Amita Bhaduri

Raging floods swarming great expanses have been a common occurrence in the 21st century in South Asia.

Sanitation workers are out in full force tasked with disinfecting the public spaces as COVID-19 crisis continues to impact the country on top of other serious challenges faced by our WASH sector.

As the planet plunges towards irreversible climate change, the challenges posed by extreme weather events and environmental degradation pose an existential threat. The trends are irrefutable and there would be a temperature rise of around 3.2oC by the end of this century, even if countries abide by the emission reduction commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Air pollution killed 16.7 lakh Indians and led to an economic loss of Rs. 

In October this year, locals and river activists campaigned against illegal sand mining in Yamunanagar, Haryana. The authorities were compelled to take notice and the errant firms that had deployed heavy machinery to embank the river and divert its natural flow to extract sand were booked for violation.

For a long time, villagers of Thanakasoga in Sirmaur, Himachal Pradesh knew about the depletion of their drinking water sources and the thirstier future they faced. “We depend on bawdis and natural springs, from where we fetched water. By 2012, our springs were dying and could hardly cater to the local demand.

In a span of a few months, COVID-19 has hit the world severely. At the same time, the water bodies are seeing more life, smog is giving way to blue skies, the air has become cleaner and many forms of pollution have plunged. However, coronavirus waste has emerged as a new form of pollution.

There is a disquieting hush across the world as the linkage between the planet’s health and human well-being became pronounced during the times of the pandemic. The deepening socio-economic and ecological crises caused by patterns of production and consumption are being increasingly recognised.

In pre-colonial times, India’s forestlands were mostly under the use of the local communities. Forest policies led to centralisation in colonial times with forestland being subject to commercial over-exploitation for revenue generation purposes. This, in turn, led to land alienation of forest dwellers and an overall increase in deforestation.

India is likely to face stark water scarcity in the coming decades as a result of excessive use, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI)’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas - a tool to visualise and assess water stress and drought and flood risk covering