Malnutrituion -Status in Madhya Pradesh

As noted in blogs earlier infant malnutrition is a very severe problem in India. Greater than 50% (1 in 2 kids) in India is malnourished, > 33% (one in three kids) is born underweight. We are worse than may under-developing country in the world in these terms. This leads to various illnesses causing death of many children, under-development of the brain etc etc. >90% of infant mortality in India is due to malnutrituion which is preventable.

You cant say the dying child that A department cant provide this because its under B department. Bureuracacy shouldnt be an obstacle in such dire needs.

Here is a case study reported in India Together:

Kids steeped in hunger, while officials fiddle
Around 80,000 children in Madhya Pradesh are suffering from severe malnutrition. So stark is the situation that one evaluation report has said that even if the children were saved, they may go blind due to lack of vitamin A. Sachin Kumar Jain chronicles continuing negligence in government departments in M.P.

20 October 2005 - In last two years malnutrition -- an indicator of human development -- has been on the rise in Madhya Pradesh. According to data collected a few months ago by the state government's own Bal Sanjeevni Abiyaan scheme, eighty thousand children are suffering from most severe malnutrition and are on the verge of death.

The Bal Sanjeevni Abhiyan scheme itself was launched by the government to address and control the problem of the severe malnutrition in the state. It has completed its 7 phases since June 2001, but the persistence of malnutrition arises from the manner in which children's issues are vested with the Women and Child Development Department. The Health Department as well as the Panchayat and Rural Development Department do not find themselves responsible and accountable towards previous starvation deaths, even though in reality, they have a responsibility. Civil society organizations in the meantime are raising strong concerns about this but the state government remains unmoved on remedying the situation.

Malnutrition in itself is a multi-dimensional problem because it is related with the process of socio-political transformation like social behaviour, household livelihood, state services, equality and human rights with dignity. It has been observed that immediately after the birth of a child, mother feeds the child for around 6 months and then the child does not get nutritional food for his growth and development due to household food insecurity. A child requires more attention and supplementary nutrition during the first two years immediately after birth because during this period of age, 80 percent physical and mental growth takes place. But due to poverty they don't get qualitative food and after a point, hunger deaths begin.

In Madhya Pradesh 37% deaths registered between 0 to 4 years are due to chronic hunger. The Women and Child Development Department has tried to provide daliya (porridge) and panjiri (bulgar) to children up to the age of 6 years. But this approach has had very limited success. Also, in MP, the under-five mortality rate is 87 per 1000 live births compared to Kerala, which reports 19 per 1,000 live births. Experts say low birth weight babies - 55.1 per cent in MP - are more vulnerable to malnutrition deaths. Madhya Pradesh is one of the most populous states in India and together with Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan and Utter Pradesh will account for 50% of the India' by the year 2012, says the 10th Five-Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India. It is also the state with the highest malnutrition.

The Department of Women and Child Development collects data on children with the help of Anganwadi workers from villages related to the children's height and weight and determines which children are malnourished. But the department does not collect data related to the livelihood, social discrimination and household food insecurity.

Under the national Food For Work Program, the state government provides manual work to the all needy persons along with 10 kg of grain. Employment is the responsibility of the panchayats and other government departments. Contractors and use of labour displacing machinery is banned. In Khandwa, the Spandan organization working for Right to Food and Work had made the connection between chronic malnutrition of children and employment of parents. Spandan has been arguing that families having malnourished children should be given employment on priority basis.

In response, the district administration (through the WCD Department) had taken this step at the state level and issued directions to prioritise such families with malnourished children in the Food for Work program. But the implementation of the FFW program is in the discretion of Department of Rural Development which is not responsive towards children's issues. So implementing the concept of priority in the schemes does not happen.

In the meantime, the children are on the brink. They need immediate health services and to provide them 160 grams daliya to make them healthy does not make sense. They digestion capacity decreases during acute malnutrition. There is no system has in place to provide supplementary nutrition in installments and after a break of 3-4 hours. A report prepared by RCVP Narohana Academy of Administration, which evaluated the Bal Sanjeevni Abiyaan affirms that the Health Department is not taking any responsibility and that badly needed vitamin A is also not provided to the affected children. The report also observed that even if children suffering from severe malnutrition were saved they would become blind due to the lack of vitamin A.

Even when an Anganwadi worker identifies a malnourished child, they are not able to help in the absence of the doctors or the health workers. Anganwadi workers always appeal for help from ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse and Mid-wife) and health officials. If ANMs and health officials wished, they could help, but normally they don't do so because they have not been made responsible since they report to the Health Department. Still, the Anganwadi worker gets less respect than ANM from the community because the ANM's work assumed to be technical in nature. This despite the fact that ANMs are not performing their responsibilities at the community level and are usually not interested in taking the children to the hospital. Anganwadi workers on the other hand play a most crucial role, but they don't receive supplies of supplementary nutrition, medicines, support from the state and training even though high expectations are placed on them.

Government officials usually say that children are dying due to TB, diarrhoea and measles and not due to malnutrition. True. But they conveniently forget that malnutrition creates the ground for these diseases. Only 31% of immunization has been done in Madhya Pradesh, for which the health department is responsible. These diseases occur due to the lack of immunization and decrease the life expectancy of children. Again, the Women and Child Development Department is held responsible for children dying, even though the health department has responsibility too.

Amidst all this, the Department of Child Development announced a new scheme in August 2005 called Bal Shakti Yojana. According to the department, severely malnourished children will be hospitalised and state will also make arrangements for their parents taking care of them in the hospital. The scheme uses colourful words -- it says that children suffering would be admitted in the hospitals till they become healthy and the family members would also be provided the facilities to stay there. The government says it is going to spend an amount of Rs. 12 crores under this scheme, but the facts and figures make these colourful dreams dark.

One, according to a perspective document of the Health Department itself, only a tiny Rs 125 per person is being allotted in the annual budget of the department and this includes costs of medicines and other services. Two, in Madhya Pradesh there are only 12407 beds available in the rural hospitals which are always occupied even when services are not available. 80,000 children are to be treated. If we take out all the patients from the illusive hospitals, we can treat only 12 thousand children at a time. Further, there are only 90-child specialists working in the state system. The state health system requires 718 doctors, (428 in community health centres, 48 in district hospitals and 6 in medical colleges) and emergency doctors. But due to the pressure of the government's work culture and unavailability of infrastructural facilities, many doctors are not ready to work in rural areas.

The Balwadi health centre of Sendhwa block in district Badwani covers 30 villages and its total population is 21,000. For the last three years, the post of the doctor in the centre is lying vacant. In this situation 13 children died due to malnutrition and 16% children are currently suffering from severe malnutrition.

It is well known that health officials and doctors do not take any interest in providing expert services to the rural and marginalised communities in the state. The state government recently terminated the services of 900 doctors who were absent from the work for last 3 years. But doctors say that they are only human and without medicines, equipments and other infrastructural support they cannot perform their duties, and in this situation their presence is useless. It in this light that announcement of the new scheme to redress child malnutrition must be seen.

This issue of child malnutrition is also closely related with the government information system. Information that government officials readily want reaches them immediately through informers. If a meeting is ongoing in tribal villages on the issues of forest and land rights then the informer conveys this to the state government and the chief minister without any hurdles. The Home Department tries to then control such meetings and sometimes orders the arrest of activists immediately. It takes only 5-6 hours to complete this process.

Read the complete story at http://www.indiatogether.com/2005/oct/chi-malnour.htm

India Rejects Quake Aid - "False Pride"

After the recent earthquake in the Kashmir region India was offered Aid by UN and several other countries. Simillarly after Tsunami aid was offered by many organizations/countries but India initially rejected that. Why?. Can India really sufficiently handle the crisis? or in its pride to show it is not a receiver it is not accepting aid?. The article below points that this would mostly be (false) Pride. I agree to most extent. This was also the case after Tsunami specially in A&N region where only few NGO's were allowed to work and Indian army was involved in relief efforts.

Calamities of nature do not just test the capacity of a state. They can also offer unexpected opportunities for political craftsmanship.

=== From NYTimes===
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/international/asia/19quake.html
"In Poonch, 150 miles northwest of the Indian city of Jammu, earthquake survivors await relief that is slow in coming.

Take India. The government has announced that it needs no international aid to recover from the Oct. 8 earthquake that leveled villages in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, killed an estimated 1,300 people there and displaced roughly 30,000 families.

As temperatures fall to near freezing in the hilltop hamlets of Kashmir, the most liberal estimates suggest that fewer than half of the surviving families have tents to sleep in. Yet a full nine days and nights after the quake, Indian officials say they have no need for the United Nations, nor foreign aid agencies, to bring tents from abroad.

Indian officials say that they are able to care for their own, and that tents are coming from private producers and the Indian military. What is more, India has sent aid, including 620 tents, to its neighbor and archrival, Pakistan. "We ourselves are taking care of our victims," said Navtej Sarna, the Foreign Ministry spokesman. "When there are offers by friendly countries and anything is needed, these offers are considered."

It is too early to tell whether India, which seeks a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, can go it alone. Certainly there is anger in Indian-administered Kashmir among people who have been forced to build their own tents out of the wooden beams and tin sheets retrieved from the rubble of their homes. Even so, India's posture says a great deal about the politics of disaster aid, and about India's own ambitions to assert itself as a world power.

India also refused international aid in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, though it later allowed United Nations and private agencies to help. Three years ago, it rebuffed development aid from a number of foreign donors, saying it was no longer necessary. In short, India has been anxious to portray itself as a giver, rather than a receiver. "What we can manage on our own, we do," said Hamid Ansari, a retired Indian diplomat. "There's a certain sense of self-confidence that we can manage it and, let me say, a desire to signal that you are capable of managing things on your own."

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the director of a private research group here called the Center for Policy Research, saw reflected in India's rejection of foreign aid so far a desire to be seen as an emerging global power, or one of what he called "the big boys."

"The risk really is that in our refusal to accept aid I don't think we are keeping people to whom aid might go as central," Mr. Mehta said. "We are playing politics with aid, using aid to make a statement."

Pakistan's approach has been exactly the opposite. Hit a whole lot harder by the Oct. 8 quake - its official death toll stood at 42,000 on Tuesday- Pakistan has appealed for worldwide help and allowed foreigners to travel to its side of Kashmir and to the traditionally well-guarded pockets of North-West Frontier Province, the two areas that suffered the greatest damage.

Pakistan is the world's largest manufacturer of tents, but still cannot produce nearly enough. The United Nations said Tuesday that 350,000 additional tents were urgently needed and that 500,000 earthquake survivors had still not received any medical care, food or other assistance.

There is no agreement on whether India has sufficient tents to care for its own. The Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Indian Army would be able to help make up the shortfall. The army spokesman in Kashmir, Lt. Col. S. K. Batra, cautioned that the military, itself badly hit in the earthquake, could not entirely deplete its own stock. The government's joint secretary of disaster management, Aseem Khurana, vowed that enough tents would be sent within a week. So far, roughly 13,000 of the 30,000 tents required have been distributed, he said, slightly less than half sent by the Indian Army.

State government officials in Kashmir said they were puzzled about the dearth of tents. "It is really eye-opening for us, that in this country with such a large population base, more than a million-strong army, and so many paramilitary forces we just do not have enough tents," said Muzaffar Baig, the Kashmir state finance and planning minister. "Every day we are getting only 300 to 400 tents from the central government."

US troops 'starve Iraqi citizens'

The following piece appeared in the BBC News World Edition on Saturday, October 15th.

This is an example of a significant news piece simply not covered in the United States so far, except for Boston Globe and LA Times. Certainly no where in the respectable New York Times, America's "newspaper of record", Washington Post, etc. There was a good deal of coverage of the vote for the Iraqi constitution on Saturday.

US troops 'starve Iraqi citizens'

A senior United Nations official has accused US-led coalition troops of depriving Iraqi civilians of food and water in breach of humanitarian law.
Human rights investigator Jean Ziegler said they had driven people out of insurgent strongholds that were about to be attacked by cutting supplies.
Mr Ziegler, a Swiss-born sociologist, said such tactics were in breach of international law.
A US military spokesman in Baghdad denied the allegations.
"A drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition's occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population," Mr Ziegler told a press conference in Geneva.
He said coalition forces were using "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."
"This is a flagrant violation of international law," he added.
'False allegations'
Mr Ziegler said he understood the "military rationale" when confronting insurgents who do not respect "any law of war".
But he insisted that civilians who could not leave besieged cities and towns for whatever reason should not suffer as a result of this strategy.
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a US military spokesman, later rejected the accusations.
"Any allegations of us withholding basic needs from the Iraqi people are false," he said.
Even though some supplies had been delayed during fighting, he argued that "all precautions" were being taken to take care of civilians.
"It does not do relief supplies any good if you have them going into a firefight," he said.
The Geneva Conventions forbid depriving civilians of food and water.
Cutting off food supply lines and destroying food stocks is also forbidden.
Mr Ziegler, who opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, said he would urge the UN General Assembly to condemn this practice when he presented his yearly report on 27 October.

A Right to Education Bill, full of wrongs

As many of you know the draft of right to education bill is being discussed currently. Here is a critique of the bill:

http://www.indiatogether.com/2005/oct/edu-rightedu.htm

Some Excerpts:

"Initially, when the Indian Constitution was framed, Article 45 said free and compulsory education for children up to the age of 14 would be a state responsibility and that it would be implemented within 10 years," he says. "Since then, different schemes have come out with different time-frames." The state's responsibilities have been diluted since then, as has the time-frame, which has moved well beyond the initial, stipulated time period to 2010, 2015 or 2020, depending on which scheme one is looking at. Thus, 55 years after the Constitution was passed, India is no closer to achieving its initial goal of universalising education."

"The draft Bill doesn't make any provision for seeking action against the government authorities. "It's a law without teeth, the authorities can't be hauled up in court for violation," emphasises Sadgopal. The Bill instead lays the blame on parents. It suggests that School Management Committees, to be set up with representatives from parents, teachers and local authorities under the Act to monitor the working of schools, can ask parents or guardians to "provide assistance by way of childcare in the school". Says Sadgopal, "Ninety-nine percent of such parents identified by the school committee will be poor people who don't earn minimum wages, or belong to migrant families." By framing such a rule, the government had failed to recognise poverty as a major reason for children not attending school in the first place. And by asking parents to help in the schools, it would put their daily wages at risk, he adds.

Rakesh Senger, an advocacy coordinator for Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude, both of which are NGOs working with child labourers, says that the government doesn't even acknowledge the fact that child labourers and migrants seldom figure in the enrolment surveys it conducts. "The government has to realise that poverty, illiteracy and child labour are part of a triangle paradigm. The children who aren't going to school are the ones who are or go on to become child labourers," he explains.

This is why the government cannot look at education in isolation, say educationists. "The availability of schools, even good schools, cannot ensure that every child will have an education. There are other socio-economic issues that play a role and the success of the Bill depends on changes in other areas - there has to be a complete change in development policies and the education system," points out Tyagi.

Chakrabarti says that the reasons why a child is out of school could include: the fact the child has to work; the caste system in many places such as West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the so-called upper castes don't allow the 'lower castes' to even enter the premises of the school; and the lack of facilities in a school, such as toilets, which deter girls in particular from attending school. The distance at which a school is located is also a factor - in tribal areas, for instance, the rule is that there has to be a school for every 300 people. "In one tribal village, there will be say, 125 people, and from that village to the next, the distance could be five kilometres," says Chakrabarti. It would be difficult for children to negotiate this distance daily.

That any attempt to ensure every child has a right to education should take these factors into consideration is clear from a visit to Viratnagar in Jaipur district, Rajasthan. Gulab Chand Balai, a 17-year-old who attends the Rajkiya Madhyamavik Secondary School here, says that the 'upper castes' would not allow Dalits to enter the school earlier, until BBA activists stepped in. As part of its project for 'child-friendly villages', BBA works in the area, creating awareness among people about child labour - many of the children in the villages are engaged in carpet weaving - and encouraging parents to send children to schools.

It fell upon a panchayat of children, created under the BBA project, to lobby for classes to be introduced up to the 10th standard in the sole school in the area. Earlier, schooling was available only up to the eighth standard. "Girls wouldn't study beyond that because the school was so far away," says 16-year-old Hitendra Kumar Sharma, a tenth standard student. There were no toilets for girls either, which deterred many parents from sending their girl child to school. Today, there are toilets and hand pumps to provide water, but despite all the efforts, the school has only two teachers for all of 500 students. "The older students help the teachers manage the lower classes," says Sharma.

This is precisely the situation that educationists want to avoid. Senger stresses that there is no point in claiming every child has the right to an education if the education provided is in itself wanting. A recent 'school report' of 14 developing countries in the Asia Pacific prepared by the Global Campaign of Education, a coalition of development organisations, ranked India ninth in its support for education, trailing behind Bangladesh, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Says Senger, "There are no women teachers in schools, no water, no blackboards despite Operation Blackboard (a scheme that envisaged providing blackboards in all schools). What is the point of a Bill if such practical problems aren't addressed?"

Advocacy Group - A Formal Introduction

I have mentioned the advocacy group in the blog before. Some of the members of the group have even posted article on women's status in India. Below is a more formal introduction to the group, its aims and activites written by Raghav and edited by Paramita.

The Asha Advocacy Group: Means of Change

Asha for Education does an excellent job of partnering with various groups in India that perform grass roots work. For this purpose, Asha solicits donations which are then disbursed at zero overhead. A lot of work is involved in this seemingly simple process, such as identifying genuine partner groups, evaluating their proposals, maintenance of regular contact with the partner groups, publicity for various fund drives, keeping accounts of the disbursed amounts for tax auditing, etc. Today, Asha has over sixty chapters world-wide and raises over one million US dollars annually. All of these funds are maximally utilised for grass roots activities for bringing about socio-economic changes through education. Quite impressive indeed!

The time has come to ask whether a large organization such as Asha should merely continue doing what it already is doing, namely being a “slam dunk” charity, or expand the nature and scope of its activities. While what Asha currently does is immensely valuable, it does not directly influence government policy or bring pressure on the government for better implementation of existing policies. Let’s consider the implementation of some Government schemes in schools as an example. Several reports had showed that Government policies such as the mid-day meal program can have a huge impact on education. It is well-known that introducing the mid-day meal program into schools tremendously increased attendance in schools. To quote the renowned development economist, Jean Dreze, "…well-devised school meals have much to contribute to the advancement of elementary education, child nutrition, and social equity". However, while examining the history of the mid-day meal program implementation in India, we learn that this was not done at the behest of well-intentioned government officials. Rather, it was the widespread lobbying of grass root organizations that this scheme finally saw the light of the day.. The “Right to Food” campaign (web site is http://www.righttofoodindia.org) was instrumental in leading upto the Supreme Court ruling on November 28, 2001 asking all states to introduce cooked meals in all government and government-assisted primary schools. There are many other groups working towards policy-level advocacy. Another example is CRY (Child Relief and You) which is engaged in promoting NAFRE, the National Alliance for Fundamental Right to Education.

The Advocacy group at Asha-Seattle was recently initiated with the intention of utilising Asha's influence to lobby for policy-level changes in the educational system of India. While we began by analyzing the current NCERT curriculum framework for middle schools , the topic for future focus that has emerged from our discussion groups is gender-based issues, including education. The rationale for this,, other than the obvious moral imperative, is that studies have shown that women's empowerment has far-reaching consequences on overall development. For example, women's education is the single most influential factor in improving child health and in reducing infant mortality. Women's education also directly impacts the fertility rate, which is the average number of children per couple. A fertility rate of 2.1 is the replacement rate, whereby a population replaces itself. Recent statistics show that India fares very poorly in women's education. As of 2001, only 47% of adult women were literate in India, in contrast to figures like 97% and 88.6% for Cuba and Sri Lanka, respectively. In fact, India is much worse than Bangladesh on several human development factors, even though India’s growth rate (in terms of GDP) is much higher. For instance, maternal mortality rates in India and Bangladesh are 540 and 380 per 100,000 live births, respectively. Several indicators of gender bias, such as the female male ratios in primary education, and labor force participation also place Bangladesh in a more favorable light. Very laudably, Bangladesh actually spends almost double the amount that India does, as a percentage of the GDP, on public health. All of this goes to show the utterly lop-sided and distorted nature of India's development strategy. Even within India, the disparity between the various states is quite striking (please see the following article “Looking Beyond Numbers”). For example, the fertility rates in Kerala and Tamil Nadu are less than 2.1 (the replacement rate), whereas the fertility rate of Rajasthan is 4.2. Similarly, while the overall female male ratio for India is 1058:1000, the corresponding ratio in specific pockets like Haryana is much lower, at 861:1000. Indeed, one of the primary reasons why states such as Kerala and Himachal Pradesh have much higher literacy rates is because these states have ensured empowerment of women through various policy implementations.

It is worth reflecting how a free and open press in a democratic society ought to handle these issues. If we are to believe the often repeated clichéd taglines of media empires, , we would expect these issues to make the headlines of our papers. However, as we know from media reporting today that nothing could be farther from reality. This real picture of India, being far removed from the image of a glitzy, booming software empire that is emerging as a major economic superpower, is simply not newsworthy always! It is preferable or rather “fashionable” to express outrage, instead, at the plight of women under the Taliban while turning a blind eye to the atrocities at home. This ought to tell us a good deal about the intellectual and moral culture of our times.

The Advocacy group continues to study these and other issues. Our findings are posted as referenced blog entries, accompanied by pertinent bibliography (please see http://volunteerthoughts.blogspot.com/). These articles are meant to provide information to the reader and also to intiate discussions. The advocacy group plans to network with other like-minded groups in India and US and through petitions, focus on lobbying-based campaigns to bring about changes in exiting policies.The other goal of the group is to spread awareness among the local community and among volunteers. We plan to do this through blogging, public presentations/workshops and discussion fora. If you are interested in joining the group or knowing more about it, please contact asha-seattle-info@yahoogroups.com.

The ideas and views expressed in this article solely belongs to the author and in no way represent Asha for Education’s viewpoints.

The economics of conservation

Rahul, who is an "energy researcher" studying Natural Gas, asks if there is a conflict between economic viability and sustainable resource utilization, and applies economic theory coupled with science, to suggest that economists might have to change some of their views on the issue.

Now, if only looking at the primary motive of an economic enterprise (direct profitability), it appears as if there isn’t necessarily a direct co-relation between (say) the environment, and the economic aspect. But, if looked at holistically, there is. For example, mining (for lets say steel) is a very profitable industry. It might be that a specific ore rich area is a dense forest on hills. Given its value as a resource, it seems essential to mine it, and of far greater value than that one little forest. But, the resultant deforestation is bound to result in deteriorating air quality in that area. Additionally, the hills serve as catchments for the local water sources, which run dry. The amount of soil erosion substantially increases. This results in local agriculture suffering, and the health of the people deteriorating rapidly. Economists do not consider the costs (in terms of human health, or actual resources lost due to losses in livelihood) due to the factory. The question to be asked is if the total value (of the particular economic enterprise) in absolute monetary terms offsets the losses in revenue due to the losses in health and productivity of an entire region. Rahul suggests incorporating an economic value for these losses, that should be considered in the original projection of the economic enterprise.

But the example I’ve taken largely has anecdotal or speculative evidence. Yet a lot of hard-nosed, practical environmentalists (who value the environment, but realize that economic factors are going to be paramount in human societies) are beginning to study environment and conservation in terms of monetary value (nothing speaks to developers or economists like money). The goals of preserving bio-diversity are difficult, and slippery. For example, the Florida panther is extremely endangered. But the land it lives on in Florida is very valuable for commercial enterprise. Sure, the loss of the panther (a sub-species of the mountain lion/cougar) is terrible, but is it far more important than the economy, economists ask? Anecdotal evidence is not an argument against this. But the more practical environmental researchers have realized this relationship between economics and conservation, and this is being reflected in actual research.

For example, take the coffee industry. It is extremely valuable, and employs millions of people worldwide. Coffee is grown on hillsides that were once lush tropical forests. Obviously, the losses to forests have been massive, but given the demand, the logic went that greater coffee plantation areas are needed. But now, hard-nosed studies are showing otherwise. Coffee can self pollinate, but bee visitation can increase yields of coffee by 15-50%. Now, with decrease in native habitat (read tropical forest), the pollinator diversity and visitation rapidly decreases. So, there is some importance of native habitat to the coffee plantations themselves. A detailed and thorough study (with rather conservative numbers) shows the decrease in visitation of pollinators in plantations due to surrounding forest depletion (2004, Conserv. Biol. 18, 1–10). A more impressive study (PNAS, August 24, 2004, vol. 101, no. 34, 12579-12582) (with more conservative numbers) quantifies the economic losses (in coffee productivity) due to forest depletion. In the study done in Costa Rica, a 1 km range of forest patches (for effective pollination) was taken. In the plantation the first 480 hectares were within 1 km of large forest patches, while the rest were not. In the region with forest patches, the output was 21.5 fa/ha, while in the rest, it was only 17.8 fa/ha. The income losses in the region without forest patches was $62,000 per year. So here, more was not better. This study did not even consider indirect benefits (like carbon sinks or water retention/purification) of forests).

Last year, South Asia was devastated by the tsunami. Anecdotal evidence told us that mangrove forests (that existed along the coast, but had since been depleted) would have protected the region. This was even seen in areas like Pichavaram in Tamil Nadu, that surprisingly had little damage due to the tsunami (due to the forests), but neighboring regions were severely affected. But a quantitative study in the area was missing. A recent report (Current Biology, Volume 15, Issue 12 , 21 June 2005, Pages R443-R447), systematically studied sites in Sri Lanka, with different degrees of degradation, and quantified the damage done by the tsunami in these areas (these were all directly in the path of the tsunami, with similar wave energies). Their results clearly showed that where there were mangroves, there was substantial protection against the tsunami. More surprisingly, the damage to the mangrove forests themselves was minimal (due to their own adaptation for survival in such environments!). There was a clear difference between mangrove forests, and mangrove associates (cryptic ecological degradation), and plantations of mangrove associates didn’t make it. Conversion of mangrove forests in to shrimp farms, resorts, urban or agricultural land contributed to the massive human and economic losses due to the tsunami, worth billions of dollars, and countless human lives.

In both these specific cases (with solid numbers), economists did not consider an economic value to the environment (that was being affected).

Our most recent example of course, is with the devastation Katrina wrought recently. Louisiana has massively depleted wetlands, and unfortunately the city itself was not protected against level 4 hurricanes. On a recent NPR show, a planner from Holland was interviewed. He said that Holland had very strict wetland conservation rules, and also spent a fair bit of money in ensuring level 5 hurricane safety to every inhabited region. Sure, the money spent was fairly large, but, in his own words, compared to the devastation bad economic planning had allowed the hurricane to wreck, it was peanuts.

Here’s Rahul’s solution:
Value Added Tax can be modified to include an exergy cost (sum of exergy consumption from the environment and waste exergy released to the environment).The tax is a measure of the physical value. This would automatically increase the costs of products that have harmful waste products and renewables would get a boost..

(cross posted at Balancing life).