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The literature on the environmental impacts of household consumption in India focuses on carbon and ecological footprints of income groups. This article connects conspicuous/luxury (C/L) consumption in India to its local, regional and global environmental impacts. We evaluate carbon dioxide (CO 2), water, and particulate matter (PM2.5) footprints of consumption disaggregated into food-basic, nonfood-basic, and C/L consumption across expenditure deciles. We find that all three footprints rise, but at different rates, with increasing expenditure. Notably, CO 2 and PM2.5 intensities of C/L consumption increase with income, unlike all other intensities of consumption. However, in all three footprints, there is a disproportionate rise in the top decile, which is driven by C/L consumption expenditure more than the pollution intensity of C/L consumption. These results imply that demand reduction measures in C/L consumption could have broad-based and deep environmental benefits, while pollutant-specific mitigation policies may face trade-offs with other environmental impacts. There is a need for further research on connecting local and regional environmental footprints with the actual impacts, to better understand the relationships between conspicuous/luxury consumption and multi-dimensional environmental impacts in developing countries context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of Covid-19 in India showing the images of a cleaner Yamuna River, Himalayas newly visible from Punjab, and the footage of hundreds of thousands of now-jobless migrant workers, confined in transit camps or setting out to hundreds of miles to their villages.

Summary: The concept of 'biodiversity conservation' includes diverse notions of what part of 'nature' one is trying to conserve. Moreover, the conservation discourse is part of a wider discussion on what kind of world we want for both humans and nature. Over the past few decades, debates have erupted on both fronts: what nature is worth saving and how to link concerns for nature with concerns for larger societal well-being. But proposals such as the Global Deal for Nature (www.globaldealfornature.org) articulated by Dinerstein and others suggest that mainstream conservation thinking has not changed much. I argue that acknowledging multiple values about conservation and about society, rejecting the biocentric high horse, pragmatic pluralism and simplistic 'win–win' arguments, and embracing a broader set of societal concerns is a more tenable approach towards achieving a balanced society–nature relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research on climate change adaptation in rapidly urbanizing developing regions focuses primarily on adaptation or resilience as the goal, assumes that climate change is the major stressor, and focuses on the household or the city as the unit of analysis. In this article, we use findings from two rapidly urbanizing sub-basins of the Cauvery River in southern India (the Arkavathy and Noyyal sub-basins) to argue for a broader analytic and policy framework that explicitly considers multiple normative concerns and stressors, and uses the entire watershed as the unit of analysis to address the climate-water interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs) give much greater attention to environmental concerns than the Millennium Development Goals. SDG6, the water sector goal, is also more broadly framed, as it recognizes conservation needs in addition to drinking water and sanitation. However, normatively speaking, SDG6 is still framed in adequacy and sustainability terms, downplaying the goal of justice. This is a serious lacuna. Intragenerational justice is fundamental to many environmental problems, and especially to water, because water is a common-pool, multiple-use and unidirectionally flowing resource. Most debates in the water sector-upstream-downstream sharing, intersectoral allocations and specifically allocation to in-stream conservation, water pollution, and even groundwater depletion-are about the 'biophysical (in)justice' caused by these characteristics of the resource. The debates then focus on how the outcomes may be made more equitable (within sectors) or fair (across sectors). Large interventions, such as big dams, create multiple benefits and costs across multiple users and sectors, focusing attention on procedural justice. Social inequities may add another layer, as they often correlate with biophysical injustice. While SDG6 recognizes conservation and public health needs, it fails to recognize the fundamental tension between these needs and other uses of water, and therefore the issues of equity, fairness, and/or procedural justice in allocating between them. Policy makers may be more comfortable with framing environmental problems as sustainability problems. However, researchers have contributed to this narrowing by framing environmental problems along disciplinarily fragmented lines. The idea of biophysical justice offers an interdisciplinary bridge that may help broaden the discourse. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1224. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1224 For further resources related to this article, please visit the . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of sustainable development in popular thought, referencing the concept's history from the 1990s through the early 2010s. The role that sustainable development plays in addressing the needs of present and future generations is discussed. The relationship between nature conservation and economic growth, including the impact that an industry polluting a river has on its profits, is discussed.

Abstract: Economic valuation of ecosystem benefits and their aggregation in a benefit–cost analysis (BCA) framework is the norm in mainstream environmental economics. But valuation and BCA have also attracted criticisms. ‘Internal’ criticisms point to the absence of alternative scenarios in valuation, overlooking of ecological trade-offs and dis-services, and inattention to context. Others criticize aggregation across diverse stakeholders and the problem of non-monetizable benefits, and dismiss BCA as fatally flawed. They suggest approaches such as deliberative decision-making and multi-criteria analysis. We propose a middle path that uses the strengths of economic analysis for decision support while avoiding the pitfalls. We disaggregate economic impacts by stakeholder groups, link ecosystem changes to benefits as well as dis-benefits, and examine how socio-technological context shapes the magnitude of economic impact. We illustrate this approach by studying the impact of creating the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple wildlife sanctuary in the Western Ghats forests of southern India. Our analysis shows that while some stakeholders are net beneficiaries, others are net losers. Changes in forest rights, irrigation technologies, and ecosystem dynamics influence the magnitude of benefits and sometimes convert gainers into losers. Such disaggregated analysis can provide useful information for deliberative decision-making and important academic insights on how economic value is generated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Tropical forest management is a quintessential interdisciplinary (ID) problem straddling the social-natural divide, and has attracted scholars from many disciplines. This paper is a review of the ID research on tropical forests with a view to understanding the challenges involved in doing ID environmental research in general and the manner in which they might be addressed. Research on two core interdisciplinary questions in tropical forest research, namely causes of tropical forest loss and degradation and its impacts on society, is analysed to illuminate issues facing ID researchers. The challenges stem from differences in implicit values, theories and epistemologies across disciplines, as well as the relationship between individual disciplines, the ID space and the wider applied research audience. Understanding the value-laden nature of terms such as forest loss and degradation leads to a multidimensional and multidisciplinary characterization of the impact of forest change on human well-being. The analysis of causes of change has been enriched by ID research in which forest outcomes are characterized explicitly in terms of their values, measured in terms relevant to these values and linked to chains of socioeconomic variables at the appropriate scale. Explanations from different disciplines may be reconciled to some extent by seeing each as partial and perhaps having context-specific validity, although some core tensions, especially between economists and anthropologists, remain. Insights from ID research have been unevenly internalized in the literature, pointing to the absence of a broadly shared ID space as a consequence of individual social science disciplines appropriating environment as a subject of study. Shifting from theory-driven to problem-driven research and re-engaging self-consciously in this applied ID space will be required to generate more rigorous and relevant ID research on forests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Researchers, policy makers and civil society organizations have been discussing the potential of biofuels as partial substitutes for fossil fuels and thereby as a simultaneous solution for climate change and rural poverty. Research has highlighted the ambiguity of these claims across various dimensions and scales, focusing on ethanol-producing or oilseed crops in agricultural lands or Jatropha-type crops on common lands. We studied the agronomic and economic viability and livelihood impacts of Jatropha curcas plantations on private farms in Tamil Nadu, India. We found that Jatropha yields are much lower than expected and its cultivation is currently unviable, and even its potential viability is strongly determined by water access. On the whole, the crop impoverishes farmers, particularly the poorer and socially backward farmers. Jatropha cultivation therefore not only fails to alleviate poverty, but its aggressive and misguided promotion will generate conflict between the state and the farmers, between different socio-economic classes and even within households. The water demands of the crop can potentially exacerbate the conflicts and competition over water access in Tamil Nadu villages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The author discusses social scientists and conservationists, in response to an article by Kent H. Redford in the 2011 issue. The author states that conservationists are better known as pragmatic interdiscipline on par with engineering or farming, while social scientists collaborate with biologists not with conservationists. He mentions that conservationists use generalized knowledge from academic disciplines, while social scientists are academics looking for better explanations of social world.

Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studies, we show how projects that align with local people's preferences and are implemented through inclusive governance are more likely to lead to improved social, ecological, and environmental outcomes. To underscore the importance of social considerations in restoration, we overlay existing global restoration priority maps, population, and the Human Development Index (HDI) to show that approximately 1.4 billion people, disproportionately belonging to groups with low HDI, live in areas identified by previous studies as being of high restoration priority. We conclude with five action points for science and policy to promote equity-centered restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavy metal (HM) contamination of water bodies is caused by both first generation (industries) and second generation (distributed sources, domestic sewage, sediments) sources. We applied a multi-pronged approach to quantify the contribution of first and second generation sources to the HM load in a stream located in an industrialised catchment. We found that, despite strict regulation, first generation sources contributed significantly to the HM load (60%–80%), showing the ineffectiveness of current regulation. Domestic sewage contributed significantly to Cu, Ni, and Mn load (15%–20%). The contribution of distributed sources and sediments to HM load is insignificant. In a 24-hour cycle, HM concentrations frequently exceeded FAO's irrigation water quality standards, with the highest concentrations observed at night. Empirically, the study highlights the continued plight of urban streams in rapidly industrialising centers and the failure to regulate first-generation sources. Methodologically, it demonstrates the importance of temporally intensive measurement of contaminant concentration and load. Policy implications include the need for ambient water quality standards, inclusion of HMs in such standards, load-based regulation, and a problem-oriented monitoring and enforcement approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India is a significant player in climate policy and politics. It has been vocal in international climate negotiations, but its role in these negotiations has changed over time. In an interactive relationship between domestic policy and international positions, India has increasingly become a testing ground for policies that internalize climate considerations into development. This article critically reviews the arc of climate policy and politics in India over time. It begins by examining changes in knowledge and ideas around climate change in India, particularly in the areas of ethics, climate impacts, India's energy transition, linkages with sustainability, and sequestration. The next section examines changes in politics, policy, and governance at both international and national scales. The article argues that shifts in ideas and knowledge of impacts, costs, and benefits of climate action and shifts in the global context are reflected and refracted through discourses in India's domestic and international policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we assessed the efficiency and effectiveness of the Vrishabhavathy Valley Treatment plant (VVTP) in Bengaluru city, which is the oldest STP in the city. Since VVTP treats both raw sewage and polluted river water, with the latter constituting 80% of the influent, we sampled water quality at locations upstream and downstream of the plant to evaluate overall efficacy as well. We found that VVTP is able to reduce biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) by only 47%. This low efficiency can be attributed to the high and variable levels of chemical oxygen demand, consistent with episodic industrial discharges. Moreover, the mean values of pH, dissolved oxygen, total suspended solids, BOD5, nitrates, faecal coliforms and faecal streptococcus did not change significantly between upstream and downstream locations. Treating river water using an STP is clearly not an efficacious way of improving river water quality. Thus, before setting up new STPs, sewerage boards need to invest in building the underground drainage network to bring raw sewage to existing STPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Unique data on hydrologic effects of tropical reforestation and human-use. [•] Clear evidence for the “infiltration-evapotranspiration trade-off hypothesis” in relation to hydrologic services. [•] Comprehensive paper on hydrology of Western Ghats, a globalbiodiversity hotspot. [•] Hydrologic processes and recharge to ground-water across land-coveranalyzed using multiple approaches and spatial scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The effects of forest degradation and use and establishment of tree-plantations on degraded or modified forest ecosystems at multi-decadal time-scales using tree-plantations on the streamflow response are less studied in the humid tropics when compared to deforestation and forest conversion to agriculture. In the Western Ghats of India (Uttar Kannada, Karnataka State), a previous soil hydraulic conductivity survey linked with rain IDF (intensity–duration–frequency) had suggested a greater occurrence of infiltration-excess overland within the degraded forest and reforested areas and thus potentially higher streamflow (Bonell et al., 2010). We further tested these predictions in Uttar Kannada by establishing experimental basins ranging from 7 to 23ha across three ecosystems, (1) remnant tropical evergreen Forest (NF), (2) heavily-used former evergreen forest which now has been converted to tree savanna, known as degraded forest (DF) and (3) exotic Acacia plantations (AC, Acacia auriculiformis) on degraded former forest land. In total, 11 basins were instrumented (3 NF, 4 AC and 4 DF) in two geomorphological zones, i.e., Coastal and Up-Ghat (Malnaad) and at three sites (one Coastal, two Up-Ghat). The rainfall–streamflow observations collected (at daily and also at a 36min time resolutions in the Coastal basins) over a 2–3year period (2003–2005) were analysed. In both the Coastal and Up-Ghat basins, the double mass curves showed during the rainy season a consistent trend in favour of more proportion of streamflow in the rank order DF>AC>NF. These double mass curves provide strong evidence that overland flow is progressively becomes a more dominant stormflow pathway. Across all sites, NF converted 28.4±6.41stdev% of rainfall into total streamflow in comparison to 32.7±6.97stdev% in AC and 45.3±9.61stdev% in DF. Further support for the above trends emerges from the quickflow ratio QF /Q for the Coastal basins. There are much higher values for both the DF and AC land covers, and their rank order DF>AC>NF. The quickflow response ratio QF /P is also the highest for the DF basin, and along with the QF /Q ratio, can exceed 90%. The corresponding delayed flow response ratios, QD /P clearly show the largest QD yields as a proportion of event precipitation from the Forest (NF1). The application of linear model supported these differences (e.g. 10–36% difference between NF and DF, p <0.001) in the storm hydrologic response of the Coastal basins. The exception was QF /P where there was a higher uncertainty connected with inter-basin mean differences. Cross-correlation plots for rain–streamflow and corresponding lag regression models for three storm events in the Coastal basins suggested the existence of alternative stormflow pathways with multiple lags with peaks between ∼12 and 24h in NF, compared to respective bimodal peaks at ∼1 and 16h in AC and ∼1 and 12h in DF. The long time lags for NF are suggestive of deep subsurface stormflow and groundwater as the contributing sources to the storm hydrograph. The short time lags in DF and AC are indicative of overland flow and so ‘memory’ of the previous degraded land cover is retained in AC as supported by previous hydraulic conductivity data. As potential and actual evapotranspiration is likely to be depressed during the monsoon, differences in streamflow and run-off responses between land-cover types is largely attributed to differences in soil infiltration and hydrologic pathways. Enhancing infiltration and reducing run-off in managed ecosystems should be explored in the terms of the context of other ecosystem services and biodiversity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article presents similarities and differences of Ecological Society of America (ESA) and Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) on issues related to tropical ecosystems into 21st century. The ATBC report, like that of ESA, recognizes the increasing impact of humans on tropical ecosystems. Tropical forest conversion, the effects of climate change, nutrient deposition, spread of alien species, and extraction of ecosystem products on the structure and functioning of undisturbed and managed ecosystems must be understood. The second component pertains to social drivers of change and social responses to conservation. The third component, understanding the structure and function of tropical ecosystems, including cataloging tropical diversity, is fundamental to comprehend and mitigate consequences of the biodiversity loss in human-impacted ecosystems.