EPI-INDIA
KEY POINTS:
- The latest Environmental Performance Index(EPI) placed India last among all 180 assessed countries.
- The assessment, carried out by Yale and Columbia University with an emphasis on climate change mitigation, has become controversial for prioritizing the flow of greenhouse gases from countries while reducing the emphasis on the stock of carbon dioxide from industrialized countries, which is warming the globe.
- The National Rank of 165 on Climate Policy and score of 21.7 in this category, which overall has 38% weightage in calculations along with 42% for ecosystem vitality and 20% for environmental health.
- Under the Paris Agreement of rising temperature to 1.5o centigrade, India is much pressured to reach this goal.
- India does better in sub-metrics like growth rates for black carbon, methane, fluorinated gases, and greenhouse gas emissions based on their intensity and per capita volumes.
- The Index rates the country low on projected greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions for mid-century, a target for net-zero emissions.
- The EPI report estimates that China, India, the United States and Russia are expected to account for over 50% of global residual greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
- India has a low per capita GHG emissions, reduced intensity of GHG emissions in its economy, made big strides in achieving 40% renewable power generation.
- The country protested that the new India State of Forest Report(ISFR) 2021 was not factored in part of the biodiversity metric.
- India scores abysmally low on some Ecosystem Vitality variables like-
- Marine protected areas-0.3 of possible 100
- Protected Areas Representativeness Index(PARI)-0.5
- Terrestrial Biome Protection(TBM)-National-1.2
- TBM-Global-2.1
- Wetland loss prevention is among the best scores for India-62.
- The low PARI score puts pressure on the Government to defend its claim that the EPI scores for biodiversity health are faulty due to weakness in collecting habitat and species data.
BIOME PROTECTION-AIR QUALITY:
- The EPI-assigned rating for India in protecting biomes has led to sharp differences.
- The Index assigns a laggard rank on tropical & subtropical dry broadleaf and coniferous forests, montane grasslands, shrub lands and the worst performance on deserts and xeric shrub lands.
- The National and legal boundaries for protected areas may not match the geographical boundaries of biomes and international classifications may not be optimal to measure conservation.
- With a score of 7.8 and a rank of 179, the dispute over data and reliability of several parameters reopened.
- The Government faults the dataset on pollutant concentration data, covering mainly Particulate Matter(PM2.5), oxides of nitrogen, sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, because of higher uncertainty in regions with less extensive monitoring networks, emission inventories.
- When the economic activity was unfettered by COVID-2019, 1.67 million deaths during 2019 were reported due to air pollution.
- There are aspects of the EPI that the Union Government has rejected, blaming the ranking agencies for not engaging with India on the climate change mitigation program, not for providing a handicap under the United Nations Principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities & Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), which forms the basis of the Paris Agreement.
GREEN GOALS:
- The National Case would be stronger if policies on luxury urban emissions are aimed at helping poor Indians.
- Pevailing high fuel, vehicular taxes could exclusively drive change & raise a green commons like clean public transport, cycling, pedestrianisation.
- The National Policy of achieving Net Zero emissions by 2070 provides a longer timeline for a coal phaseout, but other areas can benefit from policies that prevent a carbon lock-in effect.
- India has not expanded dis-aggregated rooftop solar power across residential and commercial structures.
- Stronger protection for biomes can generate wide-ranging benefits & biodiversity can recover.
AFTERWORD:
India needs to adopt a rigorous dashboard approach to indicators, assigning high weight to the environment. This can generate good data, identify the real beneficiaries of policies, avoid serious environmental deficits and ensure inter-generational equity in the use of natural resources. It can curb pollution.
source-the Hindu
