WHO report on 'Har Ghar Jal' Program

GS Paper - 2 (Polity)

The report estimates that ensuring safely managed drinking water for all households in the country could avert nearly 400,000 deaths caused by diarrheal diseases and prevent approximately 14 million Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) related to these diseases. The analysis focuses on diarrhoeal diseases as it accounts for the majority of WASH-attributable disease burden.

More about the Report

• The ‘Har Ghar Jal’ report focuses on diaarrheal diseases as they contribute significantly to the overall disease burden related to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues.
• The direct consumption of unsafe drinking water had severe health and societal consequences.
• The analysis indicates that in 2019, unsafe drinking water, along with inadequate sanitation and hygiene, contributed to 1.4 million deaths and 74 million DALYs globally.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) monitors various Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators, including the proportion of the population using safely managed drinking water services (Indicator 6.1.1) and mortality related to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene (Indicator 3.9.2).
• WHO has developed methods and tools to estimate the health gains associated with improvements in water, sanitation, and hygiene, particularly in reducing diarrheal diseases and other related health outcomes.
• The report emphasizes the tremendous time and effort saved for women and girls through the provision of tap water.
• In 2018, women in India spent an average of 45.5 minutes daily collecting water to meet household needs. Overall, households without on-premises water spent a staggering 66.6 million hours each day collecting water, with the majority (55.8 million hours) occurring in rural areas.
• Universal coverage through tap water provision will result in substantial savings by eliminating the need for daily water collection efforts.

Flashback

• The Har Ghar Jal Programme, implemented by the Jal Jeevan Mission under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, was announced by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 15 August 2019.
• The program aims to provide every rural household with affordable and regular access to an adequate supply of safe drinking water through taps.
• The program's components align with the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene (JMP) to monitor progress on SDG 6.1 for safely managed drinking water services

First mission to catches the solar wind

GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)

Data from the Parker Solar Probe has uncovered the source of solar wind, a stream of energized particles that flow from the corona, or the sun’s hot outer atmosphere, toward Earth.

More about the Mission and discovery

• One of the key motivations behind the mission, named for the late astrophysicist Eugene Parker and launched in 2018, was to determine what the wind looks like as it forms near the sun and how it escapes the star’s gravity.
• As the probe came within about 13 million miles (20.9 million kilometers) of the sun, its instruments detected fine structures of the solar wind where it generates near the photosphere, or the solar surface, and captured ephemeral details that disappear once the wind is blasted from the corona.
• The spacecraft was specially designed to eventually fly within 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) above the solar surface, and in late 2021, it became the first mission to “touch” the sun.

Untangling solar wind

• Solar wind is a continuous outflow of plasma, which contains charged particles like protons and electrons.
• The far-reaching phenomenon also includes part of the solar magnetic field and extends well beyond the corona, interacting with planets and the interstellar medium.
• There are two types of this wind. The faster solar wind streams from holes in the corona at the sun’s poles at a peak speed of 497 miles per second (800 kilometers per second).
• The slower solar wind located in the same plane of the solar system as Earth, flows at a calmer 249 miles per second (400 kilometers per second).
• The fast solar wind doesn’t usually impact Earth. But during the maximum of the solar cycle, an 11-year period over which the sun’s activity gradually increases, the sun’s magnetic field flips.
• This flip causes the coronal holes to appear across the sun’s surface and release bursts of solar wind directly toward Earth.
• Understanding the source of the solar wind can help scientists better predict space weather and solar storms that can affect Earth.
• Although they can cause beautiful auroras, the solar storms can also impact satellites and Earth’s electrical grids.
• Winds carry lots of information from the sun to Earth, so understanding the mechanism behind the sun’s wind is important for practical reasons on Earth.

The solar cycle

• The sun is expected to reach solar maximum in July 2025, which is why there have been increasing reports of solar flares and the northern and southern lights being visible in unexpected places.
• Fortunately, Parker Solar Probe and a separate mission, Solar Orbiter, are perfectly poised to observe the sun’s powerful, dynamic forces at play.

Carbon tax at WTO formally notified

GS Paper - 2 (International Relations)

The European Union (EU) has formally notified the implementation of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to the WTO members of the committee on trade and environment. CBAM or carbon tax is seen as a protectionist move made by Europe and is feared to impact $8 billion worth of Indian exports, especially steel and aluminum sector.

What

• The EU communication to the WTO said that the EU will launch an information campaign, featuring online seminars, physical events, distribution of guidance documents, and direct assistance, aimed at assisting third country operators and importers to the EU in performing all new obligations required by the CBAM Regulation and its secondary legislation.
• The campaign will start mid 2023 upon the adoption of the implementing act concerning the reporting rules applicable in the transitional period.
• This will continue through autumn 2023, thus supporting all relevant actors with the entry into application of the CBAM Regulation in October 2023. 
• As part of India's strategy to mitigate the impact of growing adoption of carbon tax like policies globally on wide range of steel and aluminum products, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) under the Power Ministry is working to develop standards to measure carbon embedded into such products which India would ask European Union and other countries to recognize.
• Measurement of embedded carbon assumes significance as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) has provisions to expand carbon tax even to low levels of embedded emissions in a bid to prevent exporters from finding loopholes in the CBAM to evade taxes.

Melting of Arctic Ice

GS Paper 3 (Environment)

A recent study in the Nature journal says that the loss of Arctic sea ice is inevitable in the decades ahead, even if the world somehow gets its act together and sharply reduces carbon emissions.

Observations of the New Study

• The recent Nature study confirms that there is no scenario under which the Arctic sea ice can be saved in summer.
• Moreover, if drastic reductions in emissions aren’t undertaken, we could very well be seeing the first such summer in the 2030s.
• Satellites monitoring the Arctic have shown the rate of loss to be 13% every year.

Importance of Arctic Ice:

• The massive sheets of ice that pad the Arctic region play a major role in influencing global climate and the rise and fall in Arctic sea temperatures
• Sea ice is light-coloured and therefore reflects more sunlight back to space than liquid water, thus playing a vital role in keeping polar regions cool and maintaining the earth’s energy balance.
• Sea ice also keeps the air cool by forming a barrier between the cold air above and the relatively warmer water below.
• As the amount of sea ice decreases, the Arctic region’s cooling effect is reduced, and this may initiate a ‘feedback loop’ whereby ocean warming caused by more absorption of solar energy leads to an even greater loss of sea ice and further warming.”

Impact of Melting of Arctic Ice:

• Changes in sea ice can affect biodiversity and impact mammals such as polar bears and walruses, which rely on the presence of sea ice for hunting, breeding, and migrating.
• The reduction in ice cover also affects the traditional subsistence hunting lifestyle of indigenous Arctic populations such as the Yup’ik, Iñupiat, and Inuit.
• On the other hand, reduced ice can present “commercial and economic opportunities” with the opening up of shipping lanes and increased access to natural resources in the Arctic region.
• This has already provoked global competition with several countries, including India, vying for greater influence in groups such as the Arctic Council that governs access to Arctic resources.
• The diminished sea ice while warming the Arctic also leads to a weakening of the polar jet streams, which are currents of air that form when warm and cold air meet.
• This weakening has been linked to rising temperatures and heatwaves in Europe as well as unseasonal showers in northwest India.