As temperatures climb, India sees an uptick in forest fires and energy demands — Issue #44
Currents, flames, and policy shifts: India stares at the rising cases of forest fires, escalating power demands, and the end of EV subsidies.
The Big Picture
It barely needs saying that this year, mercury is rising faster and earlier than normal. In tandem, India is seeing an uptick in forest fires too.
Take Karnataka, for instance. “Data from the Karnataka State Remote Sensing Authority shows that forest staff have had to deal with as many as 2,020 fires between February 15 and March 5,” reported Deccan Herald. Officials told the daily that such numbers had never been reported before. ‘The total number of forest fires for three years till September 2022 was 4,639.”
Similar reports are coming in from other parts of India.
Reportage in The Outlook lists the number of forest fires across India on just one day – the 7th of March. “According to the Forest Survey of India (FSI) data, 391 active fire incidents were reported from across the country by 12 noon during the day,” it writes. “Odisha tops the chart with 142 active fire points, followed by 58 in Chhattisgarh, 48 in Andhra Pradesh, 37 in Telangana, 32 each in Jharkhand and Karnataka and 15 in Maharashtra. Forest fire incidents were also reported in several other states but they are fewer in number.”
There might be “fewer” fires in other states – like Uttarakhand and Goa – but the effects are calamitous nonetheless. Take Goa, large fires have been sweeping across its protected areas, including Mollem and Netravali national parks, for close to ten days now. The fires, described as the worst in Goa’s history, represent a spike. All through 2022, the state saw just 10 minor forest fires. And then, since 5th March, it has seen 48.
This is a new normal. “India... has seen a 10-fold increase in incidences of forest fires over the last two decades,” writes Down To Earth. We don’t fully understand why yet. Take Goa. It is a tropical climate – with the forests themselves sited in the hum western ghats. Retired forest officials in the state said the fires were man-made in origin – with blame being variously placed on real estate mafias and local slash and burn cultivators.
This begs the obvious question. Did unconnected individuals, in a coordinated act, spread across the state in settlements like Taleigao, Batim, Dabolim, Gogol and Advalpale, start trying to clear forests all together from 5th March onwards?
In this report, local environmentalist Sandeep Parkar wonders if the timing of the fires, coinciding with the end of the financial year, could be the result of businesses and landowners starting fires deliberately to collect insurance payouts. Or could it be the case that such attempts to clear local forests continue through the year but, by early March, rising heat had created enough kindling inside forests for these fires to spread unabatedly? Like the rest of India, Goa too has seen a hot start to 2023. “February was recorded as the hottest month on record in the region, with temperatures... peaking at 38.4 degrees Celsius,” wrote Groundreport.
For now, the union environment ministry is playing down these incidents in Goa, saying there is “no major loss to floral or faunal diversity”. Local reports say otherwise.
Hard questions need to be asked. Given the rising frequency of heat waves, India’s state – and union – forest departments need to create fire lines before the heat starts to build. In the case of Goa at least, that has not been done.
The outcome is a further haemorrhaging of already imperilled biodiversity – and again reveals how deeply the management of the country’s commons (whether natural or economic) has collapsed.
Postscript: Talking of atypical weather, Nashik in Maharashtra and districts in central-coastal Tamil Nadu were hit by unseasonal rain last week.
News of the week
As temperatures climb, India is readying for a surge in power demand.
The country is looking to boost gas imports, and gas-fired power stations have been told to increase output. As this newsletter has said earlier, the country’s coal consumption is set to spike as well. Discoms, of course, continue to be in trouble.
To accelerate India’s adoption of electric vehicles – while ensuring that the country develops the capacity to manufacture these – the union government launched the FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles in India) scheme in April 2019. It offered subsidies to EVs with 50% locally manufactured components – with subsidies going as high as 40% of the vehicle’s price.
The Indian government is now considering discontinuing the scheme next year. As this report says, it’s hard to build an EV that has 50% locally made components. Automobile makers in India have always imported major components, such as battery and battery components – mostly from China.
And so, two things have happened. One, companies have used illegal means to access these subsidies. As K Balaji, an EV consultant told Rest of World, “Some automakers have started importing parts via shell companies that are registered in India, and then purchasing [the parts] from these [shell] companies.” In that interview, he cited the recent tax raids on leading EV makers like Hero Electric and Okinawa.
FAME is now expected to change into a PLI-like structure. And yet, there as well, similar questions abound. In the case of Advanced Chemical Cell Batteries, Rajesh Exports promised the highest level of localisation – according to Gupta, he promised 60% localisation in year two – and edged out industry stalwarts like Amara Raja and Exide. Its promised localisation was, as Business Standard wrote, “more than double of the other competitive bidders”.
This number, coming from a firm whose raison d’etre lies not in batteries but in gold-refining was challenged by other industry players. “The localisation commitments made by them beats me, especially when far more established players say that even in 2030 it would not be more than 50-60%,” a senior battery sector executive had told Business Standard.
In other news, NTPC is planning to invite bids for 9 gigawatt hour of energy storage systems. Between subsidy cuts and price hikes, cooking gas prices continue to singe Indian consumers. For green hydrogen to be competitive against other energy sources, India has to cut its cost of production to one-third of current costs – down from the current $3-6 per kg to less than $2 per kg. And then, there is Ola Electric. Last year, the company announced – even as its scooters were malfunctioning – the Ola Electric car was “set to arrive” in 2024. There is, however, no car.
Yet other news. In what must count as one of the great tragedies in environmental history, Raini village in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand from where the Chipko movement started in 1973 is likely to be shifted elsewhere. Geologists working for the Uttarakhand government found the slope on which the village stands unstable and therefore, as Jayashree Nandi wrote in the Hindustan Times, “unfit for habitation”.
The pathos here is off the charts. In the seventies, Chipko outlined an alternative, local community-owned model of environment management. Modernity, casting its spell on not just the state and local elite but also local communities, has resulted in that ethos being so roundly junked. The costs are before us now. To understand this better, read this article by environmentalist-scientist Ravi Chopra on the sinking of Joshimath for The India Forum.
It’s a spell that continues. In the first ten days of February, the Supreme Court’s Green Bench cleared 118 pending projects. As National Herald reported, these include – notwithstanding the pervasive climate crisis -- the axing of ancient ‘heritage trees’ in West Bengal, the destruction of evergreen forests that protect the coastal line of Tamil Nadu, the felling of Class 3 trees (whatever that may mean) in Himachal Pradesh to taking a wishy-washy stand on the steady stream of encroachments in India’s premier Periyar Tiger Reserve. At the end of it all, wrote the paper, Justice Gavai went on record saying, “PILs should not be used as a tool in present times” and that development should not be stalled ‘by white-collar environmentalists’.
And then, there is the Great Nicobar Transhipment Port project. Ten firms submitted Expressions of Interest (EoIs) to develop the project – one being pushed by the government despite its environmental impacts like massive tree-felling, threat to local biota, the local tribal communities, and other concerns like water scarcity. In a report in The Wire, retired IAS officer MG Devasahayam says the project, which seeks to provide an alternative option to shipping lines for container trans-shipment, is an attempt by the Indian government to develop “the Andaman and Nicobar group of islands into a free trade zone like Hong Kong to house multi-national companies (MNCs)” that might be seeking an alternative to China. If so, that will call for a massive investment push across the archipelago.
There are two interesting sidelights here. One, China is developing a massive “free trade port” on its island province of Hainan as well. Two, even as it backs away from other acquisitions (like DB Power) and bids (solar PLI; Concor privatisation), Adani has submitted an Expression of Interest to develop the container trans-shipment project. This is another indicator of the group’s determination to maintain its dominance over India’s port sector.
Continuing with Adani, last week was more of the same for the group. It announced the prepayment of loans worth $2.65 billion – to reduce overall indebtedness. That is about Rs 21,000 crore – its overall debt is expected to be close to Rs 250,000 crore.
On other fronts, the group continued to take a beating. MSCI ESG Research changed its assessments of Adani Group entities adding "Bribery and Fraud" and "Governance Structures" controversy cases to all Adani Group companies in its coverage. The group said it will sell a stake in its cement business to raise $450 million. This will be the group’s first asset sale as it tries to reduce debt. Weakening the group’s hegemony, a clutch of infrastructure companies are rushing to fill the void left by the group’s decision to halt fresh capex. “They include the JSW and GMR groups, which Adani earlier outbid by wide margins to clinch crucial deals, as well as behemoths such as the Tata Group, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and United Arab Emirates-based DP World,” reported Nikkei.
Video of the fortnight
Climate Long Reads of the Week
“Nations around the world have agreed to a new global treaty for governing the sustainable use and conservation of the so-called “high seas” – areas of the ocean that lie outside of any single nation’s jurisdiction.” Carbon Brief writes on the “High Seas” treaty.
“The major decarbonization plots unfolding globally are in the realms of cash (green finance), cars (EV growth), and chemicals (battery production). Inspired by energy finance analyst Nathaniel Bullard’s tour-de-force presentation illustrating the white-knuckle ride of the energy transition, this week’s newsletter picks out a few big charts that get at the antinomies of these three processes.” Phenomenal World is out with its latest newsletter.
“As attempts to fix the problem at the source fail, a new kind of inequality is taking hold in Indian cities.” Wired writes on how India’s AQI crisis is creating an outcome where the rich get clean air while the poor don’t.
“In Beatty, the just transition does not feel just enough. Across the region, a handful of tribes, environmental organizations, and activists like Laura and Kevin have been arguing for a decade that utility-scale solar is a regressive use of public land at odds with commitments to deeper social and environmental transformation. They see the destruction of habitat and sacred sites as a dismissal of the ecological value of arid lands and the communities that live in them on the part of coastal policymakers and energy consumers. They argue that the political economy of this approach to renewable energy development—driven by private developers and for-profit utilities, and concentrated on “undisturbed” public land rather than on private farmland, brownfields, or rooftops—sidesteps questions about energy conservation and the possibility of perpetual growth.” Harpers writes about the local costs of a solar farm in the US.
The growing toll of climate change on the mental health of Australians.
“India’s National Forest Policy of 1988 set an ambitions target: to bring two thirds of the Indian Himalayas under tree and forest cover. In a blow to that plan, new research showed that less than half of that percentage is feasible in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. The findings suggested that the situation is similar in other mountainous states," writes Rishika Pardikar.
One of the more talked about book releases right now is academic Ashoka Mody’s India is Broken and Why it is Hard to Fix. India Forum reviews the book. Also see, from the website run by the former editor of EPW, this long-form essay on how the people of the Sundarbans villages across India and Bangladesh live amidst the tiger population of the mangroves.
Books of the Week
This week, we have one book on evolution and one on industrial pollution.
The first is Elsa Panciroli’s Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution. It’s not the case that dinosaurs died out and were replaced by mammals, she writes. Instead, they split from reptiles 300 million years ago and co-existed – exploiting miniaturisation to survive. Why this book? Because life on earth is a miracle, it deserves to be feted, protected and loved. This book is a reminder.
Our second book is very different. It’s also brand new – copies are just reaching bookshops. This is Heavy Metal: How a Global Corporation Poisoned Kodaikanal, by journalist-turned Greenpeace activist Ameer Shahul. Here is an excerpt.