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Last Week Revision strategyTwo days for Essay:Prepare quotes, facts and intro and conclusion on below topics. You can also do mind mapping of below topics.Read here my essay strategy:What should be our strategy for the essay paper in the IAS (UPSC) exam?Very Important Topics1. $5 trillion in five years: Can we do it?2. Is Bretton Woods still relevant today?3. Politics without principle is a disaster.4. What India needs: Population control or population development?5. With Big Data comes Big responsibility6. Destiny of the nation is shaped by its citizens7. Is water crisis in India a manmade crisis?8. Means or Ends: what is more important?9. Is Gandhian philosophy relevant today10. Rapid Urbanization : Problems and prospects11. Can Zero Budget Natural farming ensure food security?12. Is privatization panacea for ailing Public Sector?13. Can UBI be a panacea for poverty?14. Rising inequality in India: An anomaly or an outcome of economic reforms?15. Industry 4.0: Is India ready?16. Without the rule of law there can be no democracy.17. Is India’s water Crisis a Man Crisis?18. Is Artificial intelligence boon or curse?19. Can State Funding ensure free and fair elections?20. India’s Population: Demographic dividend or demographic Disaster?21. Development and tribal welfare must be synchronous.22. Extreme is the new normal: Climate Change23. “Is development possible without making compromises on our environment?”24. Inequality is not just a moral issue—it is a macroeconomic issue.25. Is de globalization underway?Less Important Topics:26. The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs security of all.27. If you don’t vote you lose the right to complain.28. If voting made the difference they won’t us do it29. Politics, Business and Bureaucracy – a fatal triangle30. E-vehicle : Is it the right time to make a transition31. Malnutrition : A silent epidemic32. Suicide: A silent emergency33. Live simply so that others can simply liveGS Strategy:Answer writing Strategy:What should I do to improve if I only scored a total of 328 marks out 1000 in GS 1,2,3,4 and an overall score of 718 out of 1750 in the UPSC Civil Services 2018 Mains?Important Topics GS1:Culture:1. Mughal painting2. Indian school of philosophy with special focus on Vedanta (advaita, DaVita, Vishist Advaita) and Yoga.3. Ancient Indian Sruti literature4. Aryan invasion theory.5. Trace the evolution of Hindustani and Carnatic style of music in India6. Guptas as Golden Age in Ancient Indian History7. Mughal chroniclesModern India:1. Contribution of Jawaharlal Lal Nehru in pre and post-Independence India2. GoI Act 19193. Subhas Chandra Bose and his Azad Hind Fauj4. Jallianwala Bagh5. Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar6. contributions of Indians living abroad in India’s freedom struggle movement, especially during WW1World History:1. French revolution2. Treaty of Versailles of 1919 had sown the seeds for the Second World War3. Colonialization and decolonialisation : China and Hong Kong4. Cold war5. Communism6. Nationalism: Compare and contrast the policy of Bismarck with that of Count Cavour.Post-Independence:1. The language problem2. Unification of post partition India and the princely states under one administration.3. The 1969 bank nationalization4. Assam AccordSociety:1. Secularization of caste in India2. Social exclusion3. New social movement4. Sexual Harassment of women (prevention, prohibition ad redressal) Act and Crimes against Women5. Female labour force participation in India has fallen to 26%.6. Indian family – changing structure and norms7. Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic techniques Act and intentional sex selection- sex rati8. Discuss the linkage between the poor sanitation and Malnourishment9. POSCO and child sex abuse10. Optimum population and population explosion11. Anti-Trafficking Bill12. Tribal land alienation13. Drug menace in society14. Malnourishment problem15. HIV (Prevention and Control) Act 201716. Multi-dimensional poverty17. Disability and Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan18. Migrant workers and one nation one ration19. Sec 377 and transgender20. What are PVTGs? Discuss their geographical location along with characteristics and vulnerabilities. List few schemes for PVTGs.21. UNCCD’s land degradation neutrality (LDN) and land degradation in India22. Globalizations and tribal23. Globalizations and labour24. Rapid urbanization and environment degradation25. Counter urbanization26. Secularism and Communalism27. Does regionalism a threat to the unity and integrity of IndiaGeography1. Why earthquake and kinds of waves ?2. Tsunami2. Marine biodiversity and Depp ocean mining and deep sea fishing3. Biodiversity hot spots4. Indian monsoon and extreme climate events5. Polar vortex6. Forest fire in India?7. Hindu Kush Himalayan assessment report8. Gacial lakes outburst floods9. Heat wave10. Rare earth minerals significance and distribution around the world.11. Formation and distribution of coal deposits in India12. Two time zones in India.13. How tropical cyclones are formed and what phenomenon strengthens them? Explain how cyclone Tilti and Fani are different from the early ones?14. Identify the significance of jute industry? Explain the factors responsible for jute industry?15. Discuss the factors influencing the locations of automobile manufacturing Clusters in India.16. Port led development17. Bangalore as IT CITY locational factors18. Despite a ban, rat hole mining remains a prevalent practice for coal mining in India, why?19. Discuss the geographical factors responsible for the growth of Iron and steel industry in India?GS 2: Important Topics• Government of India Act, 1919• Due process of law• The 44th amendment• Fundamental duties enlargement and enforcement• Directive Principles• 102nd constitutional amendment Act and 103rd Constitutional Amendment Act. Does this violate the basic structure doctrine?• Assam Accord? Citizen Amendment Bill, 2016• 124A of IPC violate the freedom of expression given in article 19• Mob lynching and rule of law• Right to religious freedom• Section 499 of IPC• Article 32• Concurrent list• Madras High court has held that the elected government of Union Territory generally assumes supremacy over the lieutenant government.• Indian fiscal federalism suffers from vertical and horizontal imbalances- Role of NITI Ayog• Office of the governor and Article 356• 15th Finance commission• Finance of ULBs- municipal bonds• Cooperative federalism is an important tool in healing many evils like inter-state and intra-state inequalities• CBI credibility• Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996• Gram panchayat development plans• Inter-state River Water Dispute (Amendment) Bill, 2019 helps in overcoming the challenges.• Cooperative federalism and Zonal councils in this regard.• Demand for smaller states will lead to balkanization of Indian states. In your opinion, can more number of smaller sates bring in effective governance at state level? Discuss• judicial legislation in India• interstate council• Decline in performance of Indian Parliament• Parliamentary committees are like mini Parliament. Discuss how they increase the efficiency and expertise of the Parliament.• Department related standing committees necessary?• Cabinet Committees• Parliamentary privileges codification• office of profit• Compare and contrast the vote on account and interim budget• Rajya Sabha relevance• Anti-defection Law has achieved its desired purpose and role of speaker.• Opposition Party and leader• Need of Legislative Councils• 5th and 6th schedules tribal area administration• Legalizing lobbying• State funding of elections• Rapid criminalization of politics, SC judgment and Regulation of political parties?• Feminization of Indian politics• FPTP system to PR system• Delimitation.• MCC• electoral bonds• Increasing role of PMO vs cabinet secretariat?• Judicial reforms and vacancy• Pressure groups role and limitation• India had a piecemeal approach to transport planning with multiplicity of agencies .How far can a unified ministry.• Election Commission Appointments• Tor of 15th Finance commission• National Green Tribunal• Tribunalization of justice• Lokpal can be an effective anti-corruption body• National Human Rights Commission commemorates its 25th anniversary• centrally sponsored schemesNGOs vs state and National policy on voluntary sector, 2007• Self Help Group and Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana• Manual scavenging Act• Transgender being the third genders according to the landmark Supreme Court judgment in NALSA vs. Union of India• Forest Rights Act, 2006• Extensive amendments to Forest Act 1927• The consumer protection bill, 2019 is a major step forward in consumer empowerment. Discuss• RTI (Amendment) Bill is RTI elimination bill and Official Secrets Act• E-Gov• NCD Challenge in India• Ayushman Bharat scheme and how far it would address these limitations?• draft NEP• Bihar Primary health crisis.• What do you understand by family law/personal law? Do they come under laws mentioned in Article 13 of Indian Constitution Lateral entryImportant Topics GS 3:• Middle income trap? How can India avert this?• Employment elasticity? Examine the causes of decline in employment elasticity• domestic demand falling• Private investments• India's tax-GDP ratio is still abysmally low and widening tax base• Restrictive labor laws• MSMEs significance• India’s demographic transition• The nationalization of banks and bank merger , NPA• Under-employment• Share of manufacturing in India’s GDP is low.• Demographics especially age structure of the population and economic growth• Black economy• 1991 reform and inequality• Domestic demand driven economy to export driven economy• Green GDP• Is GDP a satisfactory• capital account convertibility and risk• Twin balance sheet problem• Double farmers’ income by 2022and Agriculture Export Policy, 2018. In this context, discuss the key recommendations of the agriculture export policy.• Farm loan waiver.• Agri distress and structural Imbalance in agriculture• Agriculture census shows trends of slide in farm size and rise in woman land owners• Ease of doing business• The vision of $5trillion economy• Missing middle• Farmer security and Farm security• Agriculture and Inclusive growth• Inclusive growth and increasing economic inequality.• Financial inclusion is a prerequisite to inclusive growth.• Economic Survey 2019 and Budget 2019 role of private investment is a key driver of the growth.• Is there a need to revisit the FRBM act FRBM Review Committee headed by NK Singh• Outcome based budgeting• Cropping pattern? Discuss the factors affecting the cropping pattern in India.• Crop diversification for doubling farmer’s income.• Agricultural marketing problems and APMC , ENAM• Precision agriculture• National Agro-forestry policy 2014• GM crops• Price deficiency payment• Challenges of Public Distribution System• Potential of FPOs• Technology missions in agriculture• Non-farm employment in the rural areas• Global warming and its impact on crop productivity.• Model Contract Farming Act, 2018.• E-technological intervention for farmers?• Discuss the scope and prospects of food processing in India. Also examine the challenges faced by the sector.• It has often been suggested that an essential element of “Make in India” has to be “Bake in India”, i.e. a renewed focus on value addition and on processed agricultural products. Comment• land reforms of India• How far LPG reforms introduced in 1991 succeeded in fulfilling the original goal of liberalization? Do you think the economic reforms are the main causes of increasing inequality in India? What are its impacts? How can this be corrected?• What is Industry 4.0? Do you think that India is prepared for this?• dedicated freight corridor-• Infrastructure deficit is the biggest hurdle in achieving $5 trillion economy. In this context, discuss the budget proposal to build a robust infrastructure.• What is strategic oil reserves• What do you understand by energy poverty• Only Solar farming• Private investments need to be encouraged in infrastructure through renewed public private partnership (PPP) mechanism on the lines suggested by the Kelkar Committee.• What is Artificial Intelligence? How artificial intelligence can transform the Indian economy and provide for inclusive growth? Discuss in the light of Niti Aayog's National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence.• Internet of Things IoT and Big Data• India’s policy on Data localization and its implications.• Net Neutrality.• Block chain• Gene editing? What is the role of Crisper-Cas9• DNA Technology (use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2019 would augment the justice delivery system of the countr• What is Personalized Medicine? How Genome India Project• Food fortification• Antibiotic resistance, superbugs.• gravitational waves• ISRO space industry and Vikram Sarabhai contribution• Mission Shakti. Does• Why the world is in a second race to the moon? What is the importance of India launching Chandrayaan-2 mission to moon?• Electric vehicles• India’s new drone regulations• Generic medicine and pharma industry• Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001• India's rank in Global Innovation Index.• National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)• Water crisis• Biofuel Policy• The coastal regulation zone notification 2018• Rat hole mining• Illegal mining has ravaged the Aravallis• Space private players• E Wastes• Large hydropower reservoirs• Extreme climate events• Circular Economy?• zero draft EIA notification, 2019• solar geoengineering• Biofuel policy 2018.• climate change on Ocean• National Clean Air Programme and Green Mobility• water crisis• GM technology• . Modernization and indigenization for the armed forces.• Digital currency security• Money laundering• Coastal Security• Smart fencing on borders• India nuclear doctrine• Mission Shakti• Indian Army's "Cold Start" doctrine• How organized crime in India is reinforcing Terrorism• NIA (Amendment) bill and UAPA bILL• Police reforms• Central Armed forces• State and non-state actorsGS 4: Topics:• Altruism• Surrogacy ethics• Medical Ethics• Sports ethics• Political campaign Ethics• Climate justice• Citizen Charter• Work Culture• Citizen charter• Probity• Courage of conviction• Civil service activism• Neutrality• Intellectual Integrity• Organ donation• Prejudice and stereotype• Mob violence –psychology• Abortion ethical dilemma• Price gouging• Sacrifice• Honor killing• Social audit• CSR• Corporate governance• Trusteeship• Auditors ethics• Politics and principles• Consumerism• Challenges of corruption• Leadership ethics• Altruistic surrogacy:• What do you understand by altruism? Does true altruism• How is compassion related to altruism?• What is ethical egoism?• What are ethical and legal issues in surrogacy?• Altruistic surrogacy and Women agency?• What are medical ethics?• Women hysterectomies:Doctors sans ethics: How medical malpractice has made hysterectomies a big business in MarathwadaWhy many women in Maharashtra’s Beed district have no wombs• What do you understand by medical malpractice?• What are reproductive rights?Fire: A young man saved life in Ahmadabad fire incident.This man saved two girls from deadly Surat coaching centre fire. Internet calls him a hero• What do you understand by self-sacrifice and courage? Why courage is called mother of all virtues?Caste discriminationNegative attitude and prejudice.Defections: Politics without principle is a disaster. Politics Without Ethics | Youth Ki AwaazWhat are the ethical issues involved in gene editing?Ethics in voting: Explain the below quote and their relevance in present context.• If you don’t vote you lose the right to complain. Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.• The ballot is stronger than bulletAbortionDiscuss the moral, legal and religious issues regarding abortion.Prejudice and stereotypes• What are prejudices? Explain with examples.• How do we develop prejudices? How it leads to discriminatory behavior? How can we get rid of it?Ethics in disasters• Disasters are not administrative challenge they create moral problems also. Discuss• What is price gouging? What are the ethical issues involved in it?• Should businesses lower prices of their services during disaster?Sports ethics• What role ethics plays in sports?• Why ethics is important in sports?• What are the ethical issues involved in allowing use of performance enhancing drugs in sports?Social accountability: RTI, SOCIAL AUDIRSensitivityPrivate and Public Ethics• Is it sufficient to practice ethics in public life?Important Facts for mains 2019ResourcesWater:World’s 9th largest freshwater reservesTotal water resource: 1869 BCMReplenishable groundwater: 433 BCMAnnual per capita water availability 1951 20195177 1720 Cubic MeterWorld Bank Report: Ganga River Basin water shortage: 39%Asian Development forecast: By 2030, water deficit of 50%Niti Ayog Report: 600 mn will face water shortageStanding Committee on water resources: Waterbodies, wetlands are getting encroachedGroundwater: 85% used only for irrigation (221 BCM out of 243BCM).80% of rural people still don't have access to piped water supply.India has only 4% of the world’s renewable water resources but about 18% of the world’s population.NITI Ayog “Composite water management Index”- The report warns that twenty-one cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting 100 million people. If the present situation continues, there will be a 6 percent loss to the country’s GDP by 2050.Of 91 major reservoirs in the country, 11 have zero percent storage. Further, almost two-thirds of the country's reservoirs have below normal levels, a report by the Central Water Commission’s report.As per a 2018 study by NABARD and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, shifting a major chunk of the rice production to India’s central and eastern states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, while encouraging wheat cultivation through sustainable irrigation in the rice-growing regions of Punjab and Haryana, could help India prevent an impending water crisis by 2030.As per the Central Water Commission, 85.3 percent of the total water consumed in India was for agriculture in 2000, and the figure is likely to decrease to 83.3 percent by 2025.Rice and wheat, two of India’s most important food crops, are the most water-intensive. Producing a kilogram of rice requires an average of 2,800 liters of water, while a kilogram of wheat requires 1,654 liters of water, as per a recent report by WaterAid IndiaGroundwater makes up 40 percent of the country’s water supply. The erratic monsoon and successive droughts have led to excessive depletion of groundwater, which resulted in the decline of groundwater by 61 percent between 2007 and 2017. A 2018 report by Water Aid has already put India at the top of a list of countries with the worst access to clean water close to homesUtilization of water: Agriculture>Domestic>Industrial>Commercial consumptionAcc. to The Energy and Resources Institute states, quoting the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organization, that the average water supply in urban local bodies of the country is 69.25 litres per capita per day (LPCD) against the service level benchmark of 135 LPCD.On an average, 85 liters of water goes waste for every 100 liters utilized.According to information furnished by the Centre, while urban areas of the country generate 61,948 MLD of sewage on a daily basis, the installed capacity of sewage treatment plants (STPs) is just 23,277 MLD. This means that only 37.5% of sewage generated can be treated.As per the Agriculture Census 2010-11, there are 138.35 million farm-holdings in India, of which 92.8 million are marginal (<1 ha) and 24.8 million are small (1-2 ha). Even though small and marginal farmers account for more than 85% of total farm holdings, their share in operational area is only 41.2%. About 1.5-2 million new marginal and small farmers are added every year due to law of inheritance.The International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous international organization established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, allots the ‘area’ for deep-sea mining. India was the first country to receive the status of a ‘Pioneer Investor ‘ in 1987 and was given an area of about 1.5 lakh sq km in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) for nodule exploration. In 2002, India signed a contract with the ISA and after complete resource analysis of the seabed 50% was surrendered and the country retained an area of 75,000 sq km.According to a release from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the estimated polymetallic nodule resource potential in this area is 380 million tonnes (MT), containing 4.7 MT of nickel, 4.29 MT of copper, 0.55 MT of cobalt and 92.59 MT of manganeseClose to 80% of the electricity generated is from coal and gas. Yet another 50,000MW of coal-fired power plants are being set up under the National Electricity Plan. More than 20% of all the electricity generated goes into “transmission and distribution losses"Due to inadequate and irregular last-mile supply, close to 15 million tonnes of diesel is used by local generators to produce 80 billion KWh of electricity. Close to $2 billion worth of battery storage capacity is imported every year. And most independent power plants operate at 12-15% below their declared capacity as they over-invoice plant costs.Official estimates indicate that around 3, 00,000 farmers have committed suicide over the past 30 years.The single largest factor about India’s water is that 90% of it is consumed in farming. 80 per cent of this irrigation is for water-guzzling crops — rice, wheat and sugarcaneFood Security:·Global Food Security Index (Economist Intelligence Unit) india’s rank - 76/113Resource Mobilisation:Tax collection for 2018-19 fell by,Direct Tax: 74,774crIndirect tax: 93,198Gross tax revenue- GDP 2018-19= 11.9% 2019-20=11.7Direct Tax:GDP will fall from 6.4 to 6.3Indirect Tax:GDP will fall from 5.5 to 5.3Disinvestment target :1 lac croreGovernment interest payment for past borrowings forms the largest component of revenue expenditureCapital expenditure is projected to grow at a rate slower than the projected rate of GDP growth.Investments of Rs 100 lakh crore would be needed cumulatively over the next 5 years to boost infrastructure.The digital payment market, with 800 million mobile users in the country of which more than 430 million have internet access, is estimated to grow to over $ 1 tn by 2025.Pre 1980’s era- GDP growth rate was about 3-3.5% and the population growth rate was 2%.World bank in its Global Economic Prospects, has projected weakening of global trade in 2019. It is projected to grow at 2.6% this year.Requirement will rise to 2.3-2.7 million digitally-skilled professionals during 2023: NasscomIIP dips to 3.1% in May owing to slow down.Index of Industrial Production (IIP) measures the quantum of changes in the industrial production in an economy and captures the general level of industrial activity in the country.Index of Industrial Production is compiled and published every month by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme ImplementationBlockchain technology is considered revolutionary for its ability to enable the secure movement of assets, without intermediaries, with its economic impact projected to exceed $3 trillion in the next decade. Blockchain is now the fastest-growing skill set demanded on job sites, with job growth rates at 2,000-6,000% and salaries for blockchain developers 50-100% higher than regular developer jobs.Blue Revolution:Blue Revolution 1.0: 1987-1997Blue revolution 2.0: 2016 onwardsIndia is second in the world in aquaculture production @ 4.7mn tnChina no.1 @ 60mn tnEEZ= 2MN km squareIndia exported fish worth 2017-18Energy:India is one of the world’s largest producers and consumers in 2 and 3 wheelers.Under National Biofuel Policy, 2018- 20% ethanol blending by 2030 10% ethanol blending by 2022One of the key requirements for a $ 5 tn economy is an investment of about Rs 5 lakh crore in the power transmission sector over the next few years, in order to cater to the 1.8 lakh crore units of electricity that India is likely to consume by 2025.·Share of green power increased from 6 %( 2014-15) to 10 %( 2018-19).Acc. to Oil Minister, India will continue to rely on petrol and diesel for running automobiles, and needs to expand its oil refining capacity by 80%.About ⅕ th of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz.Even with the growth of renewable energy, coal has been projected to be the backbone of electricity sector until 2030 and beyond.India has created 80,000 MW of renewable energy and set a target of achieving 1,75,000 MW by 2022, reduced energy intensity by 21%.Global Innovation Index 2019 : Rank 52Boost demand for vehicles as 1 mnIndia and China will surpass the U.S. as the World’s Centers of Tech Innovation by 2035, according to Bloomberg New Economy Global Survey.India has just 4% of the world’s renewable energy but have 18% of the world's population.·The advantages of transporting water over water include the fact that one Horsepower of energy can move 150 kg on road, 500 kg on rail and 4,000 kg on water. Similarly, one liter of fuel can move 24 tonnes per km on road, 85 tones on rail and 105 tones on inland water transport.·China is way ahead of India in its expansion. Over the 2014-17 period, China’s addition to its renewable energy capacity (207.2 GW) was nearly six times India’s (33.3 GW). Over the same period, China increased its installed capacity in solar energy by 105.5 GW, while India increased its capacity by only 14.3 GW — a mere one-seventh of the former. Advanced economies like the U.S. and Japan installed almost twice the amount of solar capacity over this period compared to India.·India’s annual coal demand rose by 9.1% to nearly one billion tones during the year ending March 2019. Coal features among the top five imports of India, with total imports rising from 166.9 million tons in 2013-14 to 235.24 million tons in 2018-19.·A report published by the Centre for Financial Accountability in June 2018 showed that out of a total lending of ₹83,680 crore for 72 energy projects, 12 coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 17 GW obtained loans of ₹60,767 crore. The 60 renewable energy projects, with a combined capacity of 4.5 GW, were able to mobilize only ₹22,913 crore·According to BP Energy Outlook 2019, coal’s share in India’s primary energy consumption will decline from 56% in 2017 to 48% in 2040. But that is still nearly half of the total energy mix and way ahead of any other source of energy. Oil’s share, the second largest, will decline from 29% to 23%, and the contribution of renewables will rise fivefold to 16%. Even the NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission, in a 2017 report estimated the share of coal in the energy mix in 2040 to be at least 44%.Science and technology:Chandrayaan-1- Launched by PSLV -C11. Detected signs of water molecules.·Chandrayaan-2- Orbiter, Lander(Vikram) and a rover(Pragyan). GSLV Mk III. 3 stage(solid, liquid, cryogenic). 2 Vikas engine. Science and Technology.·The establishment of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1969 heralded the Indian space programme. As the sixth-largest space agency celebrates its golden jubilee, India has slowly and steadily emerged as a pre-eminent space power with 102 spacecraft missions, the largest fleet of civilian satellites in the Asia-Pacific region, a successful inter-planetary Mars Orbiter Mission and a world record of launching 104 satellites from a single rocket.·The establishment of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in 1969 heralded the Indian space programme. As the sixth-largest space agency celebrates its golden jubilee, India has slowly and steadily emerged as a pre-eminent space power with 102 spacecraft missions, the largest fleet of civilian satellites in the Asia-Pacific region, a successful inter-planetary Mars Orbiter Mission and a world record of launching 104 satellites from a single rocketEducation:·Acc. to RTI query, scientists from SC and ST are grossly underrepresented in scientific institutions funded by Dept. of Biotechnology.·UGC has issued list of 23 fake universities and 14 of them also appear on the 2005-2006 list of fake universities by UGC·Water: India has 4% of the world's renewable water and 18% of the population.Health:Health: SDG AIM END AIDS BY 2030AIDS: consumed 20 mn lives22 mn under ART1.7mn new infections every year and 1mn deathsPreventing mother to child transmission of HIV by 2020By 2024- 80% less new HIV infection.The second edition of NITI Aayog’s Health Index was recently released in its report titled ‘Healthy States, Progressive India: Report on Rank of States and UTs’.What does the trend imply?Some States and Union Territories are doing better on health and well-being even with a lower economic output.In contrast, others are not improving upon high standards, and some are actually slipping in their performance.In the assessment during 2017-18, a few large States showed less encouraging progress.This reflects the low priority their governments have accorded to health and human development since the first edition of the ranking for 2015-16.The disparities are very evident in the rankings, with the populous and politically important Uttar Pradesh being in the bottom of the list.A World Health Assembly Resolution passed in May is hoping to catalyse domestic and external investments to help reach the global targets. These include ensuring at least 60% of all healthcare facilities have basic WASH services by 2022; at least 80% have the same by 2025; and 100% of all facilities provide basic WASH services by 2030.As a joint report published earlier this year by the World Health Organization and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) outlines, WASH services in many facilities across the world are missing or substandard. According to data from 2016, an estimated 896 million people globally had no water service at their healthcare facility. More than 1.5 billion had no sanitation service. One in every six healthcare facilities was estimated to have no hygiene service .Despite decades of effort, India still has less than one doctor for every 1,000 people, the World Health Organization’s minimum ratio for a country’s healthcare adequacy.On an average, a government doctor attends to 11,082 people, more than 10 times than what the WHO recommends. The shortage of government doctors does not augur well for India where 70 per cent of health care expenses are met by out-of-pocket expenditureIn Bihar, one government doctor serves 28,391 people. Uttar Pradesh is ranked second with 19,962 patients per doctor, which is followed by Jharkhand (18,518), Madhya Pradesh (16,996), Chhattisgarh (15,916) and Karnataka (13,556).Delhi is better in terms of doctor-population ratio (1:2203), but it is still twice the ratio recommended by WHO. The states and UTs that are closest to meeting the WHO standards are Arunachal Pradesh, Puducherry, Manipur and Sikkim.As of March 31, 2017, the country had a shortfall of 10,112 female health workers at primary health centres, 11,712 female health assistants, 15,592 male health assistants and more than 6,1000 female health workers and auxiliary nurse midwifes at sub-centres.In fact, primary health centres across the country are in want of at least 3,000 doctors with 1,974 such centres operating without a single doctor. In community health centres, there is a shortfall of close to 5,000 surgeonsThere are reportedly 462 medical colleges that churn out 56,748 doctors every year. Similarly, 3,123 institutions across the country prepare 125,764 nurses each year. However, with India’s population increasing by about 26 million each year, the increase in number of medical staff is too little.States, which are the worst performers in the entrance test for admission to MBBS courses, have the highest number of registered doctors. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had the lowest pass percentage in entrance test and yet they top the list of registered doctors—153,513 and 126,399, respectively. Rajasthan, the best-performing state in entrance test, has less than half the number of registered doctors.If the entire country wants to achieve 1:1,000 ratio, it will need 2.07 million more doctors by 2030, according to a study published in the Indian Journal of Public Health, in September last year. With the government sparing just 1.3 per cent of the GDP for public healthcare, as opposed to the global average of 6 per cent, shortage of government doctors means people will continue to incur heavy medical expenditure in private health care system.The study titled 'The Health Workforce in India', published in June 2016 by WHO, also revealed that in urban parts of India, only 58.4% of doctors have a medical qualification. The figure is really poor in rural areas with only 18.8% qualified doctorsAs per the WHO World Health Statistics 2015, India ranked 187 out of 194 countries for its public healthcare services with the public sector spending only 1.16% on health as a percentage of the GDP.Non Communicable Diseases- disease pattern in India in general and particularly in rural India has undergone a significant shift over the last 15 years. An early inkling of this change was evident in a 2001-2003 government of India report on the causes of death in the country. The report revealed that the deaths in rural India due to communicable diseases (41%) were almost matched by those due to NCDs (40%)A follow-up study on the causes of death in rural India for the years 2010-13 showed that NCDs accounted for 47% of all deaths while communicable, maternal, peri-natal and nutritional conditions together accounted for 30%High blood pressure, the biggest risk factor for death worldwide, now affects one in five adults in rural India, while diabetes affects about one in 20 adultsA recent report released by the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative shows that three of the top five leading causes of DALYs lost in India were NCDs: coronary artery disease, chronic lung diseases and stroke.It is estimated that India is likely to lose $4.58 trillion before 2030 due to NCDs.NCDs in rural India are affecting a relatively younger population—about a decade younger—compared to that in the developed countries. This is likely to be due to malnutrition early in life, which paradoxically increases the risk of NCDs and an unhealthy lifestyle in early adulthood.The government-run healthcare system in rural India largely focuses on maternal and child health and infection. For instance, of the total health budget of Rs47,343 crore in 2017-18, only Rs955 crore was allotted to the NCD programme.India has a doctor-population ratio of 1:1,655; the World Health Organisation standard is 1:1,000. Moreover, there is a considerable skew in the distribution of doctors, with the urban to rural doctor density ratio being 3.8:1.Diabetes has increased in every Indian state between 1990 and 2016, even among the poor, rising from 26 million in 1990 to 65 million in 2016. This number is projected to double by 2030. A major contributor to this epidemic is the displacement of whole foods in our diets by energy dense and nutrient-poor, ultra-processed food products.Self-styled doctors without formal training provide up to 75 per cent of primary care visits. Moreover, at present, 57.3 per cent of personnel practicing allopathic medicine do not have a medical qualification.Population:·As the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16) notes, women in the lowest wealth quintile have an average of 1.6 more children than women in the highest wealth quintile, translating to a total fertility rate of 3.2 children versus 1.5 children moving from the wealthiest to the poorest.·Similarly, the number of children per woman declines with a woman’s level of schooling. Women with no schooling have an average 3.1 children, compared with 1.7 children for women with 12 or more years of schooling.·This reveals the depth of the connections between health, education and inequality, with those having little access to health and education being caught in a cycle of poverty, leading to more and more children, and the burden that state control on number of children could impose on the weakest.·As the latest Economic Survey points out, States with high population growth are also the ones with the lowest per capita availability of hospital beds.·Today, as many as 23 States and Union Territories, including all the States in the south region, already have fertility below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman·The Economic Survey 2018-19 notes that India is set to witness a “sharp slowdown in population growth in the next two decades”. The fact is that by the 2030s, some States will start transitioning to an ageing society as part of a well-studied process of “demographic transition”·A study by the UN Population Fund titled Demographic Dividend in India projects that by 2060, India’s population is expected to touch 166 crore. Most of this increase will translate into a larger working population of people aged between 15 and 59 years. Eighty percent of India’s total population growth during the period 2001-’31 will get translated into an increase in the working age population. By the mid-2040s, this sub-group will consist of more than a billion people·For the first time in Indian history, the population increase during 2001-2011 has been greater in urban areas than in rural areas. Nearly one-third of India’s population, 377 million people, lives in urban areas. The level of urbanization is higher in the south-western Indian states at an advanced demographic stage, accounting for 45% of the population of India’s urban population.Demographic Dividend:·For the first time since independence, India’s working age population — those aged between 15-64 years — will outnumber its dependents, that is, children aged 14 and below as well as people aged 65 and above·This demographic dividend is expected to last for the next 37 years, till 2055 — and is expected to spur India’s economic growth, as well as per capita income.·In Japan, for instance, which was among the first major economies to experience rapid growth because of changing population structure, the demographic dividend phase started in 1964 and ended in 2004. It was seen that in the first 10 years of this phase, it recorded a double digit GDP growth in five of those years, above 8% in two of those years and a little less than 6% in one year. Only two of these 10 years saw growth below 5%.·In Singapore, the dividend years started in 1979 and in the next 10 years, there were only two years when its economy grew at less than 7%. The island country saw double digit growth in four of these 10 years. South Korea entered this phase in 1987 and in the next 10 years, there were only two years when its growth rate fell below 7%.·The dividend years started in 1979 in Hong Kong and it witnessed less than 8% growth rate in only two of the next ten years.·According to the UNFPA — which cites the example of Latin American countries that, despite a demographic dividend, saw only a two-fold increase in their GDP in the late 20th century whereas the Asian countries in the same period saw a seven-fold increase.·Much of what India is able to achieve through its working population increase, says the UNFPA, will depend on whether India is able to provide good health, quality education and decent employment to its entire population.·India’s dependency ratio has declined from 68.4 %( 1950) to 49.8 %( 2018). Total Fertility rate declined from 5.9(1950) to 2.2(2018).India’s working-age population is now increasing because of rapidly declining birth and death rates.In their study, Atri Mukherjee, Priyanka Bajaj and Sarthak Gulati examine how changes in India’s population have influenced macroeconomic outcomes between 1975 and 2017. They find that while overall population growth is associated with lower economic growth, an increase in the working-age population is associated with higher growth.India’s age dependency ratio, the ratio of dependents (children and the elderly) to the working-age population (14- to 65-year-olds), is expected to only start rising in 2040, as per UN estimates.India’s labour force participation rate is declining, especially among rural youth (15- to 29-year-olds) and women.Agriculture:Acc. to FAO, insufficient investment in the agriculture sector in most developing countries over the past 30 years has resulted in low productivity and stagnant production.In India, with a steadily decreasing share of 14.4% in Gross Value Added since 2015-16, the sector’s contribution to a $ 5 tn economy would be around $1 tn- assuming a positive annual growth rate.An early experience of BRIC nations has shown that a 1% growth in agriculture is at least 2-3 .times more effective in reducing poverty than similar growth in non-agricultural sector.Public Investment in agricultural research and development in terms of percentage share in agriculture GVA stands at 0.37%, which is fairly low in comparison to between 3% and 5% in developed countries.·Acc. to Deputy Governor, RBI disinvestment in PSEs would alleviate crowding out effects of government borrowings in the country. Currently, the share of capital expenditure is meagre 14%.·Digital Payment- The number of transactions done through UPI has increased by 180 times since its inception in 2016. However, private players have cut into the government backed BHIM app’s share of the transactions, while card based transactions are still the most preferred online payment method.The Ashok Dalwai Committee clarified real incomes will need to be doubled over seven years (over a base income of 2015-16), which requires a growth rate of 10.4 percent per year in order to realise doubling of farmer’s income by 2022.India is the largest exporter of rice in the world, exporting about 12 to 13 MMT of the cereal per year. If the government raises the MSP of rice, by say 20 per cent, rice exports will drop and stocks with the government will rise to levels far beyond the buffer stock norms.Today, India spends roughly 0.7 per cent of agri-GDP on agri-R&D and extension together. This needs to double in the next five years.India, with a large and diverse agriculture, is among the world’s leading producer of cereals, milk, sugar, fruits and vegetables, spices, eggs and seafood products. Indian agriculture continues to be the backbone of our society and it provides livelihood to nearly 50 per cent of our population. India is supporting 17.84 per cent of world’s population, 15% of livestock population with merely 2.4 per cent of world’s land and 4 per cent water resources.Various studies on fresh fruits and vegetables, fisheries in India have indicated a loss percentage ranging from about 8% to 18% on account of poor post-harvest management, absence of cold chain and processing facilitiesIndia is currently ranked tenth amongst the major exporters globally as per WTO trade data for 2016. India’s share in global exports of agriculture products has increased from 1% a few years ago, to 2.2 % in 2016.Women in agriculture:The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30%. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by up to 4%, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17% - that's 100-150 million people.MobilityThe higher your educational qualifications, the longer your work commute. That, in essence, is the finding reported in a working paper on mobility in one of India’s most congested cities, Bengaluru, by researchers from the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC).Unlike people with higher education qualifications, those in the unorganised sector without degrees work within five km of home.The commute to work required 42.45 minutes for about 10.84 km. This is an increase from around 40 minutes in 2001. Peak hours add on average six minutes to the commute one-way. Over 95% working in government, or in trade and commerce, move in peak time, while in the industrial sector, 66% of workers have peak-hour travel. That figure falls to just 10% for IT and 6% for the informal sector.Also, 41.91% of commuters used public transport, and a quarter used two-wheelers. Over 10% of commuters walked to work, highlighting the need for better pedestrian infrastructure.·Farm Mechanization: Laser guided land leveler can flatten the land in less time than oxen powered scrapper. It increases farmers productivity by 15%.·Agriculture Census 2018: Uttar Pradesh is home to the largest number of people tilling land, followed by Bihar and Maharashtra, according to the 2015-16 Agriculture Census.·India has been allotted a site of 75,000 sq. km. in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) by the UN International SeaBed Authority for exploitation of polymetallic nodules (PMN). These are rocks scattered on the seabed containing iron, manganese, nickel and cobalt.·Being able to lay hands on even 10% of that reserve can meet the energy requirement for the next 100 years. It has been estimated that 380 million metric tonnes of polymetallic nodules are available at the bottom of the seas in the Central Indian Ocean.·India’s Exclusive Economic Zone spreads over 2.2 million sq. km. and in the deep sea, lies “unexplored and unutilised”·The Amazon basin, spread across millions of hectares in multiple countries, hosts massive sinks of sequestered carbon, and the forests are a key factor in regulating monsoon systems.·As the custodian of forests in about 5 million sq km of Amazon land. One estimate by the World Bank some years ago noted that 15 million hectares had been abandoned due to degradation. Globally, there is tremendous momentum to save the Amazon forests. Brazil must welcome initiatives such as the billion-dollar Amazon Fund backed by Norway and Germany which has been operating for over a decade, instead of trying to shut them down.·The rainforests harbour rich biodiversity and about 400 known indigenous groups whose presence has prevented commercial interests from overrunning the lands.Zero Based Natural Farming:·Acc. to NSSO 70% of agri household spend more than they earn·50% of farmers are in debt.·In AP and Telangana debtedness is 90%(Avg debt 1lac)·Acc to NITI Aayog , more than 1.6 lakh farmers are practicing the ZBNF in almost 1,000 villages.Banking:The opening of 36 crore bank accounts in Jan Dhan Yojana has linked the poor to our growing economy.Government is in talks with foreign lenders to provide $14.5 bn in credit to millions of small firmsIndia’s 63 million firms in micro, small and medium firm sector are responsible for more than a quarter of the country’s manufacturing and services output. Gross domestic product growth fell to a 5 year low of 5.8% in January-March quarter, well below the 8% plus rates that the government is targeting.Credit availability for SMEs, which also account for about 45% of the country’s exports, has worsened due to a liquidity crisis in the NBFCs sector.A study by RBI Panel said the overall deficit in credit for the MSME sector is estimated at about Rs 20-25 lakh crore.Employment:MGNREGA- Lack of adequate financial allocation, pending liabilities and low wages have dogged the programme over the past 8 years.About 20% of budget allocation in each of the last 5 years is pending wage liabilities from previous years. It was worst in 2016-17 when pending liabilities were 35% out of total allocation of Rs 38,500 crore.MGNREGA wages in many states are about 40% lower than the national minimum wage.Swaraj Abhiyan vs Union of India, 2015- Government should provide more work to the people of drought prone area and timely wages.Public employment in India is only one-tenth of that in Norway, only 15% of that in Brazil and much than a third of that in ChinaAuto Industry:8-10 lac job lossAutomatic Hubs: Gurugram - Manesar belt , Pune , Jamshedpur,PithampurEnvironment:The total surface area of our Earth is 52 billion hectares (Ha), and 31% of this has been forest cover.FAO defines forest as a land area of at least 0.5 hectare, covered by at least 10% tree cover without any agricultural activity or human settlementSwiss and French ecologists have found out that there is potential climate change mitigation through global tree restoration by adding 0.9 bn hectares. More than 50% of this restoration potential can be found in 6 countriesIndia has 21.54% tree cover and between 2015 and 2018, we have added 6,778 sq kmPhilippines Success story- Making mandatory for each elementary, high school and college student to plant 10 trees before graduatingSection 15 of the Environment Protection Act(for thermal power plants) provides for blanket penalty for contravention of any of the provisions of EPA: up to 5 years of imprisonment and up to Rs 1 lakh fine along with additional daily fines for continuing offences.·As per Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) norms for upgraded fuels, (IS: 2796 – petrol and IS: 1460 – diesel), sulphur content is reduced to 10 mg/kg max in BS-VI from 50 mg/kg under BS-IV. This key reduction in sulphur makes it possible to equip vehicles with better catalytic converters that capture pollutants.·As per June 2019 sales data released by SIAM, automobile companies sold 16.28% fewer passenger vehicles compared to June 2018. There was a 23.39% drop in the sale of commercial vehicles in the same period. Two-wheeler sales dipped by 11.70%.·India has been emerging as one of the world’s most polluted countries, with particulate matter PM 2.5 levels spiking more than 999 microgram per cubic metre in parts of Delhi last year.·The government also commissioned a study to gauge the economic value of tiger reserves. Based on an analysis of 10 of them, the government claimed that the cumulative benefits — from the carbon and timber conserved, livelihood to those who depend on forests and tourism — were anywhere from ₹4,200 crore to ₹16,000 crore annually.·Nearly 3,000 tigers now reside in India, that's more than 70% of the world's tiger population.·The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has asserted in its report, ‘Status of Tigers in India’ 2018, that 83% of the big cats censused were individually photographed using camera traps, 87% were confirmed through a camera trap based capture-recapture technique, and other estimation methods were used to establish the total number.·The less accessible Western Ghats has witnessed a steady increase in numbers from 2006, notably in Karnataka, and Central India has an abundance, but there is a marked drop in Chhattisgarh and Odisha; in Buxa, Dampa, Palamau, which are Tiger Reserves, no trace of animal was found.·Madhya Pradesh saw the highest number at 526, closely followed by Karnataka (524) and Uttarakhand (442).·Chhattisgarh and Mizoram saw a decline in tiger population and all other states saw a “positive” increase, according to a press statement.Studies show that India’s road transport emissions are small in global comparison but increasing exponentially.Global Carbon Project reports that India’s carbon emissions are rising more than 2 times as fast as the global rise in 2018.Globally, the transport sector accounts for a quarter of total emissions, out of which three quarters are from road transport.According to the recent National Family Health Survey(2015-16), nearly 30% of all men are overweight or obese in southwest Delhi. These data correlate with high reliance of car use in Delhi and low demand for walking.India Human Development Survey shows that 10% increase in cycling could lower chronic disease for 0.3 mn people.A recent UN Global Assessment Report estimated India’s economic losses would be 4% of GDP annually if we don’t invest in building natural ecosystems, while a 2018 World Bank Report said that 600 million Indians are moderately to severely affected by changes in temperature and rainfall.Greenpeace air pollution report for 2019 lists as many as seven Indian cities among the 10 worst in the worldAnother report said that 1.2 million deaths in 2017 could be directly attributable to all-round pollutionThe IPCC report warns that clean energy, clean transport and reduction emissions alone will not cut global emissions enough to avoid dangerous warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius. It points out that the global food system is responsible for 21 to 37 per cent of the world’s GHG emissionsAbout a quarter of the Earth’s ice-free land area is subjected to what the report describes as “human-induced degradation”. Rapid agricultural expansion has led to destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands and other ecosystems. Soil erosion from agricultural fields, the report estimates, is 10 to 100 times higher than the soil formation rate.The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) estimates that the commercial production of shale gas would require multiple fracking activities in each well with water requirement of up to nine million liters per fracking activity. As of today, 56 sites across six States have been identified for fracking, and according to the World Resources Institute, all of them fall under ‘water stress’ zones, having limited supply of fresh water.The world is 1° C hotter than preindustrial 1850-1900 levels, with 2015-19 comprising the hottest years on record.As a result of global warming, sea levels could rise by 2.8 ft. by 2100, presenting an existential threat to India’s coastlines.Driving this temperature increase, carbon emissions rose by a record 2.65 parts per million (ppm) a year in 2015-19, reaching 412 ppm today. At this rate, the catastrophic threshold of 450 ppm for reaching the 2° C increase in warming will be breached in just 15 years. By 2050, temperatures in India are projected to increase 1.5-3° C relative to 1981-2010, if little action is taken.The average cost of these two renewable power sources is now in the range of the cost of fossil fuels. Even so, renewable energy still accounts for only 17% of India’s electricity needs, with 80% coming from polluting fossil fuelsAlso, energy-related CO2 is rising because of increased fossil fuel consumption, encouraged by government subsidies for this energy source. Worldwide, these subsidies increased by one-third in 2018, to $400 billion globally.Perversely, coal plant capacity is set to expanding South and Southeast Asia, which together account for half of the world’s planned coal power expansion, with India, Vietnam and Indonesia combined for over 30%. Bangladesh and Pakistan plan to increase coal-based capacity threefold, and the Philippines wants to double capacity.·Marine culture: Agriculture Minister further said that fish production in India is estimated at 11.4 million tones, out of which 68% is registered from inland fisheries sector and the remaining 32% from marine sector. It is expected that the indigenous fish requirement by 2020 would be 15 million tones as against the production of 11.4 million tonnes. This gap of 3.62 million tonnes is expected to be made up by Inland Aquaculture and also through Mari culture.E-Waste:According to the United Nations University’s Global E-waste Monitor, India’s e-waste generation amounted to 2 million tonnes in 2017. Computer and telecom equipment accounted for 82 per cent of the total e-waste generated in India, according to an ASSOCHAM-KPMG study.However, only 0 .036 million tonnes of waste was processed.E-waste generation in India is estimated to increase by 500 per cent by 2020. Approximately 95 per cent of e-waste generated ends up in the informal sector according to reports.As of now, government has 312 registered recycling facilities across 19 states with the capacity to recycle 0.78 million metric tonnes.Infrastructure:Road Transport- More people die in India due to road accident related incidents than anywhere else in the world. With over half a million accidents and over 1.5 lakh fatalities every year — and that’s the official figure; unofficially, fatalities could be 20 per cent higher and accidents 50 per cent higher than what’s captured in the crime records database.India overtook China in 2006 as the country with the world’s deadliest roads. A total of 146,133 people were killed on Indian roads in 2015, an increase of 4.6% from 2014, according to the latest data with the roads ministry. The number of road accidents in India increased 2.5% in 2015 to 501,423 while injuries from road accidents rose 1.4% to 500,279 in 2015.According to NITI Aayog “Transforming Mobility Report”, congestion in the 4 biggest metro causes annual economic losses of over $22 bnElectric Vehicles:In 2018 China accounted for 57% of EV sold globally.By 2023 100% electric 3 wheelersBikes by 2025Science and Technology:It is feared that these multidrug-resistant superbugs may kill as many as 10 million people worldwide by 2050.On Medical Devices- “The fact is after the GST regime, importers have to pay respective customs duty which is around 7.5%-10% in addition to 12% of GST. So in effect, importers are paying more taxes after the GST regime than before.It is true that the input tax credit is applicable against GST component on inputs, but the same is available for locally manufactured goods as well.In total, GST regime does not benefit importers in any way over domestic players. In fact, post-GST import duties on many implantable devices have gone up to 10% due to increase in custom duties.Micro RNAs- These are regulators of gene expression, acting like switches. They decide which protein should be made and how much in a given cell or tissue or an organism. They are tiny, having some 20-22 digits of RNA.·The establishment of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1969 heralded the Indian space programme. As the sixth-largest space agency celebrates its golden jubilee, India has slowly and steadily emerged as a pre-eminent space power with 102 spacecraft missions, the largest fleet of civilian satellites in the Asia-Pacific region, a successful inter-planetary Mars Orbiter Mission and a world record of launching 104 satellites from a single rocketSecurity:“30,000 to 40,000” militants — trained in Afghanistan and Kashmir — are still operating in Pakistan, Mr. Khan(PM of Pakistan) has admitted.Western countries such as U.S, U.K, Canada, Australia, Germany advise their citizens against travelling to Kashmir valley. Against 13 lakh tourists who travelled to Kashmir in 2016, the first 6 months of 2019 recorded just 3.54 lakh.Migration:·Top out migration states: UP,Bihar , Rajasthan,MP,Karnataka·Top in migration states: Maharashtra, delhi, up , gujarat,Haryana.5.43 cr roughly population of Myanmar was the interstate migrant at the time of census 2011.More migrants in Maharashtra ( 91l) than Delhi ( 63l)and Rajasthan(26l). Gujrat( 39l), UP( 41L)21% of interstate migrant go to Maharashtra.22% of job seeker migrants prefer MaharashtraReasons for migration:23% for employment31% for marriage3% for education1% for business40% for familyGender perspective:o47 % Men migrate for employmento4% Women migrate for employmentoHalf of women interstate migrant state marriage as the mains reason.Innovation:·Global Innovation Index : India’s rank 52nd·Israel in top 10.·It invest 7% of GDP in education.·It invest 4% in R&D.Organized Crime:·In 2016, in its reply to a Lok Sabha question, the Union Health Ministry noted that there is a huge gap between the demand and supply of human organs for transplant even though the precise numbers of premature deaths due to heart, liver, lung and pancreas failures have not been compiled.·The Ministry noted that against the demand of 2 lakh kidneys, only 6,000 were available. Similarly, against the demand of 30,000 livers only 1,500 were available, and against the demand of 50,000 hearts merely 15 were available across the country.·According to the Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network Foundation (Mohan Foundation), a Chennai-based NGO working on organ donation, only about 3% of the demand is met.·“In India, [the] deceased organ donation programme is largely restricted to big institutions and the private sector which makes it less accessible for all. The deceased donation rate in 2013 was 0.26/million population and this went up to 0.36/million population in 2014.Innovation:·Global Innovation Index : India’s rank 52nd·Israel in top 10.·It invest 7% of GDP in education.·It invest 4% in R&DEconomyThe latest International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Economic Outlook update in July 2019 has confirmed a growing belief that global growth has decelerated and dark clouds seem to be looming in the near term. Specifically, the IMF has downgraded global growth multiple times since October 2018 and now projects it to be 3.2% compared to 3.6% in 2018.The government’s fiscal deficit touched ₹4.32 lakh crore for the June quarter, which is 61.4% of the Budget Estimate for 2019-20 fiscal.In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit, or the gap between expenditure and revenue, was ₹4.32 lakh crore at June-end, as per the data released by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA).The government aims to restrict the fiscal deficit to 3.4% of the GDP (gross domestic product) in the current fiscal, the same as last financial year.India dropped two places in GDP rankings in 2018 compared to2017. With a slump in consumption, and new investments reducing to a trickle, the government’s aim of making India a $5 trillion economy 2024 seems far fetched.Drop in position : In 2017, the size of the Indian economy stood at $2.65 trillion, the fifth largest. In 2018, India’s economy in $ terms grew by 3.01% to $2.73 trillion. But in the same period, the U.K. and France grew by 6.8% and 7..3% respectively, pushing India to the seventh place in the World Bank’s GDP rankings in 2018.Investment Woes : Investments in new projects nosedived to a 15 year low in the quarter ending June 2019. The drop in value of new projects was driven by a dip in both private and government investments.Consumption drops : Three of the four major indicators of the consumer economy recorded negative growth rates in the first half of 2019.Downward revision : The IMF, Asian Development Bank and CRISIL brought down their projections for India for FY20. While both IMF and ADB have projected that India will grow at 7% or more, CRISIL has estimated that the GDP will grow by 6.9%India will now need to attract private capital amounting to 3%-4% of GDP for the ‘Great March’ that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has flagged off to $5 trillion GDPBanking: After nationalisation of banks in 1969, the share of institutional sources in the outstanding debt of rural households increased from just 16.9% (1962) to 64%(1992).The share of bank deposits to GDP rose from 13% in 1969 to 38% in 1991. The gross savings rate rose from 12.8% in 1969 to 21.7% in 1990. The share of advances to GDP rose from 10% in 1969 to 25% in 1991. The gross investment rate rose from 13.9% in 1969 to 24.1% in 1990.After economic reforms of 1991, more than 900 rural bank branches closed down across the country. The rate of growth of agricultural credit fell sharply from around 7% per annum in the 1980s to about 2% per annum in the 1990s.Between 1991 and 2002, the share of institutional sources in the total outstanding debt of rural households fell from 64% to 57.1%RBI new branch authorisation policy in 2005- the number of rural bank branches rose from 30,646 in 2005, to 33,967 in 2011 and 48,536 in 2015. The annual growth rate of real agricultural credit rose from about 2% in the 1990s to about 18% between 2001 and 2015.Between 2010 and 2016, the key responsibility of opening no-frills accounts for the unbanked poor fell upon public banks. Data show that more than 90% of the new no-frills accounts were opened in public banks·A revenue deficit of Central govt. Is relatively recent, having been virtually non existent till the 1980s. After that a rampant populism has taken over all political parties, reflected in revenue deficit accounting for over ⅔ rd of the fiscal deficit.·World Economy: IMF forecast for the world is 3.2%Disaster ManagementAccording to the World Health Organization (WHO), 30-40 per cent of the victims of catastrophic natural disasters suffer from major mental distress and require counselling.CybersecurityInternet Shut down·During 2012-017, says Icrier, 16,315 hours of Internet shutdown cost India’s economy around $3 billion, the 12,600 hours of mobile Internet shutdown about $2.37 billion, and the 3,700 hours of mobile and fixed-line Internet shutdowns nearly $678.4 million.··India is the 5th largest producer of solar energy and 6 th largest producer of renewable energy.·China ranks 1st in terms of renewable energy production according to International Renewable Energy Agency·A study by the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, shows that Indian coal-fired thermal power plants are considered the most inefficient and polluting in the world. More than 75% of these plants don’t comply with governmental regulations.IMPORTANT TOPICS FOR MAINS-2019:Employment:The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) released on Friday showed the unemployment rate in the country in FY18 was at 5.3% in rural India and 7.8% in urban India, resulting in overall unemployment rate of 6.1%.Middle income trap:The per-capita income at current prices during 2018-19 is estimated to have attained a level of ₹1,26,406 ( ₹10,533.83 monthly) as compared to the estimated for the year 2017-18 of₹1,14,958 ( ₹9,579.83 a month), showing a rise of 10%," according to the annual national income and GDP 2018-19 data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).Export policy:India’s revenue from exports of merchandise over the last four fiscal years was $310 billion, $262 billion, $275 billion and $302 billion, respectively. Thus over the four years from April 2014 till March 2018, the total growth was zero, or, rather, a tad negative. Even the ratio of exports to gross domestic product (GDP), at 11.6%, is at a 14-year low.In 2014, the trade policy announced by the Union commerce minister envisaged total exports worth $900 billion by 2020. That looks almost impossible, unless exports grow by 40% per annum from now onEmployment elasticity:The old link between growth and jobs is now much weaker than before. In the 1990s, the employment elasticity in India was nearly 0.4. This number measures how much a given rise in growth impacts jobs. At 0.4, a one per cent rise in GDP growth gives us a 0.4% rise in employment; 5% growth gives jobs a 2% boost.Now, this elasticity is down to 0.2 or lower. This means, for every percentage rise in growth, we get only a 0.2% impact on employment. Put another way, we need a minimum of 10% GDP growth to give us the kind of jobs kick we used to get in the 1990s.The gap between jobs created and jobs sought will be just over 1.5 million annually.Tax-GDP Ratio :The tax-GDP ratio is expected to cross 12% in FY19, a new high in over a decade, but lower than emerging market peers.Tax-to-GDP ratio for India has inched up slightly in recent years, but remains well below the world average. It is 10.6% , 11.6% , 12.1% in the years 2016, 2018, 2019 respectively.MSME :MSME has played a prominent role in the development of the country in terms of creating employment opportunities-MSME has employed more than 50 million people, scaling manufacturing capabilities, curtailing regional disparities, balancing the distribution of wealth, and contributing to the GDP-MSME sector forms 8% of GDP.MSME sector has cut jobs in the last seven yearsDemographic transition:India’s working-age population is now increasing because of rapidly declining birth and death ratesIndia’s age dependency ratio, the ratio of dependents (children and the elderly) to the working-age population (14- to 65-year-olds), is expected to only start rising in 2040, as per UN estimatesDemographic Dividend:For the first time since independence, India’s working age population — those aged between 15-64 years — will outnumber its dependents, that is, children aged 14 and below as well as people aged 65 and above.India’s dependency ratio has declined from 68.4 %( 1950) to 49.8 %( 2018). Total Fertility rate declined from 5.9(1950) to 2.2(2018).Black Money:Various studies and estimates have pegged black money circulation india anywhere between 7 per cent and 120 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2009-10 and 2010-11.Green GDP:Damage to the environment is put at Rs 34,0000 crores per year and it reduces the GDP by 9.5 percent annually.If water scarcity persists, it can lead to an alarming loss of six percent in the GDP by year 2050.Non Performing Asset:In recent years, the gross NPAs of banks have increased from 2.3% of total loans in 2008 to 4.3% in 2015 .Care Ratings says 17 banks have bad loan ratio above 10%. Gross NPAs of a set of 36 banks increased from ₹6.71 lakh crore in March 2017 to a peak of ₹9.66 lakh crore in March 2018 and subsequently moderated to ₹8.70 lakh crore in March 2019 before increasing to ₹8.97 lakh crore in June 2019.Agriculture export policy :India’s share in global exports of agriculture products has increased from 1% a few years ago, to 2.2 % in 2016.In 2018, India accrued a $14.6 billion trade surplus of agricultural, fishery, and forestry goods. Leadingexports consisted of Basmati rice, carabeef/meat of bovine animals, frozen shrimp and prawns, cotton, and refined sugar.Farm loan waiver:Agricultural NPAs were on a continuous decline between 2001 and 2008. Second, there is no evidence to argue that the 2008 waiver led to a rise in default rates among farmers.The rise of agricultural NPAs, from 2% to 5%, is no evidence for indiscipline in farmer repayment behaviour. One, NPAs in agriculture remained stable at around 4 to 5% between 2011 and 2015. This was despite the fact that agricultural growth averaged just 1.5% between 2011 and 2015.Agriculture census:Small and marginal farmers with less than two hectares of land account for 86.2% of all farmers in India, but own just 47.3% of the crop area, according to provisional numbers from the 10th agriculture census 2015-16.Inequality and Inclusive growth :About 50% of wealth in India in owned by just 100 people which is due to unequal distribution of wealth.Agriculture has a share of 17% in the GDP but employs about half the total labour force while the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) have a share of 32% in the gross value added (GVA) and have an important place in providing an “above the poverty line” lifestyle to the people (GoI 2018).Financial Inclusion:600 million deposit accounts were opened between fiscals 2013 and 2016, or twice the number between 2010 and 2013. Nearly a third of this was on account of Jan Dhan.for fiscal 2016 (the latest period for which data is available) show financial inclusion has improved significantly in India, with the all-India score rising to 58.0 in fiscal 2016, compared with 50.1 in fiscal 2013.Private investment:Investment in private sector projects fell similarly (83% compared to the previous quarter and 89% compared to last year).The stalling rate of private sector projects, which has hovered above 20% since the September 2017 quarter, reached an all-time high of 26.1% in the June 2019 quarter.Livestock Population:About 20.5 million people depend upon livestock for their livelihood. Livestock contributed 16% to the income of small farm households.The value of output from livestock was about 31.11% of the value of the output from total agriculture and allied sector.Food security in India :The country is home to 270 million hungry people, the highest in the world. India stands 97th in Oxfam’s Food Availability Index, and 103rd in the 2018 Global Hunger Index. In 2015-16, food grains accounted for 79 per cent of the imported agricultural produce; the figure was 76% the following year.Large-scale import of wheat in 2016 is often attributed to drought years. But there has been large-scale import of edible oil and pulses as well in the past two decades.Energy Poverty:India has just 4% of the world’s renewable energy but have 18% of the world's population.Agricultural technology:Farm Mechanization: Laser guided land leveler can flatten the land in less time than oxen powered scrapper. It increases farmers productivity by 15%.Food processing :According to the ministry of food processing industries annual report, the sector employs 12.8% of the workforce in the organised sector (factories registered under Factories Act, 1948), and 13.7% of the workforce in the unorganised sector. Despite being one of the largest producers of agricultural and food products in the world, India ranks fairly low in the global food processing value chains.Food processing is also important from the point of reducing food waste. In fact, the United Nations estimates that 40% of production is wasted. Similarly, the NITI Aayog cited a study that estimated annual post-harvest losses of close to Rs 90,000 crore.Renewable energy and energy security :Even with the growth of renewable energy, coal has been projected to be the backbone of electricity sector until 2030 and beyond.India has created 80,000 MW of renewable energy and set a target of achieving 1,75,000 MW by 2022, reduced energy intensity by 21%.India’s annual coal demand rose by 9.1% to nearly one billion tones during the year ending March 2019. Coal features among the top five imports of India, with total imports rising from 166.9 million tons in 2013-14 to 235.24 million tons in 2018-19.Best of luck to all mains candidates!God bless you all

Yes, because more trees are good for us and the environment and cutting emissions is useless and harmful to the environment when the science of human caused global warming is not settled and shoddy.Ask yourself what is the greatest environmental problem causing the most immediate harm to mankind? If you said global warming or climate change you are wrong. Think about the Medieval Warm period when civilizations prospered in every way because of the warming.How Global Warming Made Civilization PossibleNow if you said the greatest environmental disaster killing more than 4 million annually is HOUSEHOLD AIR POLLUTION. You are right.The major environmental harm from climate change theory and alarmism is the broad hindering of the use of cheap fossil fuels like coal to reduce the horrible death rate of more than 4 million annually from Home Air Pollution. The victims need to be on the electric grid and stop harmful outdoor cooking with solid fuels, but the false theory that carbon dioxide has a climate effect and the Paris Accord have demonized coal when this is the best path and essential to bring grid power to Africa, India and China etc.HOW COOKING OFF GRID KILLSCookstove Smoke is “Largest Environmental Threat,” Global Health Study FindsPosted by Marianne Lavelle of The Daily Climate on December 13, 2012 (3)http://energyblog.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/13/cookstove-smoke-is- largest-environmental-threat-global-health-study-finds/A woman bends over an improved cookstove in Cameroon. Photo courtesy of Trees for the Future/Flickr.In a finding that confirms the devastating health impact of energy poverty, the landmark Global Burden of Disease study published today tallied 3.5 million annual deaths from respiratory illness due to burning of wood, brush, dung, and other biomass for fuel.The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) is the most comprehensive worldwide observational epidemiological study to date. It describes mortality and morbidity from major diseases, injuries and risk factors to health at global, national and regional levels. Examining trends from 1990 to the present and making comparisons across populations enables understanding of the changing health challenges facing people across the world in the 21st century.]Cooking on traditional cookstoves is a far greater risk factor than poor water and sanitation, lead or radon pollution, or smog (ozone) and outdoor soot, according to the study in today’s Lancet, the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of mortality. The data indicate that respiratory illness from breathing the emissions from inefficient cookstoves causes more than double the annual deaths attributed either to malaria (1.2 million) or to HIV/AIDS (1.5 million).Seven research institutions from around the world, including Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Imperial College London, the University of Tokyo, and the World Health Organization (WHO), collaborated on the study, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Related: “How Healthy is the World?”) The research was much expanded in scope from the 1990 Global Burden of Disease study funded by the World Bank.The new study, if compared to the figures from 20 years ago, marks a decline in global deaths due to cookstove pollution (which stood at 4.6 million in the 1990 study.) But it is roughly double the 2 million annual figure that WHO has been attributing to deaths due to indoor smoke from solid fuels.“These results provide further momentum to our mission to ensure that cooking doesn’t kill,” said Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership that has been working to deploy cleaner, safer cookstoves.Added Kirk R. Smith, a professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of The Lancet article, “One of the most alarming findings is that smoke from cooking fires was found to be the largest environmental threat to health in the world today.”The most harmful environmental impact killing at least 4 million annually is often ignored and is relevant to future tragedy of advancing and following the unfounded theory of climate change. The alarmism carbon reduction targets implemented by the Paris Accord aimed at ending the use of cheap coal and other effective fossil fuels for electricity if followed will cause horrendous health harm to the underdeveloped living in the dark in Africa, India and Asia and more.COOKING OUTDOORS WITH HIGHLY POLLUTING SOLID FUELSHousehold air pollution and health8 May 2018Cookstove Smoke is “Largest Environmental Threat,” Global Health Study FindsPosted by Marianne Lavelle of The Daily Climate on December 13, 2012 (3)http://energyblog.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/13/cookstove-smoke-is- largest-environmental-threat-global-health-study-finds/A woman bends over an improved cookstove in Cameroon. Photo courtesy of Trees for the Future/Flickr.In a finding that confirms the devastating health impact of energy poverty, the landmark Global Burden of Disease study published today tallied 3.5 million annual deaths from respiratory illness due to burning of wood, brush, dung, and other biomass for fuel.The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) is the most comprehensive worldwide observational epidemiological study to date. It describes mortality and morbidity from major diseases, injuries and risk factors to health at global, national and regional levels. Examining trends from 1990 to the present and making comparisons across populations enables understanding of the changing health challenges facing people across the world in the 21st century.]Cooking on traditional cookstoves is a far greater risk factor than poor water and sanitation, lead or radon pollution, or smog (ozone) and outdoor soot, according to the study in today’s Lancet, the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of mortality. The data indicate that respiratory illness from breathing the emissions from inefficient cookstoves causes more than double the annual deaths attributed either to malaria (1.2 million) or to HIV/AIDS (1.5 million).Seven research institutions from around the world, including Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Imperial College London, the University of Tokyo, and the World Health Organization (WHO), collaborated on the study, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Related: “How Healthy is the World?”) The research was much expanded in scope from the 1990 Global Burden of Disease study funded by the World Bank.The new study, if compared to the figures from 20 years ago, marks a decline in global deaths due to cookstove pollution (which stood at 4.6 million in the 1990 study.) But it is roughly double the 2 million annual figure that WHO has been attributing to deaths due to indoor smoke from solid fuels.“These results provide further momentum to our mission to ensure that cooking doesn’t kill,” said Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership that has been working to deploy cleaner, safer cookstoves.Added Kirk R. Smith, a professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of The Lancet article, “One of the most alarming findings is that smoke from cooking fires was found to be the largest environmental threat to health in the world today.”The most harmful environmental impact killing at least 4 million annually is often ignored and is relevant to future tragedy of advancing and following the unfounded theory of climate change. The alarmism carbon reduction targets implemented by the Paris Accord aimed at ending the use of cheap coal and other effective fossil fuels for electricity if followed will cause horrendous health harm to the underdeveloped living in the dark in Africa, India and Asia and more.COOKING OUTDOORS WITH HIGHLY POLLUTING SOLID FUELSHousehold air pollution and health8 May 2018العربيةKey - Around 3 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simpl stovefuelled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal.·Each year, close to 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution from inefficient cooking practices using polluting stoves paired with solid fuels and kerosene.·Household air pollution causes noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.·Close to half of deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 years of age are caused by particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution.Indoor air pollution and household energy: the forgotten 3 billionAround 3 billion people still cook using solid fuels (such as wood, crop wastes, charcoal, coal and dung) and kerosene in open fires and inefficient stoves. Most of these people are poor, and live in low- and middle-income countries.These cooking practices are inefficient, and use fuels and technologies that produce high levels of household air pollution with a range of health-damaging pollutants, including small soot particles that penetrate deep into the lungs. In poorly ventilated dwellings, indoor smoke can be 100 times higher than acceptable levels for fine particles. Exposure is particularly high among women and young children, who spend the most time near the domestic hearth.Impacts on health3.8 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution caused by the inefficient use of solid fuels and kerosene for cooking. Among these 3.8 million deaths:·27% are due to pneumonia·18% from stroke·27% from ischaemic heart disease·20% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)·8% from lung cancer.PneumoniaExposure to household air pollution almost doubles the risk for childhood pneumonia and is responsible for 45% of all pneumonia deaths in children less than 5 years old. Household air pollution is also risk for acute lower respiratory infections (pneumonia) in adults, and contributes to 28% of all adult deaths to pneumonia.Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseaseOne in four or 25% of deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adults in low- and middle-income countries are due to exposure to household air pollution. Women exposed to high levels of indoor smoke are more than twice as likely to suffer from COPD than women who use cleaner fuels and technologies. Among men (who already have a heightened risk of COPD due to their higher rates of smoking), exposure to household air pollution nearly doubles that risk.Stroke12% of all deaths due to stroke can be attributed to the daily exposure to household air pollution arising from cooking with solid fuels and kerosene.Ischaemic heart diseaseApproximately 11% of all deaths due to ischaemic heart disease, accounting for over a million premature deaths annually, can be attributed to exposure to household air pollution.Lung cancerApproximately 17% of lung cancer deaths in adults are attributable to exposure to carcinogens from household air pollution caused by cooking with kerosene or solid fuels like wood, charcoal or coal. The risk for women is higher, due to their role in food preparation.Other health impacts and risksMore generally, small particulate matter and other pollutants in indoor smoke inflame the airways and lungs, impairing immune response and reducing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.There is also evidence of links between household air pollution and low birth weight, tuberculosis, cataract, nasopharyngeal and laryngeal cancers.Mortality from ischaemic heart disease and stroke are also affected by risk factors such as high blood pressure, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity and smoking. Some other risks for childhood pneumonia include suboptimal breastfeeding, underweight and second-hand smoke. For lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, active smoking and second-hand tobacco smoke are also main risk factors.Impacts on health equity, development and climate changeWithout a substantial policy change, the total number of people lacking access to clean fuels and technologies will remain largely unchanged by 2030 (International Energy Agency, 2017 (1)) and therefore hinder the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.·Fuel gathering increases the risk of musculoskeletal damage, consumes considerable time for women and children, limits other productive activities (such as income generation) and takes children away from school. In less secure environments, women and children are at risk of injury and violence during fuel gathering.·Black carbon (sooty particles) and methane emitted by inefficient stove combustion are powerful climate change pollutants.·Many of the fuels and technologies used by households for cooking, heating and lighting present safety risks. The ingestion of kerosene is the leading cause of childhood poisonings, and a large fraction of the severe burns and injuries occurring in low- and middle-income countries are linked to household energy use for cooking, heating and/or lighting.·The lack of access to electricity for 1 billion people (many of whom then use kerosene lamps for lighting) exposes households to very high levels of fine particulate matter. The use of polluting lighting fuels introduces other health risks, such as burns, injuries, poisonings, and constrains other opportunities for health and development, like studying or engaging in small crafts and trades, which require adequate lighting.WHO responseWHO provides technical support to countries in their own evaluations and scale-up of health-promoting household fuels and technologies. WHO is building capacity at the country and regional level to address household air pollution through direct consultations and workshops on household energy and health. This is further complemented by the ongoing development of the Clean Household Energy Solutions Toolkit (CHEST) to support the implementation of WHO Guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion. CHEST is a suite of tools and information resources that help countries identify stakeholders working on household energy and/or public health to design, implement and monitor policies addressing household energy.Guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustionTo ensure healthy air in and around the home, WHO’s Guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion provide health-based recommendations on the types of fuels and technologies to protect health as well as strategies for the effective dissemination and adoption of such home energy technologies. These build upon existing WHO outdoor air quality guidelines and WHO guidance on levels of specific indoor pollutants.Household energy databaseThe WHO Household energy database is used to monitor global progress in the transition to cleaner fuels and stove combinations in households. It also supports assessments of disease burden from the household air pollution generated from the use of polluting fuel and technologies. Currently the database includes housing data from more than 1100 surveys, representing 157 countries. It has been expanded to include information on household fuels and technologies used for heating and lighting.As the custodial agency for Sustainable Development Goal Indicator 3.9.1 (mortality rate from the joint effects of household and ambient air pollution) and 7.1.2 (population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technologies), WHO uses the Household energy database to derive estimates for tracking progress towards achieving universal clean energy access and related health impacts.Research and programme evaluationWHO is working with countries, researchers and other partners to harmonize methods of evaluation across settings so that health impacts are assessed consistently and rigorously and incorporate economic assessment of health benefits.Leadership and advocacy in the health, energy and climate communityHealth sectorIn May 2015, the World Health Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on air pollution and health, calling for the integration of health concerns into national, regional and local air pollution-related policies. The following year, the World Health Assembly adopted a “Roadmap for Enhanced Action,” calling for increased cross-sector cooperation to address the health risks of air pollution.Building on this mandate, WHO is working to integrate guidance and resources for supporting clean household energy into global health initiatives and decision-support tools, such as the Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrheal Disease (GAPPD), or Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health, as well as into other aspects of WHO's own health policy guidance. WHO emphasizes the compelling health arguments for cleaner household energy in a range of global forums addressing maternal and child health issues related to pneumonia as well as forums concerned with noncommunicable diseases. This advocacy can help increase awareness of the importance of providing and scaling up of cleaner household energy as a core preventive public health measure.WHO also supports international initiatives to improve air pollution and related health impacts such as the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and the Climate Clean Air Coalition.(1) WEO-2017 Special Report: Energy Access Outlook, International Energy Agency, 2017 (WEO-2017 Special Report: Energy Access Outlook)Household air pollution and healthIt’s Not About the ClimateThe Great Progressive Reversal: Part OneSocial justice was once synonymous with equal access to modern amenities — electric lighting so poor children could read at night, refrigerators so milk could be kept on hand, and washing machines to save the hands and backs of women. But today's leading left-wing leaders, such as 350.org: A global campaign to confront the climate crisis's Naomi Klein (above right), advocate a return to energy penury and harmonizing human civilization to Nature.April 29, 2013 | Michael Shellenberger & Ted NordhausOver the last few decades, humans achieved one of the most remarkable victories for social justice in the history of the species. The percentage of people who live in extreme poverty — under $1.25 per day — was halved between 1990 and 2010. Average life expectancy globally rose from 56 to 68 years since 1970. And hundreds of millions of desperately poor people went from burning dung and wood for fuel (whose smoke takes two million souls a year) to using electricity, allowing them to enjoy refrigerators, washing machines, and smoke-free stoves.Of course, all of this new development puts big pressures on the environment. While the transition from wood to coal is overwhelmingly positive for forests, coal-burning is now a major contributor to global warming. The challenge for the4twenty-first century is thus to triple global energy demand, so that the world's poorest can enjoy modern living standards, while reducing our carbon emissions from energy production to zero.For the last 20 years, most everyone who cared about global warming hoped for a binding international treaty abroad, and some combination of carbon pricing, pollution regulations, and renewable energy mandates at home. That approach is now in ruins. In 2010, UN negotiations failed to create a successor to the failed Kyoto treaty. A few months later cap and trade died in the Senate. And two weeks ago, the slow motion collapse of the European Emissions Trading Scheme reached its nadir, with carbon prices, already at historic lows, collapsing after EU leaders refused to tighten the cap on emissions.What rushed into the vacuum was "climate justice," a movement headed by left-leaning groups like 350.org: A global campaign to confront the climate crisis, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace. These groups invoke the vulnerability of the poor to climate change, but elide the reality that more energy makes them more resilient. "Huge swaths of the world have been developing over the last three decades at an unprecedented pace and scale," writes political scientist Christopher Foreman in "On Justice Movements," a new article for Breakthrough Journal. "Contemporary demands for climate justice have been, at best, indifferent to these rather remarkable developments and, at worst, openly hostile."For the climate justice movement, global warming is not to be dealt with by switching to cleaner forms of energy, but rather by returning to a pastoral, renewable-powered, and low-energy society. "Real climate solutions," writes Klein, "are ones that steer these interventions to systematically disperse and devolve power and control to the community level, whether through community-controlled renewable energy, local organic agriculture, or transit systems5genuinely accountable to their users..."Climate change can only be solved by "fixing everything," says McKibben, from how we eat, travel, produce, reproduce, consume, and live. “It’s not an engineering problem," McKibben argued recently in Rolling Stone. "It's a greed problem." Fixing it will require a "new civilizational paradigm," says Klein, "grounded not in dominance over nature, but in respect for natural cycles of renewal."Climate skeptics are right, Klein cheerily concludes: the Left is using climate change to advance policies they have long wanted. "In short," says Klein, "climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative."As such, global warming is our most wicked problem. The end of our world is heralded by ideologues with specific solutions already in mind: de-growth, rural living, low- energy consumption, and renewable energies that will supposedly harmonize us with Nature. The response from the Right was all-too predictable. If climate change "supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand," as conservatives decided long ago, then climate change is either not happening or is not much to worry about.Wicked problems can only be solved if the ideological discourses that give rise to them are disrupted, and that's what political scientist Foreman does brilliantly in "On Justice Movements." If climate justice activists truly cared about poverty and climate change, Foreman notes, they would advocate things like better cook stoves and helping poor nations accelerate the transition from dirtier to cleaner fuels. Instead they make demands that range from the preposterous (eg, de-growth) to the picayune (eg, organic farming).Once upon a time, social justice was synonymous with equal6access to modern amenities — electric lighting so poor children could read at night, refrigerators so milk could be kept on hand, and washing machines to save the hands and backs of women. Malthus was rightly denounced by generations of socialists as a cruel aristocrat who cloaked his elitism in pseudo-science, and claimed that Nature couldn't possibly feed any more hungry months.Now, at the very moment modern energy arrives for global poor — something a prior generation of socialists would have celebrated and, indeed, demanded — today's leading left- wing leaders advocate a return to energy penury. The loudest advocates of cheap energy for the poor are on the libertarian Right, while The Nation dresses up neo-Malthusianism as revolutionary socialism.Left-wing politics was once about destabilizing power relations between the West and the Rest. Now, under the sign of climate justice, it's about sustaining them. http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael- shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/its-not-about-the-climateCHEAP PLENTIFUL COAL FOR NEW GRID ELECTRICITY IS THE ONLY REALISTIC RESPONSE TO THIS DEADLY ENVIRONMENTAL TRAGEDY.What follows is a summary of the key WHO sponsored research into household air pollution.Millions Dead: How Do We Know and What Does It Mean? Methods Used in the Comparative Risk Assessment of Household Air PollutionWhy the world’s third-largest economy is still betting on coal?Two reasons: little concern that CO2 is a problem and evidence is renewables make electricity too expensive.Image Source: Pereira et al., 2019Over 440 Scientific Papers Published In 2019 Support A Skeptical Position On Climate AlarmJapan is pushing ahead with a fuel source that’s exacerbating climate change.By Umair Irfan Feb 18, 2020, 11:30am EST….The Japanese government is more worried about the economy than the environmentThe government publicly proclaims its concerns about the environment and its green bona fides, but Japan’s powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) is a key player in decisions about the country’s energy, and it prioritizes reliable and cheap power over low emissions. Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has also leveraged the ministry to advance his agenda to boost Japan’s economic growth, directly intervening in sectors like energy.METI has long complained that Japan pays some of the highest energy costs in the world and has been searching for a reliable and low-cost source of electricity.Japan has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. METIThat’s because Japan depends on exports and still has a lot of heavy industry that’s facing stiffer competition from competitors like China. Those high energy prices increase the prices of Japan’s exports. Add to that slowing economic growth and debt that is more than double Japan’s total economic output, and you have a government facing crushing pressure to lower costs and increase business.Right now, parts of Japan are betting heavily on renewable energy. Fukushima prefecture, where the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is located, is trying to distance itself from nuclear, aiming to be powered 100 percent by renewables by 2040. Renewables currently provide 40 percent of the prefecture’s electricity.But across Japan as a whole, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower generation provide just 17 percent of the country’s electricity. As a densely populated island country, Japan has run into land use constraints around deploying large-scale wind and solar plants. Power market rules have also kept solar and wind prices high in Japan, though METI has recently taken steps to relax these regulations to help lower clean energy costs.Over the long term, the government remains skeptical that renewables can meet Japan’s economic and climate goals at the same time.“The current situation is that for renewable energy with fluctuating output such as solar power and wind power, etc. adjustments using demand control, pumping, thermal power, etc. are necessary, and complete decarbonization is difficult using these methods alone,” according to METI’s 2018 strategic energy plan. “They become more useful when combined with electricity storage and hydrogen, but there are the issues of the increase compared to overseas of the power generation cost and the power grid constraints, etc.”That pretty much leaves nuclear as Japan’s remaining option for carbon-free electricity. But the public is resolutely against it. “Nuclear has a pretty bad reputation in Japan,” said Scott Harold, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation.With nuclear largely off the table and skepticism around renewables, Japanese officials have increasingly turned to natural gas and coal, over the objections of environmentalists and locals in many of the communities where new plants are planned.Environmental activists see this as a decision motivated more by saving money than trying to improve energy reliability. “It is true that renewable is still more expensive than coal, and coal is one of the cheapest options in Japan, but it is also true that without building new coal power, we have no problem in electricity supply in Japan regardless [of the] nuclear shutdown,” said Hirata. In fact, some coal power projects were canceled due to lack of energy demand, as well as pressure from customers to use cleaner energy and tougher environmental regulations.The rise of China threatens Japan, and so it wants to use coal to solidify and expand its influenceBehind India and China, Japan is the world’s third-largest coal importer. About two-thirds of Japan’s coal is from Australia, a country that is also facing climate-linked disasters and is struggling to curb its economic reliance on coal.But Japan is also a major exporter of coal technology, and its government has used these power plants as a means to exert soft power. Through government institutions like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the government has financed new coal power plants in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.Japan’s government has argued that these coal plants use ultra-supercritical boilers that are vastly more energy-efficient and pollute less per unit of energy. But these plants still emit greenhouse gases and are a nonstarter for activists who want the world to zero out carbon emissions.At the same time, China is financing coal plants in many of these same countries. China is using coal power financing as a key element of its Belt and Road Initiative to expand its economic and political influence throughout Asia and Africa. Both Japan and China are now racing to secure lucrative construction contracts in developing countries to expand their strategic reach.Japan is one of the largest financiers of coal power in the world, behind China. Natural Resources Defense CouncilMeanwhile, Japan has a rising rivalry with another growing regional power, South Korea. Seoul has made nuclear power a key plant of its export strategy and is also targeting many of the same markets as Japan, like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.However, Japan’s coal exports are eroding its international standing. At the December United Nations climate meeting in Madrid, Japanese Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi received a frosty reception as Japan arrived with no new commitments to curb its emissions and no indication that it would curb its financing of coal plants in other countries.Why the world’s third-largest economy is still betting on coalThe claim of global warming was based on computer models that showed dramatic increases in temperature and the end of snow. These models have been repudiated for failure to hind cast or predict the real climate. They are like fairy tales or dreams. Therefore the models “are not remotely plausible as policy tools” , in that “they …exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.”Ref. EUROPEAN CLIMATE DECLARATION[The intent of my answer is to show that the UN and alarmist computer models have failed miserably to simulate the climate and in reality global temperatures have not increased more than is expected from natural variability.]A few months ago 500 leading European scientists issued a declaration that there is no climate emergency because temperature increases are natural not unprecedented.The most glaring mistake of alarmist science is failure to take the long view essential for climate understanding. Weather changes in the short view of a few decades only will give a false signal, therefore this data is no more helpful than noise.This chart with a longer view > 300 years shows the oscillations of temperature have not changed much at all and this demolishes the fear of any anthropogenic global warming.Indeed spreading the data out more shows a clear decline in temperatures over the past 6000 years. This view makes sense as we are in the Quaternary ice age today evidenced by both poles iced over during the summers. There will be swings in temperature for decades or even centuries but with more than thousands of years of data temperature reality unfolds.Italian petition90 leading Italian Scientists have just issued a petition with details confirming no climate crisis from human industrialization and exposing the computer modeling errors of alarmists that deny the dominant role of the sun in the climate and natural variability. The petition says -Climate simulation models do not reproduce the observed natural variability of the climate and, in particular, do not reconstruct the warm periods of the last 10,000 years. These were repeated about every thousand years and include the well-known Medieval Warm Period , the Hot Roman Period, and generally warm periods during the Optimal Holocene period.These PERIODS OF THE PAST HAVE ALSO BEEN WARMER THAN THE PRESENT PERIOD, despite the CO2 concentration being lower than the current, while they are related to the millennial cycles of solar activity. These effects are not reproduced by the models.The full terms of the Italian petition follows -90 Leading Italian Scientists Sign Petition: CO2 Impact On Climate “UNJUSTIFIABLY EXAGGERATED” … Catastrophic Predictions “NOT REALISTIC”In 1517, a 33-year-old theology professor at Wittenberg University walked over to the Castle Church in Wittenberg and nailed a paper of 95 theses to the door, hoping to spark an academic discussion about their contents. Source. The same is happening today in Italy concerning climate science as dogma.90 Italian scientists sign petition addressed to Italian leadersTo the President of the RepublicTo the President of the SenateTo the President of the Chamber of DeputiesTo the President of the CouncilPETITION ON GLOBAL ANTHROPGENIC HEATING (Anthropogenic Global Warming, human-caused global warming)The undersigned, citizens and scientists, send a warm invitation to political leaders to adopt environmental protection policies consistent with scientific knowledge.In particular, it is urgent to combat pollution where it occurs, according to the indications of the best science. In this regard, the delay with which the wealth of knowledge made available by the world of research is used to reduce the anthropogenic pollutant emissions widely present in both continental and marine environmental systems is deplorable.But we must be aware that CARBON DIOXIDE IS ITSELF NOT A POLLUTANT. On the contrary, it is indispensable for life on our planet.In recent decades, a thesis has spread that the heating of the Earth’s surface of around 0.9°C observed from 1850 onwards would be anomalous and caused exclusively by human activities, in particular by the emission of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels in the atmosphere.This is the thesis of anthropogenic global warming [Anthropogenic Global Warming] promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations, whose consequences would be environmental changes so serious as to fear enormous damage in an imminent future, unless drastic and costly mitigation measures are immediately adopted.In this regard, many nations of the world have joined programs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and are pressured by a intense propaganda to adopt increasingly burdensome programs whose implementation involves heavy burdens on the economies of the individual member states and depend on climate control and, therefore, the “rescue” of the planet.However, the anthropogenic origin of global warming IS AN UNPROVEN HYPOTHESIS, deduced only from some climate models, that is complex computer programs, called General Circulation Models .On the contrary, the scientific literature has increasingly highlighted the existence of a natural climatic variability that the models are not able to reproduce.This natural variability explains a substantial part of global warming observed since 1850.The anthropogenic responsibility for climate change observed in the last century is therefore UNJUSTIFIABLY EXAGGERATED and catastrophic predictions ARE NOT REALISTIC.The climate is the most complex system on our planet, so it needs to be addressed with methods that are adequate and consistent with its level of complexity.Climate simulation models do not reproduce the observed natural variability of the climate and, in particular, do not reconstruct the warm periods of the last 10,000 years. These were repeated about every thousand years and include the well-known Medieval Warm Period , the Hot Roman Period, and generally warm periods during the Optimal Holocene period.These PERIODS OF THE PAST HAVE ALSO BEEN WARMER THAN THE PRESENT PERIOD, despite the CO2 concentration being lower than the current, while they are related to the millennial cycles of solar activity. These effects are not reproduced by the models.It should be remembered that the heating observed since 1900 has actually started in the 1700s, i.e. at the minimum of the Little Ice Age , the coldest period of the last 10,000 years (corresponding to the millennial minimum of solar activity that astrophysicists call Maunder Minimal Solar ). Since then, solar activity, following its millennial cycle, has increased by heating the earth’s surface.Furthermore, the models fail to reproduce the known climatic oscillations of about 60 years.These were responsible, for example, for a warming period (1850-1880) followed by a cooling period (1880-1910), a heating (1910-40), a cooling (1940-70) and a a new warming period (1970-2000) similar to that observed 60 years earlier.The following years (2000-2019) saw the increase not predicted by the models of about 0.2 ° C [two one-hundredths of a degree]per decade, but a substantial climatic stability that was sporadically interrupted by the rapid natural oscillations of the equatorial Pacific ocean, known as the El Nino Southern Oscillations , like the one that led to temporary warming between 2015 and 2016.The media also claim that extreme events, such as hurricanes and cyclones, have increased alarmingly. Conversely, these events, like many climate systems, have been modulated since the aforementioned 60-year cycle.For example, if we consider the official data from 1880 on tropical Atlantic cyclones that hit North America, they appear to have a strong 60-year oscillation, correlated with the Atlantic Ocean’s thermal oscillation called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation .The peaks observed per decade are compatible with each other in the years 1880-90, 1940-50 and 1995-2005. From 2005 to 2015 the number of cyclones decreased precisely following the aforementioned cycle. Thus, in the period 1880-2015, between number of cyclones (which oscillates) and CO2 (which increases monotonically) there is no correlation.The climate system is not yet sufficiently understood. Although it is true that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, according to the IPCC itself the climate sensitivity to its increase in the atmosphere is still extremely uncertain.It is estimated that a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric CO2, from around 300 ppm pre-industrial to 600 ppm, can raise the average temperature of the planet from a minimum of 1° C to a maximum of 5° C.This uncertainty is enormous.In any case, many recent studies based on experimental data estimate that the climate sensitivity to CO2 is CONSIDERABLY LOWER than that estimated by the IPCC models.Then, it is scientifically unrealistic to attribute to humans the responsibility for warming observed from the past century to today. The advanced alarmist forecasts, therefore, are not credible, since they are based on models whose results contradict the experimental data.All the evidence suggests that these MODELS OVERESTIMATE the anthropogenic contribution and underestimate the natural climatic variability, especially that induced by the sun, the moon, and ocean oscillations.Finally, the media release the message according to which, with regard to the human cause of current climate change, there would be an almost unanimous consensus among scientists that the scientific debate would be closed.However, first of all we must be aware that the scientific method dictates that the facts, and not the number of adherents, make a conjecture a consolidated scientific theory .In any case, the same alleged consensus DOES NOT EXIST. In fact, there is a remarkable variability of opinions among specialists – climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, geophysicists, astrophysicists – many of whom recognize an important natural contribution to global warming observed from the pre-industrial period and even from the post-war period to today.There have also been petitions signed by thousands of scientists who have expressed dissent with the conjecture of anthropogenic global warming.These include the one promoted in 2007 by the physicist F. Seitz, former president of the American National Academy of Sciences, and the one promoted by the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), whose 2009 report concludes that “Nature, not the activity of Man governs the climate”.In conclusion, given the CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE THAT FOSSIL FUELS have for the energy supply of humanity, we suggest that they should not adhere to policies of uncritically reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere with THE ILLUSORY PRETENSE OF CONTROLLING THE CLIMATE.http://www.opinione.it/…/redazione_riscaldamento-globale-…/…PROMOTING COMMITTEE:

I think “stress” too become a global issue in the future. Its ontinouously increases day by day. I share the references of great professor ‘s saying for future issues according mankind.Rob Reich, professor of political science at Stanford University, said, “If the baseline for making a projection about the next today is the current level of benefit/harm of digital life, then I am willing to express a confident judgment that the next decade will bring a net harm to people’s well-being. The massive and undeniable benefits of digital life – access to knowledge and culture – have been mostly realized. The harms have begun to come into view just over the past few years, and the trend line is moving consistently in a negative direction. I am mainly worried about corporate and governmental power to surveil users (attendant loss of privacy and security), about the degraded public sphere and its new corporate owners that care not much for sustaining democratic governance. And then there are the worries about AI [artificial intelligence] and the technological displacement of labor. And finally, the addictive technologies that have captured the attention and mindspace of the youngest generation. All in all, digital life is now threatening our psychological, economic and political well-being.”Rich Salz, principal engineer at Akamai Technologies, commented, “We “We have already seen some negative effects, including more isolation, less ability to focus, more ability to be deceived by bad actors (fake news) and so on. I do not see those lessening. Sadly.”Leora Lawton, lecturer in demography and sociology and executive director of the Berkeley Population Center at the University of California, Berkeley, shared these reasons digital life is likely to be mostly harmful: “The long-term effects of children growing up with screen time are not well understood but early signs are not encouraging: poor attention spans, anxiety, depression and lack of in-person social connections are some of the correlations already seen, as well as the small number of teens who become addicts and non-functioning adults.”An anonymous research scientist and professor said, “The grand internet experiment is slowly derailing. The technologies that 50 years ago we could only dream of in science fiction novels, which we then actually created with so much faith and hope in their power to unite us and make us freer, have been co-opted into tools of surveillance, behavioral manipulation, radicalization and addiction.”Digital deficits: People’s cognitive capabilities will be challenged in multiple ways, including their capacity for analytical thinking, memory, focus, creativity, reflection and mental resilienceWe currently live in a culture that fosters attention-deficit disorder because of hyperconnectivity.NIKKI GRAVESAn anonymous director of one of the world’s foremost digital rights organization said, “I’m concerned that the pace of technology creation is faster than the pace of our understanding, or our development of critical thinking. Consider, for a moment, the latest buzzword: blockchain. Yesterday, I heard about a blockchain app designed for consent in sexual interactions – designed, of course, by men in Silicon Valley. If it sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. We’ve reached a phase in which men (always men) believe that technology can solve all of our social problems. Nevermind the fact that a blockchain is a permanent ledger (and thus incontestable, even though sexual abuse can occur after consent is given) or that blockchain applications aren’t designed for privacy (imagine the outing of a sexual partner that could occur in this instance). This is merely one example, but I worry that we’re headed toward a world in which techno-solutionism reigns, ‘value’ has lost all its meaning, and we’re no longer taught critical-thinking skills.”An anonymous president of a U.S.-based nonprofit commented, “Increasingly social media is continuing to reduce people’s real communication skills and working knowledge. Major industries – energy, religion, environment, etc., are rotting from lack of new leadership. The level of those with aliteracy – people who can read but choose not to do so – is increasing in percentage. The issues we face are complex and intertwined, obfuscated further by lazy bloated media and readers and huge established industry desperate to remain in power as cheaply, easily, safely and profitably as possible – of course! Those of us who still read actual books that require thinking rather than mere entertainment, must redouble our efforts to explain the complex phenomena we are in the midst of addressing in simple terms that can encourage, stimulate, motivate.”A sampling of additional comments about “digital deficits” from anonymous respondents:“We have less focus – too much multitasking – and not enough real connection.”“The downside is too much information and the lack of ability to manage it.”“Attention spans have certainly been decreasing recently because people are inundated with information today.”“There is increasing isolation from human interaction and increased Balkanization of knowledge and understanding.”“Over 50% of childrens, adults , everyone globally mobilised with technology now have some sort of social network-based application, whether it be Instagram, Snapchat or Minecraft. These children are always looking for what they may be missing online. They are increasingly finding it hard to be present and focused.”“The writing skills of students have been in constant decline, as they opt for abbreviations and symbols rather than appropriately structured sentences.”“Digital users who have not lived without technology will not know how to cope with utilizing resources outside of solely tech. With users relying on devices for companionship, we will no longer see people’s faces, only the blue or white screens reflecting from this effervescent gaze.”Unfortunately, major social media corporations have discovered that anger and insecurity keep people glued to their screens. As long as profit is more important than people, digital life will only grow more destructive.KATE THOMASStress on the environment, society and resources?Do large populations affect and put stress on the environment, society and resources? Populations do affect and put stress on the environment. However, some claim that overpopulation is the major cause of environmental degradation. Is that so?While populations no doubt are large in many countries, and demands on resources are obviously large, it is only one of many other causes and some of those other issues such as over-consumption based, unsustainable development may have an even larger impact. Our choice of how to use those resources (i.e. our economic policies) and for what purposes (i.e. our political directions and policies) are critical issues as well on the resulting impact on the environment to meet those uses and purposes.Some suggest that the industrialized nations need to drastically change their consumption patterns that are currently seen, as this is depleting resources more than the demands from large populations as seen in many developing nations.Inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20% of the world's people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures - the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%.More specifically, the richest fifth:Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5%.Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4%.Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5%.Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1%.Own 87% of the world's vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%.Runaway growth in consumption in the past 50 years is putting strains on the environment never before seen.Human Development Report 1998 Overview, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) — Emphasis AddedMisuse of land and resourcesHow land is used to produce food etc. can have enormous impacts on the environment and its sustainability. (This can sometimes challenge assumptions on the instinct and common belief that we are overpopulated by sheer numbers and that this is the major cause of environmental degradation. While populations can burden the environment, it is the relative impact of population numbers alone versus why and how resource are used that we wish to consider here.) Take the following as an example:Junk-food chains, including KFC and Pizza Hut, are under attack from major environmental groups in the United States and other developed countries because of their environmental impact. Intensive breeding of livestock and poultry for such restaurants leads to deforestation, land degradation, and contamination of water sources and other natural resources. For every pound of red meat, poultry, eggs, and milk produced, farm fields lose about five pounds of irreplaceable top soil. The water necessary for meat breeding comes to about 190 gallons per animal per day, or ten times what a normal Indian family is supposed to use in one day, if it gets water at all.... Overall, animal farms use nearly 40 percent of the world's total grain production. In the United States, nearly 70 percent of grain production is fed to livestock.Economic policies of the wealthier nations and their consumption demands mean that more land is often used for less than ideal purposes, such asGrowing cash crops (bananas, sugar, coffee, tea etc) for export to wealthier countries (primarily);Diverting productive land for non-productive uses (tobacco, growing flowers for export markets, etc);Clearing land and used to grow things like cattle for beef exports. (Parts of the Amazon for example, are cleared for cattle ranches so the beef can be exported for use in fast food restaurants. Smaller parts are cleared by the poor who are forced onto marginal lands, or frontier areas due to poverty.These economic policies are often imposed on the poorer nations, through things like Structural Adjustment (SAPs). In the past, colonialism achieved similar things more explicitly, but today it is often wrapped up in complex trade and economic agreements. (One cannot separate geopolitics from economics and the environment.) For more about SAPs, see this web site's section on structural adjustment.Unsustainable DevelopmentAs globalization — in its current form — increases, so too does the unsustainable development approach that it seems to prescribe, as suggested by the following quote:[T]here is abundant evidence that the version of modernity demonstrated in current globalization trends neglects scientific evidence and tradition in equal measure — indeed, that traditional approaches to natural resource management in many communities demonstrate sounder science thandevelopmentdoes. One need only quote the inequitable and unsustainable share of the world's energy used, and greenhouse gases produced, by the United States to rest one's case. Tradition in local resource management elsewhere has survived over many generations precisely because of its sustainability. Global warming and other manifestations of environmental degradation — which are evidently no longer future threats but very real current crises — have resulted from approaches to modernity which, in sweeping such traditions aside, continue in denial about scientific evidence.Brendan Martin, New Leaf or Fig Leaf? The challenge of the New Washington Consensus, Bretton Woods Project, March 2000.In many regions of the world, ecosystem stress can be seen due to human-intensive activities such as unsustainable resource extraction and exploitation via large corporations and international trading agreements that open these sources up for excessive extraction and consumerism. This could lead to numerous future global security issues. At the same time, many businesses and individuals try to calm fears claiming that nothing is wrong. Major themes used for this are:To remind us of mans ingenuity to deal with any problems that may occur;That the resources are abundant enough to not cause a problem and even if they do, we will adapt;And that history shows that we have always come out for the better.Climate Change Impacts Human HealthA new UN report says that health risks related to climate change are on the rise worldwide. At the same time, coordinated international responses can help prevent some of the worst impacts of climate change on health.Youssef Nassef, Director of the Adaptation Programme of the UNFCCC secretariat, says: “the report clearly highlights the need for the UN and partners to continuously strengthen their actions to support governments to build climate resilience, including measures to protect human health.”It was prepared in collaboration with countries, the World Health Organization and other relevant expert organizations, under the Nairobi work programme − UN Knowledge-for-Action Climate Resilience Network. Below follows an overview of the report’s main findings.Climate change is expected to exacerbate health problems that already pose a major burden to vulnerable populationsThe report shares at least five major insights:1. Certain groups have higher susceptibility to climate-sensitive health impacts owing to their age (children and elderly), gender (particularly pregnant women), social marginalization (associated in some areas with indigenous populations, poverty or migration status), or other health conditions like HIV. The socioeconomic costs of health problems caused by climate change are considerable.2. Many infectious diseases, including water-borne ones, are highly sensitive to climate conditions. Figure 1 illustrates the correlation between temperature and diarrhea. A main concern in both developed and developing countries was the increase in and increased geographical spread of diarrhoeal diseases, the report found.Sensitivity of diarrhoeal disease to meteorological conditions. Source: Checkley W et al. 2000. Effects of El Niño and ambient temperature on hospital admissions for diarrhoeal diseases in Peruvian children. Lancet. 355: pp.442–450. Notes: (1) Section A of the figure shows daily admissions for severe diarrhoea at the main paediatric clinic in Lima; (2) Section B of the figure shows daily variations in temperature for Lima over the same period.3. Climate change lengthens the transmission season and expands the geographical range of many diseaseslike malaria and dengue. For example, the conditions for dengue transmission are likely to expand significantly across the globe (see figure 2 below)Changing patterns of infectious disease: dengue transmission. Source: Based on data from Hales S, de Wet N, Maindonald J and Woodward A. 2002. Potential effect of population and climate changes on global distribution of dengue fever: an empirical model. Lancet. 360: pp.830–834. Notes: (1) Section (a) shows dengue fever transmission in 1990; (2) Section (b) shows projected expanded distribution of dengue fever in the warmer, wetter and more humid conditions expected in the 2080s, assuming no change in non-climatic determinants of dengue distribution.4. Climate change will bring new and emerging health issues, including heatwaves and other extreme events. Heat stress can make working conditions unbearable and increase the risk of cardiovascular, respiratory and renal diseases. Additionally, it is estimated that 22.5 million people are displaced annually by climate or weather-related disasters, and these figures are expected to increase in the future. Climate-induced human mobility has a socioeconomic cost and can affect mental and physical health.5. Malnutrition and undernutrition were highlighted as a concern for a number of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which discussed the impacts of climate change on food security, particularly in relation to floods and drought.While these risks and challenges are big, there are also many solutionsThe report highlights inspiring examples of adaptation solutions for health worldwide:The Climate Adaptation Management and Innovation Initiative of the Word Food Programme develops climate-induced food insecurity analyses and practices to inform programming and decision-making. The initiative focuses on16 countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern, Central and Northern Africa.In France, the Tiger Mosquito Surveillance Network monitors the tiger mosquito’s movements.The Smart Health Facilities Initiative and Smart Hospitals Toolkit is being implemented through the Pan American Health Organization in the Caribbean with the aim of supporting the governments of the selected countries to assess and prioritize vulnerability reduction investments in their health facilities.Some countries integrate health into their national adaptation plans (NAPs) and programmes. For example, Macedonia and six additional countries are part of an initiative of WHO and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety that brings health into adaptation plans.There are also a number of training and awareness-raising activities, including the Self-Learning Course on Climate Change and Health, developed by Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health in line with the joint Pan American Health Organization/WHO Strategy and Plan for Action on Climate Change. The training aims at raising awareness and improving knowledge on the health effects of climate change among the general public and other sectors.To help scale up adaptation action in countries in the area of human health, various solutions have been proposed in the report that require actions by the UN and partners. As a part of the solution, the Nairobi work programme has developed the 5 step process below:Five-step process on health and adaptation under the Nairobi work programmeEffects of global warming on humansFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaClimate change has brought about possibly permanent alterations to Earth's geological, biological and ecological systems.[1]These changes have led to the emergence of a not so large-scale environmental hazards to human health, such as extreme weather,[2]ozone depletion, increased danger of wildland fires,[3]loss of biodiversity,[4]stresses to food-producing systems and the global spread of infectious diseases.[5]In addition, climatic changes are estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually.[6]To date, a neglected aspect of the climate change debate, much less research has been conducted on the impacts of climate change on health, food supply, economic growth, migration, security, societal change, and public goods, such as drinking water, than on the geophysical changes related to global warming. Human impacts can be both negative and positive. Climatic changes in Siberia, for instance, are expected to improve food production and local economic activity, at least in the short to medium term. Whereas, Bangladesh has experienced an increase in climate-sensitive diseases such as malaria, dengue, childhood diarrhoea, and pneumonia, among vulnerable communities.[7]Numerous studies suggest, however, that the current and future impacts of climate change on human society are and will continue to be overwhelmingly negative.[8][9]The majority of the adverse effects of climate change are experienced by poor and low-income communities around the world, who have much higher levels of vulnerability to environmental determinants of health, wealth and other factors, and much lower levels of capacity available for coping with environmental change. A report on the global human impact of climate change published by the Global Humanitarian Forum in 2009, estimated more than 300,000 deaths and about $125 billion in economic losses each year, and indicating that most climate change induced mortality is due to worsening floods and droughts in developing countrieslinks for reference for stress will be globally future riskhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/20-big-questions-about-the-future-of-humanity/Earth as humans’ habitat: global climate change and the health of populations