Rainspotting in Bangalore

Bihar

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:06:26 GMT

In terms of ancient history, Bihar is one of India’s most sophisticated states. The author of the original Ramayana, one of the great Sanskrit epics of India, lived in Ancient Bihar. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of the Republic of India, was from Bihar; Mahatma Gandhi launched the civil disobedience movement against British rule from here.

Yet there is little to be found of this sophistication in the eastern state today. Across the last three censuses (1981, 1991, 2001) it had the lowest human development index of any state surveyed. Literacy rates in that last census were nearly a third below the national average, and even lower than that for women. V.S. Naipaul wrote in his 1964 ‘Area of Darkness’ (a deeply pessimistic work) that it was the place where ‘civilisation ends’. But Bihar is perhaps most prohibited by its dismal figures on energy access: just 75 units consumed per capita, against the national average of 613 units.

There’s a district in Bihar called Bodh Gaya, one of the poorest in this poorest of states. It’s where Buddha sat underneath a tree to achieve enlightenment, and yet the majority of people do not have access to power.

Bihar’s capital Patna reminds me of Dhaka – cycle rickshaws, heat, horns, poverty. Yet India is one of the emerging lead economies of the future, 134th on the Human Development Index of countries, and Bangladesh is 146th. I noticed a man yesterday taking his morning wash at the side of the road, standing lathered in his pants with one hand subtly trying to wash his genitals as people walked one side of him and cars and motorbikes queued the other. Ironically, most of the shops I saw on that short walk sold either high-end travel bags or computer equipment.

Where human and social factors are crippling Bihar, natural forces are also pounding it. Hit by terrible floods in 2007 and 2008 and acute droughts in 2009 and 2010, at least five people are reported to have died of starvation already this year. The monsoon is currently three weeks late, but people are wary: flash floods to drought hit areas last year affected 300,000.

But against all odds, staggering growth is taking place in Bihar: its GDP has increased by over 11% over the last five years. The Bihar Economic Survey of 2010 found that per capita incomes had risen accordingly to almost double their 2004-2005 level. There have been many improvements in road infrastructure, and a progressive and imaginative state policy to reserve 50% of local municipal positions for women is making the first steps in redressing the gender inequalities which were, in the 1990s, the worst of any (surveyed) state in India. Four other states have since followed suit on this policy. It is clear that the people of this beleaguered state are desperate to break out of the cycles of poverty and ‘backward’ labels, but will have a tough time doing so unless there can be a ready and reliable access to power.

And that’s why I’m here. We’ve come to meet a few of the people in Bihar who are fed up of the lack of energy infrastructure, the blotchy and botched supply of electricity, and who are taking matters into their own hands. They’re creating energy for themselves by setting up decentralised systems of generation, and many of them are doing so using renewable energy sources.

The yearly deluge

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:13:30 GMT

The monsoon is here again.

It's not just the volume of water that falls from the skies, but the whole scene that changes. For someone with that English urbanite attitude to weather - that it can be a convenience or an inconvenience, but not really anything of consequence - I am again startled by the difference between the rains of this four-month-season in India, and the rains under which I grew up in London. I'm sluggish, heavy-lidded, and want nothing more than to curl up in the tawny light and sleep and sleep and sleep. The pressure is different and the air is gloomy, and effect is to leave me in a mood as filthy as the drain water which bubbles in the gutters.

Of course, the monsoon has far more serious consequences than this.

Despite India's increasing dominance of IT and technology fields, agriculture still supports 70% of the working population and accounts for around a third of GDP. Indian farms yield two crops a year: the Kharif crop, harvested in autumn, and the Rabi crop, harvested in spring. The former is sown with the first rains of the monsoon, and the latter with the last, making India's agricultural sector extremely vulnerable to their timely and consistent delivery. More than 60% of the cropped area in India still depends solely on apposite monsoon rainfall.

The monsoon of 2009 was the worst in decades, and thousands of farmers committed suicide, faced by insurmountable debts that their failing crops would never be able to pay off. In the state of Chhattisgarh, eastern central India, 1500 farmers killed themselves en masse in April, in despair at the falling water levels. If a farmer's loan is from the government, the debt is written off upon his death, so many men take their own lives as the only way to rid their families of the financial burden. If a loan is from a private money lender, of course, there is no such mercy and the widowed family inherit grief and debt together, with even less capability to pay it off.

We don't know if this is something we should expect to see more of this year. The factors which govern the monsoon arrival and delivery are extremely complex, and still not entirely understood. As a result, it has always been difficult to predict its behaviour with a decent level of accuracy. But scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune (the government body that leads research into monsoon meteorology in India) have calculated that the effects of climate change have already made the monsoon twice as difficult to predict. The general consensus is that there will be an intensification of ‘active’ and ‘break’ events – wetter extremes of weather (‘active’) followed by intense periods of drought (‘break’). These cycles can be with in a single monsoon season, or over a period of years. Last year, 299 of India’s 625 districts were declared as drought-hit. Perversely, 19 states experienced floods.

"This is known as PMF or possible maximum flood, which happens once in 10,000 years," said Geetha Reddy, the Information Minister for Andhra Pradesh, on the rains that hit his state and the neighbouring state of Karnataka.

Climate change is also expected to cause a decrease in the number of monsoon depressions and cyclones, but an increase in the number of cyclones that are severe. In May last year, a severe storm called Cyclone Alia hit the Sundarbans, a impoverished region of tidal mangrove forest spanning the coast of both India and Bangladesh. The harshness of life in this region makes the effects of the storm more difficult to define, but hundreds were killed and more than one million displaced. A year later, there is still no adequate protection or provision for drinking water for these people.

The Indian Meteorological Department has predicted that the rains this year will be normal.

We must not treat our autistic people as if they had an illness to be cured

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:02:37 GMT

A quick break from the usual environmental fare to react to an article that appeared in yesterday's paper. 'Autism and genetics: A breakthrough that sheds light on a medical mystery' relays the research findings of The Autism Genome Project, which has drawn the first link between autism and DNA. The findings are fascinating, and research into autism - a condition that affects so many, but about which comparatively little is known - is sorely needed. In fact, I find it unsurprising that the condition is represented in a person's genetic code. But the article also refers to autism as a 'disturbing behavioural disorder'; a 'developmental illness' based on 'fundamental errors in a patient's genetic code'. It is later inferred that autism is a mental disability.

To suggest that these variations represent an illness that can be treated sits uncomfortably with me, and I'm sure with many others.

My brother was 'diagnosed' as autistic as a child, though has made such adept leaps and bounds to maneuver himself through common society that his condition is now probably best described as Asperger's Syndrome. But I am again falling into using the common vocabulary of affliction which I believe to be inaccurate. I don't believe that a person has autism, but rather is autistic. When a parent grieves on a description of their young child as autistic, much of what is grieved for is the difference between the 'normal' future that is automatically anticipated, and the alternate realities that come with autism. Yet the set of characteristics that we recognise as autism are not an affliction upon a person, have not snatched their future from what it may have been otherwise. They are an integral part of that person, and we must not look to treat it as if it were an illness or disease.

I am not an idiot. I don't romanticise the condition. I realise many things may have been easier for my brother if he was able to seamlessly read others' emotions the way some people can, or as a child hadn't found change so difficult and upsetting. In other words, if he were not autistic. But if his balances were tipped in that direction, perhaps he may not have been able to so effortlessly break the ice in a room full of people as he can, may not have been so entertaining in his painfully accurate imitations, may not have been so kind. If the world had a few more autistic people, as my mum pointed out, it would be a far more peaceful place.

Help does exist in the UK for families looking to adapt to an autistic member, and for autistic people looking to smooth their interactions with society. My brother has received great education and support through the state schooling system in east London, which has taken him from a young boy who, we were told, may never speak, to a young man in a mainstream university with a whole bunch of mates. He has more bloody GCSEs than I do. I think he sometimes wishes he were 'the same as everyone else', which can be heartbreaking, but this is hardly a unique lament for a young person. Social interactions aren't seamless for anybody, despite the widespread conviction that everyone apart from you is having a great time. We're all trying our best, trying to show those ideal characteristics. I still don't know what exactly they are, but I do know this: if such a thing as a normal person exists, then they would be very, very boring.

Greenpeace survey finds radiation 5000 times background levels in Delhi market

Fri, 14 May 2010 11:31:56 GMT

A survey has today uncovered levels of radioactivity up to 5000 times background levels in Mayapuri scrap market, West Delhi, after the area was previously surveyed and declared safe by government authorities.

"The distance between the contamination 'hot spots' that have been discovered today and the people who live and work in Mayapuri is very small, so there is concern as to the effect on their health" said Karuna Raina, nuclear campaigner with Greenpeace India.

The survey found dose rate levels of 200-500 micro-Sv/h in certain areas, meaning that the maximum legal dose for a person in a year could be reached after just two to five hours close to these 'hot spots', Greenpeace said. The level of dose in the residential area was close to normal.

The survey was conducted by Greenpeace radiation experts following the discovery of a cobalt-60 source in the Mayapuri area in early April. The radioactive metal had later been traced to a gamma irradiator in the chemistry department of the University of Delhi, disused since 1985 and auctioned off for scrap in February of this year. Authorities were notified when a scrap worker was admitted to Delhi hospital with symptoms indicating exposure to radiation, including a blackening of the skin and withering of hair and nails. He was the first of eight victims to be admitted to hospital, including one 35-year old scrap worker who later died of multiple organ failure.

The accident has been rated as a Level 4 on the International Atomic Energy Agency's International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, and declared the worst global radiation accident since 2006.

The source of the radioactive metal was later traced to a gamma irradiator at the University of Delhi, imported in 1968 by the Department of Chemistry for use in research. The machine had been out of use since 1985, but still contained cobalt-60 and was stored safely on the premises. In February the university auctioned the machine off for scrap, after which it passed through the hands of several dealers before coming to Mayapuri junk yard. There workers cut into the gamma cell of the machine, unwittingly releasing the radioactive material into the environment. There are over 200 scrap shops in Mayapuri, with networks extending far out of the capital, and the extent of the contamination is now a subject of concern.

On 9th April, eight sources of radiation were removed from the area by authorities and the area declared safe by the Department of Atomic Energy, the nodal authority for radiological affairs. However, officers returned four days later to remove another two sources of Co-60, and a third was collected from the wallet of another scrap shop worker admitted to hospital. By the 5th of May, 16 cobalt 'pencils' had been recovered, and the search again declared over.

"These findings demonstrate the Government's complacency in conducting their radiation surveys," said Raina. "The decontamination process is actually fairly simple, so there is no excuse they can give for not cleaning up the zone properly, and jeopardising the health of the people who live and work in this area."

Cobalt-60 is an artificially-made radioisotope of cobalt with a half-life of 5.27 years. It decays by emission of beta particles and gamma radiation. It is used for industrial and commercial applications including sterilisation of food and spices, and also in radiotherapy in hospitals. Exposure to Co-60 can cause nausea, acute radiation sickness and/or death. If ingested, most cobalt-60 is removed from the body in the faeces, but a small amount is absorbed by the liver, kidneys and bones. Greenpeace say the levels of radiation found today are not high enough to cause radiation sickness, but could cause cancer to develop over a number of years. By that point, it will be impossible to trace the causes back to Co-60 exposure.

The findings are expected to come as a further blow to the proposed Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, which seeks to place a cap on the financial compensation that can be claimed in the case of a nuclear accident. Liability is one of the final hurdles to private US nuclear suppliers, who are keen to be part of India's multi-billion dollar nuclear industry following the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement.

IMAGE: Sudhanshu Malhotra/Greenpeace

India gets rowdy over nuclear liability

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:36:28 GMT

It's a last hurdle before opening India's nuclear power industry to private investors, and proving a far bigger stumbling block than the prime minister imagined. Attempts by the leading Congress party to pass a bill capping the amount victims may claim in the event of a nuclear accident have met with accusations that the government is selling Indian lives for cheap to pander to US corporations.
The Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement of 2008 ended India's period as the pariah of international nuclear commerce, and was proudly viewed by many in India as an indication of democratic respect. The deal opened the door for French and Russian nuclear companies to join India's indigenous nuclear power programme, but both companies are co-owned by their governments and therefore public institutions. Private US companies are now keen to take a slice of India's rapidly growing nuclear industry as it is worth billions of dollars, but the risks involved in the case of a nuclear accident mean insurance schemes are hard to come by. The proposed Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill seeks to cap the operator's liability at $100m, and to exempt any other party from legal responsibility in the case of a nuclear accident. As the operator would be the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, this effectively means that the taxpayer would be both the payer and the payee: the victim and the compensator. US companies are proposed as suppliers in the nuclear commerce chain, though critics of the bill have also pointed out that does not touch on the legal implications of a foreign private operator perhaps coming in in the future.

Beyond the operator's liability of $100m, there is a further government liability of $100m, and a final liability limit of $450m proposed, to be supplied under the Convention for Supplementary Compensation. This is an international pool of money that India must join and contribute to, though there was further confusion last week when it emerged that the CSC required not a cap on liability, but rather a minimum amount that must be paid.

The amount of compensation proposed by India compares unfavorably with international equivalents: the US has a pooled, non-governmental fund of $10.5 billion, and countries such as Germany, Japan and Switzerland have no cap on their liability amounts at all. However, it is more than China and Canada's liability caps, and about equal to that of France.

Liability is a sore issue in the country which witnessed the Bhopal Disaster, an accident in which US-owned Union Carbide pesticide plant released unquantified amounts of toxic gas, killing thousands both immediately and in the weeks and months following the leak.
Compensation was eventually agreed at $470m: more than the overall cap proposed by the nuclear liability bill, despite the fact that a nuclear accident would most likely be on a far greater scale than the Bhopal disaster. Bhopal survivors argue that the amount is paltry, and does not even provide for second generation victims - another omission from the nuclear liability bill. Twenty five years after the disaster, the victims of Bhopal are still battling for sufficient compensation, and the extradition of the Union Carbide CEO from the US for trial in India.

The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill was scheduled to be introduced in Parliament in the first phase of the budget sitting in March 2010, but was deferred by the Government at the last minute in apprehension of criticism from opposition parties. Left parties have criticised the bill as "a harmful piece of legislation meant to serve the interests of the United States and its nuclear industry", while the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has expressed "serious reservations". Congress has now indicated they are open to some debate on the bill. The Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, is currently attending the Nuclear Security Summit in the US, where President Barack Obama has expressed hope that the bill may be concluded as "expeditiously" as possible.

The second phase of the budget sitting in Parliament commences today.

Oh fantastic. Bin Laden's on the climate wagon.

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:46:28 GMT

I've been wondering where he's been, actually. Or even where he's bin, harhar. In terms of the climate change 'debate' (it's not a debate, it's a large body of scientific evidence pointing towards a conclusion), Osama bin Laden is so late to the party he may as well have just gone straight to the pharmacy the next day. Perhaps he's a little cut off wherever he may be, but still: in terms of a stick to wave at the West he only has to look at the front page of, well, pretty much any newspaper for the last several years. Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas making the largest contribution to the changing climate. Historically, the US has emitted the most carbon dioxide of any nation in the world. Not the whole story by any means, but both facts hardly secret, and hardly new. His latest tape must have been quite a disappointment when it landed in the Al-Jazeera office; I'm surprised they even bothered to air it.

So, Osama's on the climate wagon. Fox News must be thrilled. The story was immediately seized upon by their website - which, interestingly, lists 'The World's Strongest Beers' and 'Criminals In Haiti 'Raping Quake Survivors'' as its two most read articles - and it's probably only a matter of time before Republicans of the world discover that the climate change hoax was actually created by Al Quaeda in the first place. Idiots! How did we not spot it before? I always suspected eating red meat was patriotic. As food groups go, it's practically a metaphor for free speech!

It reminds me, for some reason, of a time a few years ago when some boy leant over to my friend in the pub and politely pointed out that, although she was a nice girl and everything, it wouldn't work out between them. She agreed wholeheartedly, but mainly because he was shorter than her, looked like a hobbit, voted for the BNP and the idea of even going near him had never even crossed her mind. The facts remain the same, but the conversation was a bit of an unnecessary poke in the eye. Similarly, climatic changes are taking place and the US has done a lot to contribute to it, but I'd prefer to think I didn't have anything in common with this psychotic mass-murderer. It could almost be one of my favourite things about my gender.

But does it actually matter in the slightest? An translation by the Al-Jazeera website quotes the audio tape - which has not yet been confirmed to be the voice of bin Laden - as saying "speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact," and, as much as typing the next three words reminds me of vomiting in my own mouth, he's kinda right. Who cares? Just because we can both read a scientific report, or even, ooh, listen to the radio, it doesn't mean we have anything else in common. It doesn't mean I want young people to feel so alienated from their society that they will strap explosives to their own legs in an attempt to blast apart the lives of hundreds of innocent families. Hooray! In fact, the best thing to do is just to not pay it any attention, in which case I should stop writing this right now.

A sad and bitter day

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:24:11 GMT

Another day in Delhi - a beautiful day, funnily enough - but one defiled by acrid disappointment. I feel a bit heartbroken, though the outcome of the Copenhagen summit was, sadly, hardly a surprise.

It's clear everyone's exhausted. For the past six weeks, most of Greenpeace India has been in Delhi, passing round viruses in a box that looks like a guesthouse. I had a bunch of slapstick moments that I was planning to write up, but they don't seem appropriate or interesting now. A coalition of NGOs ran a climate camp in the Indian capital city for those who hadn't flocked off to Copenhagen, hosting some 50 activists from various parts of the country. I was speaking to one of them, a 19 year old student, last night, and she started crying as she told me that her mum was having an operation back in her home village, but she wasn't going to be there to take care of her as she couldn't afford to go both to her village and to the climate camp. She'd chosen the climate camp. I fear it didn't deserve her.

On the twelfth of December the coalition organised a massive march with over five thousand people for the global day of action. What was really striking was the variety of people that attended. Every major religion was represented, often by leaders as well as their followers. There were businessmen, school children, politicians and rickshaw wallahs. The point was that every faction of society had something riding on the outcome of COP 15. The climate skepticism that's currently ruling the comment pages of UK online newspapers hasn't reached India yet.

I can't stop thinking about the people I've met over the last six months. There are people who are living underneath flyovers, in the most abject poverty I've ever seen, whose numbers will swell as agriculture and life in rural areas becomes less sustainable. There are children who will be taken out of school because their families need help coaxing the increasingly infertile land into yield. There are women who rise at 2am to travel to far-off markets to supplement the family's income as the fishermen's catch is now so unreliable. Families are huddling on beds to cook because floodwater is swirling over the floor, mosquitoes are laying their eggs in the pools and spreading malaria.

Many, many people are going to die. Millions more have just been condemned to hunger, poverty and disease. There's a part of me that wants to scream and cry and say I don't understand how this is happening in front of our eyes; and then there's another part that's quiet and resigned, because that part understands perfectly.

Clear vowels of hope

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:53:37 GMT

There's a legend in Asia that, if you light a sky lantern and make a wish, that wish will be carried to the gods in heaven and will come true. Last night, religious leaders representing Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jain, Hindu and Sikh communities joined hands with representatives from indigenous communities across India to send two thousand sky lanterns up into the night against the backdrop of India's Lotus Temple. Their wish: for a fair, ambitious and binding deal at Copenhagen.

Afterwards, on the way to the pub, we stopped by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh's house to wish him a safe journey to Copenhagen. He's less than fond of Greenpeace since a campaign against GM vegetables landed 40,000 emails in his personal inbox, but he accepted the (heavily sloganed) basket of sweets. Later, a member of one of the coalition NGOs admitted she had got hungry waiting for him to come home and eaten some.

IMAGES: Greenpeace/ Peter Caton

Planes, trains, and auto-vindication

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:56:46 GMT

I've taken three short-haul domestic flights in the last month, working for Greenpeace. It's terrible. I've done a lot of overnight buses, too, attractively hunched in the back row with a scarf wrapped round my head and a bottle of whiskey to smooth out the spine-crushing jolts of pot-holed roads, but on those three occasions deadlines meant overland wheels just weren't an option. You feel a bit of an idiot refusing a plastic bag and opting for the vegetarian meal in the departure lounge of a domestic airport.

Still, I've taken trains wherever possible - probably about a fortnight of the last 3 months has been spent rumbling and clattering through the Indian subcontinent altogether, and it's a great pleasure to be able to watch the varying countryside go by, even if you do sometimes also catch glimpses of your life going by between the trees.

That said, I've just been released from a 3 day Delhi-Bangalore-via-Mumbai epic and if I never see another fat, snoring man again in my life it won't be too soon. Good job most of the journeys have been alone as I don't think I'm very good company on these trips.

You have some pretty funny encounters, though. Like the guy who started talking to me about his year studying in the US, where he'd met a man from Aberdeen. They speak a different language in Scotland, he said.

"Do they?" I said, quickly scanning myself for stupidities.

"Yes," he replied. "I couldn't understand what this man was saying, and so I asked him what language they speak in Scotland. He told me it is called Swahili."

Or the girl who told me she had come to Nagpur, a second-tier city in Maharashtra to do her MBA. At the tail end of 3 days in a hotel room waiting for a train out of Nagpur, I never wanted to see its concrete ramble again. MBA + Nagpur, I thought. Poor girl. But she was obviously proud, so I smiled, said that sounded great. Then she asked me what I was doing there, and it was my turn to be proud. "I'm here with Greenpeace!" I swelled. "Erm, an NGO?" I added, seeing she had no idea what I was talking about. She laughed, stopped making her bed for a minute.

"You came all the way from the UK to work for an NGO?" I climbed into my bunk for another night lying on my laptop, well and truly told.

There's a code of conduct on the trains to make women travelers feel more comfortable, though you don't see many women traveling outside of family groups. It includes no staring, which is very nice in principle but, aside from playing your mobile ringtone over and over again and eating, there's often little to do but stare, especially if there's anyone slightly attractive or wierd-looking in sight. I do it all the time. Parents sometimes like to try and pick up spouses for their unmarried children too, which is certainly more ambitious target than I ever board the metal carriages with. A friend of mine, to his horror, was doing rather well with a scouting potential mother-in-law recently, until she asked what his job was and he gratefully deflected her attentions with the reply that he worked for an NGO.

Assuming you're spared the mobile-phone-and-snoring cacophony for a few hours, the train is anything but quiet. The uniformed guys from the pantry car tour the aisles constantly, calling out their foodstuffs. Platform hawkers scramble on at stations too with huge baskets hoiked on their shoulders and sell what they can before boarding another train at the next station. They must go all over the country, jumping between carriages.

"Cor-fee, cor-fee, chai-a chai-a pakorapakora choc-o-lit samohsaa...." The croaks blend with the clatter of the train wheels into a strange lullaby, rocking you to sleep on your bunk high in the ceiling, wrapped up like a mummy in Indian Railway bedsheets. A cup of cor-fee is only 5 bucks, hot and sugary and delicious and no doubt not much good for your rapidly spreading waistline.

On some of the trains - those which come from the capital, or end up there - all meals are included. You're served tea kits, flasks of hot water, chappati, rice, dahl, subzi and cake, the table carrousel a welcome punctuation to the passing hours. If you can find an empty section and draw the curtains round yourself you feel like a Prince. I'm told the carriages used to be huge open compartments, where families would set up for the 5 or 6-day journey it would take to cross India. The kitchens would take orders, the top end of the menu boasting an entire roast duck, and upscale - static - restaurants still offer 'Railway Mutton Curry' today. Despite Richard Branson's attempts to sex-up the flapjack, experience of train food in the UK makes this sound anything but appealing (congealing, perhaps), but you never know.

But the very best thing, in my opinion, is the freedom to open the door and feel the air rush past your face. I suppose it may also be the same freedom that allows people to fall out occasionally, but it is wonderful. Sit on the step and peer down the outside length of the train - not to far, watch your nose on passing poles - and you'll see a row of feet and toes, each sitting on the steps and watching the fields and pockets of ordinary life snatch by.

Peering out on this last journey, two and a half smelly days into my guilt-free eco travel, I noticed billowing clouds of black soot coming from the front of the train, and realised the bloody thing was running on diesel. Not all train track has been electrified yet, apparently, though I'm not sure how much greener the electrified trains will be, given India's profligacy for burning coal. Then there's this paper from the University of California, Berkeley, which factors in the carbon costs of laying and repairing infrastructure such as track or roads, producing fuel, manufacturing or repairing vehicles in addition to the emissions from fuel comsumption. I can't find a similar study conducted in India, but it's evident the choice of greener transport is far from simple.

Until a definitive answer is published, I'll stick to the trains. Even if they don't turn out to be greener, they're certainly more colourful.

Solar Sign Language

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:17:10 GMT

It’s a surprising finding, this roomful of African women soldering circuits.

In dry, hot Tilonia, where sunlight slanting through risen Rajasthani dust turns the air a soft pink, the few outsiders you see are European or from elsewhere in India. Nothing much grows here because of the drought-like climate - this year the monsoon season brought rain only twice - so herds of goat, buffalo, sheep and cattle crowd the roads, driven on foot every morning to find pasture. Women walk tall as columns across the flat plains, two pots of water balanced on their heads. They wear their brightly-coloured saris over their faces to shield from the heat, veils of hot pink, crimson red or egg-yolk yellow on the dusty landscape.

“We had no doubts about coming here,” says Belle, a 45 year old grandmother from Kisumu Village, Kenya, her head wrapped in a printed cotton cloth. “We were very courageous. We thought, ‘Yes! We can do it. We are African women!’ We wanted to make it to India and we did.”

Belle is one of three Kenyan women who have travelled to Tilonia in rural Rajasthan to learn how to construct, install and maintain solar lighting systems under the instruction of Rajasthani villagers. There are women from other African countries here too, some of them the only representative of their nation. What makes the programme particularly interesting is that none of the pupils, nor the teachers, have each had more than 10 years of formal education, and almost all are illiterate or semi-literate women engaged in domestic work and agriculture in rural villages.

Far from setting the women at a disadvantage, these attributes are in fact an entry requirement to this solar engineering course, encapsulating the belief of the Barefoot College, which runs the programme, that a lack of formal qualifications will not inhibit somebody in developing practical skills and providing a service to their community. Utilising a ‘do, don’t tell’ approach, the college has provided a model for 13 other centres in India and estimates to have trained over three hundred ‘Barefoot Solar Engineers’ in 16 states since the programme’s inception in 1984.

Then, four years ago, the programme began to reach outside of India. The first group of foreigners were from Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali, The Gambia, Siberia, Mauritania, Afghanistan and Bhutan, though the principles by which they were selected remained the same: the village must be remote, inaccessible and unelectrified, and the community interested in and willing to take responsibility for the solar units. The villagers form an Environment Energy Committee, which firstly has to convince every family, however poor, to pay a certain amount each month towards maintaining the solar system, the amount of which is determined by how much the family spends on firewood, kerosene and other lighting fuels. The committee will then nominate a solar-engineer-to-be, who must have leadership qualities and be willing to work for the village. They must also be aged between 35 and 60, and a woman.

“Most of the women are grandmothers,” says Bhagwat Nanda, a lead technician in Barefoot’s solar section. “Some pick it up easily, some find it very difficult. But young women face problems that might prevent them doing the training – pregnancy, or a husband who won’t let a young wife go away for six months. Grandmothers have less responsibility in the home.”

So much the age preference. The gender preference came with experience, as the College found many of the male barefoot engineers were using their new skills to migrate from their villages, so denying their communities any benefit. Belle, who supports her family by farming and selling cereals as her husband is now too old to work, agrees.

“As a woman, you are so much committed to your home, to look after your family. Men will leave for the cities – you know men are corrupt. But women will stay and protect the children.”

Schooled up to O level, fluent in English and living near a capital city, Belle is at the more urbane end of the group, some of which had never left their village before coming to India. Still, all of the women had to have passports organised by the NGOs that facilitated their trips, before taking their first journey into the skies.

“Well, at first we thought maybe it would come down,” says Belle. “Also, we left the coverings as we didn’t know you were allowed to take them.”

When I spoke to Belle this year’s group of African Barefoot Engineers had been in Rajasthan two weeks, and were still in the adjustment part of the course designed to ease the women into the surroundings, the diet and the culture. The food seems to be the hardest part, used as the Kenyan women are to eating a lot of fresh fruits, a rarity in drought-hit Rajasthan. Of course, one problem that didn’t exist before the programme expanded outside India is that of language – the women who’ve come through here have spoken Pashto, Dari, Swahili, Amharic, Jola, Tigrinya … but certainly not Hindi, at least not at first. If the woman is the only one in the group from her country, there’s a good chance she won’t be able to hold a conversation for the half year she is at the college.

“We talk in gestures,” explains Belle. “We try and make each other understand as much as possible, and we are together most of the time. We are happy to be learning about solar, so it is okay with us.”

A black velvet wall hanging dangles by the window. ‘With lots of love from Addis Ababa’ it reads, a memento from classes past. Handmade posters on the wall list colours and numbers in various African languages, and Hindi, and help the teachers to communicate the basics of a circuit. The long centre table is strewn with wires and solar lamps in various states of disassembly - I have no idea what’s going on, despite my lengthy and rather expensive formal education. One woman from Niger beckons me to watch over her shoulder, which I do, as she steadily burns her way through three sections of circuit with the unfamiliar soldering iron. She doesn’t seem remotely bothered though. God, these women are cool, I think.

The women’s training and stay in Rajasthan is paid for by the Government of India, and the purchase of the solar equipment for their home villages will be covered by other funding organisations. Belle is requesting 800 solar lamps for her village, one for each household. Unlike in India, where most unelectrified households can at least afford some government-subsidised kerosene, people in Kisumu are too poor to afford the fuel and so burn firewood to create a dim light for seeing after dark. This type of biomass burning is not only inefficient for seeing, but its smoke closely associated with lung disease and cancer, and cardiovascular disorders.

Once the six months of training is up, the women will return to their villages where they’ll take charge of a rural electronic workshop provided by their communities and equipped with all the batteries, tools, multimeters and solar modules they need to sustain the village’s solar systems. For at least the next five years, they will be in charge of assembling, installing and maintaining the solar systems that will allow the village to become financially and technically independent. It’s not a full time job, but it will provide the woman with a small amount of extra income – 60% of the community’s monthly contribution for the system. It will also earn her respect from the village, and the confidence of knowing that she is providing an important and valuable service to her community, which can be all too rare an experience for women in rural settings.

Over 120 women and about 40 men are practicing Barefoot Solar Engineers outside of India at the moment, and so far 190,000 people have been provided solar power by Barefoot technicians both in India, and out of it. The total reduction in carbon emissions from 1986 to 2008 is 1.86m tonnes annually, but the global climate crisis is not the issue here: the local benefits are reason enough.

Belle knows “it will be very advantageous. Some people in our village can’t afford paraffin, which is why we decided to come and learn about solar so we can fix lamps in our colleagues’ homes. Even with the paraffin, the children would have to be very courageous to study in this light. Now they can study at all levels.”

As for Belle’s life when she returns to her village? She looks up from the jumble of lamps and wires. “I will make a timetable. In the morning, do domestic duties. In the afternoon, go to the electronic workshop.” She grins. “It feels great – we are engineers!”

IMAGES
Top left: The Barefoot Solar Engineers' classroom, Tilonia, Rajasthan
Top right: The principles of solar systems are communicated through actions over the six month training course, as most of the teachers and pupils do not speak the same language.
Bottom left: Belle, far right, and a Kenyan colleague learn to assemble solar circuits. The charts on the wall use colour coding to explain circuit basics in the many different language that are spoken in the room.
Bottom right: two solar engineers-in-training from Niger

From the roof of the Houses of Parliament

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:33:43 GMT

Yesterday afternoon, a group of fifty-five Greenpeace UK activists scaled the walls of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster to protest that the Government wasn't doing enough towards reaching an ambitious and fair deal at the Copenhagen climate talks. Twenty-nine year old activist Brikesh Singh (foreground, left) of Greenpeace India traveled from Bangalore to London to take part in the protest, and is one of the seven activists remaining on the highest section of roof nearly 24 hours later. From his vantage point, he relates how the group managed to evade security, the din of the incessant chiming of Big Ben, and why he felt the action was worth the risk of deportation.

“I only found out the day before we came up here that I was going to be getting onto the roof of the mother of all Parliaments.

It wasn’t very difficult to get up here actually. Apparently the tourist season in London ended a week or two ago, so there were only a couple of cops at the venue, and we’re all trained climbers so it wasn’t difficult. All the volunteers who wanted to climb gathered in the area on Sunday evening, and at three o’clock it was agreed each person would jump the fence and try to access the roof. It happened so quickly – only ten minutes and we were up.

Once we were on the roof, a couple of protesters told the police that it was a peaceful protest by Greenpeace, we posed no threat to anyone, and that we would be staying up here for 26 hours. Once the cops knew that, they were really peaceful too. They had a couple of negotiations with Damien, our team leader, but we made it clear they’d have to use force to get us to come down, and the cops don’t want to compromise their values and our safety. It’s a good decision by them. They checked we were okay in the night a couple of times, not falling off the roof or anything, and they even gave us some biscuits. I didn’t eat any though, just in case they’d drugged them to airlift us off, or something. I don’t think anyone ate them. We’ve got better biscuits.

Morale’s good up here – everyone’s just happy and chilling and waiting until six o clock when we’ll come down. We’ve blockaded the door that leads up to this top bit of the roof so the cops can’t get to us, but we’ll just unblock that to come down once the parliament session ends. The crowds have been great – people honking, chanting our banner message. It seems like every second person wants to climb onto the roof and vent their frustration at the climate politics, but not everyone can so they’re just glad this group of activists did.

Spending the night up here wasn’t easy though. One of the UK volunteers gave me a jacket as he said I’d freeze my balls off in the one I’d brought with me, and he was right – it was really, really cold. We’ve got water to drink but nothing more interesting unfortunately… some brandy would have helped. On the top roof, the seven of us slept under a spare banner, huddled up like puppies do in the winter. I didn’t sleep at all though because Big Ben kept going off every fifteen minutes - I have never hated a clock so much in my life as that clock last night. Then at 3am the Indian media started up and my phone kept ringing, so I don’t think anyone else got much sleep either.

On the lower roof, people slept on special chairs that we got from some action gadget warehouse – there’s a place that designs apparatus especially for actions. These chairs are balanced so the two people sitting on it have to lift themselves off at the same time, or one could fall. It means no one can safely get you off unless you want to, or the other person might get hurt.

Have I spoken to anyone at home? I called my mum and my brother in Bombay once I was up here and told them not to worry. Anytime I’m on any kind of action my mum immediately starts praying to all of the 36 million gods we have in India that I don’t get arrested and come home safe, so she’s been doing that. My brother told me to chill, have fun and give him a call when I’m out on bail.

Once we come down we’ll definitely have to spend the night in the lock-up, though will probably be slapped with charges and released on bail within a day or two. I am a bit worried that I might get deported as I’m not a citizen, but I knew that was a risk before I chose to come up here. I’ve spoken to lawyers though and they say it’s unlikely; the UK doesn’t just deport people left right and centre, and I’m not a threat, or causing damage.

I don’t know if this kind of protest could happen on the roof of the Indian Parliament…I think it could be a bad idea. The thing is, the second we said we were Greenpeace the cops here immediately understood that it was a peaceful protest and there wasn’t going to be any panic or harm. You’d have to give the cops in India some 210 page novel to get them to understand that. They’re worried about terrorist attacks now too, so it’d be a risky business. I wouldn’t mind, but still.

I’m planning to go back to India on the 18th. If I could have got the Eurostar here I would have, but you can’t. I’m not here on a pleasure trip though – I’m here to represent the one million people that are right now homeless in South India because of flash floods. These people haven’t done anything and they’re being punished by climate change. India has said that it wants to be a ‘deal maker’ at Copenhagen, not a deal breaker, but for that to happen the UK needs to take leadership in setting ambitious emissions cuts.”

Greenpeace activists from India and UK climb Houses of Parliament in protest

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:49:29 GMT

Right now, fifty-five Greenpeace activists are standing on top of the houses of Parliament in Westminster. Amongst them is the head of public engagement from the Greenpeace India office, who travelled to the UK to take part in the action and highlight the need for greater international cooperation in the lead up to Copenhagen.

Brikesh Singh, a 29-year-old former climate and energy campaigner from our Bangalore office, intends to remain on the roof of the Palace of Westminster until tomorrow morning, when the activists will greet UK MPs on their first day back from their summer break by asking them to sign a 12-point manifesto that would lead to a lower-carbon path for the UK. Their aim is to highlight that time is running out, and that the UK has not taken strong enough steps in its climate policy so far.

“I came to join the protest because the actions of the UK government have huge significance for the people of India,” said Brikesh. “Unless the developed nations shoulder their responsibilities and make the necessary commitments to cut emissions, the developing world will never join the process.”

The action comes days after developed and developing nations clashed at climate talks in Bangkok on the issue of whether to shelve the Kyoto agreement, as the US is demanding. India and China remain firmly against the proposal, saying that the UN framework laid out in the agreement is the one which must to be followed. Both countries feel the developed world has not been ambitious enough in its plans to cut their own emissions so far, and neither have they proffered the money nor technology required for developing nations to shift from their ‘business-as-usual’ energy path, while still continuing to develop their economies.

“This is a global issue,” points out Brikesh, “and we need global action if we’re going to deal with it. The UK government could set an example to the world and take the steps they know are necessary, and that could go a long way to breaking the deadlock in the international negotiations.”

This is not Brikesh’s first involvement in the non-violent action and protest that Greenpeace holds so close. In October 2007, two days after the now-infamous Kingsnorth Six scaled the chimneystack of the E.ON thermal power plant in Hoo, Kent, six Greenpeace India activists also broke into a coal power station. Brikesh, three other men and two women – one of whom was six weeks pregnant at the time – climbed a 260ft chimneystack of Kolaghat Power Station in West Bengal, East India, and painted the words ‘smoking kills’ along its length. The six were arrested and imprisoned for the weekend, and the decision on their case is still pending two years later. To their surprise, in jail the other prisoners treated them well, offering them food and blankets and making sure they didn’t have to sit near the stinking toilets – the usual seat for new cellmates. When eventually asked why, the inmates pointed out that the activists weren’t criminals, and deserved respect for attempting to make the world a better place. Still, the boyish-looking Brikesh well remembers his terror when they first entered the jail:

“I just remember thinking: I really, really wish I hadn’t shaved.”

IMAGES:
Left: Greenpeace UK activist waves a banner in front of Big Ben from atop the Houses of Parliament
Right: Brikesh Singh of Greenpeace India atop the Houses of Parliament. It is his second trip to the UK

Great Britain's coal legacy

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:02:13 GMT

Excerpts from an old book I found while poking around a book fair in Bangalore. The casing was that lovely old hardback with embossed gold writing on the spine, and the sentiments within were equally archaic.

'COAL', by F. H. Wilson, was published in 1921 in London.

Introduction:
"Great Britain undoubtedly owes her wonderful position among the great nations of her world to her vast store of that natural source of energy - coal. Without a cheap and plentiful supply of the mineral the industries of this country could never have attained their present prosperous condition and importance, and as a substitute equal in every respect to coal has not yet been discovered it can truthfully be said that the maintenance of the commercial supremacy of Great Britain depends on her coal mines."

Growth:
"It is difficult to obtain any accurate figures relating to the production of countries other than the UK for [earlier than 1871, from the present date of 1921], but it is during this period that coal-mining has developed so wonderfully."

In 1837 it is estimated that the production of coal in the United Kingdom amounted to 23m tons, and in 1850, 42m tons.

In 1860 the total world's production of coal was 134m tons, 60% of which was raised by the UK.

In 1875 the UK alone was raising 133m tons of coal, 48% of the total world production. No other country came close to that amount, the nearest being the US with 17% of world production, followed by Germany (13%), France (6%) and Belgium (3.5%). The US was soon to catch up though, producing 50% of the world's total 958m tons of coal per year, with Great Britain following second.

The world's coal output was nearly ten times greater in 1919 than in 1860, and nearly five times greater as compared with 1875.

The Great Indian Darkness

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:19:10 GMT

I visited some villages in rural Karnataka this week where people are living without electricity. After nightfall we drove to Mahime Village in Uttara Kannada, a coastal district of Karnataka State and left the car at the side of the road. On foot we picked our way along a dirt path through the forest, splashed through a creek and uphill until we reached a house. The muted blue of the mud walls glimmered in the yellow light of the small kerosene lamps as we picked leeches off our feet and Sarojini Rama Naik, the wife of the house, burnt them with embers from the fire.

Sarojini and her husband, Rama Timma Naik, have lived here for nearly 40 years, fitting their daily schedule into the daylight hours and eating their evening meal by kerosene lamplight before going to sleep at around 8pm. The government provides everyone in the area with three litres of kerosene per month, subsidised to a rate of ten rupees per litre, but as this isn’t enough for their needs Rama travels to Gerusoppa Town, 10km away, once a month to pick up an extra six litres on the black market, at a higher rate. As the express buses don’t stop at their hamlet – Vatehalla – the journey takes him a whole day, on which he must set other business aside. The people in the village who do have electricity don’t always need their government-issued kerosene, so he asks the ration-shopkeeper to deal him the extra.

Mahime village consists of scattered hamlets, like most of the villages in this rural area, and of the 300 families the village is home to about 65 are living without access to electricity. It’s not an uncommon living arrangement, easily overlooked with the district website’s claim that “all towns and villages have electricity facilities in the District.”

Rama signs the yearly application letter for electricity sent by the village to the government, but only occasionally do they receive a reply informing them of the status of their application – usually a notice that it has been forwarded to X official – and there is still no power connection. About five years ago, 25-30 pylons were erected in the area but they still stand naked, devoid of power-carrying connecting cables. Rama doesn’t know why. He thinks it is because of the thick forest that surrounds the area, meaning cables could be cut by falling trees at any time; but also because of the scattered nature of the village population - separate cables would have to be laid for every one or two families. The village’s unelectrified residents boycotted the last assembly elections in protest but nothing has changed, save a visit from local government official.

Rama is a small-scale farmer: he cultivates half an acre of paddy and a quarter acre of orchard. The areca nut that grows in the orchard has to be dehusked, processed and separated into its red and white varieties within a certain timeframe, but it’s not work that can be done in the dark. If they had electricity, they say they could do this after nightfall too, and increase their income. They’d also use it to irrigate their crop with an electric pump, and Sarojini would get a grinding machine to save her the one-two hours she spends each day grinding spices in the huge granite mortar on the floor of the kitchen. They’d like to read at night, too, but it’s too dim so they just go to bed.
To add to their injustice, the couple live near two large hydroelectric dams – upstream of the 240MW Gerusoppa Dam, and downstream from the 55MW Linganamaki Dam. But the electricity produced by the dams goes elsewhere, and only one percent of the 1664MW of electricity produced in Uttara Kannada is distributed to the district’s residents. Most goes to the cities: Bangalore, for example, in which there are still frequent power cuts, gobbles over half of the electricity produced in the state.

“I remember when the dams were built when I was young, and my father saying we might get electricity,” says Rama. “Many of the surrounding villages have it. Why don’t we? It must be our bad fate. You learn to accept it.”

Kerosene lamps are not just a primitive and inefficient way of lighting a home, they also have implicated health issues. As we talk, the flame at the top of the small metal bottle snatched at the air, giving off grey smoke.

“The inside of my nose is black,” admits Sarojini, and the smoke makes me cough. But I’m used to it – I’ve never known a different way of living.”

Accustomed to the polluted conditions, many people with these living arrangements are not aware of the damage slowly being wreaked to their health, but that’s not to say the consequences don’t exist. The UN estimated that people who rely on kerosene and biomass stoves inhale the equivalent of two cigarette packets a day, with women and children being the most affected as they spend the most amount of time in the house. Two thirds of women in India, China and Mexico who developed lung cancer were non-smokers, an alarmingly high aberration.

The lamps are dangerous, too. Earlier in the day, while it was still daylight, a 16 year old girl called Hemavati told me how their house had burnt down two years previously after her father had left the burning lamp too close to the thatched palm wall.

“We managed to save some of our things, but most of them were burned,” she remembers. “I was very scared at the time, but all the people got out and there’s no use still being scared of the lamps – we have to use them.” Inside the dim house, the lamps were lit despite the sunshine outside, and smoke form the fire curled up in the chinks of light coming through the roof. The tops of the walls were black with deposited soot.

Some of the saddest and most overlooked consequences of living without electricity are the social and familial. In every unelectrified hamlet we visited, most of the children were absent. Sometimes for lack of a school in the village but always because of the lack of light to study in the evening time, the young people of the village had been sent away to live with relatives in bigger, electrified towns. In one village with 35 unelectrified families, only six children were still living with their parents, the other 40 living elsewhere. Rama and Sarojini’s two children are also living in a different town.

“Of course I miss them,” says Sarojini. “But they have to have an education. We see them once every six months when they come and stay with us for a night, but even then they find it difficult to be without electricity.

“Moving is not a possibility for us two. We’ve been here almost 40 years, and our home and our land is here – where would we go now?”

To keep in contact with their children, the couple have bought a mobile phone, a pink Nokia that dangles from a roof beam in the amber lamplight. Of course, they have no way to charge it and so make the day journey to Gerusoppa once a week where they can plug it into a power socket. As Sarojini texts her children by the light of a kerosene lamp, you wonder at the incongruity of living in such archaic conditions in an age of nuclear medicine and pleasure trips into space.

With thanks to Mr. Narasimhe Hegde and Mr. Ramesh Hegde.

How our changing climate is, and will be, affecting the Indian monsoon

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:22:24 GMT

The monsoon season is now drawing to a close, and the newspapers are rife with articles on how India will wrestle with the drought that was this year declared in 25% of her districts. Yet all summer the meteorological offices were defiant of any suggestion that the monsoon is becoming increasingly erratic, maintaining that the season has always displayed such unpredictable behaviour and that everything was hunky dory.

I met with the Director of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, in the middle of the season and he also echoed this stance. An imposing man who seemed slightly nervous, M.D. Ramachandran’s ready agreement to meet me came as a pleasant surprise, particularly as I showed up unannounced. My friend, an established Indian journalist who took me there, said that he was rarely granted such an impromptu audience.

“Every year, people come to us saying ‘This summer it is very hot! There is no rain!’ There will also be others who say ‘This year is the heaviest rainfall I have ever seen!” he said, leaning back in his chair and chuckling. “But weather is variation only. Research may be showing that there will be changes from this global warming, but our day-to-day data is not showing any change.”

To be fair, the weather station in Thiruvananthapuram does not conduct research, consigned instead to the short-term prediction of Keralan weather based on a system of plotting areas of high and low pressure and anticipating weather events across their lateral gradients. To do this, they receive meteorological data from about fourteen observatories and seventy raingauge stations across the state and coastal islands, and any inaccuracies require an explanatory report to the Director General of Meteorology in Delhi. Ramachandran pointed out that prediction of weather patterns, an influential and serious task at the best of times, is more problematic in equatorial regions such as Kerala, as weather changes much more rapidly than in areas of greater latitude. Still, he said, their June predictions for Kerala had an accuracy of 89-95%.

That said, he was almost too hasty to put down my questions. No, the average annual rainfall has not changed but no, there has been no seasonal variation either. No, there is no evidence that the spatial distribution of rainfall is changing. No, the melting of the arctic ice caps is not affecting our area, and no, ocean currents do not directly affect the monsoon. I got the impression he felt so consistently badgered about changes in the weather these days that he had become defensive.

But the truth is, there have been observed changes in the monsoon patterns in India. In Kerala, for example, there has been a decreasing trend in the amount of rainfall received by the south of the state over the last 100 years (see graph, top left), particularly over the slopes of the Western Ghats. The onset date of the monsoon has not moved from its 1st June average, however, and there has been no such long-term trend observed for northern Kerala.
Looking at the rainfall for all of India, it seems that there is no trend in the amount of water that falls during the monsoon, although there is, of course, interannual variability.

However, it would be foolish to assume this means there has been no change at all. Studies by Professor B.N. Goswami, who heads the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology – the place where they do do research – and other scientists have shown that there has been an increase in the occurrence of very intense rainfall in the period 1951-2003 (see graph, right). Both ‘very heavy’ events (more than 150mm of rainfall) and ‘heavy’ events (100-150mm of rainfall) show an increasing trend, while ‘low and moderate’ rainfall events (5-100mm) are on the decline. Combined, these figures produce an apparently unchanged amount of overall rainfall.

A similar change has been observed with cyclones. India gets about six tropical cyclones a year, whirling in from the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal in the months either side of the monsoon season. Professor P.V. Joseph of Cochin University, who kindly provided me with this data, has shown that cyclone occurrence shown no trend of change in the long-term, although their frequency does seem to follow a 36-year oscillation. However, within this, the amount of those cyclones that are classified as ‘severe’ has been increasing over the last 100 years. Cyclone Aila, which slammed into West Bengal in May of this year, inundating the Sundarbans region with 20ft of water and claiming more than 200 lives in total, can certainly be classified as severe. There has also been revealed a long-term decrease in monsoon depressions (see graph, below left), with a 36-year oscillation period within that. Monsoon depressions are associated with large areas of heavy rainfall – 20 to 30cm per day - and whereas roughly twelve monsoon depressions would occur during the 1900s; now there are only about four. Many of the people we spoke to for Rainspotting attested to rain now only falling in ‘pockets’, whereas before it would rain uniformly over large areas. Depressions form over the Bay of Bengal and head west-north-west, bringing heavy rains to Rajastan, in which 26 of the 33 districts have been declared as drought-hit this year.

Joseph and colleagues have also observed a steady weakening in both the lower tropospheric monsoon winds (the low level westerly jetstream, running from the surface to about six kilometres height) and the wind flow at heights of 12 to 16 kilometres (the tropical easterly jetstream), over the past five to six decades.

So what of the future? Climate models have never been able to predict the monsoon climate and its variability with accuracy, and calculations by Goswami indicate the monsoon weather has now become twice as difficult to predict as a result of climatic changes. The climate modeling community is small in India, and huge improvements would be required both in observations and prediction models, as well as computational power.

The Walker Institute for Climate System Research at the University of Reading draws together a number of renowned climate system research groups and centres from all over the world. Dr Andy Turner’s work focuses in particular on the changing climate in the Indo-Pacific area, and its effect on the South Asian monsoon. He is of the opinion that the extremes of weather – floods and drought – experienced in this year’s monsoon could well be a sign of things to come.

“Modelling results show that the wet areas over India are likely to get wetter overall, though the rain is likely to come in shorter, heavier bursts with longer dry periods in between,” he says. “The result may be both increased flooding and, paradoxically, increased drought. So we could see more of the sort of conditions we’ve seen this year in India.”

There is a strong consensus that the variability of the monsoon will manifest itself on both a year-to-year and day-to-day basis. The yearly variation of the monsoon will result in greater occurrence of flood and drought years, while the daily undulations mean that rain days may occur less often, but it’ll really flog it down when they do.

“Heavy events will likely get worse in the future, as extreme rainfall becomes both heavier and more frequent,” predicts Turner. “Rainfall events are essentially heavier because the Indian Ocean is warming up and this means there is more moisture available for convention over India.

“In addition, there are variations during the summer known as active-break cycles: short periods of heavy rain (active) or dry (break) conditions, and much more work is needed to see what will happen to these events with climate change. It’s important to note that ‘drought’ does not necessarily mean no rainfall at all, but Indian agriculture and economy are so well tuned to normal conditions that these sorts of events can cause immense problems.”

IMAGES:
Top left: Over the last 100 years, monsoon rainfall in south Kerala has shown a long-term decrease, the best fit line of which has a gradient of -0.3588
Middle right: Although the average rainfall for all India has shown no overall change from 1951-2001, within that there has been a decrease in low and moderate rainfall events, and an increase in heavy and very heavy rainfall events. A further increase in the intensity of extreme rainfall events is predicted by climate models.
Bottom left: The top graph in this images displays the decreasing trend in frequency of monsoon depressions over the last 100 years (plus). The graph at the bottom left of the picture shows that, during the first half of the period, depressions decreased at the rate of 0.29 per decade. The graph at the bottom right of the picture shows that during the second half (1951 onwards), it decreased at the accelerated rate of 0.93 per decade. A 36-year oscillation is seen superposed.

With thanks to Prof. P.V. Joseph, Dept of Atmospheric Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kerala, for data provision.

The climate politics of diet

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:48:18 GMT

Organic, locally-sourced, Fairtrade (but air-freighted?), dairy-free, free range, Sainsbury’s Basics. The average supermarket trip invites more agonising and dithering indecision in unforgiving strip lights than you find in the clutches of penniless students outside medical testing centres.

Most of us are now pretty well-versed in the climatic consequences of consuming Food From Far Away, but I think it’s fair to say that when it comes to organic food – a partiality of the middle classes, in particular - most selections are made in the belief that organic is better for you: thy body is a temple and no chemicals shalt pass thy lips, even if a few do go up thy nose at weekend dinner parties. Yet the Food Standards Agency (FSA) staunchly maintains that organic food has no additional health benefits compared to conventionally farmed foods, releasing another study this year supporting their stand. Various EU-funded research studies have found the opposite. The Soil Association maintains that ‘no food has higher amounts of beneficial minerals, essential amino acids and vitamins than organic food’, and criticises the FSA’s ‘limited’ research criteria.

Either way, an ecologist and community leader I met in Wayanad district, northern Kerala, made a slightly alarming point. He said that many of the district’s conventional farmers will not eat their own produce, having witnessed the volume of pesticides used in their cultivation. Instead, they grow their own pesticide-free vegetables – organic, in effect - on small plots around their houses. The conventionally-reared crops, the untouchables, are sold at market, or exported.

What isn’t under question, but not nearly as widely discussed, is the link between conventional farming methods and climate change. Our agricultural systems are one of the causing factors of climate change, and not just through food transport and storage. The synthetic nitrogen fertilisers used in conventional farming methods generate nitrous oxide, a gas 298 times as potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, if you compare them tonne-to-tonne over a hundred year time-frame. This is the same nitrous oxide that you suck up from balloons at parties - laughing gas - and is now the most potent destroyer of ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. In fact, in India, synthetic fertilisers emit only 2% less greenhouse gases than those generated from the road network of the entire country. Organic fertilizers (meaning those used in organic farming, rather than the sense in which organic is used in chemistry) also produce nitrous oxide, but far lesser quantities than synthetic fertilizers as they release nitrates slowly, giving the plants a chance to fix the nitrogen in other forms.

The process used to make fertilisers and pesticides is also highly energy-intensive, with most of the energy generation exhaling carbon dioxide, of course. For example, one tonne of oil, seven tonnes of greenhouse gasses and one hundred tonnes of water are involved in manufacturing one tonne of nitrogen fertilizer, according to the Soil Association. Organic farming methods also enhance soil fertility and diversity, and soil that’s rich in biomass reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by sequestering the carbon in the earth.

Ironically, and tragically, it is the effects of climate change, created in no small part by conventional farming methods, which are now pushing India’s organic farmers to switch back to conventional methods.

PJ Chackochan runs an organic farm and awareness centre in Wayanad, Kerala, in which one thousand two hundred of the district’s six thousand farmers are now practicing organic agriculture – growing coffee, cocoa, ginger and vanilla which is exported by ship to Switzerland and Germany. However, the drying land, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall of recent years mean that the movement is fighting a losing battle.

“Twenty-five years ago, this area had a lot of rainfall,” says Chackochan. “Now, there is so little and the water table is worryingly low. Six years back, a borewell would only have to reach to a depth of 200ft to find water; now, they must dig to 600ft. What little water there is the land cannot hold on to, as it is lacking in biomass as a result of monocrop cultivation and use of fertilisers and pesticides.”

The monocrop cultivation and deforestation Chackochan refers to is one of the many examples I’ve come across in the last few months in which environmental problems created by local decisions mean communities are far more vulnerable to the global climatic changes now starting to be played out. And as yield decreases and demand for food grows, farmers are even less likely to take the plunge of switching to organic methods, particularly in areas like Wayanad where there is little local demand for the produce.

“Everybody knows the consequences of pesticides and fertilisers. But priority has been given to market pricing, and producing more,” Chackochan asserts. “There’s little demand for organic vegetables here, as people are poor and it’s not their priority. There’s demand abroad, but farmers need to wait at least three years before they can start exporting their produce, as this is the time it takes to be certified as organic.”

The first three or four years after switching to organic methods are also tough for farmers, as yield is lower while the soil recovers from the past use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. It’s not hard to see it takes a certain amount of courage and conviction to commit to the methodology.

“Organic farmers are not greedy,” concludes Chackochan. “They are satisfied with what they’re getting. They’re looking forward and know they need to leave something to the next generation.”

IMAGE: Forest Haiss

Water wars

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:32:51 GMT

I’ve moved into a new place, with a solar water heater and no washing machine. My, was I feeling at one with nature this morning, as I showered in water warmed by sunshine – clean body and conscience in one! - and scrubbed my organic cotton clothes on the washstone on the roof. To be thoroughly honest the water is a little bit burny at times, and all that wringing doesn’t half get your arms, but it was only half an hour until the scalding red of my flesh settled to a healthy glow, and I expect my biceps are mere days away.

Scrub, scrub, twist, wring, plunge, swill, gush! Down the drain. Open the tap, fill the bucket again. Swill the clothes, knead them with your hands, whoosh! Soap suds swirl into the gutter. And again. And again, and again... you get the picture. Now, I have no doubt that my attempts at handwashing are grossly inept and inefficient, but it wasn’t long before I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable with the amount of water I was pushing out, each bucketful merrily laced with pollutants. I thought back to my eco-shower: I’d used at least four different chemical products, and even if the shampoo had ‘extract of wild peach’, it also had methyl paraben and sodium dodecyl suphate. Standing on the roof, the smell of wet concrete in the sunshine brought back memories of water fights we would have in the summer when I was a child. Ouch.

One of our greatest misconceptions in the way we handle water is the assumption that somehow, somewhere, it is a renewable resource. It is not. Sure, water covers over 70% of the earth’s surface, but only 2.5% of that is fresh water. Of that 2.5%, over two thirds is locked away in glaciers, leaving a tiny 0.8% of the world’s water that is available to us for our ever-increasing needs and demands. And that’s before you even start thinking about how much of that water is fit for human consumption, what with the endless disgorging of sewage and effluent.

It is anticipated the next great wars of the world will not be fought over oil, or religion, but over water. Access to fresh, clean water is the most basic human right, and the idea of its absence is the most delicate trigger. In the slum areas of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, clean drinking water has already become such a scare and precious commodity that people are willing to kill for it.

The Sanjay Nagar slum area in Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh, receives its water from one water point, which earlier this year was only opened for fifteen minutes every alternate day. Desperate, on 13 May a group of residents dug a hole in the middle of the road to reach the underground municipal water pipe, boring a hole into it and inserting rubber tubing to illegally siphon off drinking, washing and cooking supply. As the water began to flow, a fight broke out over who should be allowed to fill their bucket first, resulting in the fatal stabbing of a family of three by a group of six men.

As the 19-year-old son lay dying in the street, gasping his last breath amongst the puddles on the ground, no one came to help him. Nor did anyone come to lift his mother’s head, or tend the wounds of his father as they lay beside him. Instead, the crowd stepped over their bodies in their rush to scoop up the precious pools of drinking water spilling from the ruptured pipe. The three died in the street, and their blood quietly muddied the pools on the ground.

This tragedy may be the most extreme example of water violence in the state, but it is by no means the only one. It’s estimated that more than fifty violent clashes took place in the Bhopal district in May alone, a cruel irony in a place once dubbed the ‘City of Lakes’.

“Since the beginning of this year, our lives have revolved around just one thought,” said Savita Bai, who lives in the same slum area. “How to get enough drinking water.”

In Sanjay Nagar, water release was increased to one hour every alternate day, and civil authorities began to distribute the drinking supply with police protection.

"Culture nourishes itself from nature", and an erratic monsoon is threatening ancient traditions

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:56:41 GMT

It's easy to imagine how erratic rainfall patterns and rising temperatures can impact the lives of farming and fishing communities, and we've collected seemingly endless stories attesting to it. But the societies directly affected by the vagaries of the monsoon extend far further than that. Winding inland from the coast to the banks of the River Nila in Kerala, a traditional pottery community is also being threatened.

The Kumbhara community migrated from Andhra Pradesh over two hundred years ago, searching for an ideal location to practice their age-old skill: pottery. They found it on the banks of the River Nila in Palakkad, Kerala and settled there, seamlessly weaving their existence into that of the tributaries. Every year the monsoon rains would swell the river, flushing nutrients into the adjacent paddy fields and depositing mud and clay onto its banks. The potters would gather this clay and use it to make their wares – rich terra cotta utensils they then traded with the other river communities.

The lives of the river communities are connected with the monsoon in other ways, too. The Malayalam calendar divides the year up into Njattuvelas - 4-week agricultural cycles, each designed for a specific agricultural activity and intimately related to the monsoons. Njattuvelas are determined by astrologers from the movement of the celestial planets, and dictate sowing times, harvesting times, times for resting and taking traditional medicines to rejuvenate your body for the arduous months ahead. As such, the agricultural practices of the communities rely heavily on a consistent and predictable monsoon, and are sensitive to even the slightest departure from their age-old pattern.

A rich tapestry of rituals also enfolds the yearly harvest: praying to the Goddess on the banks of the river for a good monsoon, thanking her afterwards for the harvest. Each of the river communities has a defined role in these rituals: costumes, music, folktales and dances to give worship to the Goddess so that next year she will not forsake them; that she will send a good monsoon. But the monsoon is changing, and the communities with it.

“Thirty years ago, more than fifty-five families lived here in the Kumbhara community,” says Gopalan, a traditional potter. He speaks a local dialect particular to the river communities: a mixture of Telugu and Malayalam.

“We lived off the river, but we knew we were just its custodians. We gathered clay from the banks, but we always knew the banks belonged to God.”

As his hands conjure oil lamps from mud and smooth out gleaming plates on his potters’ wheel, he recollects how the introduction of plastics to the community seeded its decline.

“People began to purchase plastic water containers and utensils instead of the terracotta ones, and the potters’ occupation became unprofitable. People began to migrate to the cities in search of a living, and now there are only thirty-three families left in the community.

“I myself also left – I worked first in Delhi, and later in Dubai, where I was earning up to Rs. 250 per day. But what I couldn’t find there was satisfaction in my life, and so I came back to the river and my heritage.”

“These are not simple crafts, these are their occupations,” explains Vinod Nambiar, founder of the Vayali Folklore Group, which aims to preserve the traditions of the river communities. “The skills are brought by their ancestors. Back when we had no plastic or aluminum products, the local community was using clay items for everything. This is very simple example of how we can live in harmony with the nature: terracottas are eco friendly and cause no harm to nature. No big factories are required to make them, and there is not much pollution. We should be adapting these systems, not forsaking them. But it is an uphill struggle.”

Gopalan’s wife expands on the virtues of the traditional materials: “Storing drinking water in mud patram [pot] keeps us healthy and provides immunity from infections,” she says. “We’ve been using the same mud patram to store water for the last eight years, and it is just as good. The reason: it has been made from the best quality mud, obtained from the banks of River Nila.”

The decrease in rainfall over the last three years has further harmed the community, as the deposits of clay on the riverbanks have reduced dramatically.

“The monsoon would bring clay to the banks in a systematic process: every year the process used to bring new fresh raw material for their lives,” says Nambiar. “Recent developments in the tourism sector and other related technologies have also resulted in people competing with each other to buy lands near to the river to construct resorts or source bricks from the clay. This has created lots of problems in terms of the availability of cheap raw materials – people are having to pay to get what little clay there is, whereas previously it was a common resource, and free. The occupation is no longer profitable and people are abandoning it. This rich legacy is being lost.

“As age old people say, culture nourishes itself from nature. Without nature a culture can’t exist, without a culture a society cannot.”

India's Solar Mission is to generate 20GW of solar energy by 2020. How?

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:13:03 GMT

This week the India announced its National Solar Mission, a detailed plan of the energy the country intends to generate from solar technology between 2010 and 2040. The plan is undeniably ambitious, proposing that India will produce:

- 1 GW of energy from solar by 2012,
- 6-7 GW by 2017,
- 20 GW by 2020,
- 100 GW by 2030 (or 10-12 % of total power generation capacity)

20GW by 2020 is a whopping figure, especially when you consider that it’s only eleven years away, and an almost negligible 3MW (0.003GW) of the energy on the national grid currently comes form solar sources.

But India’s booming economy and population mean her energy demands are set to steeply escalate, and the heavy incorporation of solar into the energy mix is a much-needed for the energy security of a country plagued by frequent power-cuts.

Anyway, the plan doesn’t suggest that all 20GW are on the national grid, and this is one of the beauties of solar: it allows energy generation to be decentralised. It is therefore a tool for development, holding hope of energy for the 400m Indians who currently have no access to electricity, but also by empowering people on a grassroots level, not to mention reducing dependency on the burning of dirty coal, with all the health implications that come with it.

“India’s putting a very strong argument in front of developed countries that it has huge potential for renewable energy,” says Siddarth Pathak, Greenpeace India’s chief climate campaigner. “And the document seems fairly solid.”

The 20GW is proposed to be divided thus in 2020:

Utility power (grid connected, including tail-end support) - 12000 MW
One million rooftops hosting panels to generate electricity, both captive and grid connected -3000 MW (average of 3 kW per system)
Rural installations (rural grid plants and stand-alone applications) 3000 MW
Other distributed solar photovoltaic applications (e.g. telecom towers) 2000 MW
In addition: solar lighting for 20m households, and a solar collector area of 20m square metres for heating applications

How will this be achieved?

The plan is divided into three phases: the first from now until 2012, the second from 2012 to 2017, and the third taking the plans up to 2020.

Phase One details the rapid scaling up of installations and the scaling down of costs, manufacturing much of the solar equipment domestically to validate its technological and economic feasibility. By 2012, all government buildings must have solar panels on their rooftops, and it will be mandatory for all hospitals, hotels and residential buildings to host solar water heaters, capturing sunlight from 7 million square metres by the end of this first stage. There’ll also be efforts put into research and development to increase efficiency, with dedicated technology parks for solar, and demo projects for photovoltaic (PV) power plants, concentrated solar power plants (CSPs) and tail-end solar power plants.

One very important point made in the document is that 'Accelerated Depreciation' will not be available, except for the building of power plants in rural areas. Accelerated Depreciation is a tax rebate meaning that the cost of a setting up a power plant or renewable energy company would depreciate quickly. Its inclusion into previous schemes has caused problems as all incentives are focused on the set-up of the plant or company, as opposed to how much energy it generates once up and running. This has resulted in huge graveyards of renewable energy potential across India: wind farms operating at only a tiny percentage of their capacity while citizens experience regular blackouts and proposals are made to fire more coal.

Instead, incentives will be based on how much electricity is generated, with feed-in tariffs of Rs. 10 per kWh for urban areas, and Rs. 11 per kWh for rural areas to further promote rural development. It will also be mandatory for the state electricity regulators to purchase energy from solar sources, meaning that households could sell any surplus power from their rooftops back to the grid. Houses purchasing this equipment will benefit from interest subsidies, and tax holidays on critical equipment.

In Phase Two, subsidies on solar lighting will start to be phased out and replaced with micro-finance schemes. A general scaling-up of all activities will be accompanied by the rolling out of commercial thermal solar power plants, and a pilot deployment of CSP.

Finally, by Phase Three it's anticipated the level of tariffs will reach a par with that of conventional energy sources today, and that the products of the previous years’ research and development will be ready for commercialisation.

What will it cost?

The plan estimates the cost of the plans from now to 2040 to stand at 916.84 billion rupees, divided as follows:

Generation Based Incentive for 18,000 MW Grid solar power - Rs. 699.85 billion
Demonstration projects - Rs. 70 billion
Rural electrification & lighting - Rs. 24.5 billion
Solar thermal applications - Rs. 1.22 billion
Interest subsidy (solar heating) - Rs. 10.68 billion
Interest subsidy (PV) - Rs. 62.59 billion
R&D, capacity building etc. - Rs. 48 billion

Pathak points out that one thing the Solar Mission hasn't covered is how the costs will be divided between the three time phases. He's also puzzled by press coverage of the Mission which suggests India is demanding the costs of the plan to be covered by developed nations.

“There’s a lot of hot air surrounding this document, including the claim that India is asking developed nations to foot the bill," he says. "I don’t know where this has come from, as there’s no mention of any foreign money coming in to fulfill the technical side – the mission will be a unilateral action by India. All costs will be fronted by India. This is a good thing, as it allows the country autonomy over her own solar plans.

International collaborations and partnerships are mentioned to meet priorities such as increasing the efficiency of technology transfer mechanisms and and protecting intellectual property.

“What it hasn’t included, which I would like to see included, is how the money will be divided into the different time phases of the plan.”

How likely is it to happen?

“It depends on the execution,” says Pathak. “Plans are one thing, but everything in India actually depends on the regulations behind the plans. This approved version has more connections with the existing ground structure than the previous drafts, which bodes well for implementation.”

Given that the world produces about 14GW of solar power today, and that the global generation is predicted to be only 27GW by 2020, for India to even be turning out even half of that would be a pretty good achievement. Theoretically, it is perfectly possible for India to capture such levels of energy from sunlight – more, even – and we should hope that other nations will display such bold visions. Now on to the implementation.

IMAGE - Sunset over Hampi, Karnataka, the day before India announced its ambitious solar energy plans.

Farmers fight power giants over coal-fired plants

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:58:02 GMT

"Dream no small dreams, for they have not the power to move the hearts of men" Geothe

There is a fight going on in the coastal region of Raigad, in the state of Maharashtra. Only a half hour drive from Mumbai, Raigad's fertile lands, ragged mountains and crumbling fort couldn't be more different from the 24-hour burn of the maximum city. But there's a change being proposed - and opposed - to the land.

Two of India's energy giants - the Tata Power Company Ltd. and Maharashtra Energy Generation Ltd., a subsidiary of Reliance Power - have struck a deal with the Maharashtra State Government to acquire 8,500 acres of farmers' land in Raigad to build two coal-fired power plants. The land would be acquired with compensation, but without the farmers' consent. The proposed plants in this and a neighbouring region would generate a total of 10,000MW of power, with much of the coal for burning being imported from Indonesia.

According to Tata Power's Managing Director Prasad Menon, the site is ideal for a coal-burning power plant as it is located on the coast without being in an ecologically sensitive zone and offers a sufficiently deep draught for barges with heavy loads of coal to come in. According to the residents of Raigad, the site is not ideal for these plants as burning coal is an outdated and dirty method of producing power, with health implications for the community including respiratory problems and inhibition of children's neurodevelopment.

“We believe that the energy planned from these coal plants is dirty. It can come instead from clean alternatives like wind and solar energy, and by using energy more efficiently. We will not give up our land and our future to these mega power plants that will pollute our air, land, and water. We will not allow them to ruin our children’s future by adding to the problem of climate change,” said Dr Vishnu P. Mhatre of the Naugaon Sangharsh Samiti, one of the organisations fighting for clean energy.

It's important to note that these people, most of them villagers with only a basic level of education, are not technophobic, or anti development. As with most states in India, power demand outstrips supply in Maharashtra and is only set to increase with the growing population and booming economy. The need for an increase in energy production is something that cannot be denied, nor should it.

“We do not oppose production of energy. But, we strongly demand that the Government of India change its energy pathway and move towards decentralised renewable energy, which will be used locally for agro-based industries and domestic needs,” said Satish Londhe, a resident of Alibag, the capital of Raigad.

The citizens are arguing that the land in Raigad is ideally located for wind power generation, and are setting up a 'Wind Monitoring Station' to record the area's wind potential through an anemometer and encourage the government to invest in renewable energy plants.

Raigad's villagers have been fighting against the power giants' coal plans for more than four years, and yesterday nearly one thousand of them came together to form a giant human windmill on the proposed plant site (top left). In a touching display of solidarity, the image formed and dissipated in a moment as fragile as the defence of these villagers, and the path of their future.

If you are the big tree, we are the small axe, coming to cut you down, goes the song. But we shall have to wait and see if this little axe is sharp enough.

You can show your support for the farmers of Raigad by signing the petition demanding a renewable energy law for India here.

"Before, our fish would keep fresh for 4-5 hours. Now, they go dry after only an hour"

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:33:54 GMT

Sitting cross-legged on the harbour, one hand steadying the prow of his boat, Sahijid’s pink shirt is unbuttoned at the neck, a woven reed hat with a painted blue brim keeping the sun from his eyes. His skin is dark and taut, shiny from years of working at sea.

49 years old, Sahijid has been fishing from this port since he was nine. His cousins work here too. Every morning, he rises at 3am, completes his toilet and takes his daily tea at a nearby tea stand. At 5am, he and the other fishermen join together and start out to sea in their traditional wooden boats. If the day’s catch is good, they won’t return until 3 or 4pm. If the catch is poor, as it often is these days, they’re back in the harbour by 9am with little to do but prepare their boats and hope tomorrow will bring more a bigger yield.

The problems started twenty years ago, when mechanised fishing was introduced. These bigger boats use closely woven nets that catch fish indiscriminate of size: consequently, the natural regeneration of the waters’ stock is inhibited and there are less fish, which must also be shared between the higher population of fishermen.

“Today, we made Rs. 7000 [about £87.50] between four people,” Sahijid recounts. “There are costs to cover, though: Rs. 1000 on repairing the engine, Rs. 1500 on fuel. Eventually, we’re taking home Rs. 500 [about £6.25] each. But for the three days before this, we couldn’t go out because the seas were too rough. For the two days before that, we went out but made no catch. And we still have to pay Rs. 700 for fuel, whether we make a catch or not.”

The Government has placed a ban on mechanised fishing in June and July, to allow the fish to breed and regenerate stock. Although the traditional fishermen go out to sea all twelve months of the year, it’s only in these two months that they can hope to bring home a good catch. For the other ten months, their catch is only a tenth of what it is in the monsoon season.

“From August through to May, we only earn enough to just cover our living costs: we can’t save any money or invest in new equipment,” he says.

“So we take loans out from the state to prepare our boats and nets for June and July, and count on there being a good catch then. The loans are taken against our land documents, so if the catch is poor, the state can take our homes. But we are prepared to work night and day if we need to, to try and stop this happening.”

One of the main things the fishermen must save for is dowries for their daughters. Dowries are now illegal in India, but the practice is still common in rural areas and the men say the Government do little to stop it. According to them, even the ministers here accept dowries for their daughters in marriage. If a girl has no dowry, no one will marry her.

Sahijid has one daughter, who was married with a dowry of 240g of gold, and Rs. 25,000. While it’s difficult to see how Rs. 25,000 can be saved up on an income of Rs. 500 per week, while still supporting a family, this dowry is still meagre. Sahijid also has a son, thirteen years younger, and so the family can expect to receive some money when he marries.

While his wife doesn’t work, some of the wives here have now had to take jobs in addition to the housework to try and support the families. Some of these women are crouched across the harbour, saris hitched, nimbly sorting through the day’s catch with their bare hands.

Fishing in June and July is not without its problems: it is monsoon season, and the seas are high and rough. But Sahijid says weather patterns have also changed, and become unpredictable for the fishermen:

“If we can see clouds on the horizon, and the bottom of the clouds lift, we know the winds are coming, and we run fast to the boats. I know how to identify if they’ll be small or big winds. But look” - he gestures overhead, where a grey blanket of clouds cover the sky – “now we can’t tell when the winds will come.

“The rains have changed too – the monsoon would begin at a specific time. This year it was late, and we had no rain in April or May. It didn’t used to be like this.”

The fishermen's catch is also being affected by the rising temperatures:

“Before, when out at sea, fish would keep fresh in the boat for 4-5 hours”, he explains. “Now, sometimes they go dry after only an hour. When this happens, I must throw those fish back and can earn nothing that day.”

In theory, the June/July ban on mechanised fishing could at least give these old and new methods a chance to co-exist. But the ban is not total, as the government still allows international vessels to fish these waters year-round. Equipped with radar systems to locate activity, these ships trawl the bottom of the sea, picking up the small fish and eggs on the sea bed and damaging their chances of regeneration. Suddenly small next to the imposing trawlers, the mechanised fishing crews shout at the boats as they come in, but can do little to stop them. Left rocking in their wake, the mechanical-method fishermen are also having to take out loans to see them through the summer months: loans which they must then repay over the full course of the year.

“Globalisation has made big problems for us here,” says one of the other fishermen.

“Why must the international boats come here? There are plenty of fish in other waters. Why must they come and take our catch?”

Pollution from industry is also adversely affecting the community. Two hundred and forty-seven factories lined along the banks of the Periyar river pour their waste into its mouth: a shocking 170,000,000 litres of effluent per day. The fishermen know that this is partly responsible for the decline of some species of fish, but they don’t seem to make the connection that this is also the water that is piped to them for drinking.

I ask what Sahijid sees for the future. “Every day when we go out, if the seas are rough, we know there is a chance we will not come back. But what if there are no fish in the sea? I do not know what will happen. We can’t think about that.

“We know no remedy. We are suffering and we can see no way out.”

"My neighbour killed himself by swallowing his own pesticides... the land can no longer support us"

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:24:16 GMT

Mutai came to Kerala, to this farm, on January 21st, 1951. He was eleven years old then, and has lived here ever since. He’s dark-skinned, white-haired and wearing a bright blue check lunghi [a wrap-around piece of material worn as a skirt], as all the farmers here wear. A granddad vest, a shirt and an excellent pair of 1980’s NHS-style bifocals: on paper he’s not too dissimilar from people I used to know in Shoreditch.

In 1966 he married a girl called Mariakkutty and these few acres of land have been their livelihood through forty-three years of marriage and five children. When the first agricultural settlers came here in the fifties, they razed the land of forest and planted lemongrass oil seeds that they had bought with them. The initially small-scale production was fruitful in the rich biodiversity of Wayanad, and the farms grew. Rather than planting a variety of crops for food, the farmers chased the money they could make from exporting cash crops such as pepper, coffee and plantain. Now the combination of years of monocrops, coupled with the rising temperatures and reduced rainfall caused by climate change has made the unthinkable a reality: the fertile lands of Wayanad are going dry.

“The problems really began when the price of pepper dropped,” explains Mutai. “Because of foreign imports, the value fell from Rs. 20,000 per quintal [about £2.50/kg] to just Rs. 6,000 [75p]. It’s at Rs. 9,000 [£1.13] now, which is still too little for a family to support themselves with.

“Then three years ago the price of coffee fell too, and on top of that our yields reduced: the lack of rainfall has starved the crops. That’s when the farmers had to start borrowing money – nearly 90% of the people here have taken out loans.”

Mariakutty brings in glasses of hot coffee, grown in the garden. Despite the problems the cash crops have bought the land, we still drink the sweet dark liquid from glasses engraved with the red logo of a rubber company.

“The land is so hard these days that it is unturnable in the summer season, and our ginger grows as little stubs where it should be two foot high,” she says. “This year again there is much less rain. Look –“ She gestures out of the open door, when a thin drizzle is falling on the lawn. “You can see out there it is limited again. Five years ago we had to take a loan from the bank to install an irrigation system to artificially water the coffee plants. We never had such problems before.”

Unable to support themselves from the land, the people of Wayanad have started to turn to dairy farming, and most families in the area now have one or two cows. Of course, crops are also needed to feed the animals and the farmers have to purchase grass from their already narrow funds. Defaulting on their loan repayments and under growing financial pressure, many farmers feel they have no choice but to end their lives, and Wayanad has seen a spate of suicides in recent years. In a macabre final remark on the state of their professions, many of these men kill themselves by swallowing their own pesticides.

“One of my neighbours [killed himself],” remembers Mutai. “Abraham. He had three children; two daughters whose marriages he needed to pay dowries for. Three years ago there was a drought, and the price of pepper dropped to Rs. 6,000 [per quintal]. They couldn’t exist on the money they made.

“He was sixty when he committed suicide. The Government writes off the debts of dead people, so the only way for a family to survive is if one dies.”

As were leaving, one of Mutai’s sons arrives with his wife and kids. They crunch up the driveway in a little gold car, all bright urban clothing and shy sons in Levi’s shirts. None of the five children work in agriculture, choosing more lucrative professions such as teaching and the military instead. When the old couple die, the farmland will be sold for whatever it can fetch and the proceeds divided up between his children.

“Young people today should work somewhere else,” says Mutai, shaking his head.

“No-one will come back to agriculture.”

Images:
Top: Mutai, left, ad his brother in front of the family lands
Middle Right: Mutai and two of his grandchildren in their home in Wayanad, Kerala

With thanks to Anil Emage and Suneesh Chittilapalli

Nuclear must not be blindly advocated as the solution to the energy crisis

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:29:46 GMT

I sneaked out of the office to a massive party on the beach yesterday, filled with extremely attractive, half-naked Bollywood stars cavorting in a riot of Bacchanalian abandon.

That's a lie. I went to a lecture on Nuclear Energy and the Environment. Plus ça change, etc.

Bangalore Science Forum has been holding a lecture on some aspect of science, from medical to computer, on every Wednesday without fail since 1962. This was lecture two thousand four hundred and something, a room fashioned from a courtyard with cloth for walls, a humming projector and rows of plastic chairs. In one corner were the preppy students, hanging on the Professor’s every word. In the other, the environmentalists - straggly beards and natural fibres.

The lecture gave some interesting information:

- India has nearly 70 atomic energy institutions across the country, including R&D institutions, industrial organisations producing heavy water and nuclear fuel, ‘public sector undertakings’, ‘service organisations’, ‘aided institutions’…

- Two of the aided institutions under the Department of Atomic Energy belong to Tata, who have stated they are ready to add nuclear power to their market-spanning list of enterprises.

- Atomic energy applications are by no means confined to the two elephants of electricity generation and weaponry. In India they are also being used to breed mutated crop varieties valued for their high yields and resistance to certain diseases; a radio pharmaceutical lab in Bangalore is used to sterilise medical equipment.

- India has performed 4 explosive nuclear weapons tests; the US 1030; Russia 715; France 210; the UK 45.

- India currently has 3 nuclear power plants in operation, 4 under construction and a further 4 approved for construction.

- Although India has tiny CO2 emissions per capita, it is in fact the 5th largest in the world in terms of cumulative CO2 emissions between 1950 and 1995. [Greenpeace did an interesting report on this recently, called Hiding Behind the Poor]

-More than half of India’s energy production is from coal, with oil actually accounting for less than 1% of the thermal production, let alone total production. Hydroelectric power is a significant contributor. [I would be more specific about these figures, but a few quick internet searches suggests the data presented at the lecture was out of date].

- Nuclear energy has so far reduced global CO2 emissions by 10%.

The lecture then gave the case for why nuclear energy was needed:

- India’s booming economy and increasing household incomes all demand more energy, and fossil fuels are limited. [Quite true. India has also set a particularly ambitious target of ‘Power for All by 2012’, a giant undertaking in a country where some 400m people still have no access to electricity. Power demand frequently outstrips supply and there are regular power cuts, particularly if the rains are unreliable]. Climate change is a result of burning fossil fuels. As nuclear energy production does not generate greenhouse gases, it is therefore an environmentally friendly option.

- Energy production by nuclear methods, as opposed to from the combustion of coal, have so far prevented the release of 90,000 tonnes of toxic heavy metals into the atmosphere.

- Waste from radioactive waste may be dangerous for thousands of years, but it eventually becomes 'dead'. Waste from the burning of coal remains dangerous forever. Therefore nuclear is clearly the best path for future energy production.

And with this slightly staggering last point, the lecture was apparently done. The only mention of safety issues was a perfunctory run-through of IAEA regulations and plant emergency response plans. The only mention of solar energy was in the following quote, attributed to ‘American actor and writer Dan Castellaneta’ and presented to further cement the case for nuclear power.

“And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.”

Dan Castellaneta is the voice of Homer Simpson. This is a Homer Simpson quote.

After, there was a short period set aside at the end for questions. An environmentalist in the corner stood.

“If this is a lecture on nuclear energy and the environment, then why haven’t you included anything about the dangers of radiation?” he asked. “You sound to me like a salesman. If this whole process is so safe, why is there not more transparency? Why is so much of the information about these plants kept secret?”

“Shut up!” shouted a student disciple from the back. ”It is to protect it from the mafia!”

A big debate took off then, bespectacled environmentalists shouting from the one corner, bespectacled students from the other. The professor did himself no favours, waving away health concerns with repeated non sequiturs about waste disposal regulations. Looking amused and slightly embarrassed, the organizers of the lecture tried to hush the dissidents and decided time was up. Shame next week’s lecture is on computer science, or I’d go again.

As the former vice-chancellor of Bangalore University, Professor Siddappa is obviously a very clever man who knows a lot about nuclear science. In university, I studied just enough nuclear chemistry to know I understand nothing but that theoretically, the science is beautiful. As the heart of our sun and so source of life on our planet, it must be one of the closest things science has to divinity, and so it follows that its applications by man – for example, in weaponry - cannot come without some fear of a God complex. The potential applications of nuclear power are great, and surely the science is something to be explored and the debate about its utilisation held. But that debate is not something that should be dominated by one viewpoint alone, whether that be theoretical, political or social.

It is uncontested that we need an alternative energy source to fossil fuels, and that these alternatives must be able to meet our rising energy demands. But nuclear is not the only alternative, and technologies such as solar or wind have nothing like the dubious track record of nuclear applications. There are communities living next to a uranium mine in Jaduguda, Jharkhand displaying abnormally high rates of deformity; where nearly one in five women has suffered at least one miscarriage or stillbirth. Just this month a leak of radioactive material has been found in a nuclear waste storage site in Lower Saxony, Germany. Nuclear waste is highly carcinogenic, capable of causing genetic mutations that can pervade for generations, and, as pointed out in this lecture, can last for thousands of years. Accidents do, and will, happen. Worse is the blind eye turned to the improper disposal of waste in developing countries; people distorted and suffering for politics and money.

To give such a one-sided endorsement of as complex an issue as that of nuclear power generation when such social consequences as these exist in the world makes a mockery of your argument, and of those who would support it.

Climate change in Kerala. God's Own Country, they call it

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:32:07 GMT

Now, some members of the Rainspotting team have been curving an arc over the Northern Indian states and viewing some pretty harrowing sights: victims of Cyclone Alia crowded into refugee camps swarming with malarious mosquitoes in the east; lake beds so dry the earth has cracked open in the drought-hit west. Stories such as these I’ll post as they come in. I, on the other hand, have spent the last couple of weeks cruising round Kerala on the back of a motorbike and boy, is that state good-looking. God’s Own Country, they call it.

A vivid slick slash of jewel-coloured tropical forests, slow grey backwaters and glimmering white beaches, Kerala is one of the first states in India to receive the South-West Monsoon as it comes sweeping in from the Arabian Sea.  Like most South Indian states, agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed: sweeping flats of rice paddy, waving coconut trees, banana, tea, coffee, spices and plantations of rubber trees standing like sentinels, blue bibs in place to catch their oozing latex. The coconut trees are not only used for their fruit: the juice of the tree is tapped and sold as toddy, a mildly alcoholic milk consumed by Keralan men in simple toddy shops to the crackle of local radio. Kerala is also one of the major sources of the world’s coir: fibre torn from coconut husks is soaked in water for up to ten months, pounded with a wooden mallet and spun into yarn to be woven into mats. Interesting fact of the day: the doormat lying by your front door was very likely made in Kerala, fashioned from coconut husk.

It’s often said that the states of India are of such markedly different personalities that they may as well be separate countries, and the certainly the culture of Kerala is unique. Currently governed by a democratically-elected communist party, the state enjoys high literacy rates (almost 100%), low infant mortality and long life expectancy statistics more synonymous with a developed rather than developing country. The boom of Bangalore, they boast, is thanks to Keralan brain power, and it can’t be denied that Keralites have a tendency to emigrate: much of the country’s educated youth leave for employment in the Gulf countries, and the economy of the state is heavily dependent on the remittances these emigrants send home to their families.

Statistics such as these make it an interesting place to interview rural people about what changes are taking place in their environment: while most are educated enough to be aware of the ‘global warming’ phenomenon and recognise its effects in the state, they are also highly media-savvy and keen to provide you with the material they think you need. One scientist I spoke to in the state pointed to Kerala’s political history: society here is highly sensitive and reactive, he said, and a consequence of this is that people may be inclined to forsake their deductive abilities in favour of amplification, particularly when dealing with as emotional an issue as the environment. For example, people may have heard that sea levels are rising, and this was certainly attested to by all the coastal communities I spoke to. The actual effect felt, though, is also dependent on other factors such as the local geological movements of the land and will not be uniform. For example, the town of Kochi, a historical port town in the middle of Kerala, is currently undergoing geological subsidence: coupled with rising sea levels it will sink notably more than a land region that is rising, and for which the effects may be negligible.

That said, there are still many people even in Kerala who are not educated enough to know of the climate threat, or to be able to explain the changes happening to their environment.

“Some of the older folk think it is the beginning of end of the world,” laughed Mabel Johnkutty, a community worker I spoke with. I’m not sure it’s really that funny. In an effort to explain the phenomenon to local people, V.J. Jose, the Periyar Riverkeeper, uses a frog in a demonstration charming in its simplicity, albeit slightly dubious in terms of animal rights. Placing the amphibian in a glass bowl, he demonstrates that the creature will jump if boiling water is suddenly poured onto it. If the frog is placed in cold water and slowly heated, however, the change is gradual and the animal won’t notice the heat until it is too late.

There are of course many environmental problems the Keralites are facing that tangle in with and exacerbate those of climate change. In Wayanad, a cool highland region perched on the last of the Western Ghats before they begin their rundown to the low coast, deforestation to grow cash crops such as pepper and rubber is drying out the formerly moist land. It was explained to me thus: in natural forest, different varieties of plant life reach to different heights, and their roots to different depths. The entire system then acts as a kind of ladder, pulling water up from the depths and passing it to other plants that penetrate the earth less deeply. Thick vegetation on the ground also decomposes to produce soil rich in biomass, and so the earth retains water like a sponge. When the forest is cleared to grow more lucrative mono-crops such as pepper, this effect is lost. One organic farmer I met in Wayanad said that 50 years ago, rainwater falling in the district would take six months to work its way across Kerala to the Arabian Sea. Now, so porous and parched is the earth there, he estimates it to run through in a mere 48 hours.

But it is the coast, the gleaming stretch of meandering white-gold, that is arguably what characterises Kerala. The state has only 10% of India’s coastline, but is home to 25% of the country’s fishing population, and a correlating proportion of its fish production. The fishing communities are concentrated here because the seas are notably rich, a wealth attributed to a unique phenomenon called Chaakara: during the monsoon season, the rains flush out clay particles from the banks of the 41 rivers leading down to the coast. Rich in nutrients, the clay particles create a breeding ground for fish and prawns, resulting in unusually high sea yields. Needless to say, if the monsoon is poor, this stock will be among those critically affected.

A high concentration of fishermen means a crowded coastline, and the rising seas have already started their slow chomp on the homesteads. Two years ago in Veli, a village just outside the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram, the tide destroyed a stretch of houses that had stood untouched for thirty years. More than sixty families were rendered homeless in a matter of three days. In an effort to lessen their vulnerability, the government has commissioned the building of a sea wall along large stretches of the coast, a strategy opposed by residents who struggle to lift their boats over the construction. It’s also a highly expensive business, they say, and strewn with corruption. Each year the rough monsoon seas knock down parts of the wall, and they have to be rebuilt.

The problems of climate change may not yet be impoverishing the people of Kerala as much as in other states in India, but that does not mean that they are not being felt, nor that the future is any less foreboding. Like the frog in the bowl, people are adapting their lifestyles to the rising temperatures, erratic rains and encroaching seas, too preoccupied with their day-to-day struggles to worry about the idea of a looming global phenomenon.

“There’s a saying in Malayalam [the language of Kerala], that you hear people say about the changing climate,” Mabel Johnkutty tells me.

“Roughly translated, it says that if the whole world is falling down, a fate accomplished, then what is the point in trying to hold it up with a pole? This is the feeling towards mitigation.

“Their world is changing, and what can they do?”

IMAGES:
Top left: A fisherman casts his net, Alapuzzha, Kerala
Top right: A rubber plantation, Wayanad, Kerala. Lucrative mono-crops such as this are drying out the formerly lush land
Middle left: Paddy workers in Kuttanad, the 'rice bowl of Kerala'. Reclaimed land and below sea level, the area is certain to be swallowed by rising seas
Bottom right: Mutai, a farmer in the Wayanad District of Kerala for over 50 years, tells us about changes in the climate while his grandchildren listen
Bottom left: Boys strain to rebuild the sea wall, erected in an effort to keep the rising seas from destroying homesteads.  Kovalum Beach, Kerala

Video footage of the Periyar River

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:05:03 GMT

Now Back to Bangalore Broadband, I can upload some footage of the polluted Periyar River. From the opposite bank, Riverkeeper V. J. Jose points out the back of a few of the 247 factories that line the banks of this part of the Periyar, dumping 170m litres of waste effluent into its waters every day.

The yellow-stained earth that can be seen on the track down to the water is a result of factory trucks dumping large loads of waste gypsum, either directly into the river or next to it, from where the chemicals wash down into the river with the next rain.