Let us not only blame it on EL NINO
From the
time in the 1920s SIR GILBERT WALKER recognized the pressure pattern of the giant
ocean –atmosphere seesaw circulation which is called the Walker Circulation or
southern oscillation there has been lot
of research and renewed interest in the study of this pressure pattern of which
EL NINO forms a part.
In fact the word
EL NINO means ‘the boy’ in Spanish or perhaps even ‘the child’. It was called
as such by the fishermen who observed the arrival of warm water in the ocean
ground about Christmas time.
Normally, in
December, air pressure is high, over the south east pacific and low over Indonesia.
When EL NINO occurs this process is reversed and as a consequence where there
should be rains there is draught and where there should be sun shine, there is
floods and so on.
Though we
are all now well informed about what is EL NINO, when it occurs and also what
happens when it occurs etc. still what causes or what the factors that cause EL
NINO have not yet been discovered and therefore obviously no remedial measures
have been thought out much less worked out.
Labeling away
verbally any major ecological degradation or atmospheric change to any single
specific factor like EL NINO has become a fashion as the governments feel that
they have justified the huge catastrophe that is wrecked with a verbal label
with which the media will have a nice time with experts vomiting their varying
degrees of ignorance and these fellows, the media anchors, in turn,
unfortunately, happen to be the mass opinion molders.
Almost all
the possible causes of EL NINO are at best conjectures and wild generalizations
spiced with select jargons discernible only to the academicians and parroted by
that huge industry which suffers from selective amnesia and collective
indifference, you guessed it right, the media houses.
These generalizations
and conjectures come in handy as a remote factor on which we find it easy to
blame any adverse and unbearable weather conditions and thereby blinker our
vision from seeing the damages that are caused by our own misdeeds affecting
the environment and directly and indirectly contributing heavily to all these
erratic climatic conditions.
Once the climate
returns back to normalcy everyone goes into hibernation and wake up only when
the same crisis awakes all of us again. Of course the natural cycles are
jealous of our jet speed life styles that they stop us to have a look at them
and acknowledge that they are very much part of our life and we are all
interrelated and inter connected.
The list of
our misdeeds contributing to this unbearable weather conditions especially
severe heat in summer is rather too long. So, let me take out one major misdeed
and delve into it, namely, excessive urbanization leading to concrete jungles and
its concomitant catastrophic consequences.
Excessive urbanization
is due to lack of amenities and opportunities in the villages. As a result the rural
population migrates to urban areas and to provide for space for this population
eats into the very little left over farm lands, tress etc in the urban areas
and as more and more villagers migrate
the agricultural sector in villages too suffer. There is not corresponding
public transport facilities for transporting these huge populations in the urban
areas, forcing many to go in for individual vehicles which in turn take more
road space from the existing green lands-either agricultural or forest lands. The
shelter and fuel requirement of this augmented population requires further
felling of trees. The left over small farmers are also pushed away by Mechanization
of agriculture which replaces resourceful people with resource- wasting
machines.
Lot of greenery
is also lost to grazing by cattle which are bred in huge number for export of
meat. In fact the State of the Environment Atlas, Penguin 1995, world resources
1992-93, as JONI Seager mentions that
the world is losing 7 million hectares of fertile land each year due to soil
degradation of which 35% accounts for over-grazing, 30% for deforestation,
28%mecahnized farming and 7% other causes.
Can these
problems ever get solved with next higher posting seeking crisis managing bureaucrats
or next election minding politicians or the academic approval and corporate
sponsor seeking scientists or economists
who work out theories that would fit into certain set pattern of ideological slots
which would get them awards, recognition , sometimes even publication or the most poisonous institute with nexus with
all these and which merely parrots what all these people say and ultimately act
as mass opinion molders , the dangerous media houses.
Let us not
allow any of these crooks to decide the future of our planet which is a very
complex system wherein a slight damage to one part may have catastrophic effect
on something else.
Our economist
and politicians can only think of the foreign exchange revenue that export of
prawn can bring and they are not bothered about the damage to cultivable land;
for them forests are raw materials for
furniture industry , in fact, forests
are for rest of the species; these people would go to any extent to harvest the
sea for marine products and they see human beings only as labor force.
Each one of us,
in our individual capacity, to the extent we can must strive to make the necessary
plans and effect the necessary changes to ensure that we bequeath a planet
wherein our children can lead a life in harmony with nature. Our environmental
ethics as a whole must make the inevitable paradigm shift from human –centered approach
to life –centered approach.
As a first
step, we must come out with a detailed environmental atlas, something like the
e the Atlas of environmental and sustainability indicators for Latin America
and Caribbean released by Manuel Winograd [ the architect of this computerized
Atlas and an Environmental Scientist at C.I.A.T]. It allows users to easily
pull together and visually compare in a single way many kinds of data, variety
of reputable but separate sources such as C.I.A.T, THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY,
N.A.S.A, THE GLOBAL RESOURCE INFORMATION DATABASE OF UNEP, THE WWF and THE
WORLD CONSERVATION MONITORING CENTER.
As this type
of Atlas gives avid readers, learners, knowledge seekers, students, sincere
policy makers etc all the best possible data to monitor environmental impact. The
sincere policy makers need to have information on crops, forest covers,
climate, land and water uses and abuses, topography, temperature zones [India
has more than any other country], road locations, how much of forest cover has
been converted to create tea plantations, population distribution, explosion of
vehicular traffic etc . This will definitely help us from differentiating
between facts and false claims.
Once these
comprehensive information from various sources are made available , we can
learn what it is to adopt to ‘frugal technology’ in certain areas of life where
it is necessitated to harmonize with the ‘new scarcity’ of Earth, “ the 4.5 x
10^9 year –old near spherical Cornucopia” as N.L.Falcon, the great Geologist
calls it, in a worthy and habitable condition for future generations.
Primarily at
any cost we must create opportunities and facilities in our villages. And avoid
too much urbanization.
As per the “An
Urbanising World”, Global Report on human settlements, 1996, U.N. Center for
Human Settlements [ habitat] Report, “The average size of the world’s largest
100 cities have grown from 2,00,000 in 1800 to 5.1 Million in 1990. Asia counts
3/5ths of world’s population and 44.5% of worlds’ urban population” and the
States of Disarray [UNRISD] report gives world’s ten largest urban
conglomerations in the year 2000 with population in Millions and two Indian cities
figure in this: Calcutta with 15.7 Millions and Mumbai:15.4 Millions.[would
like to remind you that these states are for 2000]
Dr.Jeff
Luvall who along with Dr. Dale Quattrochi is leading the Urban Heat Island pilot Project , says, “The artificial material store much of the sun’s
energy and remain hot for long after sun set” and “ in extreme cases these heat pockets can
push city temperatures 10 degrees higher than surrounding rural areas”. He also
says, “The hotter the city more quickly the ground level Ozone forms”.
So growing
urbanization and creation of concrete jungles can increase heat and make it
unbearable even late in the evening whether there is EL NINO or Ni Siquiera eso
[ not even that].
Finally I would like all concerned citizens to ponder over the
following
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION of the RIGHTS of POSTERITY
Which was drafted by the UK council for posterity initially by a
gentleman called Professor Scorer and a group of other concerned people like
ecologist Herbie Girardet, Tanya Schwarz of the Forest Peoples’ Support Group,
Guy Dauncey environmental consultant and Nicolas Albery of the Institute of
Social Inventions.
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF POSTERITY
(DRAFT, JULY 1989)
Whereas our descendants’ generations, although likely to prove far
more numerous than ourselves, have no voice or vote in any of our political
systems, we therefore declare that all the generations yet to come, for as far
into the future as human life survives on this planet, are entitled by natural
justice to the following rights, which those alive today have a duty to respect
and uphold:
1. The right to inherit a planet that has been treated by its
human occupants with the utmost respect. And more particularly:
2. The right to inherit a planet with oceans, lakes and atmosphere
undamaged by human activity, with safeguards for planet’s climate, such as
rainforests, still intact.
3. The right to inherit a planet with an undiminished diversity of
species.
4. The right to inherit adequately maintained reserves of fossil
fuel and other mineral resources.
5. The right to be born into world of human-scale societies,
unravaged by population excess.
6. The right to inherit a world unmarred by nuclear or chemical
wars, incidents or wastes.
7. The right to expect that previous generations will have cleaned
up their pollution, repaired their damaged environments, on land, sea and in
the air ( including outer space), and protected places of natural beauty.
8. The right to inherit political, legal, technological and social
systems that respect individual human dignity, such as those laid out in the UN
Declaration of Human Rights.
9. The right to inherit the full uncensored cultural heritage
bequeathed by former generations, as expressed, for instance, in their art,
history, literature, libraries and museums.
10.The right of future generations to have their interests
considered and, where appropriate, represented by a competent advocate, in any
present day tribunal or assembly that is deciding courses of action that might
have harmful log-term consequences.
So, let us do something more than blaming it
on EL NINO.
URBANISATION MANIA CAUSES EL NINO
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