro-organisms are largely responsible for controlling soil temperature and water run-off, production of vitamins, minerals and a host of plant hormones, not to mention that soil micro-organisms provide much of a plant’s immune system so reducing their population is harmful. Thus modern agriculture is unsustainable from the point of view of its harmful contribution to global warming.
Simultaneously economically too this modern agriculture is proving to be unsustainable. The main problem with modern artificial input agriculture is that there is a natural limit to the artificial inputs that the soil can take and so the amount of fertilisers, pesticides and water to be applied goes on increasing while the yields go on falling and sometimes the crop fails altogether. Consequently the economic costs of providing the inputs go on increasing while the realisation of the value of agricultural products in the market does not keep pace with this rise in input costs. Inevitably, in the case of India, this leads to farmers falling into the clutches of moneylenders and becoming enmeshed in spiralling debt. Matters have been compounded by the reduction in the availability of cheap institutionalised credit and various kinds of government subsidies for fertilisers, water, diesel and electricity in recent years. The economic crisis in agriculture has now assumed serious proportions with thousands upon thousands of farmers having committed suicides, sold their lands, houses and even their kidneys.
Another problem arising from the adoption of modern agriculture has been that of the increasing scarcity of water. Most of the water needed for irrigation in India is being provided by groundwater extraction and this has led to a situation of "water mining" wherein water collected in the deep confined aquifers over hundreds of thousands of years have been used up in the space of a decade and large parts of the country are facing a ground water drought from the late nineteen nineties onwards. Presently there is less and less ground water available for not only irrigation but also for drinking and the cost of its extraction is continually going up.
Finally modern agriculture drastically reduces the agricultural bio-diversity with its stress on mono-cultures. For example in the western Madhya Pradesh region there has been a reduction in the acreage under coarser cereals and pulses which have been replaced by soybean. This combined with the greater monetisation of the rural economy has forced the marginal adivasi farmers to buy their food from the market instead of getting it cheaply from their farms and this has reduced their nutritional levels well below healthy standards. Thus they too have become sufferers of the problem of chronic hunger that today engulfs the poor in much of the developing world and even in the developed countries because the shrinking of livelihood opportunities has meant that they are not able to earn enough to buy wholesome and adequate food. Thus, it would not be wrong to say that modern agriculture mostly produces gas these days!
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