All that was discussed in the House through the day
Deforestation cannot be attributed as a factor causing adverse impacts on India’s environment, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Union minister of state for environment, forest and climate change told the Lok Sabha August 7, 2023.
The total forest cover in the country, according to the India State of Forest Report (ISFR), 2021 assessment, is 713,789 square kilometres, which is 21.71 per cent of the geographical area of the country, he added.
Further, the total forest and tree cover of the country, according to ISFR 2021 is 809,537 sq km, which is 24.62 per cent of the geographical area of the country, Choubey noted.
The total forest cover has increased by 1,540 sq km compared to the ISFR 2019, he said.
As reported by the States, in 937 ULBs, 35.4 million households (36.56 per cent) are connected with piped sewer network, Hardeep Singh Puri, Union minister for housing and urban affairs told the Rajya Sabha.
Total sewerage generation is around 45,000 million litres per day (MLD) against which sewerage treatment capacity is around 22,491 MLD, catering to 50 per cent of sewage generated, he added citing information by the cities.
More than half the ST population of India live in multidimensional poverty, Saruta said citing the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2021, jointly published by the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.
“In India the Scheduled Tribe group accounts for 9.4 percent of the population and is the poorest: More than half — 65 million of 129 million people — live in multidimensional poverty,” the report stated.
However, the latest Global MPI 2023, which has not given caste-wise poverty data, concluded that 415 million poor people moved out of poverty from 2005-2006 to 2019-2021 and poorest groups, including children and people in disadvantaged caste groups, had the fastest absolute progress, the minister noted.
India has halved its MPI from 2005-2006 to 2019-2021, she told the Lok Sabha.
India has not signed the Global Methane Pledge of reducing global methane emissions from 2020 levels by 2030, Choubey said.
As per the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the predominant gas responsible for climate change is CO2 which has a lifetime of 100-1,000 years, he added.
This pledge shifts the CO2 reduction burden to methane reduction, which has a lifetime of just 12 years, the minister noted.
Government of India is a party to the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and is implementing various demand and supply reduction measures for tobacco control.
Article 6 of WHO-Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) relates to the price and tax measures to reduce the demand for tobacco. The WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2023, 41 countries were protected by tax rates at 75 per cent or more of the price of the most popular brand of cigarettes. However, Sri Lanka (66.9 per cent) is not one of them, Pankaj Chaudhary, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance told the Lok Sabha.
The Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs is implementing the scheme ‘Pradhan Mantri Adi Adarsh Gram Yojana’ (PMAAGY), under which 36,428 villages having at least 50 per cent tribal population and 500 Scheduled Tribes across states / UTs with notified STs will be covered by March 2026, Renuka Singh Saruta, Union minister of state for Tribal Affairs told the Lok Sabha.
This includes 3,764 villages of Gujarat, including 502 villages in Dahod district to be taken up during 2021-22 to 2025-26, she added.
The scheme aims to provide basic amenities in selected villages by bridging gaps in various sectors of development through appropriate convergence of government schemes like availability of road, water, health and education facilities, Anganwadi, among others, the minister added.
India’s historical cumulative emissions from 1850 to 2019 amount to less than 4 per cent of the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions of the world from the pre-industrial era, despite being home to 17 per cent of the world’s population, said Choubey to the Lok Sabha.
Hence, India’s responsibility for global warming thus far has been minimal and even today, its annual per capita emissions are only about a third of the global average, he added.
India, at the 26th session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in November, 2021, announced its target to achieve Net Zero by 2070, the minister said.
As many as 76,030 cows were reported during 2022 (June-December) due to lumpy skin disease in Rajasthan, said Parshottam Rupala, Union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying told the Rajya Sabha.
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