The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Risks Report 2021 has mentioned environmental degradation as a top long-term risk, followed by climate action failure. Supriya Patil, an environmentalist who works with the social organisation Grow-Trees.com, warns that prolonged climate action failure will lead to debilitating ecological imbalance in the country. She says,” The recent Joshimath crisis and the retreating Kolahoi, the largest glacier of Kashmir Valley’s Jhelum Basin are red flags that must be heeded. They signify the catastrophic consequences of heedless human disruptions to sensitive ecosystems.”
As per the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 60 to 70 per cent of the world’s ecosystem is degrading faster than the recovery rate and in 2021, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) shared that land degradation is among the country’s most urgent environmental problems with close to 30 per cent of its geographical area already affected.
Supriya points out, “Almost all Indian states, according to reports, have recorded an increase in degraded land in the past 15 years. However land is just one component of the environment. Ecological degradation also impacts water, air, biodiversity, wildlife habitats and can lead to floods, land subsidence, extreme weather events and depletion of the ozone layer. We seem to be totally unaware of the aftershocks that deforestation can bring in its wake. Burning fossil fuels, using toxic fertilisers and pesticides, creating more and more landfills, overpopulated urban jungles and heat islands are destabilizing our ecosystems and we cannot repair these ruptures without urgently addressing environmental losses.”
Expanding on the rampant use of pesticides for large-scale food production, he points out how they not only deplete the land but also make our food chain toxic. Loss of biodiversity, green cover and degeneration of environmental markers will also negatively impact the tourism industry, she warns.
Since 2010, Grow-Trees.com has been inspiring individuals and communities to become part of a massive afforestation movement in India and Supriya also suggests other actionable solutions like campaigning for stringent action against illegal dumping, and mainstreaming environmental issues so that it does not take a crisis like Joshimath to wake people up to the cost of irresponsible development.
“The central government has included various green growth programmes in this year’s Union Budget and has allocated over Rs 3,079.4 crores for the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate change and separate funds have also been dedicated to pollution control programmes. Let us hope that now we will see a consolidated thrust towards the achievement of our SDGs and the creation of a greener and more resource efficient economy,” concludes Supriya.
