Kolkata Blog

Joining a new global initiative to save the tiger, the World Bank on Wednesday said if the striped cat continues to vanish from the wild, it will be the first large predator to go the way of the dodo.

“To secure the future of the tiger in the wild and save it from poachers, financial and material resources and a strong policy commitment is needed,” it said while listing poaching, prey depletion, forest degradation and habitat loss as the main reasons for its decline.

Its existing wild populations inhabit fragmented and isolated patches of land constituting a meager seven per cent of their “historic range”, it said.

“If current trends persist, tigers are likely to be the first species of large predator to vanish in historic times,” it said in a statement after joining the worldwide alliance of conservationists, scientists and celebrities besides Global Environment Facility to save the tiger.

It’s joining the initiative bears significance in that tiger numbers have declined from over 100,000 a century ago to just 4,000 today with 3,000 of them in India.

Noting that the animals had become an “enforcement dependent species”, it said the tiger population health was an indicator of biodiversity and a barometer of sustainability.

The World Bank and its partners have decided to assess financing needs and work with governments and the private sector for tiger conservation.

“Since tigers are at the top of the food chain, the conservation of wild tigers also means preservation of the habitats in which they live and the prey populations that support them,” the statement said.

News Source: PTI
Photo Source: Save The Tiger Fund

They could soon be gone

About six waves of massive extinction are known in the history of the earth, the last one wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Now, add one more to the list — pollution, but this has no natural causes. A new report on the destruction of natural habitats has claimed that pollution, which is manmade and rampant, is actually eliminating three species every hour.

The extinction rate has not been seen since the dinosaurs vanished 65million years ago, says a shock report on the destruction of natural habitats.

One in four mammals are on the endangered list, including orangutans, chimpanzees and elephants. The doomsday list also includes one in eight bird types, a third of amphibians and 70 PER CENT of plant life, reports the United Nation’s World Conservation Union.

It warns failure to act on greenhouse gases and climate change could threaten food supplies and “destroy the foundation of human life”.

Officials from 191 countries in Bonn, Germany, heard the destruction already costs £1.8billion a year and that failure to act on greenhouse gases and climate change could threaten food supplies and “destroy the foundation of human life”.

They hope to agree ways of slowing the extinction rate. A UN summit in 2002 set a target for slowing extinction but is way behind schedule. Last year, the United Nations had warned that human activities would wipe out animal or plant species every hour and called on the world to do more to slow the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs by 2010.

“Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate. The global response to these challenges needs to move much more rapidly, and with more determination at all levels,” the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had said in a statement.

In the first ever analysis of the effect of the transport sector on climate, it has been established that road traffic contributes the most to global warming, aviation sector has the second largest warming effect, and shipping has a net cooling effect on the Earth’s climate.

According to a report, for the analysis, five researchers from CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research) broke down the transport sector to four subsectors: road transport, aviation, rail, and shipping.

The research team then calculated each subsector’s contribution to global warming by looking at the radiative forcing (RF) caused by transport emissions.

The study concludes that since pre-industrial times, 15 per cent of the RF caused by man-made CO2-emissions has come from the transport sector.

It also looks at other emissions. For ozone, transport can be blamed for 30 per cent of the forcing caused by man-made emissions.

The study implies that more attention needs to be put on the fast growing road sector. Looking solely at CO2 emissions, road traffic alone has led to two-thirds of the warming caused by total transport emissions.

When the researchers looked at the effect today’s road emissions has on future climate, they found that the share is even larger: the road emissions of today will constitute three- fourth of the warming caused by transport over the next hundred years.

For shipping, the picture is more complicated.

Until now, shipping has had a cooling effect on climate. This is because shipping emits large portions of the gasses SO2 and NOx, which both have cooling effects.

However, although these two gases, until now, have given the shipping industry a cooling effect, this effect will diminish after a while, as the gases don’t live long in the atmosphere. After a few decades, the long-lived CO2 will dominate, giving shipping a warming effect in the long run.

The reason that road transport tops the list is mainly the amount of vehicles on the roads and the smaller cooling effect from their emissions. Following road transport, aviation is the second largest transport contributor to global warming.

However, the historical contribution from aviation emissions to global warming is more than doubled by the contribution from road emissions. In fact, over the next 100 years, today’s road emissions will have a climate effect that is four times higher than the climate effect from today’s aviation emissions, the report said.

In general, the transport sector’s contribution to global warming will be continuously high in the future.

Environmental pollution may trigger diabetes, scientists suspect in the US.

In the commentary published in the recent edition of the Lancet, Cambridge scientists Oliver Jones and Julian Griffin highlight the need to research the possible link between certain pollutants and diabetes.

In their commentary, Jones and Griffin cite peer reviewed research including that of Dr D Lee, et al, which demonstrated a very strong relationship between the levels of POPs in blood, particularly organochlorine compounds, and the risk of type-2 diabetes.

Past research had found individuals are more at risk of diabetes if they are thin with high levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in their blood than if they are overweight but with low levels of POPs, scientists said.

POPs are chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods and are considered as toxic to humans and wildlife. The POPs came into prominence as effective pesticides with the introduction of Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) one of the best-known synthetic pesticides in the 1940s.

Many of these chemicals, including DDT, fell out of favour after they were blamed for the declining number of wild birds and other animals and the possible negative human health effects, according to a report posted in the Cambridge University website.

© Despair (1999) – Kushal Gangopadhyay – Piali Village, West Bengal, India
UNCCD Photo

The nature of West Bengal’s weather is changing. Monsoon doesn’t come as scheduled any more. Duration of Summer became longer, Winter comes late, without its normal intensity and duration. The meteorologists are alarmed and they got a picture of the nature of changing climate. Some districts are witnessing more rainfall than usual and some are witnessing less. Number of depressions in the sea has also gone up.

Renowned meteorologist Dr. Swadesh Mitra made a survey on the weather of W.B. His studies are important for the development and industrialization of the State. According to him rainfall has decreased in Darjeeling, Malda, Krishnanagar, Bardhaman and Bankura from 1981 to mid 2007 and at the same time it has increased in Kolkata, Medinipur and Sagardwip region. Number of oceanic storms has also increased. During the period of 1901 – 1950 there were 5 droughts in the State. From 1951 – 2000 the number is gone up to 11. The statistics of flood: in the 70s 2 floods; from ’81 – ’90 6 floods; from ’91 – 2000 9 floods. The average temperature is also rising in the different parts of the State. The temperature of Sagardwip has rose 0.1 deg. Celsius form 1891 – 1970. Darjeeling has an average rise of 0.6 deg. Celsius, Baharampur 0.4 deg. Celsius, Bardhaman 0.2 deg. Celsius and Alipur and central Kolkata 0.7 deg. Celsius. Rise of temperature is rapid after the ‘70s. Average numbers of depressions in the year in the Bay of Bengal have increased from 7.3 to 8.9. Earlier the schedule of arrival of the Monsoon in W.B. was on 8^th June but now it arrives on 13^th of June. But the monsoon bids adieu at it’s schedule time although it comes later. The rainfall is also becoming irregular.

© Asis Sanyal – A drought-stricken rural area in West Bengal, India
UNCCD Photo