Focus on Arts and Ecology

Purpose of the articles posted in the blog is to share knowledge and occurring events for ecology and biodiversity conservation and protection whereas biology will be human’s security. Remember, these are meant to be conversation starters, not mere broadcasts :) so I kindly request and would vastly prefer that you share your comments and thoughts on the blog-version of this Focus on Arts and Ecology (all its past + present + future).

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A 7-Step Formula to End Frustration and Ask for What You Want

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By Homaira Kabir
7 steps to end frustration
It’s easy to get frustrated by others. It’s easier still to get frustrated by people we are close to, because we believe they should know what we want. We believe they should have the same values and motivations that we do. And when things get rough, we believe they should be as eager to fix them as we may be —then we get disappointed when they aren’t.
The reality is that human relationships lie at the intersection of at least two whole beings, each with their own aspirations and motivations. There could also be a difference in temperament, where one person is mellow while the other is bubbly and excitable. Or perhaps one finds it easy to let go of faults and issues, while the other expects perfection not just in themselves, but also in those around them. No wonder our interactions can sometimes feel incredibly exasperating for some, and a walk on eggshells for others!
If a relationship has been causing you pain lately, be the one to take the first step in mending it. Here’s a 7-step formula that will help:

Identify the Frustration

What exactly is the issue? What is it about the other person’s behaviors that bothers you? Be careful to separate behavior from the person. Resist the urge to label it as "They're so selfish" or "They're so inconsiderate." This will only fuel your frustration, while "I'd like them to have dinner ready when I'm running late" is a much more actionable ask.

Reconsider Your Expectations

Is your expectation reasonable? Is it tied to your values—or perhaps to your fears? If it’s the latter, think of ways you can let go of it. Often empathy and perspective-taking can help; so can finding work-arounds to having your need met. However, if your expectation is indeed reasonable and beneficial for all parties involved, then by all means, feel confident in asking.

Ask!

Yes, really! You'll be surprised at how often we don’t do it, especially with people we’re close to. The reality is that no one, however close, can read our minds, even if they had the time and inclination to do so. But be careful about how you ask. Blurting out "How many times have I told you to..." does little to engage the other person. Begging and pleading doesn’t get results either, and initiates a power game. Choose the right time, and create a space where the other person is willing to listen.

Listen

It’s highly unlikely that your ask will be met by gratitude and instant change. More likely than not, the other person will try to bring up a grievance that may or may not even be related to what you want. Nip “Well you also...”-type blame games in the bud, and stay focused on your ask while staying open to their needs. Remember that communication is successful in the long run only if it’s win-win.

Take Responsibility

End the conversation by taking responsibility for what you will do to meet their needs and what they will do to meet yours. It’s one of the best ways of ensuring that the other person stays motivated to act on their promise. This not only provides clarity and actionable steps, but it also activates the natural human desire to want to reciprocate the kindness and consideration of others. If the other person is one to take advantage of your kindness, you may want to limit it to the extent that it is reciprocated.

Show Your Appreciation

Make it easy for the other person to stick to their promise. Show appreciation, thank them for their efforts, talk about how it’s helping you and the relationship. Ask them how it’s going for them, and whether you can do anything to make it easier. We all want to feel seen and appreciated, and you’ll be surprised at how willing people are to go out of their way to help when this basic need is met.

Hold Them Accountable

Despite their best intentions, there will times when the other person may forget what they promised to do, or revert to old habits when they're pressed for time or under stress. Don't read too much into it or consider it a sign of dismissal or disregard for your concerns. Flag it gently when it happens, then forgive and move on. Believing that others are capable of goodness brings out the best in them.
Author and speaker Margie Warrell has said, "The quality of your relationships is determined by the quality of the conversations you have in them." Ground yourself in your values, gather up your courage, stay guided by hope and patience, and you'll begin to find far greater joy in the relationships that may currently be frustrating you.
Homaira Kabir is a recognized positive psychology coach and a researcher on women’s self-esteem. Check out your authentic self-worth on her website with her short and evidence-based quiz.
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Killing Plants Is the Fastest Way to End the World

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A recent study underscores how human-caused global warming could annihilate life through co-extinction of species.
A recent study underscores how human-caused global warming could annihilate life through co-extinction of species. PIYASET / SHUTTERSTOCK
BY 
, 
PUBLISHED November 20, 2018

A recently published study has found that “[c]limate change and human activity are dooming species at an unprecedented rate.”
The study, “Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change,” published in the journal Scientific Reports, was a joint effort by Australian and Italian researchers from Flinders University in Adelaide and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, respectively.
To conduct the study, the researchers created 2,000 “virtual Earths.” They then added in different stressors such as abrupt climate change replicating that which we are now experiencing, a nuclear winter following the detonation of multiple nuclear weapons, and a massive impact from an asteroid.
Each scenario resulted in showing that plant and animal species that are wiped out by any of these extreme environmental changes dramatically increases the risk of a domino effect that could annihilate all life on Earth.

Co-Extinction

The researchers found that these worst-case scenarios led to what they called “co-extinctions,” wherein an organism dies out because it is dependent upon another doomed species.
The team developed models to predict ecosystem function and resilience, including past, present and predicted future ability to change and adapt.
The study found that the fastest way to doom all life on Earth was to remove the most ecologically important species — the species with the most connections in their ecological network — first. And those species are, in general, the ones most likely to go first when it comes to warming.
“At least in our simulations, heating tends to remove the ecologically most important species first,” reads the results of the study.
When the researchers modeled a warming planet, they found that it had an effect that was similar to the experiment they ran in which they removed the most ecologically important species.
In the introduction of their study, the researchers stated that their findings make it “difficult to be optimistic about the future of species diversity in the ongoing trajectory of global change, let alone in the case of additional external, planetary-scale catastrophes.”
They found that the loss of plant life set in motion the annihilation of life on Earth. This is because plants have a relatively low tolerance to rapidly changing temperatures, and when the plants die, so do the herbivores that eat them. Then, obviously, the predators that eat the herbivores are left foodless, including humans.
They found warming the planet to also be the worst-case cataclysmic scenario because it affected plants the most (on a global scale and all at once), more than all the other scenarios.
Studies that fail to take into account co-extinctions underestimate the rate and magnitude of the loss of species from an event like climate change by “up to 10 times,” one of the researchers told The New Daily in Australia.
Giovanni Strona of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre based in Ispra, northern Italy, one of the co-authors of the study, released a statement saying, “In the case of global warming in particular, the combination of intolerance to heat combined with co-extinctions mean that five to six degrees of average warming globally is enough to wipe out most life on the planet.”

Planetary Warming Will Speed Up

Truthout recently reported how feedback loops, particularly those in the Arctic, are already dramatically speeding up climate change.
For example, when sea ice in the Arctic melts away (thanks to warming), positive feedbacks kick in: The darker water is able to absorb far more heat, subsea permafrost in the shallow Arctic seas melts and releases methane, and dramatic shifts in the polar vortex could likely cause (if they haven’t already done so) runaway climate change and ensuing collapse of the biosphere.
Humans have already added CO2 to the atmosphere comparable to that which occurred during the “Great Dying,” the end-Permian extinction event that occurred 252 million years ago, annihilating a majority of life on Earth. That event took 20,000 years, whereas humans have taken barely 250 years since the broad use of the combustion engine to dramatically increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Studies have shown that the current rate of CO2 injection into the atmosphere by humans is now mirroring the rate that this took place during the Great Dying.
Species are already disappearing as fast as they did during Earth’s previous mass extinction events.
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How to Feel Happy Even on Your Lowest Days

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Sam Cawthorn fell asleep at the wheel, crashed into a semi-truck and was pronounced dead. He was resuscitated, but lost his arm and had debilitating injuries—in fact, doctors told him he would never walk again. Not only did Sam walk again, but he can even play guitar. In this motivating video, he discusses three ways that he finds happiness every day and how you can, too.


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Study shows China’s glaciers in rapid retreat

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A new study produced by Greenpeace and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, shows that climate change is catalysing glacial disasters in some of the headwaters of Asia’s largest rivers, reports Caixin. In October, glacial melt spurred ice avalanches that blocked the Yarlung Zangbo River, forcing 20,000 people to evacuate. This is just one of many recent events. With increasing frequency, glacial melt has caused lakes to form, which then burst, resulting in major downstream flooding. China’s second glacial survey showed that 82% of China’s glaciers have retreated since the 1950s and their area has been reduced by 18%. The trend has accelerated since the 1990s. The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau where many of the glaciers are located is warming at twice the the global average rate. Glacial melt has already affected water availability in downstream areas. The report says that by 2040, glaciers could reach peak water volume after melting, with severe water scarcity expected to follow.
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Construction stopped after endangered Chinese sturgeons killed

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Construction projects in Jingzhou, a Yangtze River town in Hubei province, have been stopped following the death of 36 Chinese sturgeons. A joint investigation team drawn from multiple provincial government departments has been stationed in Jingzhou, reports thepaper.cn. Since September 2017 the construction of Jingzhou Eco-cultural Tourist Area, which borders a national aquatic resources protection area, has wreaked havoc on a sturgeon breeding base. A series of die-offs caused the owner of the breeding base, Hengsheng Corporation, to complain vehemently and plea for government intervention. China banned fishing of wild Chinese sturgeon in 2009 and has tried to restore the stock through breeding. It takes 12-20 years and intensive care to raise a Chinese sturgeon to maturity.
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Behind China’s vote against Antarctic marine reserves

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Earlier this month China, Russia and Norway blocked the establishment of a 3.2 million square kilometre marine reserve in the Antarctic Ocean. In an analysis piece for the Paper, senior lecturer in law at Adelaide University, Dr Liu Nengye, offers three reasons why China blocked the reserve. Firstly, he notes, China holds misgivings about the current sovereignty claims over Antarctica, which were frozen in the 1961 Antarctic Treaty, to which China was not party. Secondly, as a latecomer to Antarctica, China’s understanding of and policy on Antarctic issues is still developing. But most importantly, China is the world’s largest distant water fishing nation and the government has explicitly said it aims to “safely open up the Antarctic Ocean’s bio-resources”.
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Crew member reveals true story behind Galapagos shark haul

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The fishing company responsible for an illegal haul of thousands of shark carcasses in the Galapagos Islands Marine Reserve has been identified, a year after 20 Chinese fishing crew were arrested there. In an interview with Caixin, one of the imprisoned crew from the refrigerated storage vessel Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 claimed that the carcasses on board were caught by Fuzhou Honglong Ocean Fishery Company and exposed the company’s cover story, which blamed Taiwanese vessels. Of the five boats involved, he said three belonged to Honglong and two to the NASDAQ-listed Pingtan Marine Enterprise. The two companies are owned by brothers and headquartered in the same office in the provincial capital of Fujian, Fuzhou. The Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 was detained on 13 August last year with 6,223 shark carcasses, including 600 endangered hammerhead sharks. The crew’s prison sentences in Ecuador ranged from one to four years. Caixin’s source served one year and returned to China on 16 August this year. (A shorter version of the article is available in English on Caixin Global).
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The world needs a Paris-style accord for biodiversity

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image: Fernando Flores

16 Nov  by Fermín Koop 
For 12 days from today, representatives from more than 190 countries will gather in Egypt to explore how to better protect biodiversity, currently facing grave threats from human activity.
The UN Biodiversity Conference, also known as the Conference of the Parties (COP14), is held every two years. It oversees the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an international treaty to achieve a sustainable future.
“There is much less progress than expected,” said Obdulio Menghi, a biologist and president of the Biodiversity Foundation in Argentina. “The CBD is an empty shell and I do not have much hope for this new summit. The solution lies in the world of economics and with the politicians of every government.”
Worldwide, populations of vertebrate animals such as mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have diminshed by 60% between 1970 and 2014, according to the recently published Living Planet report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Experts believe that the rate of species extinction is currently 1,000 times higher than before humans dominated the planet. They argue that we are going through the sixth mass extinction in geological history. Many species will disappear even before being discovered.
“Biodiversity is sometimes subjugated below climate change. But losing biodiversity is as, or more dangerous than the the planet’s rising temperature,” said Manuel Jaramillo, director of the Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina, associated with WWF.
UNMET GOALS
Deemed equally as important as the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the Aichi biodiversity targetswere created in 2010. There are 20 ambitious objectives to conserve biodiversity that range from preventing the extinction of species to reducing the rate of deforestation.
Each of the 194 countries that adhered to the goals must comply with them before 2020, when a new agreement must be adopted. With less than two years to go, only 5% of countries are on track to meet the targets, according to a 2016 report by a group of international environmental organisations.
Despite the fact that three-quarters of signatories are making progress, none is moving fast enough to meet the 2020 target. Worse, 20% of the countries have not made any progress or have actually weakened protections for biodiversity
“All the indicators show that not enough effort is being made. It is already openly acknowledged that the goals will not be achieved and that the money from the developed countries for developing countries is not enough,” said Ana Di Pangracio, president of the South American Committee of the Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Countries have advanced mainly in two areas of the Aichi targets. The Nagoya Protocol, an international agreement on access to genetic resoriurces, entered into force in October 2014, prior to the slated 2015 deadline.
At the same time, only goal 11 – to conserve at least 10% of marine and coastal areas and 17% of terrestrial and inland waters – has made significant progress in the protection of aquatic biodiversity. More than 80% of countries have achieved objectives to protect life on earth, as outlined in the goal.
However, goal 20, which calls for a substantial increase in financial resources for the care of biodiversity, has been one of the least successful. Less than 15% of countries have managed to fulfill the agreed commitment for 2020.
“It is another example of the ineffectiveness of international agreements,” said Jaramillo. “They are non-binding commitments that countries don’t take seriously. We must rethink the binding nature and set up of agreements, using the Paris Agreement as an example.”
NEXT STEPS
After the expiration of the Aichi targets, signatories to the CBD must now develop a new international agreement for biodiversity. They will begin to lay the foundations at COP14 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
For Cristiana Paşca Palmer, executive secretary of the CBD, countries must halve the loss of natural habitats and grow protected areas and restoration projects by 10% every 10 years.
In anticipation of a new agreement, Paşca Palmer left the door open to accepting commitments and voluntary contributions similar to those presented in the Paris Agreement. She highlighted the desire to create a “nature fund” for money from governments and companies for developing countries.
“The discussion is whether to take the Aichi targets as a minimum standard or if they must improved and are open to discussion, which can lead to setbacks. They should be a base and aim for more,” said Di Pangracio.
One of the objectives will also be to match the biodiversity goals with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), established by the United Nations in 2015. The SDGs foresee even more demanding biodiversity goals, with nature conservation being a central element.
“The agreement must include the voices of those who have no voice, the rest of the 10 million estimated species on the planet, which inhabit the soil, water, air and provide food, shelter, medicine and welfare,” said Maria Eugenia Di Paola, Coordinator of Environment and Sustainable Development of the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP).
For WWF, a new framework agreement for nature and people should be implemented in 2020, with the objective of reversing the decline in biodiversity by 2030. It should include ambitious commitments and implementation mechanisms and should monitor countries’ actions.

“The global agreement will become important when public and private decision-makers understand that continuing in the same way is not an option for nature. If we can not save biodiversity there will be no way to recover it,” said Jaramillo.
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Air pollution affects unborn girls more than boys

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by  | Nov 16, 2018

As India grapples with high levels of air pollution, especially of particulate matter and noxious gases, latest research indicates that even unborn babies are not spared its ill effects
Women in Mangaljodi village in eastern India return with headloads of dry eucalyptus leaves for cooking from Forest Department plantations (Photo by Manipadma Jena)
Air pollution seems to affect unborn girls more than boys, resulting in more pre-term girls than boys being born when pregnant woman are exposed to extreme air particulate pollution, researchers have found.
In addition to the infant mortality effect, air pollution results in earlier births, more of which are girls, Amir Jina, an environmental economist and Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, said from his yet-to-be-published study on the impact of particulate matter on infant mortality and fertility in developing countries.
“We however need to find out whether this is happening through pollution effects on the foetus itself by air pollution passing through the mother’s blood stream through the placenta to the baby, or if it is something happening to the mother,” he told indiaclimatedialogue.net.
In pregnant women, exposure to carbon monoxide, the major pollutant from vehicles and from wood and kerosene stoves, reduces the availability of oxygen to be transported to the foetus. Carbon monoxide also readily crosses the placenta and binds to foetal haemoglobin more readily than to maternal haemoglobin and is cleared from foetal blood more slowly than from maternal blood, leading to concentrations that may be 10% to 15% higher in the foetus’s blood than in the mother’s, according to several earlier studies.
However, particulate matter — from construction dust, motor vehicle exhaust and biomass fuel burning — cannot cross the placenta.
“Air pollution related infant death, on the other hand, claims more boys,” Jina, a founder of the Climate Impact Lab, said.
“When pregnant women are exposed to highly polluted air, it produces clots in the arteries and in some of the critical blood vessels including the placenta. As the placenta provides oxygen and nutrients to the growing baby during pregnancy, clots can deprive the baby of the flow of nutrients and oxygen and depending on the extent of the clot, they can either abort or have a premature birth,” said Sola Olopade, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. “When pollution-driven clots are not severe enough but still compromised, babies are born full term but weighed 148 grams less than babies born to mothers who breathed cleaner air.”
More at risk
“Unborn babies exposed to air pollution can have learning and memory development issues,” Olopade said. “They are also at greater risk for chronic diseases such as asthma and cardiovascular disease later in life.”
In his study, Jina has measured the economic burden to individual lives and society in developing countries like India and others when an unborn baby, particularly a girl, survives pollution but is born with health complications that plague them throughout life owing to the pre-birth exposure.
Researching household air pollution impact on unborn babies, Olopade found that 70% exposure to pollutants was from indoor cooking smoke and 30% from outside pollutants, mainly vehicular exhaust.
The impact was very different when mothers cooked with dirty firewood or kerosene and when they cooked using ethanol, a clean biofuel.
Women who cooked with ethanol were more likely to be able to take their pregnancy to full term, significantly more than women who continued cooking with firewood or kerosene. They also had fewer miscarriages, according to Olopade. “We also observed women in the ethanol group had much lower blood pressure closer to delivery, relative to those using polluting cooking fuel. Both groups had normal blood pressure throughout early pregnancy,” he said.
A low-weight baby girl struggles to overcome challenges and survives in a specialized cell in Bhubaneswar city’s government facility, not accessible to rural millions (Photo by Manipadma Jena)
Hypertensive or high blood pressure changes and a co-condition to pregnancies contribuAte to pre-eclampsia, a major cause of death of the mother and the child.
“Pre-eclampsia might be the mechanism affecting the babies’ neurological system and could be the medical reason for more girls being born prematurely to mothers living in polluting environments,” Jina said. “Medical research corroborating these findings have not been robust as yet.”
Pre-eclampsia affects the blood flow to the placenta, often leading to smaller or prematurely born babies. If the pre-eclampsia remains untreated as is likely among India’s rural and poor, it can develop to eclampsia, in which the mother can experience convulsions, coma, and can even die.
Adverse impacts of air pollution on pregnancies was a major topic for interdisciplinary environmental health discussions at a workshop in Delhi held earlier this month by the University of Chicago.
Household toxic air pollution from solid fuel smoke has been associated with a wide variety of adverse health consequences, resulting in an estimated 3.5 million premature deaths and 110 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) annually.
More than 40% of the world’s population, which includes 1 billion under-15 children, are exposed to high levels of household air pollution, mainly from cooking with polluting technologies and fuels, WHO said in a recent study.
“Moving away from traditional cooking fuels will lead to improvement in indoor air quality but if the outside air quality remains poor, it may not drive any health benefit,” Olopade said.
In low- and middle-income countries, 98% of all under 5 children are exposed to PM 2.5 levels above WHO air quality guidelines. About 600’000 deaths in of children under 15 years of age were attributed to the joint effects of outdoor and household air pollution in 2016, according to WHO.
But fairly little is even now known about the impact on the lives of a generation of those unborn.
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Interview: How Arctic ice melt affects the monsoon

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The director of India’s National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, M Ravichandran, speaks to thethirdpole.net on India’s experiences and hopes from research in the polar regions

Iceberg off the Antarctica coast [Image by: National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, India]

 Omair Ahmad, November 19, 2018
At the sidelines of a conference jointly organised by the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Norwegian Embassy, and the European Union on 19-20 November, the Director of India’s National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), explained the importance of the research for India, its history, and its ambitions.
Omair Ahmad (OA): India has a long standing research programme in the polar regions; how did it come about?
M Ravichandran (MR): We began work in 1981, with our first station, Dakshin Gangotri, established in 1983 in Antarctica. Unfortunately we had done limited surveying before making that choice, and did not realise it was in an accumulation zone, and so it has been submerged, buried in ice, over the years. We then established the Maitri, with the help of the Indian military in 1989, which became fully operational in 1993. Our third, most modern base, the Bharati, was established in 2012. We did an international tendering process for this and it is a state-of-the-art research facility.
We acted early, and became members of the Atlantic Treaty System [in which only 29 countries – including India – have Consultative status] in 1983. Since then many new members have wanted to join and receive Consultative status, often due to geo-strategic reasons, but have not had it so easy.
India’s most modern base in Antarctica, the Bharati [Image by: National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, India]
OA: Why did we embark on these difficult, and expensive, research projects?
MR: Our fundamental question had to do with the monsoons. Could we predict its variability, help in predicting how it would play out? This is a critical question for India. Unfortunately the Antarctic could not give us as much information as we wanted – although with deep drilling and the examination of ice, we can determine what the weather patterns were like for decades, even a century, earlier. The variation in Antarctica is limited, it is in the Arctic that the retreat of ice has been more significant. This is why we expanded our research to the Arctic region in 2008.
The Himadri station in Svalbard, Norway, was inaugurated in 2008, and we started serious work there in the years thereafter, looking at four key questions: the mass balance of glaciers, the effect of the warming on the marine system, the formation of clouds and precipitation, and the effect on biodiversity.
OA: What connections have you found between the monsoons and the Arctic?
MR: You have to understand what is happening. It is not as if average rainfall during the monsoons has changed, it is that there is increased variability in when the rainfall happens and where. This is directly related to heating in the atmosphere. Since a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, it takes more water to make rainfall happen, and when it falls, it is more water in a more concentrated area. When the rainfall happens, heat dissipates. That heat is transported to the Arctic. So after a massive downpour in Uttarakhand, or in Kashmir, within 15 days you will see greater melting in the Arctic.
The connection in the other direction – from the Arctic to the Himalayan region – is more complicated, and takes longer, but the study of precipitation and temperatures in the Arctic from June to October tells us how the monsoon will be in the coming year. For example, you may have read about the western disturbance in the newspapers when they talk about the monsoon. This is created by the oscillation in the air as it moves over ice and snow in the Arctic. If there is less oscillation, the air will have less moisture, leading to less rainfall in the monsoons.
Feiringbreen glacier in the Arctic, being studied by Indian scientists for clues to the South Asian monsoon [Image by: National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, India]
OA: Is there a link to sea level rise as well?
MR: Yes. This happens for two reasons. One, because of polar regions melting, and two, because warmer water expands. The Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. One reason proposed is because the heat has no ventilation to the north. In the Pacific, the warm water travels to the north and the south, and cools at the poles. In the Indian Ocean, the Asian landmass prevents the hot water circulating to the north, so it has only the South Pole to cool it.
Himansh, a research station for Indian scientists in the Himalayas, after fresh snowfall [Image by: National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, India]
OA: You had sent some PhD students to Norway to study the Arctic and Antarctic, why is that?
MR: We have too few glaciologists, and we need to find out more about how glaciers work, especially in the Himalayan region. Learning from the Arctic and the Antarctic helps us in that. For example, one of the two was looking at ice rises in the Antarctic. These rises stop the collapse of glaciers, interrupting an even melt, so it happens unevenly. We would look to model from such research how glacier collapse might happen in the Himalayan region.
As I mentioned, we are drilling out ice cores to see what the weather was like over the years. We are working with Norway, which has great ice and sea radar, and we are good at ice drilling. The areas we look at have relatively stable ice accumulation, and a core of 100 metre depth lets us see what the temperatures were like for about 100 years (in other areas the same depth of ice, depending on accumulation, may reveal only 20 years of data, or with low accumulation, even 500 years.)
M Ravichandran, Director of National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research [Image by: National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, India]
OA: Are we still leading when it comes to such research?
MR: Not as much as I would like. For example, I would suggest our investment in this research is about one order of magnitude less than China’s. Where we send ten people, they send 100. Where we invest INR 100 million (USD 1.4 million), they invest INR 1 billion (USD 14 million). Ministers are regularly a part of the initiatives, giving it political heft.
For example, there is a Mosaic Expedition in the Arctic in 2019. This has been driven by Germany, and is going to be the biggest Arctic scientific expedition ever, with hundreds of scientists from many countries, on a ship that they will sail up and let freeze in the Arctic. We did not join, I do not know why. The Chinese and Russians will sail their icebreakers to the ship to supply it with oil and food, but we will not even be part of it.
We have been trying to commission a Polar Research Vessel since as far back as 2004, but the bureaucratic process is very slow. Right now we hire ships, and do not have one for ourselves. This type of research is long-term and it requires long-term planning. It is critical to understanding how our monsoons, the Indian Ocean, and the Himalayan glaciers will change, all of which are very important for India, but there does not seem to be that focus.
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