Let’s Consume More But Damage Less

A few years back there was a proposal within the central government to stop the building of any more dams in Uttarakhand, which was successfully opposed by Uttarakhand’s then CM. A study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Technology has recently found that climate change is interacting with new dams on the Ganga, leading to more floods and destruction. Next time we meet anyone in the government, let us bring up this topic. Saving the Ganga, surely no one would oppose that!

Reportedly an average American wears a garment only 7 times, and since US consumption sets global trends, the world must also be moving towards this number. The damage being caused is massive as is happening in Ghana. Donating or recycling are only stop-gap measures, as even the poor don’t need as many clothes as are produced. Humanity does need to consume less of manufactured items, and garments are a good place to start. At an individual level, we can start by reducing the space we allocate for clothes in our homes.

Straw burning in Punjab and Haryana is often blamed on the less time between planting wheat and harvesting rice. A solution to this was growing a variety of paddy that takes less time to ripen and therefore is harvested earlier. However, Punjab has found that has not helped much. The reason is that with more time between crops the farmers are likely to squeeze in another crop. Moreover, rice milling units prefer the longer duration variety of rice to purchase. The obvious solution did not work, we need to look elsewhere. 

The data seem to support that India can make greater progress on climate change if it found a solution for coal, and the methane produced by its about 193 million cattle. While renewable energy costs are falling, methane production in cow bellies has no short-term solution in sight. Improved feed, better manure management, and other practices might reduce the problem though. These are not solutions easy for India, for that, we need a better understanding of Indian breeds, feeding, cow rearing practices, and implementing capacity of the government.  

Ghost nets are a global problem. Fishers in India for centuries abandoned unusable nets that would decay and dissipate over time. This isn’t so with nylon nets. A start-up is collecting these ‘ghost nets’ and recycling them into bracelets and suchlike but that’s not a scalable solution. One possibility is to create Self Regulatory Organizations with the fishers themselves monitoring, rewarding, and punishing each other. That is how worker guilds of the past operated successfully for many centuries.

The eleventh biennial conference of The Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) will be co-organized with Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIITD). The conference will be held online during December 15-17, 2021.

The roundtable will explore the current narratives on the air pollution crisis in India, with Members of Parliament from across the country and political affiliations.