A million species risk extinction, are we one of them?
Paris: Humanity is rapidly destroying the natural world upon which our prosperity -- and ultimately our survival -- depends, according to a landmark UN assessment of the state of Nature released Monday.
Changes wrought by decades of pillaging and poisoning forests, oceans, soil and air threaten society "at least as much as climate change," said Robert Watson, who chaired the 132-nation meeting that validated a Summary for Policymakers forged by 450 experts.
One million animal and plant species face extinction, many within decades, they reported. Alarmingly, the accelerating pace at which unique life-forms are disappearing -- already tens to hundreds of times faster than during the last ten million years -- could tip Earth into the first mass extinction since non-avian dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago.
In the short term, humans are not at risk, said Josef Settele, a professor at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany and co-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
"In the longer term, it is hard to say," he told AFP. "If humans do go extinct, Nature will find its way, it always does." Halting and reversing these dire trends will require "transformative change" -- a sweeping overhaul of the way we produce and consume almost everything, especially food, the report concluded. "We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality-of-life worldwide," said Watson.
"By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganisation." The pushback from "vested interests," he added, is likely to be fierce.
Drawing from 15,000 sources and an underlying 1,800-page report, the executive summary details how our species' growing footprint and appetites have compromised the natural renewal of resources that sustain civilisation, starting with fresh water, breathable air, and productive soil.
An October report from the UN's climate science panel painted a similarly dire picture for global warming, and likewise highlighted the need for social transformation "on an unprecedented scale" to cap the rise in temperature at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
The global thermometer has already gone up by 1C, and on current trends will rise another 3C by century's end. Climate change and biodiversity loss, it turns out, feed off each other in a vicious cycle.
Deforestation and industrial agriculture are major drivers of species and ecosystem decline, but also account for at least a quarter of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Trees release planet-warming carbon dioxide when cut down, and the destruction each year of tropical forests covering an area the size of England shrinks the vegetal sponge that helps to absorb it.
Global warming, in turn, is pushing thousands of animals and plants out of their comfort zones, and intensifies the kind of heatwaves and droughts that recently fuelled unprecedented fires in Australia, Indonesia, Russia, Portugal, California and Greece.
The overlapping drivers of global warming and biodiversity loss point to shared solutions, but there is potential for policy conflict too, the new report cautioned.
Plans to green the global economy reserve a crucial role for burning biofuels and locking away the CO2 released, a technology known as BECCS.
But the huge tracts of land needed to grow energy crops on this scale -- roughly twice the size of India -- would clash with the expansion of protected areas and reforestation efforts, not to mention food production.
For the first time, the UN body has ranked the top five causes of species lost and the degradation of Nature. By a long shot, the first two are diminished or degraded habitat, and hunting for food or trade -- often illicit -- in body parts.
All but seven percent of major marine fish stocks, for example, are in decline or exploited to the limit of sustainability despite efforts by regional management organisations to fish sustainably.
Global warming is third on the list, but is likely to move up.
"We can see the climate change signal getting stronger really, really quickly," IPBES co-chair Sandra Diaz, a professor at the National University of Cordoba in Argentina, told AFP.
Numbers four and five are pollution -- 400 million tonnes of heavy metals, toxic sludge and other waste are dumped into oceans and rivers each year -- and alien species, such as rats, mosquitoes, snakes and plants that hitch rides on ships or planes.
"There are also two big indirect drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change -- the number of people in the world and their growing ability to consume," said Watson.
The heavily negotiated text does not set benchmarks for progress or "last chance" deadlines for action, as does the 2018 climate report. Nor is the panel mandated to make explicit policy recommendations.
But it does point unmistakably to actions needed: reduce meat consumption, halt deforestation in tropical countries, discourage luxury consumption, slash perverse subsidies, embrace the concept of a low-growth economy.
The report will "serve as a basis for redefining our objectives" ahead of a key meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in China in October 2020, said co-author Yunne Jai Shin, a scientist at the Research Institute for Development in Marseilles.
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Rajiv Gandhi scrapped inheritance tax to save Indira's wealth from going to government: Modi
Morena(MP)/New Delhi, Apr 25: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday alleged that former PM Rajiv Gandhi had abolished inheritance tax in 1985 after his mother Indira Gandhi's death to save her wealth from going to the government, as he continued his relentless attack on the Congress over wealth redistribution and inheritance tax.
Modi also claimed at a poll rally in Morena in Madhya Pradesh that after benefitting from the abolition of estate duty--a levy imposed on inherited movable and immovable assets, the Congress now wants to bring back the levy.
As the political slugfest over the issue of inheritance tax escalated on the eve of the second phase of the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress hit back at Modi, calling his remarks on Rajiv Gandhi "lies". The opposition party also cited the then finance minister V P Singh's budget speech in 1985 on scrapping of inheritance tax.
If the Congress comes to power, it will snatch more than half of the earnings of the people through inheritance tax, Modi claimed.
A day after Rahul Gandhi's remark that those who call themselves "deshbhakt" are scared of the 'X-ray' of caste census, Modi also said the Congress wants to confiscate people's jewellery and small savings by conducting an X-ray of their properties and valuables.
"Listen with your ears wide open about the sins that the Congress has committed. I want to put forth an interesting fact. When sister Indira Gandhi passed away, there was a law by virtue of which half portion of the wealth used to go to the government. There was a talk then that Indiraji willed her wealth in her son Rajiv Gandhi's name," the prime minister said.
"To save the money going to the government, the then PM Rajiv Gandhi abolished the inheritance tax."
The Congress wants to reinforce the tax more powerfully now after its four generations reaped benefit of the wealth passed on to them, he said.
An adviser to the opposition party's 'shehzada' (referring to Rahul Gandhi) has now suggested imposition of inheritance tax, he said.
Modi on Wednesday seized upon Congress leader Sam Pitroda's remarks on inheritance tax to step up the ruling BJP's attack on the issue of "wealth redistribution".
The Congress later distanced itself from the comments of the US-based president of its overseas wing and asserted that it has no plan to introduce such a tax.
Modi said that as long as the BJP is there, it will not allow any designs like imposition of inheritance tax to succeed.
"The wealth that you have accumulated by working hard and enduring hardships will be looted from you once a Congress-led government is formed.”
"Modi is standing as a wall between you and the Congress' plan to loot you," Modi said.
Hitting back at the prime minister, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on X, "Yesterday the PM claimed that @INCIndia wanted to impose an Inheritance Tax. Once it became clear that it was actually the BJP that has been propagating an Inheritance Tax, he switched lanes."
"Every time he opens his mouth to speak, the Prime Minister provides fresh evidence of his meanness, pettiness, and his steadfast adherence to lies.”
"Once again, his lies stand unravelled. Here is the paragraph from then Finance Minister VP Singh’s budget speech of March 16, 1985, which proposed the abolition of estate duty. Paragraph 88 of the speech states the reasons clearly," Ramesh said, and shared an excerpt from the speech.
"As both wealth-tax and estate duty laws apply to the property of a person, the former applying to his property before death and the latter after his death, the existence of two separate laws with reference to the same property amounts to procedural harassment to the taxpayers and the heirs of the deceased who have to comply with the provisions of two different laws," Singh had said, according to the excerpt of his speech shared by Ramesh.
"Having considered the relative merits of the two taxes, I am of the view that estate duty has not achieved the twin objectives with which it was introduced, namely, to reduce unequal distribution of wealth and assist the States in financing their development schemes," Singh had said.
While the yield from estate duty is only about Rs 20 crore, its cost of administration is relatively high, he had noted.
"I, therefore, propose to abolish the levy of estate duty in respect of estates passing on after deaths occurring on or after 16th March, 1985. I will come forward in due course with suitable legislation for this purpose," the then finance minister said.
In his post, Ramesh said incidentally, Indira Gandhi gave away her ancestral property in Allahabad way back in 1970 to the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund.
Echoing his party colleague's sentiments, Congress leader P Chidambaram claimed that the "manufactured" controversies on "redistribution of wealth" and inheritance tax showed that fear has gripped the BJP, which has fallen back on “distortion, falsehoods and abuse" as 'Modi ki Guarantee' has vanished without a trace.
BSP president Mayawati, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, had a different take on Pitroda’s remarks, saying it has got less to do with the welfare of the poor and more with diverting attention from the failure of the Congress' 'garibi hatao' campaign.
कल प्रधानमंत्री ने दावा किया कि @INCIndia विरासत कर लगाना चाहती है। एक बार जब यह स्पष्ट हो गया कि वास्तव में भाजपा ही विरासत कर का प्रचार करती रही है, तो उन्होंने अपनी राह बदल ली।
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) April 25, 2024
एक बार फिर उनका झूठ बेनकाब हो गया। यहां 16 मार्च 1985 के तत्कालीन वित्त मंत्री वीपी सिंह के बजट… pic.twitter.com/x0hCUllRe9
