UN sustainable tourism declaration

Context: 

• More than 50 countries sign UN sustainable tourism declaration

News:

• More than 50 governments have signed a U.N. declaration to make tourism around the globe more climate friendly, the United Nations said, in what it hailed as a major achievement of the climate summit in Azerbaijan.

More info:

• The global tourism industry accounts for 3% of global GDP and is the source of 8.8% of greenhouse emissions.
• The countries that signed the declaration on Enhanced Climate Action on Tourism have pledged to recognise the need to address tourism when drafting climate plans, such as their Nationally Determined Contributions.
• The next update of NDCs, in which governments describe policies to reduce emissions that cause global warming, are due in February.
• Tourism often accounts for a large share of a government’s hard currency revenues, particularly in emerging countries, and can itself be highly exposed to climate events such as hurricanes, heatwaves and droughts.
• The declaration was accompanied by a number of other initiatives, such as a framework presented by hotel industry body World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, aimed at measuring and reporting data such as greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, waste and energy usage across the sector.
• The collated data would help the tourism industry and travellers understand their impact.

Kani tribe

Context:

• Researchers have embarked on a project to uncover the secrets of the ancient Kani tribe

About Kani tribe:

• Ancient Kani tribe continues to survive in the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
• The Kanis are believed to be a proto-Australoid tribe — probably descendants of the earliest of migrants to India, the Africans.
• Skeletal biological studies have linked tribes such as the Irulas in Tamil Nadu and Veddas in Sri Lanka to Australian aborigines.
• Scholars have postulated that the out-of-African migrants who came to what is India today continued to expand east and south into Australia that was then part of the Asian mainland.
• Researchers say that traces of pre-historic knowledge systems and culture continue to survive in the Kani tribe.
• Their project would be a comprehensive study to document and preserve the community’s unique culture, dialect, and traditions.
• The Kani tribe is a treasure trove of indigenous knowledge, and it’s essential to document and preserve their oral tradition before it’s lost forever.
• The Kani tribe has a population of around 5,000-7,000 individuals in Kerala and 52 settlements in Tamil Nadu.
• Their traditional language, Malambhasha, and unique communication system are among the aspects being studied.
• The research team will also explore the tribe’s spirituality, rites and rituals and social governance.
• Similar research in the future, applying theories of ethnomethodology, may throw more light on the tribal ethnomedical practices and occult science.
• Though the Kani language is similar to Tamil and Malayalam, it continues to have remnants of the ancient past.
• While trekking in the forest, the Kanis often casually pluck leaves, fruits and berries and munch on them.
• Amazed researchers attribute this to their energy that hours of trekking have no effect on.
• The Kanis point to clouds descending down the mountains and assure visitors that they could disperse the clouds just by clapping their hands in a specific rhythm.
• Researchers have already explored the Kani oral tradition and believe that it will be a milestone research on a primitive tradition that would enhance Indian Knowledge Systems.
• The Kani tribes are among the least studied and understood who can trace their lineage to pre-history.

Heatwaves

What is a heatwave condition? Why are Indian cities, towns and villages vulnerable both in the hills and the plains? Will notifying it as a State-specific disaster help? Why is it important to have a focused management plan in place?

Introduction:

• The Tamil Nadu government notified a heatwave as a State-specific disaster.
• This would entail providing relief to people affected by heatwaves, solatium for the family of those who have died of heat-related causes, and to launch interim measures to help manage the heat.
• Expenditure for this will be incurred from the State Disaster Response Fund.

Heat as a crisis:

• The World Meteorological Organization declared that 2023 was the hottest year on record.
• The frequency of heatwaves has increased in recent years, consistent with anthropogenic climate change, as per the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2023.
• Closer home, in India, people are already reeling under the impact of intense heatwaves.
• In a paper titled Impact of heatwaves on all-cause mortality in India: A comprehensive multi-city study, the authors recorded India’s heatwaves that have been occurring with increased frequency during the last decades.
• In May 1998, India experienced a severe heatwave over a two-week period considered to be the worst in the preceding 50 years.
• In the summer of 2024, a severe and long heatwave impacted India, blistering plains and hills, causing deaths and heat strokes.
• May 2024 was the worst, with Churu in Rajasthan recording a maximum of 50.5°C, recorded as the highest temperature in India in eight years.

Heatwave definition:

• A heatwave is defined generally as a prolonged period of unusually and excessively hot weather, which may also be accompanied by high humidity, but is primarily determined by regions for themselves.
• The India Meteorological Department (IMD), which determines heatwave conditions, has specified the following criteria: a heatwave need not be considered till maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 40°C for plains and at least 30°C for hilly regions.
• In the regional context, heatwave management has already emerged as a problem requiring focused attention.
• During April and May 2024, many parts of Tamil Nadu recorded temperatures above 40°C.
• A paper on Deadly heatwaves projected in the densely populated agricultural regions of South Asia featured in Science Advances, stated that the crisis is all the more significant in South Asia, a region inhabited by about one-fifth of the global human population, where there exists an unprecedented combination of severe natural hazards and acute vulnerability.
• “The most intense hazard from extreme future heatwaves is concentrated around densely populated agricultural regions of the Ganges and Indus river basins,” the paper forecasts.

Impact of heat on health:

• Extreme heat conditions have a definite deleterious impact on human health, life and productivity.
• In the paper on heatwaves, authors say they found strong evidence of the impact of heatwaves on daily mortality.
• Longer and more intense heatwaves were linked to an increased mortality risk.
• This makes it a public health problem that governments must tend to.
• They further add that heat-related morbidity and mortality can be caused by the direct effects of exposure to extreme heat, including a spectrum of heat-related illnesses from heat exhaustion to heat stroke.
• “Equally challenging from a public health perspective are the indirect effects of extreme heat exposure, occurring when heat exposure stresses underlying physiological systems and results in other specific manifestations such as renal insufficiency, acute cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease, and exacerbations of pulmonary disease,” the paper notes.
• Further, existing vulnerabilities such as poverty, lack of access to shelter and health care, unplanned cities and working out in the open, add to the burden in mid and low middle income communities.
• Children, senior citizens, pregnant women, those with pre-existing co morbidities, and people forced to work in the open, as in construction and agriculture industries, are more vulnerable to the impact of heat.
• According to the WHO, heat-related mortality for people over 65 years of age increased by approximately 85% between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021.
• A working paper “Extreme Heat Affects Early Childhood Development and Health” details the effect extreme temperatures can have during pregnancy and early childhood, including on learning, sleep quality, and mental and behavioural health.

Wet bulb temperature:

• Wet bulb temperature is the lowest temperature to which a surface can be cooled by water evaporating from it, or the lowest temperature to which the surface of the skin can be cooled by sweating.
• Beyond this threshold, the human body can no longer cool itself, leading to heat stroke or even death.
• This temperature accounts for not only the degrees but also helps measure humidity and understand how much evaporation can occur.
• This is particularly significant to India, which has a vast coastline in the east and west, and where rising humidity levels are of concern.
• One of the authors of the paper on heatwaves said An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress point out that peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today.
• Exceeding a wet bulb temperature of 35°C for extended periods would induce hyperthermia in humans, as dissipation of heat becomes impossible.

What should governments do?

• The long-term goal is addressing the anthropogenic causes for climate change, and at the same time, tackling systemic shortfalls like poverty, unplanned cities, access to health care and nutrition.
• However, there is much that governments can do even in the interim, during periods of intense heat, as indicated by the Tamil Nadu government.
• These include keeping in readiness health centres, maternity and children hospitals to provide treatment for citizens, stockpiling adequate quantities of ORS and medicines that will be useful at hospitals, providing water and shelter to those who have to brave the elements and rescheduling work hours to protect outdoor workers.

CARICOM

Context:

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Prime Minister of Grenada (current CARICOM Chair), chaired the 2nd India-CARICOM Summit in Georgetown.

More info:

• The first India-CARICOM Summit was held in 2019 in New York.
• To further build on India’s close development partnership and strong people to people ties with the region, Prime Minister offered assistance to CARICOM countries in seven key areas.
• C: Capacity Building
• A: Agriculture and Food Security
• R: Renewable Energy and Climate Change
• I: Innovation, Technology and Trade
• C: Cricket and Culture
• O: Ocean Economy and Maritime Security
• M: Medicine and Healthcare
• Given that Sargassum seaweed poses a major challenge for tourism in the Caribbean, Prime Minister noted that India would be happy to help convert the seaweed into fertilizer.
• PM announced that the next India-CARICOM Summit would be hosted in India.

About CARICOM:

• The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is a grouping of twenty-one countries: fifteen Member States and six Associate Members.
• Stretching from The Bahamas in the north to Suriname and Guyana in South America, CARICOM comprises states that are considered developing countries, and except for Belize, in Central America and Guyana and Suriname in South America, all Members and Associate Members are island states.
• CARICOM came into being in 1973 with the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas.
• The Treaty was later revised in 2002 to allow for the eventual establishment of a single market and a single economy.
• CARICOM rests on four main pillars: economic integration; foreign policy coordination; human and social development; and security.
• CARICOM is the oldest surviving integration movement in the developing world.
• All CARICOM countries are classified as developing countries.
• They are all relatively small in terms of population and size.
• All members subscribe to the Community’s principles outlined in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (2002).
• Leaders of member states shape the Community’s policies and priorities.
• They meet twice yearly to discuss issues affecting the Community and the wider world at the Conferences of Heads of Government.
• All members have an equal say regardless of size or economic status.
• This ensures that every member has a voice in shaping the Caribbean Community.
• Members include Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
• Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Curacao, and the Turks and Caicos Islands have associate member status, and Aruba, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela maintain observer status.
• The permanent secretariat has its headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana.