Impact of climate change
#Environmen
Increase in the risk of natural and manmade disasters:
✅The moisture from land and water is rapidly evaporating due to the high atmospheric temperature.
✅This causes drought. Those areas that are affected by drought are highly susceptible to the negative effects of flooding.
✅As this current condition, the droughts may become more frequent and more severe. This may lead to distressing consequences for agriculture, water security, and health.
✅Countries in Asia and Africa are already facing this phenomenon, with droughts becoming longer and more intense.
✅The increased temperature is not only causing droughts but also increasing the cases of forest fires across the globe.
✅Climate change is also causing increased and intensified hurricanes and tropical storms, causing a devastating impact on human societies and the environment.
✅The cause of this is the rise in the ocean temperature as warm waters influence the energies of hurricanes and tropical storms energies.
✅The other factors that cause intensified hurricane and tropical storms are rising sea levels, disappearing wetlands and increased coastal development.
Impact of climate change 2
Agriculture productivity and food security:
✅The crop cultivation is dependent on solar radiation, favourable temperature and precipitation.
✅Hence, agriculture has always been dependent on climate patterns.
✅The current climate change has affected agricultural productivity, food supply and food security.
✅These effects are biophysical, ecological and economic.
They resulted in:
🌲Climate and agricultural zones are moving towards poles
🌲There is a change in the agricultural production pattern due to increased atmospheric temperature
🌲Agricultural productivity has increased due to the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere.
🌲Unpredictable precipitation patterns
🌲The vulnerability of the landless and the poor has increased.
Climate Change affecting India
India was the fifth most affected country by climate change:
✅It was not shocking when Germanwatch, an environmental non-profit think tank, reported in 2018, that India was the fifth most affected country by climate change, globally.
✅In the last two years, the country has been hit by at least one extreme climate event every month.
✅According to the World Risk Index 2020, India is the fourth-most-at-risk country in South Asia, after Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
✅There is no doubt that climate change is real and its implications are disastrous
✅Historically, internal migration in India occurred due to factors like ethnicity, kinship, work opportunities, or access to better healthcare and education.
✅More recently, climate disasters also contribute to displacement (involuntary and unplanned) and migration (voluntary and planned) in India.
✅In 2018 alone, nearly 7 million Indians were either displaced or have migrated due to climate-induced distress.
Measures to improve air quality:
National Air Quality Index
✅Launched in 2014 with outline ‘One Number – One Color -One Description’ for the common man to judge the air quality within his vicinity.
✅The measurement of air quality is based on eight pollutants, namely: Particulate Matter (PM10), Particulate Matter (PM2.5), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Ozone (O3), Ammonia (NH3), and Lead (Pb).
✅AQI has six categories of air quality. These are: Good, Satisfactory, Moderately Polluted, Poor, Very Poor and Severe.
✅It has been developed by the CPCB in consultation with IIT-Kanpur and an expert group comprising medical and air-quality professionals.
Air pollution
✅WHO’s 4 Pillar Strategy: WHO adopted a resolution (2015) to address the adverse health effects of air pollution. There is a need to adhere to a roadmap highlighted under this. This 4-pillar strategy calls for an enhanced global response to the adverse health effects of air pollution. Those four pillars are:
Expanding the knowledge base
Monitoring and reporting
Global leadership and coordination
Institutional capacity strengthening
