More conflicts over water of large reservoirs are expected as big dams continue to fail in this nation!

At 72 per cent of the total storage capacity, 85 important reservoirs of the country sound an alarming bell  

As per information received from the Central Water Commission, 85 of the important reservoirs (we can call it major reservoirs) of the country as on 5^th November 2014 was 111.957 BCM that is 72 per cent of their total storage capacity at Full Reservoir Level (FRL).  This was 128.73 BCM on 11^th September last year, a huge reduction.  In fact on October 01, 2014 it was 121.396 BCM which is 78% of total storage capacity of these reservoirs.  So, within a month, we have already experienced a 6 per cent reduction. Large dams continue to fail in this nation!

Yesterday only I had posted in this blog about the drastic reduction of sowing in Wheat, Gram and Pulses.  Even though there is no data available as yet from the government that could establish the exact relationship between the reduced water availability of water in these reservoirs and the decrease in farming, we can assume about this especially in cases of reservoirs which are providing irrigation. 

Reduced water levels in the reservoirs would mean more conflicts between different uses. Farmers and hydro power generation are going to suffer in cases such as Hirakud where there is already a growing conflict due to illegal and excessive withdrawal of water by the industrial houses making irrigation and hydro power generation to suffer. 

Storage Reduction in Eastern Region including Odisha:  As per the CWC, the Eastern region that includes States of Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Tripura, has 15 reservoirs having a total storage capacity of 18.83 BCM. The total storage available in these reservoirs as of 5th November 2014 was 14.71 BCM which is 78 per cent of total storage capacity of these reservoirs. The storage during corresponding period of last year was 88 per cent, which means these reservoirs are running at a capacity reduction of 10 per cent from the previous year.

As I have always said, India’s water woes have a solution in decentralized water harvesting and management through small structures that are done in ecologically sustainable models so that the entire river basins are recharged, as against the centralized large storage systems which have more negatives to offer than they can contribute positively.

Ranjan Panda

Convenor, Water Initiatives Odisha

Convenor, Combat Climate Change Network, INDIA

Mahanadi River Waterkeeper (Member, Global Waterkeeper Alliance)

Mobile: +91-9437050103/9937561700

Email: ranjanpanda@gmail.com, waterinodisha@gmail.com

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EnviroTweets: India sees drastic reduction in Wheat, Gram and Pulses farming!

A just released information from India's Agriculture Ministry shows that Indian farmers have drastically gone down on sowing Wheat, Gram and Pulses in the Rabi farming season.  Only the Oil Seeds sown area has experienced a marginal increase.  The following are the detailed figures:

Wheat:  Compared to sown area of 9.39 lakh hectares in 2013-14, it has reduced to 4.47 lakh hectares in the corresponding period in 2014-15. Wheat farming has therefore gone down by more than half!

Gram: Sowing of Gram has gone down from 23.78 lakh hectares in the previous year to 16.15 lakh hectares this year, a reduction of almost 32 per cent.  

Pulses: This year Pulses have been sown in 23.98 lakh hectares, compared to 30.86 lakh hectares in the corresponding period of previous year.  This is a reduction of about 22.30 per cent.  

Oil Seeds: Oil Seeds sowing has shown a marginal increase of about 10.40 per cent.  As compared to previous year's sown area of 28.41 lakh hectares, this year Oil Seeds have been sown in 31.36 lakh hectares.

 

WOW! We have met the MDG target of halving world's poor!!!

This wonder is achieved, if you believe the new World Bank formula of calculating poor! The way our government is now planning to reduce the poor people in 'statistics' instead of reducing poverty, the World Bank's revised Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is intending to do the same.  The revised PPP and poverty line would mean a dramatic decrease of poor people in India and the globe.  And this would further justify the current form of exploitative global private capital which alienates the poor people from their natural resources and makes them real poor.  And investments in poverty reduction would also be reduced because we would have supposedly achieved the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing poverty by half by the year 2015.  What a formula?

Image: Business Standard at the link shared below

While I have posted the link to the detailed article by Nitin Sethi published in Business Standard on this, the following paragraph is worth quoting here. 

By taking the World Bank-prescribed $1.25 as the poverty line on the previous PPP index, India had 402 million poor people in 2010. But with the revised PPP number, the Centre for Global Development's back of the envelope calculations put the figure at 102.3 million in 2010. Brookings Institution suggests it would fall down to as low as 98.9 million. Global poverty itself would fall by more than half from 1.2 billion poor people to 571.3 million overnight, for economists at least. That means the Millennium Development Goals target for 2015 has been met. The story of this statistical game lies behind the method of calculating the PPP index and the global poverty line.

(Further details @ http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/india-s-poor-may-shrink-75-by-new-world-bank-formula-114080400161_1.html)

101 Degree F Shock to Japan! 11 Dead, Thousands hospitalized!!

Global warming is taking its toll everywhere.  This Saturday Japan was shocked by the country's hottest day this year.  News reports have it that at least 11 people have died and near to 2000 people have been hospitalized due to a major heatwave.  Almost fourteen cities broke the heat records in Japan, with the city of Higashiomi reaching a record-breaking 38.8° C (101.8° F) and more than a quarter of observation points across the nation recorded temperatures of 95° or higher...

More @  http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/28/3464638/11-die-japan-heatwave/

Banned in 1972, DDT kills Songbirds in USA in 2014!

We call ourselves the most educated and advanced race.  However, our activities prove that we have exposed ourselves and most importantly our environment to irreparable damages by developing and using products that we hardly have any control over.  We are half educated in most of our so called 'development inventions and discoveries.'  As a result we let loose killers into the environment and then don't have any control over them.  The DDT is one such example. 

A latest news report from Michigan talks about this alarming fact of DDT killing Songbirds.  Tests have found out that these songbirds are being poisoned by this pesticide that was banned in the Unites States more than 40 years ago, in 1972.  Lethal concentrations were found in the birds' brains, as well as in the worms they eat; said this report.  

(Detailed report @http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/jul/dead-robins)

A China River turns blood red within no time and no body knows how!

Nobody knows the cause as yet about what made this China river turn blood red in no time. One thing is however sure that humans are always capable of polluting rivers so easily and most the times they really don't have an idea about this deadly act of theirs...

(More @ http://www.ecouterre.com/breaking-river-in-china-mysteriously-turns-blood-red-overnight/)

8 MW of SUN for Delhi: Do it NDMC!

It is a welcome news.  The New Delhi Municipal Council(NDMC) plans to tap 8 MW of solar power from roof tops of all it's major buildings to power those buildings.  I hope more cities would follow suit...

(More @ http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/ndmc-to-tap-solar-energy-for-buildings-114020800486_1.html)

Fukushima nuclear disaster’s latest fallout. Monkeys are found with abnormal blood!

This new study by researchers at Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University in Tokyo finds out that Japanese monkeys' abnormal blood is linked to Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011.  The Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), that were studied, had low white and red blood cell levels and low haemoglobin, and are more prone to infectious diseases.  In fact this study could help in finding similar impacts of the radioactive elements on human health.

Japanese macaque perched on a tree. Photograph: Renee Lynn/Corbis (published in www.theguardian.com)

As reported by the Guardian, the scientists compared 61 monkeys living 70km (44 miles) from the the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant with 31 monkeys from the Shimokita Penisula, over 400km (249 miles) from Fukushima. The Fukushima monkeys had low blood counts and radioactive caesium in their bodies, related to caesium levels in the soils where they lived. No caesium was detected in the Shimokita troop.  Professor Shin-ichi Hayama, at the Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University in Tokyo, told the Guardian that during Japan’s snowy winters the monkeys feed on tree buds and bark, where caesium has been shown to accumulate at high concentrations.

“This first data from non-human primates — the closest taxonomic relatives of humans — should make a notable contribution to future research on the health effects of radiation exposure in humans,” he said. The work, which ruled out disease or malnutrition as a cause of the low blood counts, is published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.

Further details at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/24/japanese-monkeys-abnormal-blood-linked-to-fukushima-disaster-study

Do you eat Vegetables? Watch out for the river toxins in your greens!

If your river is polluted, the vegetables you eat is poison.  This is what we are warned from this news that talks about how pesticides and a toxic mix of sewage and industrial effluents may be contaminating what’s grown on the bed of the Yamuna River in India...

(Source: Times of India) 

Full report at http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31808&articlexml=Veggies-full-of-river-toxins-15052014004031

Subsidy for renewable energy is welcome. India should focus on Solar now!

900 crore subsidy to conventional & renewable sources in areas with no or poor electricity. India sud focus on solar now,even in grid covered ares!

(https://twitter.com/ranjanpanda/status/491566973881315329)

Monsoon condition improves, but not sufficient!

Indian government sources have said that there has been an eleven percent increase in monsoon rains over the last week.  The situation has certainly improved, but it is not as good as we should expect.  Last week, the source says, the deficiency was 43% as compared to this week’s 32%.  Farmers of the nation are waiting for a good monsoon, desperately…

More at http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=107050

Cancer causing arsenic in rice to be controlled: international standards set!

Cancer-causing arsenic in rice to be limited, said the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the top global decision-making body for food standards, issued the decision at its ongoing annual meeting in Geneva. The commission set a maximum of 0.02 mg of arsenic per kilo of polished race — the product that is traded and consumed.  Arsenic affected water impacts negatively the rice consuming population in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India and Vietnam…

(More at: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/07/18/world/science-health-world/governments-agree-stem-cancer-causing-arsenic-rice-u-n/#.U8khivnjVvB)

Bird population declining due to popular pesticides such as Neonicotinoids!

Pesticides don't just kill pests. New research out of the Netherlands provides compelling evidence linking a widely used class of insecticides to population declines across 14 species of birds.  Scientists from Radboud University in Nijmegen and the Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology and Birdlife Netherlands (SOVON) compared long-term data sets for both farmland bird populations and chemical concentrations in surface water. They found that in areas where water contained high concentrations of imidacloprid—a common neonicotinoid pesticide—bird populations tended to decline by an average of 3.5 percent annually…

(Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140709-birds-insects-pesticides-insecticides-neonicotinoids-silent-spring/)

Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused lesions in fish, said scientists!

Oil that matches the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been found in the bodies of sickened fish, according to a team of Florida scientists who studied the oil's chemical composition. Thousands of claims for damages against BP continue to be processed since the oil and gas producer's Gulf rig exploded, killing 11 oil workers and spilling millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days after the April 2010 blast.  Fishermen in the northern Gulf near the blown-out well say they began noticing a spike in abnormal-looking fish, including many with unusual skin lesions, in the winter of 2010-2011…

(Source: Thompson Reuters @ http://planetark.org/wen/71843)

India ranks second in world fish production!

India ranks second in world fish production, contributing about 5.4% of global fish production. It is also a major producer of fish through aquaculture. Total fish production during 2013-14 is estimated at 9.45 mt with 6.10 mt coming from the inland sector and 3.35 mt from the marine sector. The sector contributes about 1 per cent to overall GDP and represents 4.6% of agricultural GDP…

(Source: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=106270)

Fukushima groundwater has 4000% more radioactive element!

Newly released data shows 4,000% more radioactive material in Fukushima groundwater than Tepco claimed — 39 billion Bq/m³ in sample from shoreline… after going through filtration process — Results not made public until almost a year later...

(Source: http://enenews.com/newly-released-data-shows-4000-more-radioactive-material-in-fukushima-groundwater-than-tepco-had-claimed-levels-near-ocean-reached-39-million-bqliter-after-going-through-filtration-process-vi?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29)