The Civil Analyst

Bonn Challenge is an international effort propelled by the Government of Germany and IUCN to restore 150 million hectares of world’s degraded and deforested land by the year 2020, and additional 200 million hectares by 2030. Later, it was endorsed and extended to 2030 by the New York Declaration on Forests of the 2014  UN Climate Summit. Currently, 56 governments, private associations and companies have pledged over 168 million hectares to the Challenge. The Bonn Challenge is not a new global commitment but rather a practical means of realizing many existing international commitments, including the CBD AichiTarget 15 , the UNFCCC REDD+ goal, and the Rio+20  land degradation neutrality goal. It is an implementation vehicle for national priorities such as water and food security and rural development while contributing to the achievement of international climate change, biodiversity and land degradation commitments. It is anticipated that restoration of 150 million hectares of

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her maiden Union Budget speech of the 17 th Lok Sabha emphasized on zero budget farming, calling for a “back to the basics” approach. She also said that practising zero budget farming can help in doubling the income of Indian farmers by the year 2022, in the time of our 75 th year of Independence.   The neo-liberalization of the Indian economy led to a deep agrarian crisis that is making small scale farming an impracticable vocation. Privatized seeds, inputs, and markets are very difficult to get and highly expensive for farmers. High production costs, high interest rates for credit, the volatile market prices of crops, the rising costs of fossil fuel based inputs, and private seeds, is the principal cause of indebtedness of Indian farmers and suicide . As the data given by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), around 70% of agricultural households spend more than they earn and more than half of all farmers are under indebtedness. In States s

The corona crisis has only accentuated the recent changes in the global order. This article analyses 7 trends that have been emerging in the global order recently. 1.     The rise of Asia Till the 18 th century, Asia accounted for half the world’s GDP. The European naval expansion and colonialism followed by Industrial Revolution contributed to the rise of the Western world. Now the  balance is being restored whose first trend which became clear in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008. The financial crisis of 2008 tested the  resilience of Asian countries . Even today, Asian economies have demonstrated greater agility in fighting the corona pandemic compared to western countries. The economic forecasts of International Monetary Fund (IMF) has indicated that out of the G-20 countries, Only India and China is expected to show a positive growth in 2020. It is true for other Asian nations as well which displayed a greater responsiveness against Corona and expected t

In the early 1980s, increasing environmental awareness in many developed countries led to the strict environmental regulations which accelerated the costs of disposing of hazardous wastes . This started an approach known as ‘ not in my backyard ’ or ‘NIMBY’ by which developed countries found it very easy and cheaper to dump such wastes in developing countries and Eastern European Nations where people are not as much aware as in the developed countries. In the later 1980s it became very evident that hazardous wastes of developed countries were being shipped to and buried in developing countries without proper caution. In order to regulate these wastes across international boundaries, the Basel Convention came into existence. T he Basel Convention on the Control of transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes was established on March 22, 1989 by the Conference of Plenipotentiaries in Basel, Switzerland, under the aegis of United Nations Environment Programme . It entered into force in

Migratory Species are those animals that travel from one place to another because of various factors such as food, sunlight, climate and temperature etc. The movement between habitats can sometimes go beyond thousands of miles/Km for some migratory birds and animals. A migratory route can involve nesting and also requires the availability of habitats before and after each migration. In order to safeguard the migratory species all through their range countries , a convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) was signed under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the year 1979 in Germany, also known as the Bonn Convention . It entered into force on 1 st November 1983. It is the only international environmental treaty that provides a platform for the conservation and sustainable use of migratory species and their habitats. CMS is established utterly for the conservation and management of terrestrial, aquatic and avian migratory species through

The international trade of wildlife is estimated to be worth of billions of dollars, including hundreds of millions of plant and animal specimens. This trade ranges from live animals and plants to a vast array of wildlife products derived from them, including food products, exotic leather goods, wooden musical instruments, timber, tourist curios and medicines. Such a high level of exploitation and trade of some animal and plant species with various other factors such as habitat loss or destruction leads to severe depletion of their populations and even gets them close to extinction. While many wildlife species in trade are not endangered, but there is a need for an agreement to ensure the trade sustainability in order to maintain these resources for the future (You may also interested in Bonn Convention ). CITES CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna & Flora), also known as the Washington Convention is an international agreement between go

The global energy consumption in the recent years has been rapidly increased especially fossil fuels (non-renewable resource) whose depletion has led to the world energy crisis. Additionally, fossil fuels results in the emission of greenhouse gasses to the environment, leading to global warming and climate change. Thus, a sustainable society requires reduction in pollution and fossil fuel consumption. Hereafter, there is an urgent need for alternative energy resources, which should be clean, renewable and economical. Biofuels, which is considered as a renewable energy source, is a step taken to put less strain on the limited supply of fossil fuels. Biofuels are hydrocarbon fuels which are primarily derived from organic matter or biomass such as plants, animal waste or algae material. It can be in any form e.g. solid liquid or gaseous and can be used as an alternative or sometimes blende with petrol, diesel or any other fuels. Now a days, biofuels are one of the largest renewable en