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Role of Agrometeorological Advisory Services in Enhancing Food Security and Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change
No full textProviding knowledge inputs to farmers is critical to reduce their vulnerability and enhance resilience against climate change. In developing countries such as India, where small-holdings and rain-fed agriculture are predominant, knowledge inputs become even more critical. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is providing integrated agrometeorological advisory services (AAS) to farmers since 2008. In this paper, we estimate the scale of access to AAS and its impact on crop yields in 1000 households across ten villages in two agroclimatic zones in India. We find evidence suggesting that access to AAS can have a significant impact on crop yields in the Kharif (June-September) season while other inputs are more important in the case of Rabi (winter) crops. Specifically, the yields of pigeon pea, soyabean, and pearl millet are higher by 233 kg/ha, 98 kg/ha, and 318 kg/ha respectively for AAS beneficiaries. For the entire study area, this translates to a value addition of $9.66 million for these three crops in one season. Our results show that AAS can be an important contributor to meet the developmental goals of enhancing food security in dryland agriculture and building resilience against climate change
The National Bias of India’s First-Past-The-Post System
Get PDFThe relationship between the local and the national in Indian politics has taken a variety of forms, from secessionist tendencies to agitational politics around specific issues. The course of this relationship is typically explored through electoral performance, primarily whether a party wins sufficient seats to form the government. There is much less attention paid to the relationship between votes and seats. This has led to some questions not getting the attention they deserve, particularly whether the first-past-the-post electoral system that India uses is entirely neutral in the dynamic between the local and the national. This article addresses this question by developing a model that captures the effects of the share of the votes of national parties, as well as the concentration of national and local votes, on the performance of national and local parties. The empirical evaluation of this system points to an overall national bias, which is eroded over time by the emergence of regionally dominant local parties
Human Reliability Programs in Industries of National Importance for Safety and Security
No full textThis book discusses human reliability programs (HRPs) and their various elements, including safety and security case studies. The topics covered include significance and vulnerability aspects of human reliability and sustainable HRP, including case studies and lessons learned, methodologies used for human reliability analysis, and good practices of HRPs from various industries. Human reliability is widely used in fields requiring high standards of safety, such as the aviation, petroleum and chemical process, and nuclear industries. The book showcases contributions on the topic from experts in the field of technology, design, aviation, and nuclear industries. The book can be a valuable reference for researchers and professionals interested in HRP to ensure safety and security in industries
Climate Change Exacerbated Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: Role of the Feminist Foreign Policy
Get PDFFeminist foreign policy (FFP) ensures the representation and participation of women both nationally and internationally. Initially, it aimed to focus on some special areas relating to women, peace and security especially sexual violence in conflict and women representation in peace process. Now, the ambit has been broadened and issues relating to climate change are also included. The research has already proved that women suffer double victimization as a consequence of climate change. Climate change exacerbates sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), so, they face all types of consequences of climate change (CC) and natural disasters as human beings but they face SGBV in particular because of their gender. The FFP states respect for international law and efforts to address gender inequalities and violence. Unfortunately, the existing international law e.g. the CEDAW or human rights treaties etc. generally or law on climate change e.g. the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement etc. specifically do not address the issue. Also, the interlinkage between climate change and SGBV has not been discussed earnestly. The FFP has been consistently pursued at the UNFCCC COP negotiations in the context of climate peace initiative etc and involved women especially local and indigenous in the decision-making process. Thus, the FFP can be one of the strongest global voices to end SGBV by ensuring women’s participation; addressing the legal gap; and advocating for the adoption of the gender-responsive law and policy both nationally and internationally. They can be a leader at the international level and a change-maker at the national level. This study has sought to explain how climate change exacerbated SGBV has emerged as a subject of FFP and how it can address the challenge of SGBV exacerbated by CC, the relevant legal issues therein and the road ahead
Predicting climatic tipping points
Get PDFIncreased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide, are leading contributors to a significant increase in the global temperature, and the consequent global climatic changes are more noticeable in recent years than in the past. A persistent increased growth of such gases might lead to an irreversible transition or tipping of the Earth’s climatic system to a new dynamical state. A change of regimes in CO2 buildup being correlated to one in global climate patterns, predicting this tipping point becomes crucially important. We propose here an innovative conceptual model, which does just this. Using the idea of rate-induced bifurcations, we show that a sufficiently rapid change in the system parameters beyond a critical value tips the system over to a new dynamical state. Our model when applied to real-world data detects tipping points, enables calculation of tipping rates and predicts their future values, and identifies thresholds beyond which tipping occurs. The model well captures the growth in time of the total global atmospheric fossil-fuel CO2 concentrations, identifying regime shift changes through measurable parameters and enabling prediction of future trends based on past data. Our model shows two distinct routes to tipping. We predict that with the present trend of variation of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the Earth’s climatic system would move over to a new stable dynamical regime in the year 2022. We determine a limit of 10.62 GtC at the start of 2022 for global CO2 emissions in order to avoid this tipping.
The Earth’s climate has seen many changes over the years, affecting the physical environment (be it terrestrial, marine, or the atmosphere). These major changes or regime shifts from one stable dynamical state of the physical environment to another, each of which may persist for several years, produce major shifts in natural ecosystems involving trophic structures, changes in composition, and abundance of species. The climatic system moves over to a new regime once it crosses a climatic tipping point—a threshold crossed irreversibly by the system’s dynamics. Anthropogenic influences brought about in the physical environment invariably contribute in a substantial way to climate change globally as the dynamics of the climatic system is governed by the coupling between the land, the atmosphere, and the oceans. An increase in levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mainly caused by human activities, especially carbon dioxide, has been one of the important contributing factors leading to climate change in the last few decades. We present here a theoretical model that well captures the rate of increase of the total global concentrations of carbon dioxide, the major contributing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. We then employ the concept of rate-induced bifurcations to demonstrate that it is possible to determine the climatic tipping points from our model. This way, we predict that the climatic system would relocate to a new stable state early in the year 2022. It has been widely accepted that tipping point mechanisms can be used to study climate change. In this paper, we shall introduce and apply a rate-induced tipping model to global fossil-fuel emissions data. Our model shows two distinct routes in which tipping can occur, and the parameters describing these can be calculated from data and are physically measurable. Through the application of this model, we identify crucial tipping points, which lead to climate change and quantify exact boundaries crossed that induce tipping. Control can be exercised over the parameters describing tipping, if desired, such that tipping can be prevented. The methods developed can further be applied to any growth curve that may have undergone rate-induced tipping
Affordable and sustainable transportation: Key drivers and policy choices for a megacity in India
No full textThe city of Bengaluru is one of the latest entrants to the list of 33 mega cities in the world. The transportation infrastructure of the city is expanding to accommodate the rapidly increasing population. As such, there is a need to reevaluate public transport policies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 11.2. In this study, we conducted a socio-economic survey of 1350 households belonging to the low and low-middle income categories in Bengaluru city to understand their travel behaviour and transportation mode choices in the event of changing transport infrastructure dynamics of the city. While two-wheelers are the dominant mode among employed working males in the age group of 18–45 years, buses are preferred for long-distance travel. Metro ridership is low even where metro stations are accessible at the start of the journey because low- and middle-income groups are unable to afford metro services. Additionally, we used Random Forest model to assess the contribution of each explanatory variable in mode choice determination. The results shows that travel cost followed by travel time and travel distance are the most important explanators in determining the mode choice for our sample population. Based on these findings, the authors have created two scenarios to assess the impact of metro fare rationalisation on metro ridership. This study quantifies the co-benefits of the proposed policy changes in terms of economic benefits to the operators and the avoidance of air pollution and CO2 emissions
Cultivated, feral, wild: the urban as an ecological formation
No full textThis paper seeks to rethink the urban as an ecological formation. It argues that contrary to an emphasis on the built environment, articulated through refrains of capital, planning and design, cities are lived achievements, emerging through fabrications between human and other-than-human forces. Ecological formations are fleshed out in three modes: ecologies that involve the cultivated, feral and the wild. There are distinct forms of urban governance affiliated with each, taken as hybrids of biopolitical and vernacular practices. Rethinking cities as ecological formations enables a more radical understanding of the difference and heterogeneity of urban worlds than those on offer in urban theory. It signals a shift from animating urban geographies towards understandings of how other-than-human geographies are constitutive of urban worlds
Indian Navy’s Submarine Development Programme: A Critical Assessment
Get PDFIn the twenty-first century, undersea warfare is changing. The role of submarines and ASW is also adapting to the new maritime environment in the Indo-Pacific region. The Submarine arm of the Indian Navy plays a crucial role in this region. Except for the four recently inducted Scorpene submarines, the other conventional submarines are more than two decades old. India’s ageing submarine fleet calls for greater focus on submarine acquisition. The 30-year (2000–2030) submarine building plan drawn up in 1998 envisaged the development of two parallel lines of six conventional submarines, to be constructed in India over twelve years. This is to be followed by 12 submarines of indigenous design based on the learning curve of the two lines to be constructed over the next twelve years. But, as of now, Project 75 has been planned for six submarines (with French design) in 2006, of which five are on active duty and the last one is undergoing sea trials. Project 75I has been sanctioned to build six submarines but with a new model involving two Indian firms, with the introduction of a strategic partner from the private sector to encourage their participation in the ‘Make in India’ policy. Despite India’s capability to design, develop, build and operate strategic submarines with very high indigenous content, India’s lack of capability to design conventional submarines raises the following questions, which this paper has tried to address: Is it related to inadequacies in capability or policy decision-making? Are there inconsistencies in defence procurement policy/procedure? Is there a need to evaluate the Strategic Partnership model before implementation? Is there a lack of access to technology
Tracing Ancient Itinerants and Early Medieval Rulers in the Forests of Bandhavgarh
No full textThis article arises out of a disquiet about the archaeology of historical India which has largely been concerned with cities and villages. Forests and wilderness rarely figure there, except in passing when the expanding agricultural terrain is described in relation to forest lands being domesticated or when there is an exploration of lines of communication, some of which pass through forested tracts. Because of this gap in engaging with lands beyond agrarian tracts and city sites, large expanses that carry markers of ancient human use have not centrally figured in such research. Here, we describe our field work in the Bandhavgarh National Park and Tiger Reserve and its implications. The earliest remains go back in the form of caves to the 2nd century CE. Shrines of early medieval antiquity, sculptures, and reservoirs begin in the time of Kalachuri kings (7th century CE till the 13th century CE) and continue into the high medieval with Vaghela fortifications and palace remains (13th century CE onwards). What these can tell us when they are immersed in the hills and meadows of Bandhavgarh, in its forests and around its water bodies, is explored here