Date : 11/02/2023

Relevance: GS-3: Biodiversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management.

Key Phrases: World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), Epizootic diseases, One Health Unit, National Digital Livestock Mission, Manhattan Principles, One World-One Health

Context

• The Joshimath tragedy is merely the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of an unprecedented challenge as the concern is not just about what’s happening to one Indian hill-town that finds itself sinking.
• The tragedy reflects the dire consequences of human encroachment and the destruction of natural habitats and the environment.

Key Highlights:

• The risk of Joshimath’s destabilization was first flagged in 1976 (i.e., 47 years ago).
• More recently, in May 2010, environmentalists and academic researchers had warned of an impending disaster in the hill town through an article in the Indian scientific journal Current Science.
• It is an outcome of humans messing with forests, animals, land, and entire ecosystems of nature. It’s not something that has happened overnight. We were forewarned.
• Human mistreatment of the environment has different forms.

Threat To Vulture Population:

• About a decade ago, the Indian subcontinent’s population of vultures witnessed a steep decline which was traced to the use of indiscriminate and high doses of a painkiller diclofenac sodium for pets and domestic animals, such as cows, starting in the 1990s.
• Vultures that fed on the remains of dead animals that were given this medicine died of chemical poisoning. These birds have long been part of the food chain.
• Though people in some parts of India consider vultures in the sky an inauspicious sign, it forests) to humans.
• At the root of these disease outbreaks has been human interference with nature, the very meddling that has resulted in climate change and global warming.
• Worldwide environmental damage, rising temperatures, large-scale deforestation, unplanned urbanization, the unnecessary use of antibiotics and ‘antimicrobial resistance’ have emerged as significant threats.

One Health Concept:

• In the past decade, inter-relationships between the health of humans, animals and the environment have been studied and given us the concept of ‘one health’, by which we must all come together to save all three: humans, animals and the environment.
• As part of India’s G20 presidency, India has proposed health emergencies, prevention, preparedness and response as a key focus area, with ‘one health’ and antimicrobial resistance as sub-themes.
• Yet, activities that harm us on all these fronts continue to expand, on various pretexts, unabated.
• One reason is that policymakers continue to ignore scientific evidence and rational voices.

What Is One Health Concept?

• One Health is an approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment.
• One Health has become more important in recent years because many factors have changed interactions between people, animals, plants, and our environment.
• The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) introduced the term “One World-One Health” in 2007 along with 12 recommendations (the Manhattan Principles) that focused on establishing a more holistic approach to preventing epidemic disease and maintaining ecosystem integrity.

One Health Concept In India:

• The bridge between human and wildlife health is the domesticated animals, which are the carriers of a lot of diseases between human beings and wildlife, or which start from the livestock sector and gets transferred to human health.
• The initiatives under the concept include
  • Institutionalising the mechanism for the data collection on disease outbreak, prevalence, and management.
  • It also entails integrating the network of laboratories with a focus on strengthening communication and lab testing capacities around zoonotic diseases,
  • Developing a communication strategy across sectors with an emphasis on livestock and animal health-related issues, and integration of the data with the digital architecture of the National Digital Livestock Mission to enable the analytics needed for the development of One Health Programme.

Perils Of Rising Global Temperatures:

• In April 2022, a study published in the journal Nature concluded that if the world’s temperature rises by 2° Celsius between 2020 and 2070, around 15,000 new pathogens which are currently in the wild will come into human contact.
• Even if a small proportion of them cause illness, it would drastically increase the risk of disease outbreaks and epidemics.
• Most exposed to this peril would be residents of Asia and Africa and thus, ignoring such scientific warnings cannot be afforded.
• As for Joshimath in Uttarakhand, had the aforementioned scientific commentary of May 2010 received top-level attention, the tragedy might have been averted that has been unfolding in recent weeks.

Conclusion:

• We still have an opportunity to correct ourselves.
• Over the past few decades, in the name of development, very little has been done to address the increasing carbon footprints, destruction of flora and fauna and propulsion of climate change.
• The tragedy of Joshimath should remind the people to always be mindful of development risks.
• The policymakers must listen to the sober voices of scientists, researchers and environmentalists, and then act upon scientifically valid advice.
• It is time governments fulfill their promises on the environment.
• If that is not done, we would deserve the negative view that future generations takes of us.

Source: Live-Mint

Mains Question:

Q. The Joshimath tragedy is merely the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of an unprecedented challenge as the concern is not just about what’s happening to one Indian hill town that finds itself sinking. The tragedy reflects the dire consequences of human encroachment and the destruction of natural habitats and the environment. Elaborate. (150 words).