State of Environment Report, 2021

- The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has released its State of Environment Report, 2021.

Centre for Science and Environment is a public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi.

As India’s leading environmental NGO, CSE researches into, lobbies for and communicates the urgency of development that is both sustainable and equitable.

The country is all set to usher in a ‘pandemic generation’, with 375 million children (from newborns to 14-year-olds) likely to suffer long-lasting impacts, ranging from being underweight, stunting and increased child mortality, to losses in education and work productivity,
The pandemic also has its hidden victims — over 500 million children forced out of school globally and India accounted for more than half of them.
Covid-19 has made the world’s poor poorer. 115 million additional people might get pushed into extreme poverty by the pandemic – and most of them live in South Asia.

On the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the report said that India ranks 117 among 192 countries and is behind all South Asian countries, except Pakistan.
The five best performing states on SDGs are Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, the report said, adding that the five worst states were Bihar, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh.

India’s air, water and land have become more polluted between 2009 and 2018.
Sixty-seven million Indians died due to air pollution in 2019. The economic cost was over $36,000 million, equivalent to 1.36 per cent of the country’s GDP.
Contrary to popular belief, India’s rivers did not see any significant improvement in their water quality during the lockdown. Of India’s 19 major rivers, five – including Ganga – ran dirtier in the Covid-19 period.
The report also noted that 34 per cent of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act funds since 2014-15 were used for water-related works, leading to the creation of almost 11 million water assets in half a million India villages.

Forestland diversion continued unabated in the country. Over 11,000 hectares were diverted in 22 States in 2019.
On India’s forest cover, the report questions whether it has grown by 5,188 sq km since 2017. The report notes that the Forest Survey of India mistakes “trees for forests”—it counts orchards, plantations and even trees along highways as parts of forest and tree cover.

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