Climate Change & Global Health (GS Paper 3, Environment)
Why in news?
- A recent report by Lancet, has traced in detail the intimate link between changing weather events and their impact on the health of people.
- The 2022 Lancet ‘Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Health at the Mercy of Fossil Fuels’ points out that the world’s reliance on fossil fuels increases the risk of disease, food insecurity and other illnesses related to heat.
What does the report outline?
- Climate change is not an isolated incident or occurrence, but a global phenomenon, leaving its impact on almost every aspect of life, across the world, irrespective of whether they contributed to it or not.
- Countries and health systems continue to contend with the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and persistent fossil fuel overdependence has pushed the world into global energy and cost-of-living crises.
- Its worsening impacts are increasingly affecting the foundations of human health and wellbeing, exacerbating the vulnerability of the world’s populations to concurrent health threats.
- According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change affects the social and environmental determinants of health — clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter.
- The rapidly increasing temperatures exposed people, especially vulnerable populations (adults above 65 years old and children younger than one) to 3.7 billion more heatwave days in 2021 than annually in 1986–2005.
How is it leading to rise in infectious diseases?
- The changing climate is affecting the spread of infectious disease, raising the risk of emerging diseases and co-epidemics. For instance, it records that coastal waters are becoming more suited for the transmission of Vibrio pathogens.
- It also says that the number of months suitable for malaria transmission has increased in the highland areas of the Americas and Africa.
- The WHO has predicted that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 2,50,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
What about food security?
- Every dimension of food security is being affected by climate change. Higher temperatures threaten crop yields directly, with the growth season shortening for many cereal crops.
- Extreme weather events disrupt supply chains, thereby undermining food availability, access, stability, and utilisation.
- The prevalence of undernourishment increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and up to 161 million more people faced hunger in 2020 than in 2019. This situation is now worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the report underscores.
Dependence on fossil fuel:
- The war has led many countries to search for alternative fuels to Russian oil and gas, and some of them are still turning back to traditional thermal energy.
- The report argues that even if implemented as a temporary transition, the renewed clamour for coal could reverse whatever gains have been made in air quality improvement and push the world towards a future of accelerated climate change that would threaten human survival.
- Instead, a transition to clean energy forms would undeniably be the sustainable way ahead.
Roadmap:
- A health-centred response to the coexisting climate, energy, and cost-of-living crises provides an opportunity to deliver a healthy, low-carbon future.
- A health-centric response might be starting to emerge. Measuring the rising coverage of health and climate change in the media, the governments’ commitment to assess and address the threats from climate change, are positive signs, the report stresses.
- This is the way a health-centred response would work – it would reduce the likelihood of the most catastrophic climate change impacts, while improving energy security and creating an opportunity for economic recovery.
- Improvements in air quality will help prevent deaths resulting from exposure to fossil fuel-derived ambient PM2.5, and the stress on low-carbon travel and increase in urban spaces would result in promoting physical activity which would have an impact on physical and mental health.
- The report also calls for an accelerated transition to balanced and more plant-based diets, as that would help reduce emissions from red meat and milk production, and prevent diet-related deaths, besides substantially reducing the risk of zoonotic diseases.
- This sort of health-focused shifts would reduce the burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases, reducing the strain on health-care providers, and leading to more robust health systems.
Way Forward:
- The data shows that the pace and scale of climate change adaptation, planning, and resilience is insufficient.
- In this context, the report calls for global coordination, funding, transparency, and cooperation between governments, communities, civil society, businesses, and public health leaders, to reduce or prevent the vulnerabilities that the world is otherwise exposed to.
Army focus on setting permanent defences using 3D printing tech in Ladakh
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Why in news?
- In a major technology push, Indian Army has envisioned construction of ‘permanent defences’ along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh using cutting-edge 3D printing technology, a move that will save time and improve its defence preparedness.
Why 3D printing technology?
- 3D printing technology uses complex software and robotic unit that helps in creating a structure through multiple stages from a digital model.
- These 3D-printed permanent defences can withstand a direct fire by a T-90 tank from about 100 metres.
- 3D printing technology can help save time and cut cost compared to what is needed in construction of conventional units, like a bunker or a habitat for troops.
Eastern Ladakh border standoff:
- The eastern Ladakh border standoff had erupted on May 5, 2020, following a violent clash in the Pangong lake area. Both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry.
- As part of a five-day disengagement process, Indian and Chinese militaries on September 12, 2022 moved back their frontline troops to the rear locations from the face-off site of Patrolling Point 15 in the Gogra-Hotsprings area in eastern Ladakh and dismantled temporary infrastructure there.
Developments on the eastern Ladakh border:
- Since the eastern Ladakh border standoff in 2020, shelters for about 22,000 troops have come up in the last two years, and these are relocatable, modern, compact, and can be lifted and erected in a few days.
- The army has taken a number of steps to boost its capability development and achieve modernisation and trials on the use of 3D printed defences have been successful.
- Besides building habitat for 22,000 troops and shelters for storing equipment have been constructed in the last two years. Nearly 450 A vehicles and guns can be stored in these shelters.
Infrastructure Development:
- A 298 km road, projected to be completed in 2026, will provide alternate connectivity to Western Ladakh and the Zanskar Valley directly from the Manali axis. It also includes a 4.1 km twin tube Shinkun La tunnel for providing all weather connectivity, which is likely to be approved by the defence ministry soon, the sources said.
- Under the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), there are 18 projects spread across the length and breadth of the country.
- BRO has constructed more than 60,000 km of roads, 693 major permanent bridges totalling a length of 53,000 metres, 19 airfields and four tunnels running a total distance of nearly 19 km, including the Atal Tunnel which holds the world record for being the longest tunnel (9.02 km) in the world above 10,000 feet for the world's highest motorable road over Umlingla.
- Currently, the BRO is constructing nine tunnels which include 2.535 km long Sela tunnel, which will be the highest bi-lane tunnel in the world once completed.
With 177 mn, India largest contributor to global population milestone: UN
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Why in news?
- As the world population touched 8 billion recently, India was the largest contributor to the milestone, having added 177 million people as per the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).
Key Highlights:
- The UN Population Fund (UNFPA), in a special graphic to mark the global population reaching eight billion, said Asia and Africa has driven much of this growth is expected to drive the next billion by 2037, while Europe's contribution will be negative due to declining population.
- India, the largest contributor to the 8 billion (177 million) will surpass China, which was the second largest contributor (73 million) and whose contribution to the next billion will be negative, as the world's most populous nation by 2023.
- The global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under 1 per cent in 2020.
- The world's population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050.
- The world added a billion people in the last 12 years.
- It took about 12 years for the world population to grow from 7 to 8 billion, but the next billion is expected to take about 14.5 years (2037), reflecting the slowdown in global growth.
- World population is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and is expected to remain at that level until 2100.
Future Projections:
- For the increase from 7 to 8 billion, around 70 per cent of the added population was in low-income and lower-middle-income countries.
- For the increase from 8 to 9 billion, these two groups of countries are expected to account for more than 90 per cent of global growth.
- Between now and 2050, the global increase in the population under the age 65 will occur entirely in low income and lower-middle-income countries, since population growth in high-income and upper-middle income countries will occur only among those aged 65 or more.
India’s population status:
- The World Population Prospects 2022, released in July 2022 said that India's population stands at 1.412 billion in 2022, compared with China's 1.426 billion.
- India is projected to have a population of 1.668 billion in 2050, ahead of China's 1.317 billion people by the middle of the century.
- According to UNFPA estimates, 68 per cent of India's population is between 15-64 years old in 2022, while people aged 65 and older were seven per cent of the population.
China:
- China is expected to experience an absolute decline in its population as early as 2023.
- The countries where population growth has slowed must prepare for an increasing proportion of older persons and, in more extreme cases, a decreasing population size.
- The WHO pointed out that China has one of the fastest growing ageing populations in the world.
- The population of people over 60 years in China is projected to reach 28 per cent by 2040, due to longer life expectancy and declining fertility rates.
- In China, by 2019, there were 254 million older people aged 60 and over, and 176 million older people aged 65 and over.
In 2022, the two most populous regions were both in Asia:
- Eastern and South-Eastern Asia with 2.3 billion people (29 per cent of the global population) and Central and Southern Asia with 2.1 billion (26 per cent).
- China and India, with more than 1.4 billion each, accounted for most of the population in these two regions.
- More than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania.
- Countries of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to contribute more than half of the increase anticipated through 2050, the report added.
