Honest Review: The Climate

By: Anagha Vinay

Climate Crisis is entangled with every aspect of our lifestyle. The Climate Transparency Report is a comprehensive annual review of the state of climate performance of the G20 nations. Its assessment includes 100 indicators for climate adaptation, risks, protection, and finance. The G20 countries coming under this are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.

The report shows a comparative analysis of the climate actions taken by these nations to achieve a net zero emissions economy. It is a global partnership with a shared mission. It is a concise report developed by experts from 16 partner organizations from the G20 nations. The 2022 report theme is ‘G20 response to the energy crisis: Critical for 1.5°C.’ It bridges climate emergency to the energy crisis.

According to the 2022 report, climate change has had a massive impact across G20 countries with wildfires, heatwaves, tropical storms, and rising global emissions. Exploiting our environment for development at an unsustainable pace left us blind and deaf to the wailing cries and consequences of the ecosystem, and now the tables have turned. It is not Mother Nature who is pleading, it is us. We don’t have a choice, but to act, immediately. In this time of crisis, there are going to be no more excuses, and there are going to be no next times.

The report shows that the prices of fossil fuels rose exponentially in the second half of 2021 mainly as a repercussion of the Russia-Ukraine war. China, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom have the highest total fossil fuel consumption and production subsidies. Energy emissions were found to have rebounded across the G20 countries by 5.9 percent last year, returning to the pre-pandemic levels. In 2021, emissions in the power and real-estate sector were higher than pre-pandemic levels. The per capita emissions in these sectors in China and Turkey are currently higher than in 2019 levels. However, the share of renewables in the power generation mix has seen an increase in all the G20 countries between 2016 and 2021. Countries with the highest increase in renewable energy share are the United Kingdom (67 percent), Japan (48 percent), and Mexico (40 percent), and the lowest increase are Russia (16 percent) and Italy (14 percent).

India has suffered the highest heat-related labour capacity reduction, nearly 167 billion labour hours, resulting in a financially crippling loss of about 5.4% in the GDP, equivalent to $159B. India even witnessed reduced wheat crop yield due to record heat waves. It is estimated that around 142 million people or 10 percent of the population of the country may be exposed to summer heatwaves at 1.5°C. India stands third among the G20 nations with high methane emissions, with a soaring 10.5%.

Climate Action Tracker statistics have rated India’s overall climate action efforts as highly insufficient. For instance, the average temperature experienced in the summer of 2017-2021 has been recorded to be 0.4°C higher than the 1985-2005 global mean temperature increase. About 33% of the country is drought-prone, and approximately 50% of this area faces chronic droughts. This, right here, is the Code Red for Humanity. But there’s still so much we can do, together. This is why we need to be out there, making our voices heard as one, louder, and stronger than ever before.

Real change will happen when the concerns of all the vulnerable groups have been addressed and every possible action has been taken to protect our ecosystem. This is the need of the hour. Let’s join hands and be a part of this. Let’s strike to make them listen to us. Let’s strike to make them act. Let’s strike because now the time has come, when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or fully in measure, but very substantially. The real change is coming. All we have to do is be in this fight for what is just, and we shall triumph.

Kejriwal – A Man Of Systems

By – Jayishnu Agarwal

The Punjab elections gave India its most successful political startup, making its supremo Arvind Kejriwal one of the most influential and powerful people in India, leaving behind its opponents, clearly becoming the only one to be at least on the same track on its march to the finish line of the 2024 elections.

Kejriwal, an ex-Italian and civil servant, is one of the most educated and learned IItians in the country. He has worked in every system that exists and aspires to change the lives of people in this country, from corporate jobs to NGOs to policymaking. Arvind had been a part of every system, but his constant drive was to change the system. From his days in Parivartan to joining India against corruption, he has blatantly rallied against every political party and ideology and has had a phenomenal role in bringing the importance of the right to information to the public light. 

Arvind’s movement against corruption brought the entire country together, from politicians to writers, actors, businessmen, and even high-profile civil servants, rallying behind him, eventually bringing the Sheila Dixit government in Delhi down. He formed his own party that represented the plight of the common people and called it the Aam Aadmi Party to fight the Delhi elections. He claimed that his party would follow a democratic process, not make individuals into cult figures, promising to be grounded and not include corrupt people in the party, the one thing against which he fought and found his name popular among people. He promised to use the Maruti Wagon, a symbol of the middle class refusing to even have security. Eventually, he even won the elections and formed a government in coalition with the Congress, vowing to pass the Jan Lokpal bill that would make government officials accountable for their work, failing which he even resigned on a record day. He was loved by people for his integrity and was again unanimously elected with a thumping majority in the coming Delhi elections.

He suffered a huge setback when his party members, namely Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, left the party, which later only cemented his place in the party as the party supremo. He became very popular among young people. His image of a learned, secular, and welfare-oriented administrator screamed for a change in the system that the young had long awaited. He began well, with his policy affecting the lives of the poorest of the poor. He aspired to make new schools and change the existing ones, including the happiness subject, for which he was appreciated across party lines. He seemed a little different from the other politicians who cared for the people and not a career politician who had joined politics to just raise his ranks.

However, things started changing as Kejriwal’s aspirations grew. It began with the onset of the 2017 Punjab elections. Kejriwal started doing things that every ordinary politician did, cemented his position in the party, and removed the rule that limited the number of times a member could be elected president. Next, he started promising things that were neither feasible for the economy nor able to be delivered. With this, he was stuck in a web of lies from which he never came out. He openly lied about the number of jobs delivered, and the number of buses installed, and also lied about the water supply facilities for which he had sold the dream. Even his closest friends in politics left him and were on record accusing him of escalating a riot in Punjab to win an election. 

In an interview, he went so far as to question the integrity of the RTI act. His politics now seemed to be that of a football match where he was just passing the blame and moving forward, playing the victim card time and again to gain public sympathy. He went so deep into vote bank politics that his image of a secular leader now seemed like that of a tourist agent offering free religious travel to the people of his state. After gaining complete control of the police in the state of Punjab, he started using his powers to threaten his opponents in the state of Delhi, misusing the public services as a private entity to silence his critics. So much irony for a person who has made his way up to criticising every other politician that has existed in the country. His party members were found guilty of rioting while he was outright defending them. Both the big riots that happened in Delhi in the last few years had AAP leaders at the helm of affairs while the party was still defending them.

The major problem I have with him is that he seemed like a change, a strong force in the political system that would change it forever, but now he seems like every other politician that has ever existed in the country; the same old people that have rotted the public system; a person who could go to any lengths for his personal gains. His actions have not only damaged his reputation but have made sure that no politician is born of a revolt against the system because of the living testimonials that he has provided. He has also crushed the hopes of every little youngster that wanted to join politics because of the dream they were sold off, and the idea that you could change India still remains a distant dream. Nevertheless, it has cemented the one belief that stands the test of time: that in India, politics is not for the common man and that the name “Aam Aadmi Party” is the biggest irony that has ever been in the modern politics of India. 

Landmine – The Perfect Soldier

-by Rehan

“There was no hope in their gaze, succinctly consanguine to the dying light that is bound to leave the eyes of roadkill as they breathe one last time through perforated lungs caged within crushed ribs. Some lost a foot, and they were the ones to consider themselves lucky, others had to forego whole legs and that merely takes into account those who survived. It is hellish, to say the least.”

A clumsy waiter and broken cafe AC seemed non-problems as my frequent flier friend narrated his experience of volunteering in Egypt, and I must admit I expected him to be verbose, expounding the beauty of the pyramids in lieu of the gory details I was listening to in actuality. He narrated his experience working with permanently disabled children who were the victims of an anti-personnel landmine explosion and prompted me to look more into it. According to him, after what he had seen, the lack of awareness on this issue was akin to a humanitarian crisis in itself, let alone the severity of the actual issue. 

With an estimated 23 million landmines peppered across its land area, Egypt is the most heavily mined country on earth and the local communities have been plagued by fears of exploring new pastures, letting the kids wander off, grazing their livestock in battle-ready, landmine littered fields. Too often the locals recount incidents of their close ones or even themselves going off for just a routine walk through a shorter path across a new patch of land only to have their legs blown off 15 steps into their brisk endeavour. Often, it is the kids as young as 4 who get the courses of their lives irrevocably altered and anyone who spares their pain even a second of thought asks themselves, who is responsible for this. These perfect soldiers that never sleep, never miss and are always ready, who’s accountable for the hell that breaks loose once the victors have rolled up their sleeping bags and left, cursing those that will inhabit these fields to a lifetime of an invisible war against a suicidal, palm-sized enemy buried just beneath the next step.

These perfect soldiers lay in wait, once lodged they will seldom see the light of day unless it’s to detonate, and they do what all competent soldiers do – they strike fear into beating hearts in the middle of the night, for decades to come. The random broadcasted way in which the mines have been laid down shows that they were aimed at terrorising the local population, an aim well achieved as most often the local communities are suffering some amalgamated manifestation of group PTSD. Adults that are unfortunate enough to step on them usually manage to make it out alive albeit losing a limb, yet it’s the children that often end up as casualty as their vulnerable bodies cannot survive the deadly blasts. If one does survive then blindness, disfigurement and serious abdominal injuries are commonplace and often the victim tends to hail from nation’s that have a health infrastructure that fails to provide even the most basic medical help.

Landmines cause a great deal of pain and death, but they also have long-term economic and social consequences. They obstruct the flow of goods and people, and make many arable lands less productive, in addition to the costs of medical services and costs for families caring for injured members. Furthermore, the presence of mines and ERW leads to the ongoing “militarization” of everyday life. They are so common that there are instances of them being used for fishing, as a means of securing property, or even for settling domestic disputes.

Landmines are used by almost all armies. Approximately 1 million mines were laid along the Iraq-Kuwait border and around the Iraqi city of Basra during the Persian Gulf War by the US and its allies. And 3 million people have been killed in the ongoing Balkan conflict, many as a result of these hidden killers. Landmines kill or injure more than 15,000 people per year, usually civilians, as indiscriminate explosives (Strada 1996). Mines laid and mapped by well-trained armies may or may not be removed after a battle, although this is not always the case. In many modern wars, novice or untrained combatants mine without thinking about how to map the devices for post-conflict clearance.

It takes $3 to manufacture and deploy a mine and $1000 to clear one, crystal clear is the priority of foreign armies ravaging weaker nations. The question isn’t about the damage that this abominable arm causes but rather about when this issue will be taken more seriously. Commendable progress has been made mostly due to the efforts of NPOs like The Halo Trust and The Mine Ban Treaty but more needs to be done. And until this issue can be on the front page of our morning dailies, sufficient awareness will not be raised and the suffering of innocent souls whose sole crime was that they took a step, in their own lands, where the curse of a foreign power lay waiting to claim a soul.

Works Cited

1. Dahlman C. (2004) Hidden Killers: The Problem of Landmines and Unexploded Ordinance. In: Janelle D.G., Warf B., Hansen K. (eds) WorldMinds: Geographical Perspectives on 100 Problems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2352-1_7 
2. Exposed to the Danger of Uncleared Landmines. DW news, 25 Nov. 2020, amp.dw.com/en/exposed-to-the-danger-of-uncleared-landmines/av-55718864.
3. “Landmine Monitor 2019.” CMC, ICBL, 21 Nov. 2019, reliefweb.int/report/world/landmine-monitor-2019.
4. “The Legacy of Land-Mines.” Unicef.org, 2019, http://www.unicef.org/sowc96/9ldmines.htm.