India’s elephant numbers are falling – Issue #119

Habitat destruction, rail tracks cutting through elephant paths, human-elephant conflict, mining, everything exacts a price

Oct 09, 2024

News of the week

Solar power was mandatory reading in the week gone by.

The first time, thanks to a Bloomberg long-read on how the US ceded control over solar manufacturing to China.

The newswire travelled to the US and China — and came back thinking that Chinese application and American mis-steps, not state subsidies, underpins the country’s extraordinary hegemony over solar panel production. “The fall of America as a solar superpower is a tragedy of errors where myopic corporate leadership, timid financing, oligopolistic complacency and policy chaos allowed the US and Europe to neglect their own clean-tech industries,” he writes. “That left a yawning gap that was filled by Chinese start-ups, sprouting like saplings in a forest clearing.”

The second report, published in the Financial Times, focuses on a sidelight of China’s solar panel hegemony. As countries like the USA erect tariff walls to keep Chinese panels out, manufacturers in India, among other countries, are gaining. The tale, however, is more complicated than that. As the recent controversy over Waaree showed, some of these firms are using Chinese solar cells in their modules. India’s Russian oil trade comes to mind.

In ecological news, the Expert Appraisal Committee has rejected Adani Energy’s application for 1500 MW Warasgaon-Warangi Pump Storage Project. The Committee has asked Adani to, as SANDRP reported, “prepare a new project layout which will not obstruct rivulets in Western Ghats” and to “change the project layout to reduce impact on forest land”.

A couple of weeks earlier, SANDRP’s Parineeta Dandekar had visited the proposed site for Warasgaon-Warangi. Her blogpost on the site — and her photographs — are eye-opening. As she writes: “Multiple dams, mushrooming resorts, creaking cities like Lonavala and townships like Lavasa have pushed Western Ghats Forests to a corner here. And yet, the region is speckled with community conservation spaces like sacred groves, temple forests, sacred river origins and that spectacular gem of culture and conservation: community fish sanctuaries.”

Read her blog post here.

The Committee also said it will also conduct site visits to “all proposed pumped storage sites in the Western Ghats… prior to granting Environmental Clearance, because “These projects are located in the ecologically fragile Western Ghats and huge forest area is also involved.”

This activism is welcome. Especially since other bodies like the CEA are clearing projects rather rapidly.

Elsewhere on ecology, news continued to be ominous.

India has cleared 1 million square kilometres of its 3.5 million square kilometres of sedimentary basin for oil and gas exploration, a significant portion that was previously classified as a "no-go" area.

Last week also saw terrible news on the elephant front. India’s elephant numbers are falling steeply. They have dropped by an alarming 41% between 2012 and 2023 in the once great forests of central and eastern India — West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gadchiroli (Maharashtra), and Andhra, said a report the government is yet to release.

The national picture is not great either. Elephant numbers have dropped by a fifth over the last 5 years. Habitat destruction, rail tracks cutting through elephant paths, human-elephant conflict, mining, everything exacts a price. As things stand, there is one more report the government is sitting on — The India State of Forest Report (ISFR), due for release in 2023, has been delayed by over a year. “It’s likely that forest cover has diminished significantly, which may be why the government is reluctant to release the report,” a senior official told Down To Earth.

As things stand, India’s forests are about to shrink further. There is Great Nicobar. In addition, Telangana wants to chop Damagundam forest — that hyperlink will take you to a blistering article. Do read it. Another forest, this time in Baran, Rajasthan, is about to face the axe as well. This time around, for a power plant.

At the same time, though, the Indian government is now mulling a “Cheetah Corridor” to manage cheetahs in Kuno, Gandhi Sagar and adjacent landscapes as a meta population. Forests are shrinking. Cheetahs are dying. On paper, however, conservation is proceeding apace!

Our previous issue had alluded to Indian firms’ race to grab hydel projects in adjacent countries. There is one more development on that front. Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group has tied up with Bhutan’s Druk Holding and Investments, the commercial arm of the Bhutanese government, to invest in the country’s solar and hydel sector. There is one more solar IPO. After Premier Energies and Waaree, it is Vikram Solar’s turn. And, in another surprising development, India has declined to buy gas from Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project citing US sanctions. This is bad news for Putin, reported Newsweek. India wants to create a natural gas hub. Ford is returning to India, this time to sell EVs.

And, talking of EVs, Ola is back in the news. Sigh.

Also in the news was Adani. The group met Bombardier to chat about collaborations in aerospace and defence; is doubling down on its data centres; and took over a school from Catholic nuns.

And finally, the monsoon is leaving again. A look at the rains this year, here.

PS: We missed our issue last week. Too many other deadlines. And so, here are some of the major events in the days between 22-28 September. Once again, the infamous red mud pond at Vedanta’s Lanjigarh smelter, at the foothills of Niyamraja, breached its walls.

An unspecified number of private firms are interested in installing captive small and modular reactors, reported Indian Express. More information about the proposed arrangement comes from the Economic Times. "The funding and land for the nuclear plant will be made available by the private player but the plant will be managed by NPCIL,” the newspaper was told.

This will be interesting to watch. As CarbonCopy had reported earlier, SMRs are uncompetitive against most rival forms of electricity generation — even large nuclear reactors are cheaper. In this case, NPCIL wants to deploy its 220 MW Bharat Small Reactors. The cost/MW, said the paper, will be as low as Rs 16 crore/MW. Will this be cheaper than alternatives like green hydrogen which has, of late, been facing charges of high costs? What about safety concerns? Wait and watch, as the journalistic cliche goes.

While on Green Hydrogen, read this report on Ohmium. In other developments, India wants its PSUs to list their renewable businesses. “Hiving off and listing green energy arms is seen as a better way to raise funds for this growing sector… given the difficulties in raising funds for conventional energy companies given their carbon footprint,” wrote Mint.

India’s elephant numbers are falling – Issue #119

Habitat destruction, rail tracks cutting through elephant paths, human-elephant conflict, mining, everything exacts a price

News of the week

CarbonCopy read of the week

Podcast of the week

Climate long reads

Discussion about this post