The Civil Analyst

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has defined Acid Rain or Acid Deposition as a form of precipitation with acidic compounds such as  such as sulfuric or nitric acid that fall on the ground from the atmosphere in wet or dry forms. E.g. rain, snow, fog, hail or even dust that is acidic. Normal rain is slightly acidic with a pH of 5.6 whereas pH of acidic rain generally ranges between 4.2-4.4. The term acid rain was firstly coined by Scottish chemist  Robert Angus Smith in 1852, who is also known as the "father of acid rain ." Smith decided on the term while investigating rainwater chemistry near industrial cities in England and Scotland (Refer BaselConvention for transboundary movement of hazardous wastes). He described about this phenomenon in 1872 in the book " Air and Rain: The Beginnings of a Chemical Climatology . "  However, it was not given any attention until the late 1950s when scientists in the United States started studying the phenomenon, and in

Recent data revealed by the Swarm satellites of the European Space Agency ( ESA) has confirmed the presence of a mysterious anomaly that weakening the Earth’s magnetic field . Named as ‘ South Atlantic Anomaly’ , it spreads all the way from South America to southwest Africa. What is South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA)? Many of us would confuse it with some climatic or oceanic current related phenomena but it’s something else. South Atlantic Anomaly is the behaviour of Earth’s Geo-Magnetic field in a range between South America and Africa. South Atlantic Anomaly is the zone where the Earth’s inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to the Earth’s surface, to an altitude of only 200 kilometres. This causes an increased flux of energy particles in this region and exposes the satellites orbiting in the region with higher-than-usual levels of solar radiation. This anomaly is caused due the non-concentricity of the Earth and its magnetic dipole. At this region the Earth’s magnetic field i

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