The Environment of India

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As the oldest civilization in the world, awareness of the environment and ecosystem was part of the psyche of every citizen. Of the five things that every citizen was expected to venerate every day, the environment is one. While many of the ancient values are not ubiquitous among every citizen but they are still prevalent. The Indian Constitution is the only national framework that considers the life of an animal or plant as precious as a human. Ancient practices divided the year into 6 seasons—in modern Indian, the Indian Meteorological Department divides the year into four: winter (mid-December to mid-March), summer (mid-March to May), the South-West monsoon (rains from June to September), and the North-East Monsoon (rains from October to mid-December).

Apart from being home to the largest diversity of races, religions, languages, kingdoms, and sub-cultures, India also has one of the world’s largest biodiversity. India has all the natural features in one country – deserts, the tallest mountains, tropical and temperate forests, swamps, swamps, plains, very long rivers, island archipelagos, wide beaches, etc. According to one source, India has 350 species of mammals, 375 reptiles, 130 amphibians, 20,000 insects, 19,000 varieties of fish, and 1,200 species of fish. It also houses the largest number of cats with tigers, Asiatic lions, leopards, and panthers being the most famous. India has 6% of the world’s flowering species, about 17,000 and 7% of the world’s flora about 45,000 species.

India is divided into eight floristic regions: the Andamans, Malabar, Deccan, Indus Plain, north-Western Himalaya, Ganga Plain, Eastern Himalaya, Assam and the North-East. India is a signatory to the multilateral Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) treaty whose signatories promise to conserve their biodiversity, use it sustainably, and share its benefits equitably.

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India now is home to 70% of the world's tiger population. The tiger census published every 4 years, is an arduous task covering half a million square kilometres where scientists and forest officers have to trek through difficult terrain to ascertain information. They have to compare 350,000 images taken by 26,000 cameras installed in over 50 sanctuaries. The number of protected areas rose from 692 in 2014 to 860 in 2019. The number of community reserves has more than doubled, to 100. According to Management Effectiveness Evaluation of Tiger Reserves (MEETR), an index developed by the government, 42 per cent of the tiger reserves fell in the Very Good management category, 34 per cent in the Good category, 24 per cent in the Fair category while no tiger reserve was rated Poor.

Climate change has been disastrous for most wild beings. Notably, it has played havoc on the majestic Bengal tigers inhabiting the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans separating India and Bangladesh. Rising sea levels have vastly reduced the space bringing these tigers into direct conflict with humans. Rising salinity damages the livers and kidneys of tigers forcing them to become man-eaters.

Climate change in India is induced by many factors ranging from pollution carried from China, waste dumping by rich countries in oceans, an unending appetite of the Indian economy to produce power, mismanagement of power distribution, and use of polluting source of fossil fuels. Acknowledging that “climate change and calamity are major challenges facing the world“ Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi disclosed plans to deal with self-induced climate affecting factors. India wants to generate renewable energy 450 gigawatts(GW) by 2030 up from 136GW in 2020. He said that his government will advance “the target of mixing 20 per cent ethanol” to 2025 and will set up “5,000 compressed bio-gas plants will be set up to turn municipal and agriculture waste into energy.”

In the last 6 years, India has had several small but significant wins on the environment front—“switch over to energy-efficient LED bulbs” reduced carbon emission by 38 million tonnes; use of “modern techniques of irrigation” has reduced the use of pesticides”; adoption of Bharat-VI emission norms in April 2020 to reduce vehicular pollution; India’s installed non-fossil electricity generation capacity has grown to 38%; showing sustained progress to reach Paris Agreement targets ahead of the 2030 target date; and, voluntarily planning to cut its pollution rate by 33-35% by 2030. For all these achievements, he was conferred the 2021 CERAWeek Global Energy & Environment Leadership Award.

India has signed strategic partnerships and agreements with many countries including Russia, France, Denmark, and Sweden. Top US Government special presidential representative on the environment, John Kerry, revealed that he has “put together a small consortium of several countries” and “private sector capital” “that are prepared to help India with some of the finance and transition” in its ambition to “produce 450GW of renewable energy by 2030.”