Climate change to hit the poor most in Orissa

Due to the climate change, we have witnessed advancement or post-ponement of all the seasons and the seasonal characteristic  has been intensified. The winter has become more colder and the summer has become more hotter while abnormal rains have been witnessed in the rainy season. 

The summer season in Odisha from mid-March to mid-June has become unbearable. The temperature in the state has been registered above 40 degree Celsius and crossed 45 degree Celsius  during the said period.  We need to review the impact of the Climate change on the Odisha's economy.

But, before we see the impact of the Climate change on the economy, we need to identify the main reasons for the climate change.

•   Mindless deforestation.
•   Cutting of trees.
•   Mining.
•   Rapid Industrialisation.
•   Govt agencies carelessness while providing environmental clearances to the industries.

Impact on the Human resources:

•   Due to unpredictable seasons, the labour intensive work in various sectors specially road and building construction, has been affected. It has become difficult for the labourers to work in the extreme heat. So, unlimited mandays have been lost.

•   It has affected the health of the people. People have developed skin related problems, sleeplessness and problems related to abdominal.  The heath problems effects the efficiency  of the work force.

Impact on the Agriculture sector:

•   The water level has gone down,

•    Electricity supply to the agriculture sector has been distrupted because of excessive use of AC and Fridge. The shortage of hydro-power during the season led to the power shortage resulting to the load shedding to the rural sector.

•    The unseasonal rain and lack of proper irrigation facility due to the lack of power supply to the agriculture sector has impacted the production resulting in the price rise of the food items specially the vegetables.

Impact on the economy and finance:

•    The negative impact on the human resources effects productive activity.

•    People are forced to spend their income on the antigen, medicated soaps (skin ailments) and antagen (abdominal problems).  A random survey shows that the sale of these drugs have gone up by 30 % in Odisha as against 50% in metros like Mumbai in the last three years. The unexpected rise in the essential items and the  additional expenditure cuts the savings of the people and there is a possibility of the poor getting trapped into debt. It leads to a chain reaction in the state's economy.

How to mitigate this problem:

Govt should motivate every household to plant one tree and look after it to grow.

The companies should ensure that the environmental norms are not violated and should resist from using money power to get the environmental clearances. 

The companies should follow the corporate governance norms in the letter and spirit. The board and shareholders meetings should be held democratically and in a transparent manner.

The state government should ensure that the polluting industrial units plant trees in a stipulated time frame which should be commensurate to their industrial unit polluting the environment.

Farmers Commission set up by the Odisha government should recommend the state government to make it mandatory for all the academicians of  the agricultural academic institutes like OUAT to work in tandem with the farmers of the state on a regular basis and  educate them on how to meet the challenges of the climate change, the way it has been done in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.

Government agencies like the Pollution Control Board should not come under any political pressure while issuing the environmental clearance certificates to the industrial projects.  The recent incident of Union environment ministry's decision to keep the environment clearance order given to the Vedanta project  at abeyance shows that the officials do not follow the rule of law while issuing the clearances. The PCB officials of both Union and state should follow the rule of the land in toto.

 There should be a third party scrutiny to the environmental clearance given to any project  by the PCB or any other Govt agency. The third party can consist of a panel of experts in the field of environment.

To conclude, the above steps are necessary for a healthy economic development of the state and to maintain social harmony in the society. Otherwise, there is possibility of the conflict between rich and poor getting further widened in Odisha as well as throughout the country.

Source: Orissadiary.com