Current Affairs 12 September 2024

CONTENTS

1. India Leads in Global Plastic Pollution
2. WHO Issues Guidelines to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance
3. Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maandhan Yojana
4. Mikania Micrantha
5. Ukai Dam
6. Madeira River

India Leads in Global Plastic Pollution

A recent report in the journal Nature identifies India as the leading contributor to global plastic pollution, responsible for about one-fifth of all plastic waste worldwide. This significant share highlights the urgent need for enhanced recycling processes and innovations in waste management within the country to mitigate environmental impact.

Relevance:

GS III: Environment and Ecology

Dimensions of the Article:

1. Key Findings of the Study
2. Reasons for High Plastic Pollution in India
3. Plastic Pollution: A Global Environmental Crisis
4. Plastic Pollution in India: Alarming Statistics
5. Way Forward

Key Findings of the Study:

• Annual Plastic Pollution: India generates around 9.3 million tonnes of plastic pollution annually, significantly higher than Nigeria (3.5 mt), Indonesia (3.4 mt), and China (2.8 mt).
• Waste Generation Rate: India’s per capita daily plastic waste generation stands at approximately 0.12 kilograms.
• Regional Disparities: The highest rates of plastic waste emissions are found in Southern Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeastern Asia, highlighting a clear regional divide in pollution sources.
• Waste Management Practices: In the Global South, including India, waste is often managed through open burning, whereas the Global North predominantly uses controlled disposal methods.
• Global Impact: 69% of global plastic waste emissions, amounting to 35.7 million tonnes annually, originate from just 20 countries.
• Controlled Disposal in High-Income Countries: Despite higher generation rates, high-income countries are not among the top 90 polluters due to effective collection and disposal systems ensuring 100% waste coverage.

Reasons for High Plastic Pollution in India:

• Consumption and Urbanization: India’s growing population and increasing affluence have led to higher plastic consumption and waste generation, exacerbated by urbanization and a higher demand for plastic products and packaging.
• Inadequate Infrastructure: India’s waste management infrastructure struggles with large waste volumes, resulting in numerous uncontrolled dumping sites rather than sanitary landfills.
• Inefficiency in Waste Collection: Official statistics claim a 95% waste collection rate, but research indicates it is closer to 81%, revealing significant inefficiencies.
• Burning Practices: Annually, India incinerates about 5.8 million tons of plastic waste, contributing to severe pollution and health risks.
• Informal Recycling Sector: An unregulated recycling sector handles significant amounts of plastic waste, often unrecorded in official statistics, complicating the understanding of actual pollution levels.

Plastic Pollution: A Global Environmental Crisis

Plastic pollution has emerged as one of the most pressing environmental challenges of the modern era. It is a global crisis that affects ecosystems, wildlife, human health, and the overall well-being of our planet. Here’s an overview of the key aspects of plastic pollution:

• Pervasive Presence: Plastics have become an integral part of our daily lives due to their versatility, durability, and affordability. However, this widespread use has resulted in massive plastic production, consumption, and waste generation. Plastics now pervade our environment, from oceans and rivers to remote wilderness areas.
• Marine Plastic Pollution: One of the most visible and concerning aspects of plastic pollution is its impact on marine ecosystems. Millions of tons of plastic waste enter the oceans each year, leading to the formation of vast “garbage patches” and entangling marine life. Marine animals often ingest or become trapped in plastic debris, leading to injury and death.
• Microplastics: Plastic pollution extends beyond what’s visible to the naked eye. Microplastics, tiny plastic particles measuring less than 5mm, have infiltrated aquatic ecosystems and even our drinking water. These particles are ingested by marine organisms and can ultimately find their way into the food chain, posing risks to human health.
• Environmental Impact: Plastic pollution disrupts ecosystems, as it takes hundreds of years for plastics to degrade. During this time, plastics can release toxic chemicals, harming both terrestrial and aquatic life. Plastic waste also interferes with natural processes and habitats, impacting biodiversity.
• Human Health Concerns: While the full extent of the health impacts of plastic pollution is still being studied, there are concerns about the potential transfer of toxins from plastics to humans through the food chain. Microplastics have been found in various food items, including seafood and table salt.
• Global Response: Recognizing the severity of the issue, governments, organizations, and individuals worldwide are taking steps to combat plastic pollution. Initiatives include bans on single-use plastics, recycling programs, and innovations in plastic alternatives.
• Individual Responsibility: Reducing plastic pollution is not solely the responsibility of governments and industries. Individuals can contribute by reducing plastic use, recycling, properly disposing of plastic waste, and supporting policies and products that are environmentally friendly.

Plastic Pollution in India: Alarming Statistics

• Extent of Plastic Waste: Data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) reveals that plastic waste constitutes a substantial portion, precisely 8%, of India’s total solid waste.
• Urban Contributors: Among urban centers, Delhi emerges as the primary contributor to plastic waste, closely followed by Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
• Massive Plastic Generation: India’s annual production of plastic waste surpasses a staggering 3 million tons, signifying a colossal environmental challenge.
• Low Recycling Rates: Despite the substantial plastic waste output, the country struggles with an abysmally low recycling rate, hovering at a mere 30%.

Way Forward

• Enhance Recycling Practices: Emphasize the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle through improved product design, establishing recovery centers, offering incentives for using recycled plastics, and requiring recycled content in manufactured products.
• Reform Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): Introduce variable fees for recycling challenging plastics, implement a plastic credit trading system, and expand EPR to include the informal sector to improve conditions for waste pickers.
• Adopt Advanced Waste-to-Energy Solutions: Invest in cutting-edge technologies such as pyrolysis and gasification for processing non-recyclable plastics. Enforce stringent emissions standards and harness the energy produced to power waste management operations.

-Source: The Hindu

WHO Issues Guidelines to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance

Context:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently released guidelines on managing wastewater and solid waste in antibiotic production to combat the growing threat of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). This initiative underscores the critical need for responsible environmental practices in pharmaceutical manufacturing to prevent the escalation of AMR globally.

Relevance:

GS II: Health

Dimensions of the Article:

1. Overview of the Guidance
2. What is Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)?
3. Concerns regarding Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

Overview of the Guidance:

• Provides a systematic approach for regulators and industry stakeholders to manage antibiotic resistance effectively.
• Serves as a scientific basis for incorporating specific targets into regulatory and policy frameworks to combat antibiotic resistance.
• Non-binding Guidance: Though not legally mandatory, it promotes consistency, transparency, and helps avoid piecemeal policy approaches.

Principles and Best Practices:

• Recommends best practices derived from other sectors such as food and water safety to develop risk management strategies.
• Stresses the need for regular internal and external audits and maintaining transparency in practices.
• Advocates for gradual improvements, acknowledging the need for global supply chain security and fair access to essential antibiotics.

Intended Audience:

• Regulatory Authorities: Targets national and regional officials overseeing pharmaceutical manufacturing and waste management.
• Audit Organizations: Addresses third-party bodies involved in the oversight of antibiotic production and waste management processes.
• Pharmaceutical Sector: Directs companies engaged in all phases of antibiotic production and related organizational bodies.
• Waste Management Entities: Focuses on those handling the disposal of antibiotic wastes and wastewater.

Scope and Focus of the Guidance:

• Concentrates on reducing antibiotic resistance risks.
• Highlights the ecotoxicological impacts on aquatic ecosystems from antibiotic residues.
• Encompasses the entire spectrum of antibiotic production, from active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) production to the final packaging.
• Focuses extensively on the management of both liquid and solid wastes, particularly emphasizing effluents and runoff management.

Risk Assessment Protocols:

• Mandates detailed risk assessments at manufacturing facilities producing multiple APIs, considering the environmental impact both before and after waste treatment processes.

What is Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)?

• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites to remain unaffected or survive antimicrobial drugs such as antibiotics, antivirals and antimalarials.
• AMR occurs when microorganisms exposed to antimicrobial drugs develop antimicrobial resistance resulting in standard treatments becoming ineffective leading to persistence of infections and spreading of infections.
• Microorganisms that develop antimicrobial resistance are sometimes referred to as “superbugs”.
• The misuse of antimicrobials in medicine and inappropriate use in agriculture is one of the major causes of spread of Antimicrobial Resistance.
• Contamination around pharmaceutical manufacturing sites where untreated waste releases large amounts of active antimicrobials into the environment also leads to spread of AMR.

Basis of Antimicrobial Resistance

• Some bacteria due to the presence of resistance genes are intrinsically resistant and therefore survive on being exposed to antibiotics.
• Bacteria can also acquire resistance by sharing and transferring resistance genes present in the rest of the population, or by genetic mutations that help the bacteria survive antibiotic exposure.

Multi drug resistance

• Multiple drug resistance (MDR), multidrug resistance or multi-resistance is antimicrobial resistance shown by a species of microorganism to multiple antimicrobial drugs.
• The types most threatening to public health are MDR bacteria that resist multiple antibiotics; other types include MDR viruses, parasites (resistant to multiple antifungals, antiviral, and antiparasitic drugs of a wide chemical variety).
• Recognizing different degrees of MDR, the terms extensively drug resistant (XDR) and pandrug-resistant (PDR) have been introduced.

Concerns regarding Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

• Medical procedures such as organ transplantation, cancer chemotherapy, diabetes management and major surgery (for example, caesarean sections or hip replacements) become very risky due to AMR.
• AMR increases the cost of healthcare with lengthier stays in hospitals, additional tests and use of more expensive drugs.
• No new classes of antibiotics have made it to the market in the last three decades, largely on account of inadequate incentives for their development and production.
• Without urgent action, we are heading towards a future without antibiotics and with bacteria becoming completely resistant to treatment and when common infections and minor injuries could once again kill (referred to as antibiotic apocalypse).
• It is putting the gains of the Millennium Development Goals at risk and endangers achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Concerns regarding AMR in India

• India, with its combination of large population, rising incomes that facilitate purchase of antibiotics, high burden of infectious diseases and easy over-the-counter access to antibiotics, is an important locus for the generation of resistance genes.
• The multi-drug resistance determinant, New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase-1 (NDM-1), emerged from this region to spread globally – Africa, Europe and other parts of Asia have also been affected by multi-drug resistant typhoid originating from South Asia.
• In India, over 56,000 newborn deaths each year due to sepsis are caused by organisms that are resistant to first line antibiotics.

Way forward

•  The use of antibiotics unrelated to treating human disease, such as in food and animal production, must be “optimised”.
• Greater action need to be taken to monitor and control infections, globally, nationally and within individual hospitals.
• Access to vaccines, clean water and sanitation ought to be expanded.
• And finally should be “more thoughtful” about our use of antimicrobial treatments —expanding access to lifesaving antibiotics where needed, minimising use where they are not necessary to improve human health and acting according to WHO’s recommendations on the same.
• Increasing funding for developing new antimicrobials and targeting priority pathogens such as K. pneumoniae and E. Coli and ensuring that they are affordable and accessible to most of the world.

-Source: The Hindu

Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maandhan Yojana

Context:

Recently, the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maandhan Yojana (PM-KMY), launched on 12th September 2019, has completed five successful years. 

Relevance:

GS II- Welfare Schemes

Dimensions of the Article:

1. Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maandhan Yojana (PM-KMY)
2. About PM KISAN

 Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maandhan Yojana (PM-KMY):

• The program is designed to provide social security to landholding Small and Marginal Farmers, defined as those possessing up to two hectares of land.
• As of August 2024, approximately 23.38 lakh farmers are registered, with the highest numbers in Bihar and Jharkhand.
• Significant enrollments include over 2.5 lakh from Uttar Pradesh, 2 lakh from Chhattisgarh, and 1.5 lakh from Odisha, indicating a broad acceptance across regions.

Key Benefits of PM-KMY:

• Contribution Structure: Participants contribute between Rs 55 and Rs 200, based on age, which is matched by the Central Government.
  •  The Central Government contributes an equal amount to the pension fund as the subscriber. 
• Pension Benefits: Eligible subscribers receive a minimum pension of Rs 3,000 monthly after turning 60 years old.
• Spousal Benefits: In the event of a subscriber’s death, a spouse not already benefiting from the scheme receives a monthly family pension of Rs 1,500.
• Integration with PM-KISAN: Small and Marginal Farmers can fund their contributions via the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) with an auto-debit setup.

Exiting the Scheme:

• Premature Termination: Subscribers leaving before age 60 can reclaim their contributions plus accrued interest.
• After Subscriber’s Death: Should the subscriber pass away while receiving the pension, the spouse gets 50% of the original pension amount. If both the subscriber and spouse pass, the remaining funds are returned to the pension pool.

Scheme Management:

• Administrative Body: The pension scheme is administered by the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), with registrations managed through Common Service Centres (CSCs) and State Governments.

About PM KISAN

Nodal: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare

• The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Scheme is a Central Sector Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Scheme.
• Under the scheme an income support of 6,000/- per year in three equal installments will be provided to small and marginal farmer families having combined land holding/ownership of upto 2 hectares.
• The Scheme initially provided income support to all Small and Marginal Farmers’ families across the country, holding cultivable land upto 2 hectares.
• Its ambit was later expanded to cover all farmer families in the country irrespective of the size of their land holdings. 
• Definition of family for the scheme is husband, wife and minor children.
• State Government and UT administration will identify the farmer families which are eligible for support as per scheme guidelines.
• The fund will be directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.
• There are various Exclusion Categories for the scheme.

-Source: Indian Express, PIB

Mikania Micrantha

Context:

Mikania micrantha weed is spreading quite fast in the Bhadra Tiger Reserve and threatening its biodiversity.

Relevance:

Facts for Prelims

Dimensions of the Article:

1. Mikania micrantha
2. Bhadra Tiger Reserve Insights

Mikania micrantha:

• Mikania micrantha is a perennial vine that exhibits aggressive and expansive growth. It originates from Central and South America.
• Recognized as a significant invasive species, it affects regions across Southeast Asia, India, and the Pacific Islands.
• Introduced in the 1940s for ground coverage in tea plantations, it now poses a threat to various agricultural and forest regions throughout India.
• Thrives in areas with high fertility, organic content, moisture, and humidity.
• The plant deprives neighboring flora of sunlight by overgrowth, leading to their damage or death. It uses its climbing ability to reach sunlight, enhancing its spread.
• Produces chemicals that suppress the germination and growth of surrounding plant seeds.
• Capable of producing numerous lightweight seeds that disperse through the wind and can also propagate vegetatively from its roots.

Bhadra Tiger Reserve Insights:

• Nestled in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, India.
• The reserve is surrounded by various hill ranges, housing a robust population of elephants and is designated as an Elephant Reserve.
• Home to a significant number of tigers, it was declared the 25th Project Tiger Reserve in 1998.
• The area is well-watered by the Bhadra River and its tributaries.
• Features a mix of dry deciduous, moist deciduous, shola, and semi-evergreen vegetation, with species such as Teak, Rosewood, and other medicinal plants.
• Supports diverse fauna including tigers, leopards, Dholes, and various ungulates like Gaur and Sambar.

-Source: The Hindu

Ukai Dam

Context:

Following rainfall in its upper catchment areas, the authorities recently discharged 1.19 lakh cusecs of water from the Ukai Dam, bringing the water level in the dam just five feet below the danger mark of 345 feet.

Relevance:

Facts for Prelims

Ukai Dam:

• The Ukai Dam, also called Vallabh Sagar, spans the Tapti River and ranks as the second largest reservoir in Gujarat, next only to the Sardar Sarovar.
• Built in 1972, the dam is primarily used for irrigation, power generation, and managing flood risks.
• The dam’s storage capacity represents nearly 46% of the combined capacity of Gujarat’s dams, comparable to Bhakra Nangal Dam.
• This hybrid earth-cum-masonry dam extends nearly 4,927 meters in length. The height of the earth dam is 80.77 meters, with the masonry portion standing at 68.68 meters.

Tapti River:

• Tapti is among the major rivers in peninsular India and is one of the three principal rivers, alongside Narmada and Mahi, flowing east to west.
• Originating from the Gawilgarh Hills in central Deccan plateau of Madhya Pradesh, it traverses west through the Satpura Range splits, crosses Maharashtra’s Jalgaon plateau, and passes through Surat in Gujarat to reach the Gulf of Khambhat.
• The river stretches over 700 kilometers (435 miles) with a catchment area of approximately 65,145 square kilometers, with 80% of it in Maharashtra.
• Flanked by the Saputara mountains to the north and the Ajanta and Satmala ranges to the south, with the Mahadeva range to the east, it runs parallel and close to the Narmada River, separated by the main Satpura Range.
• Tributaries: Major tributaries include the Purna, Girna, Panzara, Waghur, Bori, and Aner rivers, contributing to its vast network.

-Source: The Hindu

Madeira River

Context:

Residents near the Madeira River in the Amazon are facing unprecedented challenges as water levels drop to historic lows amid a severe drought.

Relevance:

Facts for Prelims

Madeira River:

• The Madeira River stands as an essential tributary of the Amazon River.
• This river emerges from the confluence of the Mamoré and Beni rivers at Villa Bella, Bolivia, and proceeds northward.
• Geographical Role: Spanning approximately 100 kilometers (about 60 miles), it demarcates the boundary between Bolivia and Brazil.
• Basin Size: Encompassing an area of roughly 1,300,000 square kilometers (502,000 square miles), the Madeira River Basin constitutes about 19% of the entire Amazon Basin.
• Distribution: The basin’s expanse covers Bolivia (50%), Brazil (40%), and Peru (10%).

Significance of the Madeira River:

• As the Amazon’s largest tributary, the Madeira River is pivotal to South America’s ecological framework, influencing the Amazon Basin’s hydrology.
• It plays a critical role in supporting a rich diversity of flora and fauna across Bolivia and Brazil, enhancing the region’s environmental diversity.

-Source: India Today