General Studies-03: Environment

1. Invasive weed threatens elephant habitats in T.N.

Women plucking tea leaves as an elephant and a gaur graze in a swamp at Valparai. 

An aquatic weed native to some countries in Central and South America, including Peru, is threatening elephant habitats and foraging areas in Valparai, a Tamil Nadu hill station close to the Kerala boundary, and reviving the risk of human-elephant conflicts in the region.

Ludwigia peruviana, which grows fast along waterbodies, has infested the majority of the hill station’s swamps, locally known as vayals, where elephants used to find lush grass even in the summer. However, the Forest Department says that most of these swamps are located on private estates, which are responsible for the tricky process of removing the weed; if not done correctly, trying to pull it out will help it spread even more.

The rapid large-scale spread of the weed — which was probably introduced as an ornamental plant for its tiny yellow flowers — has shaken the balance of these perennial foraging grounds, limiting the growth of grass and native plants that are palatable to elephants and animals including gaur.

General Studies-03: Technology

2. INS Kirpan decommissioned from Indian Navy, handed over to Vietnam as a present

Shining legacy: The indigenously built missile corvette INS Kirpan served 32 years in the Indian Navy. 

Calling upon the Vietnam People’s Navy (VPN) to closely examine and explore the vast potential that the Indian shipbuilding industry holds, and stressing that it is the best value-for-money proposition they can find, Navy chief R. Hari Kumar on Saturday said that India’s indigenous shipbuilding prowess is an “assurance to our friends and partners” that the Indian Navy is capable and ready to support collective security needs in the region. He said this while speaking at the ceremony for decommissioning of the indigenous missile corvette INS Kirpan after 32 years in the Indian Navy, and was handed over to Cam Ranh, Vietnam.

The decommissioning and handing-over ceremony was presided over by Adm. Kumar and Rear Adm. Pham Manh Hung, Deputy Commander-in-Chief and Chief of Staff, VPN. “What makes this occasion even more significant is the fact that this is the first-ever occasion that India is offering a fully operational corvette to any friendly foreign country,” Adm. Kumar noted.

“The transfer of INS Kirpan from the Indian Navy to the VPN symbolises the status of Indian Navy being the ‘Preferred Security Partner’ in the Indian Ocean Region and would definitely be a catalyst for enhancing the existing bilateral relations between the two navies,” the Navy said in a statement. “The ship has been handed over today to VPN with complete weapon complement.”

Manned by 12 officers and 100 sailors, Kirpan is 90 metres long and 10.45 metres in width with a maximum displacement of 1,450 tonnes.

On June 19, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had announced the gifting of INS Kirpan to VPN during the visit of his Vietnamese counterpart General Phan Van Gang to India.

General Studies-03: Bio-Diversity

3. Captive-bred vultures take wing in forest expanses

An Oriental white-backed vulture at the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre in Pinjore. 

In 2020, eight critically endangered oriental white-backed captive-bred vultures were released into the wild for the first time in India from the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre in Pinjore, Haryana.

Close to three years later, five survive and two have paired and successfully nested, in the untamed habitat of the Shivalik range in the foothills of the Himalayas. This has received a hurrah from wildlife enthusiasts working towards protecting the vultures that have been under threat of extinction since the 1990s.

There has been no report of deaths due to veterinary non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). This too is a relief for ornithologists, who had over the years been worried about the uncontrolled use of these drugs on cattle, especially the illegal use of the banned diclofenac. Vultures feeding on their carcasses die as the drugs are toxic to them.

“Nesting is a very important milestone and an encouraging sign for the re-induction programme. Also, the fact that there has been no mortality is inspiring and indicates increasing vulture-safe zones,” Kishor Rithe, the interim director at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), said.

After the release from Pinjore, 31 oriental white-backed vultures were released in batches in West Bengal in 2021. “All the birds fly every day and have started locating their own food. Our teams have been monitoring the released birds. Of the 31, as many as 29 are surviving,” Mr. Rithe said.

In 1993, there was an estimated 40 million vultures in India, a BNHS study said. The population of three species — the oriental white-backed, the long-billed, and the slender-billed — has declined by over 97% since the 1990s.

The oriental white-backed vulture’s prevalence has gone down by an astonishing 99.9%. All three species are classified as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), composed of both government and civil society bodies. The species come under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, meaning they enjoy the highest level of protection.

The BNHS and Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) have been managing four Jatayu conservation breeding centres across the country in partnership with the State governments of Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and Assam. Through this conservation breeding programme, the BNHS-RSPB has bred more than 700 birds in captivity since 2004.

The birds “wear” tracking devices, through which the team has found that one of the oriental white-backs released from Rajabhatkhawa in West Bengal flew into Nepal, re-entered India, and then reached Bhutan, and is now back in India. “So, this bird is moving between Nepal, Bhutan, and India,” Mr. Rithe said.

Soft release centres

Prompted by the success, the BNHS has already started the construction of soft release centres in Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan, and at three tiger reserves in Maharashtra. Mr. Rithe said tiger reserves had become free from humans and livestock, and had sufficient wild prey that were free from NSAIDs. Hence the BNHS now intends to use these areas to release the captive-bred vultures. A vulture-safe zone is an area of 30,000 sq. km that is declared free from the drug diclofenac, says the IUCN.

Conservationists believe that a ban on NSAIDs which are toxic to vultures will go a long way in vulture conservation.

Vibhu Prakash, an independent raptor researcher and formerly associated with Pinjore’s conservation centre, said that the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB), a government body, had recently recommended a ban on the use, sale, and manufacture of veterinary drugs aceclofenac and ketoprofen, for animal use.

The DTAB, in its meeting on May 10, agreed to prohibit the manufacture, sale and distribution of the drugs ketoprofen and aceclofenac, and their formulations for animal use.

“Once a notification regarding the ban is out, it would really help in vulture protection, as vultures feeding on cattle carcasses treated with these drugs suffer mortality due to visceral gout and kidney failure. The complete ban would help to stop this,” he said.

The DTAB also suggested that a list of all drugs which affect animal health or the environment be prepared for further action, and recommended constituting a subcommittee to examine the matter in detail and submit its report to the Board.

General Studies-02: Governance

4. What has to be done to get to Zero Hunger?

Why is the level of undernourishment high? What is the extent of cost increase for a healthy diet? Where is food insecurity being felt more? What are some of the suggestions offered by the Global Report on the Food Crises?

The story so far:

The Global Report on the Food Crises (GRFC) 2023 released recently estimated that between 691 million and 783 million people in the world suffered from hunger in 2022. While the two pandemic years did not record a growth in food insecurity, the data for 2022 shows levels far higher than pre-pandemic 2019. This year’s report records the historic moments that had an impact on the assessment — a pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, a war (in Ukraine), soaring prices of food, and agricultural inputs. The GRFC is produced by the Food Security Information Network in support of the Global Network against Food Crises, and involves 16 partners to achieve a joint consensus-based assessment of acute food insecurity in countries.

What is food security?

Food security is defined (from the World Food Summit of 1996) thus: “When all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active, and healthy life”. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population is based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES).

What are the key findings?

The Global Report starts with a qualified assertion that hunger is no longer on an alarming path upwards at the global level, but still far above pre-COVID pandemic levels, and that the world is far off track towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 — Zero Hunger. It sets the global contexts preceding and during the year under assessment, particularly paying attention to the increasing phenomenon of urbanisation, and its effects on food security.

New estimates of FIES, as per the report, “confirm that for 2022, no progress was made on food insecurity at the global level. Following a sharp increase from 2019 to 2020, the global prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity remained unchanged for the second year in a row, but remained far above pre-COVID-19-pandemic levels.” In 2022, an estimated 2.4 billion people did not have access to adequate food. This is still 391 million more people than in 2019. Global hunger, measured by yet another metric — the prevalence of undernourishment — remained relatively unchanged from 2021 to 2022 but is, again, far above pre-COVID-19-pandemic levels, affecting around 9.2% of the world population in 2022 compared with 7.9% in 2019, according to the report.

Some good news is that stunting, another key metric, defined as the condition of being too short for one’s age, among children under five years of age has declined steadily, from 204.2 million in 2000 to 148.1 million in 2022. Simultaneously, child wasting, caused by insufficient nutrient intake or absorption, declined from 54.1 million in 2000 to 45 million in 2022. In terms of children who are overweight or obese, the study indicated a non-significant increase from 5.3% (33 million) in 2000 to 5.6 % (37 million) in 2022.

The revised analysis presented in this year’s report shows that almost 3.2 billion people worldwide could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, with a slight improvement in 2021. The cost of a healthy diet increased globally by 6.7% between 2019 and 2021. It also projects that almost 600 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030.

What are the key drivers of food insecurity?

The report notes the following reasons as being responsible: slowing down, thanks to lockdowns, economic downturns, and other pandemic-related disruptions in 2020 that led to job losses and reduced incomes for many people; the Ukraine war; governmental policies that may not be entirely favourable; and increasing urbanisation that drives changes through the agrifood systems. The report’s comparison of food insecurity among rural, peri-urban and urban populations reveals that global food insecurity is lower in urban areas.

What are the solutions ahead?

The report helps “identify vulnerable population groups, contributing to evidence to inform decision-making and effective action through the appropriate targeting and design of policies and programmes.” As the authors record, sound nutrition is fundamental to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and must be central in government policy and supported by civil society and the private sector. Some of its recommendations include supporting healthier food outlets as key for enabling access to healthy diets. Policy incentives are necessary to encourage shops to sell greater amounts of fresh and minimally processed foods. Another key input is on street foods, which an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide consume every day, thanks to the convenience and cost factor. The report calls for addressing multiple infrastructure and regulatory gaps to improve nutritional safety and quality of street food.

The GRFC also suggests building rural infrastructure, including quality rural and feeder roads to connect remote farms and enterprises to main road networks. Other public investments to support linkages between (mainly small) farms and small and medium enterprises could include warehousing, cold storage, dependable electrification, access to digital tools and water supply.

It underlines several times the role of local governments as fundamental actors in leveraging multilevel and multi-stakeholder mechanisms that have proved effective in implementing essential policies for making healthy diets available and affordable for all.

The report projects that almost 600 million people will be under-nourished in 2030