Ecology & Environment Notes, March 27-April 2, 2023

The world marked the first-ever International Day of Zero Waste on March 30, 2023.
The day urged communities and governments to prevent and minimise waste and promote a societal shift towards a circular economy.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) established the day in response to the worsening impacts of waste on human health, the economy and the environment.
Waste generation — plastics, debris from mining and construction sites, electronics and food — has increased massively around the world in recent decades.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), based in Strasbourg, France, witnessed the first-ever public hearing addressing the duty of states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The UN General Assembly also adopted a resolution calling upon the the International Court of Justice to issue an opinion on state legal responsibilities to protect the climate system.

India will continue to support setting up two Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in Antarctica to protect marine life and its ecosystem services.
The Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica covers around 10 per cent of the global ocean.
Souther ocean is home to nearly 10,000 unique polar species.
The Southern Ocean has two MPAs — one in the southern shelf of the South Orkney Islands and the other in the Ross Sea.
Climate change, commercial fishery are the main threats to marine species.
Since 2012, the European Union and Australia have proposed an MPA in East Antarctica.
In 2021, India extended its support for designating East Antarctica and the Weddell Sea as MPA.
Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), an an intergovernmental body, came into existence in 1982.
CCAMLR has 27 members, and its objective is to conserve Antarctic marine life.
United Nations 30×30 Framework aims to protect 30 per cent of the world’s land and sea.

A report published by the Earth4All initiative for the Global Challenges Foundation has investigated the relationship between population growth and environmental degradation.
The report has revealed that unlike the popular belief, population growth is not the main cause of climate change and global warming.
It is the world’s most affluent 10 per cent population that is destablising the eco system by leaving exceptionally high carbon footprint levels.
Humanity’s main problem is luxury carbon and biosphere consumption, not population.
The places where population is rising fastest have extremely small environmental footprints per person compared with the places that reached peak population many decades ago.

According State of India’s Environment 2023 (SoE), released by the Centre for Environment, India has slipped nine spots — ranking 121 in 2022 in the United Nations-mandated sustainable development goals (SDG).
India is behind its neighbours Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.
The report looked at states’ performances as well. An alarmingly high number of states have slipped in their performance of SDGs 4, 8, 9, 10 and 15.
India’s ranking has been taken from the SDG Index and Dashboards Report 2022 by Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the time period 2017-2022.

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