Question : Q. In the context of decarbonizing the economy, discuss the importance of the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage.


Decode the Question:

• In Introduction,  recent developments regarding decarbonizing the economy should be discussed. 
• Discuss the importance of the National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage.
• Provide a suitable conclusion. 

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• Promotion to Electric vehicles in India: The Mission will provide mobility solutions that will bring in significant benefits to the Electric vehicle industry, economy and country. The Mission will recommend and drive the strategies for transformative mobility and Phased Manufacturing Programmes for Electric Vehicles, EV Components and Batteries.
• Solution to Air Pollution in Cities: This mission will help in improving air quality in cities.
• Reducing oil import dependence: It will help in reducing India’s oil import dependence and enhance the uptake of renewable energy and storage solutions.
• Development of domestic manufacturing ecosystem: The Mission will lay down the strategy and roadmap which will enable India to leverage upon its size and scale to develop a competitive domestic manufacturing ecosystem for electric mobility.
• Improve quality of life: It will deliver societal and environmental benefits that will improve quality of life for citizens.
• Employment generation: It will also provide employment opportunities through ‘Make-in-India’ across a range of skills.

Question :

• Start the Introduction with the current situation of climate leading to the need for a renewable revolution . 
• Discuss the role of renewable revolution in helping to mitigate the climate crisis and strengthening energy security.
• Conclude with providing a way forward. 

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As the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ripples across the globe, the response of some nations to the growing energy crisis has been to double down on fossil fuels, pouring billions more dollars into the coal, oil and gas that are deepening the climate emergency.
Meanwhile, all climate indicators continue to break records, forecasting a future of ferocious storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and unliveable temperatures in vast swathes of the planet.
Fossil fuels are not the answer, nor will they ever be. In such a scenario, renewable revolution can help in mitigating the climate crisis and strengthening energy security.

In mitigation of Climate crisis: 
Fossil fuels are the cause of the climate crisis. Renewable energy can limit climate disruption and boost energy security. Renewables are the peace plan of the 21st century. The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity and a liveable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition.
Renewables could supply four-fifths of the world’s electricity by 2050, massively cutting carbon emissions and helping to mitigate climate change.
Mitigating the effects of climate change will require us not only to reduce our future emissions of greenhouse gases but also capture some of the carbon already in the atmosphere.
Renewable energy development helps us achieve the first objective – reducing future emissions.  For example, hydropower instead of traditional fossil fuels has contributed to the avoidance of more than 100 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in the past 50 years alone. That’s roughly equivalent to the total annual carbon footprint of the United States for 20 years.
With increasing amounts of renewable energy penetrating energy markets, the number of avoided emissions will only continue to grow.

Strengthening Energy Security: 
Global geopolitics may threaten energy security. In this vein, renewable energy is considered a potential game changer in energy security. Key geopolitical actors (the United States, Russia, China, Germany, and Denmark) have increased electricity production from renewable energy by a combination of different renewable sources.
Despite any social acceptability issues and negative environmental impacts, renewable energy will help countries become more energy secure. At the same time, they will make themselves more resistant to geopolitical strife and more independent of the vagaries of fossil fuel markets.
While oil and gas prices have reached record price levels, renewables are getting cheaper all the time. The cost of solar energy and batteries has plummeted 85 per cent over the past decade. The cost of wind power fell by 55 per cent. And investment in renewables creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels.
As we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the benefits will be vast, and not just to the climate.
Energy prices will be lower and more predictable, with positive knock-on effects for food and economic security. When energy prices rise, so do the costs of food and all the goods we rely on. So, let us all agree that a rapid renewables revolution is necessary and stop fiddling while our future burns.

Way Forward:
Making renewable energy technology a global public good, including removing intellectual property barriers to technology transfer, improving global access to supply chains for renewable energy technologies, components and raw materials, cutting the red tape that holds up solar and wind projects by making fast-track approvals and more effort to modernise electricity grids are necessary steps.
The world must shift energy subsidies from fossil fuels to protect vulnerable people from energy shocks and invest in a just transition to a sustainable future.
Triple investments in renewables which includes multilateral development banks and development finance institutions, as well as commercial banks is a prerequisite for renewable revolution. For climate action, energy security, and providing clean electricity to the hundreds of millions of people who currently lack it, renewable revolution is a hope.


Source: Indian Express

Question : Q. Discuss the issues around ecological concerns of western ghats. Also analyse the Gadgil Committee recommendations.


Decode the Question:

• Start the Introduction with western ghats and its biodiversity significance. 
• Discuss the issues around ecological concerns of western ghats.
• Highlight the Gadgil Committee recommendations and point out the criticism associated with this report.
• Provide a suitable conclusion.

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• Illegal mining: illegal mining of iron ore in areas around Uttar Kannada. The result of this undocumented mining is iron ore so low in quality that India doesn’t even use it. Sand mining has emerged as a major threat in Kerala. Unsustainable mining has increased vulnerability to landslides, damaged water sources and agriculture, thus negatively affecting the livelihoods of the people living in those areas.

• Deforestation: Along with mining, large scale deforestation is further threatening the environment. Conversion of forest land into agricultural land or for commercial purposes like tourism, illegal logging for timber have had significant negative effects on biodiversity.
• Power projects: In Southern Maharashtra, the districts of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg have been severely impacted both environmentally and socially all due to rampant mining, power projects in the area and polluting industries.
• Livestock grazing: The rise in human settlements has led to the over-exploitation of forest products through activities such as livestock grazing.
• Fish industry: The fish industry also has its own set of problems. Traditional methods such as use of poison and electricity etc are used till date, to easily catch some exotic species. This has reduced the fish population and their availability.
• Monoculture plantation practices: Large scale plantations of Eucalyptus & Acacia that were started in 1980’s have proved this and much more deterioration across the Ghats.
• Hydropower projects: large dam projects in Western Ghats have resulted in environmental and social disruption despite cost benefit analyses and environmental impact assessments being done by the government and companies
• Encroachment by human settlements: Human settlements where legal and/or traditional rights of land ownership occur both within and outside protected areas all across the Western Ghats and represent a significant landscape level threat.

• It designated the entire Western Ghats as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) and, had classified the Western Ghats into Ecologically Sensitive Zones (ESZ) 1, 2 and 3 of which ESZ-1 is high priority, almost all developmental activities (mining, thermal power plants etc) were restricted in it.
• It recommended the establishment of Western Ghats Ecology Authority through a broad-based participatory process.
• It specified that the system of governance of the environment should be a bottom to top approach (right from Gram sabhas) rather than a top to bottom approach.
• It recommended that no new dams based on large scale storage be permitted in Ecologically Sensitive Zone 1 as defined by the Panel. It also called for Establishment of fully empowered Biodiversity Management Committees in all local bodies.

Question :

• Start with the reasoning why floods occur in the Northeast part of India.
• Discuss the climate factors and planning factors responsible for floods.
• Suggest some measures to mitigate the effects of floods.
• Conclude with a suitable note.

• A combination of La Nina in the Pacific and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole in the Indian Ocean has strengthened the winds blowing from the southwest to the northeast (southwesterlies) in the Bay of Bengal.
• These strong monsoon winds in the Bay of Bengal can now carry much more moisture than ever before, in response to global warming. The volume of atmospheric moisture increases with rising temperature because warmer air holds more moisture and for longer.
• These winds dumping rains over Bangladesh and northeast India have been exceptionally strong.

• Poor embankment construction:  These are weak and are regularly breached. Embankments are a temporary solution, and they are as good as their management. Usually when embankments are breached, villages inside embankments (between the river and embankments) are affected and are supposed to be evacuated. But this year, villages lying outside embankments in Darrang district, the very land the embankments were supposed to protect, were engulfed by floods. No preparation is done for such villages.
• Not updated District Disaster Management Plans (DDMP): Ensuring updation of the DDMPs and, more importantly, its practical implementation can help manage floods better. But these are not updated regularly. Only 7 per cent of the districts have updated their disaster management plans (DDMP) until 2020 in Assam. These types of poor planning factors led to diminish the mitigation efforts.

• Strengthen embankments along the Brahmaputra and other rivers: Most embankments built in the 1980s are not strong enough. Since they were temporary measures, the government did not spend on high-specification embankments. These are weak and are regularly breached.
• Dredging of rivers:  increasing the water-holding capacity of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries by dredging may help. This could be done in consultation with all stakeholders. This would also boost and benefit the state’s economy.
• Modern weather stations set up: Centre to set up modern weather stations in the upstream catchment of all dams in the North East and install sirens on river banks near dams. This would alert downstream populations in the event of floods.
• Afforestation and rejuvenation of wetlands: These measures can help to mitigate floods.
• Inclusion of river erosion in the admissible list of calamities: The government should consider the inclusion of river erosion in the admissible list of calamities for availing assistance under the National Disaster Response Fund / State Disaster Response Fund.
• Manpower strengthening: Brahmaputra Board, which has been functional since 1982, does not have enough manpower. It had asked the board to fill up all vacant posts on a priority basis
• Enactment of flood plain zoning bill: The bill envisages the zoning of the flood plain of a river according to flood frequencies and defines the type of use of flood plains.
• Setting up of River Basin Organizations: These would effectively provide immediate, short-term and long-term solutions in addition to the overall development of the river basin.
• River Basin Management Authority: prioritise and enact the River Basin Management Authority for holistic management of water resources of each river basin.
• Integrated basin management system: bring in all the basin-sharing countries on board. For that, interstate relationships, political cooperation and the role of the government are important.

Question : What are the emerging opportunities and threats for efforts to conserve biodiversity in India?

(GS Mains; Paper 3)

Question : Discuss the criteria employed for dispersal of pollutants in marine ecosystems.

(GS Mains; Paper 3)

Question : Describe the principle of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). What are its potential and advantages in India?

(GS Mains; Paper 3)

Question : What do you think should be improved in nature conservation systems and biodiversity of natural ecosystems in addition to just increasing financial outlays on nature conservation policies conducted by government agencies and ministries of the environment?

(GS Mains; Paper -3)
Biodiversity Conservation

Question : “Seeing the trend in Migration to cities and impending climate change there is need for building sustainable cities.”
In the backdrop of above statement, what do you mean by sustainable cities? How these cities should be ready to face the impacts of climate changes? Elaborate with suitable example.

GS MAINS; PAPER 1 & 3
(Urbanisation, Migration, Climate Change)