Life on Land – Preserve or Perish

Authored by –
Ankit Mallick, Diptisikha Dash, Kashish Gupta, Raghav Grover, and Rucha Kalekar
Introduction – Sustainability 101
591 million – The number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty. 18.7 million acres of forests lost every year. 800 million – the number of people worldwide vulnerable to extreme effects of climate change. 41,415 – The number of endangered species on the IUCN Red List. The numbers make one thing pretty clear. The time to act is NOW.
In 2015, the member nations of the United Nations collectively adopted 17 interdependent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to reach three major targets by 2030. These targets were aimed at ending poverty, protecting the planet, and ensuring peace and prosperity of the people. To name a few, these goals address zero hunger, no poverty, health, education, inequality, sustainability, climate change, life on land and below water. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) along with other UN agencies are at the forefront of striving to achieve these goals and provide MAPS (Mainstream, Acceleration and Policy Support) for projects in 38 countries. Their push for creativity, innovation, financing, data analysis is crucial for pushing the pledge taken by UN member nations and putting into action the efforts towards meeting SDG targets by 2030.
SDG 15: Life on Land is one of the 17 SDGs to protect, restore and promote the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. It is an important goal considering the drastic biodiversity loss, land degradation and deforestation that our planet currently faces. 
The SDG is further divided into 12 targets which encapsulate conservation and restoration of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, ending deforestation and desertification, promoting biodiversity, access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, eliminating poaching and protecting species. Enabling SDG 15 in government planning and obtaining finances for sustainable usage of ecosystem is also important. 
Relevance of SDG 15 to India
In 2010, 176.4 million Indians were living on degraded agricultural land. This was a 10% increase in a decade. The number of people living in remote areas with unproductive land and no market access is on the rise. India has 7-8% of the world’s plant and animal species and is one of the 17 biodiversity hotspots of the world. To protect these reserves, India has a few targets in relation to SDG 15. These include ensuring conservation of mountain ecosystems, preventing extinction of species, promoting sustainable management of forests and combating desertification. The target dates for most of these goals are 2020.The National Afforestation Programme aims to improve the forest and tree cover and sustainably manage forest resources. National programmes on the integrated development of wildlife habitats along with various projects like Project Elephant and Project Tiger aim to protect plants and wildlife alike.
SDG 15 in Business Context – Farming, Desertification & Afforestation
While the tendency to ignore the numerous pressing problems associated with climate change is underlying in many corporations, some companies such as ITC whose future prospects rely heavily on  agriculture-related industries have had to revamp their outlook.
They launched a pilot project by the name ‘Barah Mahine Hariyali’ in UP and Bihar, to maximise farm yield. They are working with over 10 lakh farmers and have produced encouraging results so far. It is an important initiative as farmers were able to double their income by producing value-added crops by better farming techniques while not damaging the soil or over cultivating. “The programme focuses on specific interventions such as crop intensification, income diversification, capability building with appropriate market linkages leveraging your Company’s e-Choupal network and Choupal Pradarshan Khets (demonstration farms).
“Desertification is the “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities”.
Cities must know more about desertification and be a part of the solution: Sunita Narain, CSE
It degrades and erodes the nutrient-rich topsoil. It puts farmers between a rock and a hard place- if it doesn’t rain, there’s no crop production. If it rains even a bit extra, the thin topsoil layer, eroded due to desertification, gets further eroded and the seeds need to be planted again.
Desertification continues to plague India. In Maharashtra, the timber mafia is slicing through the forest areas so much so that nearly 1 million trees have been felled in the last decade and a further estimated quarter-million cut illegally. Excessive mining in Goa has seen it transform the landscape altogether and is adversely affecting both the soil and the air. Excessive and illegal mining in Jharkhand has led to the lowering of the water table. The practice of shifting cultivation and slash-and-burn techniques have caused massive deforestation across Nagaland. Overgrazing continues to plague many grasslands in Gujarat.
Governments can’t be solely relied upon to act on this. Business need to put a check on over utilisation of land resources. Some initiatives are being taken in India. The Soil and Moisture Conservation programme by ITC aims among other things to drought-proof agricultural catchment areas by reducing moisture stress through water-harvesting. It has an outreach in 15 states through over 15 thousand water harvesting structures.
The scope for mitigating climate change through forest restoration is immense. However, it is crucial to understand what works and what doesn’t. A recent study in Nature by Simon Lewis has shown that allowing land to regenerate into forests will sequester more than 40 times that from plantations and 6 times that of agroforestry. Forest restoration is thus a vital cog in the wheel as far as SDGs are concerned. In this regard, the government has taken some initiative. “In the last seven years (2011-2017), India has restored 9.8 million hectares of degraded land, with Government agencies playing a major role in the green initiative, restoring 95 per cent while the remaining 5 per cent was done by NGOs and private companies.” 
What is Ecological Restoration?
India Bonn Challenge
Infact, India was the 1st nation to submit its progress report on the Bonn Challenge, which is aimed at reversing land degradation, reducing deforestation and preventing biodiversity loss. The government has pledged to restore 13million hectares of degraded land by 2020 and another 8 million by 2030.
Are we there yet?
In 2010, Nestle had made a commitment to no deforestation by 2020. Palm oil, pulp and paper, soya, meat and sugar are the top 5 commodities used by Nestle which contribute to deforestation. In March 2019, 75% of it had been declared as deforestation free. However, according to a recent statement released by the company, the 2020 target is not likely to be achieved. According to their website, they have updated it to 90% of their agricultural produce be verified as deforestation free by 2020.
Falling back on sustainability targets is not something unique to Nestle. Procter & Gamble has also acknowledged the fact that it will fall short of its goal of using ingredients which are deforestation free by 2020. There are multiple reasons why such established companies are failing to meet their sustainability targets. For one, these companies have existed for decades and have well established processes and supply chains which are difficult to change. Moreover, in order to sustainably grow crops, the farmers these companies source from have to be taken on board.  Changing people’s mindset is very difficult, especially when the change affects their profits and increases their workload. Afforestation is necessary for countering deforestation, but on many occasions, saplings are planted but not taken care of, due to which they do not grow. This is just an example where business often fail to focus on sustainable growth and mainly try to achieve their short term goals.
One of the ways of overcoming this problem is to collaborate with the farmers and educate them. By working closely with the farmers and helping them improve their yield using sustainable technology, a lasting relationship can be built which will help the corporates influence the decision of the farmers. ITC has taken steps in this direction through Social and Farm Forestry initiatives which has increased pulpwood and fuelwood availability in the rural parts of southern India including Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Also, ITC’s Social Forestry program has forested over 33 thousand acres across India which has helped generate carbon sinks to tackle climate change. 
Biodiversity
As Greta Thunberg said, “We cannot solve a crisis, without treating it as a crisis”. What our world faces today is an unprecedented challenge when it comes to biodiversity and life on land; as per the Planetary Boundaries Framework developed by Rockström and his colleagues the threshold limit for the loss of biosphere integrity stands at 10 extinctions per million species-years. Currently, there are 1000 extinctions per million species-years and the number is rising. Not only have the wild animal populations been halved since 1970, but there is a mass extinction event that is going on across all ecosystems and natural habitats. This is problematic since we depend on biodiversity in ways that are not always apparent or appreciated. For a healthy and productive life, we are dependent upon availability of fresh water, food and fuel sources. Biodiversity ensures sustainable productivity of soils and provides the ecosystem and resources for all agricultural produce – both crops and livestock. Access to a wide variety nutritional basket is imperative for a healthy life of human beings. Most of the local communities across the globe are dependent on the high biodiversity levels for both nutrition as well as traditional medicine. A lot of corporations who are in the business of food & beverages as well as medicine and pharmacology are exploiting the biodiversity for products and profits. For example, companies operating in the agriculture like Nestle and ITC rely on diversity of the wild relatives of food grains and crops to provide crop resistance to disease and pests. At the same time, quite a lot of medical and pharmacological discoveries are made through working and tweaking around with Earth’s biodiversity; a loss of biodiversity is an opportunity loss for discovery of future potential treatments of diseases and health problems.
The most important action that is required right now is to urgently stop the degradation of natural habitats and wildlife through bold government action, and to include principles of biodiversity for future planning and development policies. One of the better ways to go ahead with this is to safeguard biodiversity hotspots and ensure that further degradation of these natural resources does not take place. Further, it needs to be noted that one of the primary reasons for loss of biodiversity is the conversion of forests and natural habitat to agricultural land. This is a dicey situation as since the world population is increasing and is expected to touch 8-10 billion in the coming decade, and the food requirements are not going to go down. Further, the lifestyle patterns are changing: there is an increasing number of citizens in emerging economies like India, Brazil and China who will aspire to the various luxuries of life, above and beyond the survival necessities. For example, as the lifestyle pattern changes to a higher spending one, the meat consumption rises and that will create even more pressure to clear forests for grazing lands or to grow food grains and crops for livestock.
Another challenge that we face is that there exists a strong bias against services provided by nature when it comes to evaluating the economics of decision making. We tend to undervalue the natural services, for example, the value of a forest is much more than just the value of the timber, and also includes the service of water table regulation, CO2 sequestration, and climate regulation amongst other things, but these are not included in such decision making and evaluations. What this leads to is the fallacy that natural services are not valuable since they are seen as free and limitless by those using them; this approach ensures that protection of nature’s services and biodiversity will not be considered as a priority.
Suggested Actions: Where do we go from here?
So, to conclude our article with solutions, we need to approach the challenges with a three-pronged approach. First, there must be a focus on environment sustainability and UN SDG while working on planning, and management by the government, as well as a push for technological advancements that improve the efficiency of our current systems and restore degraded ecosystems. Second, we need to change our perspective towards economic decisions as a society; we need to value and take into account all the natural services and not just those that are bought and sold in the market. Removal of subsidies to agricultural activities and energy sources that are non-sustainable should be undertaken, and there should be payments and incentives that should be introduced for businesses and landowners to manage their property in such a way that it protects and restores the ecological components of that land, and provide valuable services like water retention and quality improvement, carbon storage, climate regulation, etc. 
Finally, the behaviour and alignment of each and every individual that inhabits this planet has to change, and especially of those whose consumption patterns are not sustainable given the current account of resources we have. Public education needs to be provided to enlighten people as to how to reduce consumption and why it is critical to do so. Further, once people are educated and aware of the challenges we face, we need to give people access to information about habitats and ecosystems and how their decisions affect the natural services provided by them. This can be done creating reliable systems of grading (like ISO or ISI) that are more holistic in nature and include sustainability measures. This will give the people choice and the drive to buy sustainably harvested products.
The future does look bleak and grim from where we stand right now, and it may even be a bit too late for us to act on the environmental issues that we face but it does not mean that we refrain from working towards a better future. The best time to act was ten years ago; the next best time is now.
References:
Jyoti, A. (2018, September 7). India sets record in forest restoration. Retrieved from https://www.dailypioneer.com/2018/india/india-sets-record-in-forest-restoration.html.
What is Nestlé doing to ensure zero deforestation? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/environment/answers/nestle-deforestation.
Naidu, R. (2019, September 27). Nestle, P&G say they will miss 2020 deforestation goals. Retrieved from https://in.reuters.com/article/us-consumer-goods-deforestation/nestle-pg-say-they-will-miss-2020-deforestation-goals-idINKBN1WC1WC.
Why businesses fail to meet their sustainability goals. (2016, November 22). Retrieved from https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/business/why-businesses-fail-to-meet-their-sustainability-goals/.
SDG 15: Life on Land. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://in.one.un.org/page/sustainable-development-goals/sdg-15/.
World Poverty Clock. (2019). Retrieved 30 October 2019, from https://worldpoverty.io/
Endangered Earth – Promoting the Plight of Endangered Species and the Efforts to Save Them. (2019). Retrieved 30 October 2019, from http://www.endangeredearth.com/
Neshovski, R. (2019). Home – 2019 – United Nations Sustainable Development. Retrieved 30 October 2019, from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/
Goal 15: Life on Land. (2019). Retrieved 30 October 2019, from https://www.globalgoals.org/15-life-on-land
Desertification setting in across a quarter of India. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/environment/desertification-setting-in-across-a-quarter-of-india-66407.
J. Rockström and colleagues developed the original Planetary Boundaries framework, published in 2009 in the international scientific journal Nature, issue 461, pages 472-475, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html
Sustainability Reports:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SDG 5: Gender Equality

Image
Introduction to SDG 5: Gender Equality One of the most important SDGs today is the Gender Equality goal. First of all, to think that we need a goal for such a fundamental human right such as Gender Equality is in itself a painful thing. The middle-east countries like UAE, Yemen, Lebanon, and Asian countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and India are amongst the worst-ranked in the world according to a Gender Gap Report published by WEF (World Economic Forum) in 2018 ( (Ahmed, 2019) 1 ) as can be seen in the figure below: There have been some improvements with more number of girls going to school and receiving education as compared to what the situation was 15 years ago ((UNDP, 2019) 2 ). But majority of the women across the globe still face discrimination on multiple fronts. There were only 74 girls enrolled for primary level education for every 100 boys in 2012. There are laws in at least 155 countries which hamper the economic opportunities women can get. And the glo...
Read more

Group 7_A | SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

Image
  Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns Authored by:  Aparajita Rai BJ21013 | Deepak Sharma BJ21018 | Jishnu Purkayastha BJ21026 | Nikhil Gupta BJ21033 | Pranav Singla BJ21040 | Utkarsh Mani Tripathi BJ21059 | Zach Tom BJ21061 ( Image Source ) “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” -    Mahatma Gandhi Introduction to the SDG The world market thrives on production and the demand for consumptions is ever growing. But production of any good requires raw materials and other assets and facilities to process the final product. Generally, such raw materials come from natural resources and require labour. However, with production, waste is also produced. Also, a significant portion of the produced goods goes to waste due to lower consumption or due to the end of their usability cycle. Every year about one-third of all the food produced goes to waste and ends up rotting in bins, landfills, or streets. A similar prob...
Read more

SDG - Combat On Climate Change

Image
Introduction             The United Nations in 2015 adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) that it hopes we will achieve by 2030 through the collective action of all countries. The stated goal of SDGs, as envisioned by the UN, is to serve as "the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. SDG 13, in particular, focuses on Climate Action [1] . The global average temperatures in 2017 were 0.9°C higher than the mean of temperatures recorded from 1951 to 1980. The Sea level has been rising at roughly twice the pace of the long-term average. Both of these trends are worrying. As temperatures grow, the agricultural yields suffer, rainfall becomes less predictable, storms become more severe, and freshwater sources become stressed. All of this means that the prices of food will go up. This will affect all of us, but the poor will suffer the most. The same is the case with rising sea levels. Prese...
Read more