What mackerel and a volcano can tell us about climate change

                                                                                                                                                Researchers assert that bit of history gives clues about what food security could be like in a world that is fast accepting the reality of global warming

What could an Indonesian volcanic eruption, a 200-year-old climate disaster and a surge in the consumption of mackerel tell us about today’s era of global warming? Quite a bit, researchers say.

A group of scientists and academics with the University of Massachusetts and other institutions made that assessment while conducting research about a long-ago calamity in New England that was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora half a world away in 1815.

A cooled climate led to deaths of livestock and changed fish patterns in New England, leaving many people dependent on the mackerel, an edible fish that was less affected than many animals. The researchers assert that bit of history gives clues about what food security could be like in the modern era of climate change.

“How we respond to these events is going to be critically important for how we come out of this in the long term,” said Karen Alexander, the lead author of the study and a research fellow in environmental conservation. “We can learn from the past how people dealt with the unanticipated.”

The research group’s findings were published this month in the journal Science Advances. They looked at what the catastrophic Tambora eruption meant for the Gulf of Maine and nearby human food systems.

The Tambora eruption was one of the most powerful in recorded history, and was followed by a short time of climate change specifically, global cooling and severe weather. Its impact on weather, food availability and human and animals deaths worldwide has been studied extensively. The year that followed the eruption, 1816, is often described as the “Year Without a Summer.”


The researchers behind the Science Advances article found that alewives, a fish used for everything from fertilizer to food by 19th-Century New Englanders, did not fare well. But mackerel had better survival rates and became a criticalsource of protein and jobs, Alexander said.

As crops failed and famine began to spread, the little fish emerged as a staff of life, the report states. It’s a scenario similar to what parts of the developing world are experiencing today as climate change affects food security.

The study states there is a parallel between the need for immediate adaptation after Tambora and the challenges in coping with the climate-driven devastation caused by storms, floods and droughts today. It notes that the loss of food staples due to climate change caused people in the northeastern states to move something seen today in places such as Pakistan and Syria.

“Understanding how adaptive responses to extreme events can trigger unintended consequences may advance long-term planning for in an uncertain future,” the report states.

The report illustrates how abrupt changes in climate can have unexpected consequences long after conditions moderate, said Andy Pershing, chief scientific officer and ecosystem modeller for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.

“Good stewardship of our natural resources can help buffer against some climate impacts. Unlike the people in 1815, we have an idea of what’s coming, and we need to make sure we are prepared,” he said.

Setback to climate action plans

That Donald Trump’s scepticism about climate change will adversely impact policies to address global warming became abundantly clear minutes after his swearing-in as U.S. President. The White House website quickly deleted all mention of climate change. Turning its attention to other agencies, the Trump administration instructed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to follow suit and scrub all mention of climate change from its website as well. But following a protest by scientists and others, the administration softened its stand and indicated that the agency’s website was only being “reviewed” and that it had “no immediate plans to remove the content” on climate change. Mr. Trump has also resurrected the controversial Keystone XL, that former President Barack Obama had blocked after a protracted battle with policymakers, and Dakota Access pipelines. The Trump administration had issued a gag order to scientists at the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop them from speaking to the media; it subsequently changed its policy with respect to EPA but has mandated that even routine data and studies be “reviewed” before being released to the public. In line with his thinking that “global warming is an expensive hoax”, Mr. Trump plans to re-energise the fossil-fuel industry. The America First Energy Plan listed on the White House website aims to increase fossil fuel extraction in the name of creating more jobs, and in the process “eliminating”, among other things, Mr. Obama’s climate action plan.

Even more alarming is Mr. Trump’s intention to reverse America’s involvement in the historic Paris climate accord. Under the pact, 195 countries have agreed to limit the increase in global temperature since pre-industrial time to less than 2°C in the 21st century, and try to work towards reaching a tougher target of 1.5°C. In November 2014, Mr. Obama announced a new target to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. Among other measures taken in 2015, the U.S. had finalised the clean power plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector to 32% below 2005 levels by 2030. With the average global temperature already reaching 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels, there are fears that further delay will have long-term repercussions that would be near impossible to mitigate. With the current and proposed policies by the U.S. already inadequate to meet the Paris target, any negative deviation from the plan will have implications for the entire world.

World’s Oldest Bird Welcomes New Chick

Beloved Laysan albatross Wisdom, the world's oldest banded wild bird, has added yet another branch to her sprawling family tree.

In a blog post, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service reveals that the bird, who is at least 65 years old, and her mate welcomed a healthy hatchling into the world on February 1.

Wildlife researchers named the chick Kukini, which is Hawaiian for "messenger."


Throughout the colony, Wisdom's isn't the albatross family with a new addition -- officials have identified nearly 500,000 active nests at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, a USFWS facility in the northern Pacific Ocean that houses the world's largest albatross colony.

Wisdom was first banded by renowned ornithologist Chandler Robbins in 1956. She has "nested consecutively" at the refuge since then, according to USFWS data.

Based on decades of observations, researchers believe that she has raised as many as 40 chicks and logged millions of miles of ocean flight time throughout her life.


"Wisdom is an iconic symbol of inspiration and hope," Refuge Manager Robert Peyton remarked in a statement.

"She is breaking longevity records of previously banded birds by at least a decade. With over a million albatross on Midway Atoll alone, this shows just how much is left to learn about the natural world around us."

Source- Discovery Blog

Averting water wars in Asia

Water is a precious resource, for which there is no substitute. One-third of the people in the world facing water stress or water scarcity live in India, which generously signed a treaty in 1960 reserving over 80 per cent of the waters of the six-river Indus system for its adversary Pakistan. Since then, water shortages in India’s Indus basin have become acute, triggering silent water wars between states in the north. The paradox is that India has failed to tap its treaty-allocated 19.48 per cent share of the Indus resources.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done well to initiate moves to correct this anomaly. The high-level inter-ministerial task force set up by Modi for this purpose held its meeting on December 23.

Averting water-related conflicts is actually a major challenge across Asia, which has less freshwater per capita than any other continent, except Antarctica. This reality has helped promote growing interstate and intrastate disputes over shared water resources. An MIT study this year found a high risk that Asia’s current water crisis could worsen, to severe water shortages by 2050.

Yet Asia’s maritime-security challenges draw much greater international attention than its river-water disputes. This is largely because sea-related issues, such as in the South China Sea, affect even outside powers by threatening the safety of sea lanes and freedom of navigation. The truth is this: Asia’s sharpening competition over transnationally shared freshwater resources holds strategic ramifications just as ominous as those relating to maritime territorial disputes.

Recent developments are highlighting how the competition and fight over shared water resources is a major contributory factor to the growing geopolitical discord and tensions in Asia. In fact, China’s ‘territorial grab’ in the South China Sea has been accompanied by a quieter ‘freshwater grab’ in transnational river basins. Re-engineering trans-boundary water flows is integral to China’s strategy to employ power, control, influence, and fashion a strongly Sino-centric Asia.

China’s relationship with India, for example, is roiled by increasing discord over shared water resources. To complete a major dam project, China said recently that it has cut off the flow of a tributary of the Brahmaputra River, the lifeline of Bangladesh and northeastern India. The tributary drains into the Brahmaputra within Tibet itself.

The blocking of the Xiabuqu River’s flow comes amid ongoing Chinese work to dam another Brahmaputra tributary, the Lhasa River, into a series of artificial lakes.

With the focus of China’s dam building and other water diversions moving from internal rivers to international rivers, Chinese mega-projects now are increasingly concentrated in the resource-rich minority homelands, especially the Tibetan Plateau — the starting point of 10 major Asian rivers.

This has spurred growing concern in downstream countries over how China is using its control over Asia’s largest river systems to re-engineer cross-border flows. With as many as 18 downstream neighbours, China enjoys riparian dominance of a kind unmatched in the world.

Meanwhile, China’s close ally, Pakistan, has sought to initiate — for the second time in this decade — international arbitral tribunal proceedings against India under the terms of the Indus Waters Treaty. Seeking international intercession is part of Pakistan’s ‘water war’ strategy against upstream India. Indeed, Pakistan has used the treaty to sustain its conflict and tensions with India, including over Kashmir.

Asia’s economic rise has been aided by peace and stability. But the upsurge of resource and territorial disputes are highlighting major new dangers, including the linkage between water and peace. In the coming years, water scarcity could become Asia’s defining crisis. In this light, India must treat water as a strategic resource for its own well-being.

The author is a strategic thinker and commentator

तूफान के निशान

देश ने समुद्री लहरों का सबसे भयानक कोप दिसंबर 2004 में देखा, जब सुनामी ने

दक्षिण भारत के साथ-साथ श्रीलंका और इंडोनेशिया पर भी कहर बरपाया था।

प्राकृतिक आपदा को रोका नहीं जा सकता। पर उसके कहर को कम जरूर किया जा सकता है, और जाहिर है, यह निर्णायक रूप से पूर्व-सूचना तथा पूर्व-तैयारी पर निर्भर करता है। ‘वरदा’ तूफान से, पूर्व के अनुभवों की तुलना में, जान-माल का कम नुकसान हुआ, तो इसका बड़ा कारण चेतावनी प्रणाली का विकास है। तूफान के आने की सूचना समय से लोगों तक पहुंचा दी गई थी और सरकारों ने भी अपनी तैयारी कर ली थी। सोमवार को दोपहर बाद जब वरदा नामक समुद्री तूफान तमिलनाडु के तट से टकराया, उसके पहले राज्य सरकार ने कोई दस हजार लोगों को तटीय क्षेत्र से हटा कर सुरक्षित स्थानों पर पहुंचा दिया था। इसी तरह आंध्र प्रदेश की सरकार ने भी हजारों लोगों को तटीय क्षेत्र से दूर पहुंचा दिया था। मछुआरों समेत तटीय इलाकों में रहने वाले सारे लोगों को तूफान के बारे में आगाह कर दिया गया था। केंद्रीय आपदा रक्षक बल के कई दस्तों और सेना की कई टुकड़ियों को आपात-सहायता के लिए पहले ही बुला लिया गया था। अभी तक तमिलनाडु और आंध्र प्रदेश में तूफान के चलते कुल मिलाकर दस लोगों के मारे जाने की खबर है। क्या पता यह तादाद कहीं ज्यादा होती, अगर वरदा से निपटने की पूर्व-तैयारी न हो पाती।

हाल के इतिहास में जिस सबसे भयंकर चक्रवात की याद लोगों को है वह 1999 में ओड़िशा में आया था। जब वह चक्रवात जगतसिंहपुर जिले के पारादीप बंदरगाह से टकराया तो उसकी गति करीब ढाई सौ किलोमीटर प्रतिघंटा थी। उस तूफान ने भयावह तबाही मचाई थी। हजारों लोग मारे गए और लाखोें घर उजड़ गए थे। उसके मुकाबले वरदा की रफ्तार काफी कम थी, सवा सौ से डेढ़ सौ किलोमीटर के बीच। पर जान-माल का नुकसान अपेक्षया कम हुआ तो इसकी वजह तूफान की गति कम होने के अलावा बरती गई सतर्कता भी थी। ओड़िशा के चक्रवाती तूफान के बाद देश ने समुद्री लहरों का सबसे भयानक कोप दिसंबर 2004 में देखा, जब सुनामी ने दक्षिण भारत के साथ-साथ श्रीलंका और इंडोनेशिया पर भी कहर बरपाया था। उसी के बाद चेतावनी प्रणाली विकसित करने पर तेजी से काम चला। फिर, अंतरिक्ष कार्यक्रम में हुई प्रगति से इसमें और मदद मिली। अब मौसम संबंधी भविष्यवाणियां पहले से ज्यादा प्रामाणिक होने लगी हैं। चक्रवाती तूफान के साथ अक्सर भारी बारिश भी होती है। तूफान, तेज हवाओं और भारी बारिश ने चेन्नई तथा चित्तूर समेत तमिलनाडु और आंध्र के कई तटीय जिलों में बहुत सारे पेड़ और मकान ढहा दिए हैं।

यों चेन्नई हवाई अड्डे से विमानों के उड़ान भरने का क्रम फिर से चालू हो गया है, और गिरे हुए पेड़ हटा कर कई प्रमुख रास्ते फिर से आवागमन के लिए खोल दिए गए हैं। पर कई रास्ते अब भी बंद हैं और कुछ इलाकों में बिजली की आपूर्ति फिलहाल ठप है। सामान्य स्थिति बहाल होने में अभी वक्त लग सकता है। वरदा की पूर्व सूचना मिल जाने और बचाव की पूर्व तैयारी हो जाने पर लोगों ने राहत की सांस ली है। पर तूफान की मारकता और कम हो सकती थी अगर समुद्रतटीय वनों को नष्ट नहीं किया गया होता। सुनामी के समय यह देखा गया था कि जहां मैंग्रोव वन थे वहां कम तबाही हुई। लेकिन विडंबना यह है कि सुनामी के भीषण अनुभव के बाद भी मैंग्रोव वनों को बचाने का कोई खास प्रयास शुरू नहीं हो पाया, और यह कोताही अब भी जारी है।

Rights for the rightful owners

On the tenth anniversary of the historic passage of the Forest Rights Act, tribal resistance to defend their rights is growing even as government after government tries to dilute its provisions

On this day 10 years ago the historic Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act was passed in the Lok Sabha. Its conception and passage was the result of the decades of struggles and sacrifices of millions of tribals across India, of their organisations, of numerous activists and intellectuals working on tribal issues, and because of the commitment and efforts of the Left parties.

Attempts at dilution

A century ago colonial chicanery had turned tribal owners of the forests and its resources into encroachers. A decade ago, the Indian inheritors of this legacy of fraud were working against the Bill till literally the last moment. The real encroachers and plunderers of the forests, the mining companies, the private power sector companies, those involved in irrigation projects, the timber and paper industries, the forest resort tourist industry had high stakes in preventing the passage of the Bill. They were in the company of fundamentalist wildlife and environmentalist groups with their close links with the powerful forest bureaucracy. They made a motley though influential crowd and had the ear of very important people in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government hierarchy.

They succeeded in diluting some important recommendations of the Parliamentary Select Committee on community forest rights, access to minor forest produce and so on. The clause that Non-tribal Traditional Forest Dwellers would have to show evidence of their occupation of the land for 75 years virtually negated the inclusion of these largely poorer sections, many of them Dalits, in the law. The Left had proposed that for these sections the Supreme Court-proposed cut-off year of 1980 would be appropriate, while for tribal communities the cut-off year should be 2005. But at the last moment the government surreptitiously brought in the three generation or 75-year clause.

The Bill with these obnoxious clauses was circulated and listed for immediate discussion and passage. As soon as we saw it, the Chairman of the Select Committee, Kishore Chandra Deo, and I rushed to the chamber of Pranab Mukherjee, then External Affairs Minister, who was the point person for the Bill on behalf of the government in the negotiations with the Left. There was a mini-drama and heated discussion which finally ended with the arrival of the Tribal Affairs Minister, P.R. Kyndiah, who had been summoned by his senior. In the discussions he assured us that he would move amendments to the Bill. At that time there was no choice but to accept the assurance at face value. It had taken more than a year of struggle to finally get the Bill included in the business agenda of Parliament and listed. The powerful lobbies against the Bill would have used our opposition to once again shelve it. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was playing a duplicitous role — its Adivasi MPs supported the Bill while others were dead against it. They ran a campaign among MPs from the Northeast that if passed, the law would legalise encroachment by “illegal Bangladeshis”. This was utterly misleading, but anything was fair in the war against tribal rights.

The missing amendments

The Bill became law, but without the amendments promised. After much discussion and pressure, some of them were included in the Rules. This also was a big struggle and there was a strong group of activists who along with the Left representatives could work out a fairly good set of Rules. It included giving prime importance to the role of the gram sabhas.

In spite of its inadequacies, there can be little doubt that the Forest Rights Act (FRA) stands as a powerful instrument to protect the rights of tribal communities. It is a hindrance to corporate interests to their free loot and plunder of India’s mineral resources, its forests, its water. But the Narendra Modi government is systematically implementing its plan to weaken and dilute the Act in several ways.

New attempts at dilution

First, it has brought a series of legislation that undermine the rights and protections given to tribals in the FRA, including the condition of “free informed consent” from gram sabhas for any government plans to remove tribals from the forests and for the resettlement or rehabilitation package. The laws were pushed through by the Modi government without any consultation with tribal communities. They include the amendments to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act and a host of amendments to the Rules to the FRA which undermine the FRA. The requirement of public hearings and gram sabha consent has been done away with for mid-sized coal mines. BJP State governments and partners in the National Democratic Alliance such as the Telugu Desam Party government in Andhra Pradesh have introduced government orders to subvert the FRA. In Telangana, in total violation of the FRA, the government has illegalised traditional methods of forest land cultivation. The Jharkhand government has brought amendments to the Chotanagpur and also the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Acts which eliminate rights of gram sabhas and permit tribal land to be taken over by corporates, real estate players, private educational and medical institutions in the name of development, without tribal consent. In Maharashtra the government has issued a notification of “Village Rules” which gives all rights of forest management to government-promoted committees as opposed to the gram sabha. This is the law-based offensive.

Second, there is the policy-based war. The Modi government has declared its commitment to ensuring “ease of business”, which translates into clearing all private sector-sponsored projects in tribal-inhabited forest areas. The National Board for Wildlife, with the Prime Minister as Chairperson, was reconstituted, slashing the number of independent experts from 15 members to three, packing it with subservient officials. In the first three months of assuming office, the Modi government cleared 33 out of 41 proposals diverting over 7,000 hectares of forest land. Of this the major share was for Gujarat companies. In two years the clearances for projects have included “diversion” — or more appropriately land grab — to the extent of 1.34 lakh hectares of forest land. In many areas this will lead to massive displacement of tribal communities. In the multipurpose Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh alone, now given a national status by the Central government, 2 lakh hectares of forest land will be submerged affecting around 85,000 families, more than half tribals, including 100 habitations of particularly vulnerable tribal communities. In almost all these projects, the affected tribal families have not yet received their pattas (land ownership documents), one of the conditions set by the FRA. This wilful disregard and blatant violation of the legal protections given to tribals has become the cornerstone of the policy.

Third, there is the deliberate freeze of the actual implementation of the FRA. Neither individual pattas nor pattas for community forest resources are being given. During the UPA-II government the implementation of the Act was virtually hijacked by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and rejections of claims increased. However, now the situation has worsened, and the rate of rejections has gone up during the Modi regime. According to one analysis, between May 2015 and April 2016, eight out of every 10 claims were rejected. This is the ‘Gujarat model’ in operation. The State has one of the worst records in implementation of the FRA. Although 98 per cent of the approximately 1.9 lakh tribal claims had been approved by the gram sabhas, the bureaucrats in the sub-divisional committee and above brought the acceptance down to just 38 per cent. This is in sharp contrast to a Left-led State such as Tripura, where 98 per cent of tribal claims have been recorded and titles given.

Mixed signals from the judiciary

The judiciary has also had a role to play. The same institution, which gave tribals hope through the Samata judgment, the historic Niyamgiri judgment, has also clubbed together a number of hostile petitions to the FRA and is giving them a sympathetic hearing. In January last year the court in an ominous intervention in a writ petition filed by Wildlife Trust of India and others issued notice to all State governments to “file an affidavit giving data regarding the number of claims rejected within the territory of the State and the extent of land over which such claims were made and rejected and the consequent action taken up by the State after rejection of the claims”.

This has rightly been taken by tribal communities and their organisations as a prelude to mass evictions. Maharashtra issued a notification dated April 23, 2015, directing the police to take action against “identified encroachers”, namely those whose claims have been rejected. Till 1985, the department of “Tribal Affairs” was under the Home Ministry. Tribal rights and struggles for justice were viewed as a “law and order issue, always a problem”. Under the present dispensation this retrograde approach seems to have been resurrected.

On the tenth anniversary of the historic passage of the FRA, tribal resistance is growing all over the country to defend their rights under FRA and other related issues

The nowhere people

People migrating due to environmental disasters should be accorded ‘refugee’ status in international law

An increasing number of people globally are facing displacement due to droughts, famines, rising sea levels and other natural disasters caused by climate change. This class of migrants has been labelled as ‘environmental refugees’ in popular literature. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international body reviewing trends of internal displacement, an estimated 24 million people are being displaced annually by natural disasters since 2008. This crisis will make almost half a billion people worldwide “environmental refugees” by the end of the century.

The UN Refugee Convention (1951) grants certain rights to people fleeing persecution because of race, religion, nationality, affiliation to a particular social group, or political opinion. The rights they are entitled to follow principles of non-discrimination, non-penalisation, and non-refoulement. However, people migrating due to environmental disasters have no such recognition of their ‘refugee’ status in international law, leaving them without any basic rights of rehabilitation and compensation. In September 2015, in the run-up to the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris, New Zealand reportedly refused a man and his family asylum. Ioane Teitiota from Kiribati, who had sought it on the grounds of being an ‘environmental refugee’, lost his appeal before the New Zealand Supreme Court, which rejected the argument that he faced persecution because of climate change, since no such category is listed under the UN Refugee Convention. He was deported to his native island, which regularly witnesses environmental problems including storm surges, flooding and water contamination.

The Paris let-down

The Paris Agreement presented a unique opportunity to set the record straight by addressing the challenge of increasing environmental refugees. Before the negotiations commenced, numerous demands were made to incorporate ways to tackle climate migration in the final agreement. These included recognising the threat posed by climate change to livelihoods and human safety, and environmental refugees or migrants affected by climate change; providing technical and capacity building support to national and local initiatives tackling such displacement; and developing suitable policies to manage loss and damage by addressing climate change-induced displacement. However, the Paris Agreement falls considerably short of these expectations. While some hail this agreement for alluding to the rights of ‘migrants’ in its Preamble, it is an anaemic attempt at appreciating the gravity of this crisis. There is also little follow-up in the text of the agreement to address this problem.

The agreement, in Paragraph 50 of the Loss and Damage section, creates a task force to build upon existing work and develop recommendations for addressing climate migration. But this is meaningless for two main reasons — first, the recommendations of the task force have no binding authority; and second, no details are provided on its functions, operations, funding and other aspects. This ambiguity further erodes confidence in the realistic capability of this task force to effectively tackle climate migration.

The way forward

Almost one year after the Paris Agreement, its significance in displaying collective political will to take meaningful action against climate change cannot be undermined. However, this should not excuse its deficiencies in addressing a burgeoning population of environmental refugees.

The draft of the Paris Agreement discussed before COP 21 provided for a Climate Change Displacement Coordination Facility. This facility was intended to target organised migration and planned relocation of displaced persons, securing emergency relief, and arranging compensation for those displaced — actions more meaningful than those of the task force in the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, this coordination facility did not make it to the final text of the agreement, but it may be worthwhile to reconsider its establishment.

While such a coordination facility can provide short-term support to relocate migrants and rehabilitate them in safer regions, a permanent solution requires an international treaty framework that recognises ‘environmental refugees’ and the obligations of nation states in accommodating them within their territories. We are already witnessing a world that is reactionary towards political refugees. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump are two events that testify to the underlying paranoia towards immigrants. Ignoring environmental refugees or their status under international law keeps them in legal limbo and endangers their survival.

This scenario can be averted by either expanding the ambit of the existing UN Refugee Convention to include climate migration, or by creating an independent treaty framework addressing the challenges of climate change-induced migration comprehensively. It is also pertinent to mention that while India, the U.S., and China have all ratified the Paris Agreement, there is little discussion on steps to be taken by the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases. The absence of such discourse is ironic given that the three countries are predicted to suffer tremendously from climate change-induced migration, resulting in large-scale displacement of their own populations. Therefore, it should be in their collective interest to lead efforts on finding an international resolution to this problem before the ensuing harm becomes irreparable.

Ameen Jauhar is a Research Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi. Views are personal.

Permian Period: Climate, Animals & Plants

The Permian Period was the final period of the Paleozoic Era. Lasting from 299 million to 251 million years ago, it followed the Carboniferous Period and preceded the Triassic Period. By the early Permian, the two great continents of the Paleozoic, Gondwana and Euramerica, had collided to form the supercontinent Pangaea. Pangaea was shaped like a thickened letter “C.” The top curve of the “C” consisted of landmasses that would later become modern Europe and Asia. North and South America formed the curved back of the “C” with Africa inside the curve. India, Australia and Antarctica made up the low curve. Inside the “C” was the Tethys Ocean, and most of the rest of Earth was the Panthalassic Ocean. Because Pangaea was so immense, the interior portions of the continent had a much cooler, drier climate than had existed in the Carboniferous.

Marine life

Little is known about the huge Panthalassic Ocean, as there is little exposed fossil evidence available. Fossils of the shallower coastal waters around the Pangaea continental shelf indicate that reefs were large and diverse ecosystems with numerous sponge and coral species. Ammonites, similar to the modern nautilus, were common, as were brachiopods. The lobe-finned and spiny fishes that gave rise to the amphibians of the Carboniferous were being replaced by true bony fish. Sharks and rays continued in abundance.

Plants

On land, the giant swamp forests of the Carboniferous began to dry out. The mossy plants that depended on spores for reproduction were being replaced by the first seed-bearing plants, the gymnosperms. Gymnosperms are vascular plants, able to transport water internally. Gymnosperms have exposed seeds that develop on the scales of cones and are fertilized when pollen sifts down and lands directly on the seed. Today’s conifers are gymnosperms, as are the short palm like cycads and the gingko.

Insects

Arthropods continued to diversify during the Permian Period to fill the niches opened up by the more variable climate. True bugs, with mouthparts modified for piercing and sucking plant materials, evolved during the Permian. Other new groups included the cicadas and beetles.

Land animals

Two important groups of animals dominated the Permian landscape: Synapsids and Sauropsids. Synapsids had skulls with a single temporal opening and are thought to be the lineage that eventually led to mammals. Sauropsids had two skull openings and were the ancestors of the reptiles, including dinosaurs and birds. 

In the early Permian, it appeared that the Synapsids were to be the dominant group of land animals. The group was highly diversified. The earliest, most primitive Synapsids were the Pelycosaurs, which included an apex predator, a genus known as Dimetrodon. This animal had a lizard-like body and a large bony “sail” fin on its back that was probably used for thermoregulation. Despite its lizard-like appearance, recent discoveries have concluded that Dimetrodon skulls, jaws and teeth are closer to mammal skulls than to reptiles. Another genus of Synapsids, Lystrosaurus, was a small herbivore — about 3 feet long (almost 1 meter) — that looked something like a cross between a lizard and a hippopotamus. It had a flat face with two tusks and the typical reptilian stance with legs angled away from the body.

In the late Permian, Pelycosaurs were succeeded by a new lineage known as Therapsids. These animals were much closer to mammals. Their legs were under their bodies, giving them the more upright stance typical of quadruped mammals. They had more powerful jaws and more tooth differentiation. Fossil skulls show evidence of whiskers, which indicates that some species had fur and were endothermic. The Cynodont (“dog-toothed”) group included species that hunted in organized packs. Cynodonts are considered to be the ancestors of all modern mammals.

At the end of the Permian, the largest Synapsids became extinct, leaving many ecological niches open. The second group of land animals, the Sauropsid group, weathered the Permian Extinction more successfully and rapidly diversified to fill them. The Sauropsid lineage gave rise to the dinosaurs that would dominate the Mesozoic Era.

The Great Dying

The Permian Period ended with the greatest mass extinction event in Earth’s history. In a blink of Geologic Time — in as little as 100,000 years — the majority of living species on the planet were wiped out of existence.  Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of marine species became extinct and more than 70 percent of land animals. Fossil beds in the Italian Alps show that plants were hit just as hard as animal species. Fossils from the late Permian show that huge conifer forests blanketed the region. These strata are followed by early Triassic fossils that show few signs of plants being present but instead are filled with fossil remnants of fungi that probably proliferated on a glut of decaying trees.

Scientists are unclear about what caused the mass extinction. Some point to evidence of catastrophic volcanic activity in Siberia and China (areas in the northern part of the “C” shaped Pangaea). This series of massive eruptions would have initially caused a rapid cooling of global temperatures leading to increased glaciations. This “nuclear winter” would have led to the demise of photosynthetic organisms, the basis of most food chains. Lowered sea levels and volcanic fallout would account for the evidence of much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the oceans, which may have led to the collapse of marine ecosystems. Other scientists point to indications of a massive asteroid impacting the southernmost tip of the “C” in what is now Australia. Whatever the cause, the Great Dying closed the Paleozoic Era.

Tetrapods: Natural Antacid Helped Early Land Creatures Breathe

The earliest creatures to crawl out of the water onto land may have concocted antacids out of their own bones, a clever innovation that would’ve let the animals breathe, researchers now find.

The earliest tetrapods, or four-limbed creatures, made their first evolutionary forays onto land about 370 million years ago. Breathing air came with challenges, though. A major one was getting rid of the air’s carbon dioxide, which, when it builds up, reacts with water in the body and forms an acid.

Now, growing evidence in modern reptiles suggests that bones that grew within the skin of early tetrapods may have acted as a natural antacid by releasing their neutralizing chemicals into the bloodstream. The result would have bought the creatures time to spend on land before they had to head back to the water to rid themselves of excess carbon dioxide.

The skeleton of Eryops, one of the earliest land-walking tetrapods.

Credit: © Christine M. Janis

 “Now we know that dermal bone can do this and it’s something we didn’t know before, that gives us a basis that maybe this is why tetrapods had this feature, which previously we didn’t have a good explanation for,” study researcher Christine Janis, a paleontologist at Brown University, told LiveScience. “It’s the discovery of this new feature of the physiology of these living animals that lets us go back [in time].”

First on land

So let’s rewind the clock: The first tetrapods evolved from fish in the Devonian period, which spanned from about 416 million years ago to 359 million years ago. These early tetrapods had broad faces, not unlike frogs, and rather immobile ribcages. That means they wouldn’t have been able to get rid of extra carbon dioxide by breathing quickly, as humans and other mammals do with their longer snouts and flexible ribcages. Nor were the tetrapods small enough to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen via their skin, as modern amphibians do.

What tetrapods did have was complex “dermal bone,” or bone that forms from connective tissue in the skin instead of from cartilage like the long bones of the arm or leg.The concept of skin bone may seem strange, but it’s very common: The human skull, for example, is a dermal bone.

Early tetrapod bone showed many pits and furrows, indicating lots of blood supply, Janis said. Her colleagues, including paper co-author and biologist Daniel Warren of Saint Louis University, had found another piece of the puzzle: In modern turtles and alligators, this dermal bone helps the reptiles tolerate carbon dioxide buildup when they’re under water, unable to breathe.

Bone breathing

Tetrapods would have the opposite problem, Janis realized: They’d be able to release carbon dioxide through their skin while in the water, since their skin was more permeable than an alligator’s tough hide. But out on land, they’d need another means of release. It seemed very possible that tetrapods could have used their complex dermal bones as a storage unit for calcium and other acid-neutralizing minerals, releasing them as needed when body acid levels got too high, Janis said.

To test the idea, the researchers analyzed the skeletons of tetrapods. As you might expect, the tetrapods known by the skeletons to spend more time out of the water had the most complex dermal bones. The evolutionary history of the animal supports the hypothesis, as well.

“When [the dermal bone] gets lost, it gets lost in the lineage leading to modern reptiles when they start getting more mobile ribs,” Janis said.

She and her colleagues reported their work Tuesday (April 24) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

End of the early tetrapods

While the evidence is consistent with Janis’ theory, there’s no proof yet that tetrapods really used their bones in this way. The next step, Janis said, will be to look for chemical or other clues in modern reptiles who use their bones as antacid. If any telltale signs are established, researchers can then hunt for the same signals in ancient tetrapods.

The terrestrial tetrapods studied by Janis and her colleagues went extinct during the Permian period 299 million to 251 million years ago. It was a changing world, Janis said, and atmospheric carbon dioxide was increasing. It’s possible that tetrapods’ bone-dependent breathing wasn’t as effective in this new atmosphere.

“Who knows?” Janis asked. “I think the point to make is that this was probably a perfectly good way to live for awhile — millions of years — but in the end, there were things that had figured out better ways of how to get rid of carbon dioxide.”

Forest rights and wrongs

Social activists and wildlife groups must acknowledge that no rights can be championed, nor wildlife saved, if the forests at the centre of the tussle vanish

The situation is equally distressful in states such as Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

Soon after daybreak, driving through the forests of Sonitpur district in Assam in late 2005 we made a quick U-turn when a herd of around 15-20 elephants, young ones in tow, emerged from the forest to forage right next to the road leading to the fishing camp at the Nameri Tiger Reserve. The night before, we watched as elephants raided paddy stocks in a village near Balipara, unafraid of the mashaals (fire torches), drums and yells of the distressed villagers. Even as we turned, the matriarch followed our vehicle for 20 metres or so, trumpeting protectively from around 30 metres to make sure we got her message loud and clear.

I know this part of India well and before my eyes, I have seen some of India’s most precious forests sacrificed to satiate political expediency using mistaken notions of tribal rights as a fig leaf to exchange land for votes. On a site visit to the same area 10 years later, I found myself speechless at the sheer destruction. In a decade, virtually the entire standing forest on the right bank of the Jiya Bharoli river had vanished. In its place were sparse mustard fields and scattered tree stumps that spoke of once-tall hardwoods whose trunk girth would have been three or four metres at the very least.

Similar stories unfold across vast areas of Sonitpur. We had predicted such disaster when the Forest Rights Bill was being debated way back in 2004-05. We asked, at the very least, a consensus be arrived at that individual rights not be included. A leading NGO, Kalpavriksh, amongst the most vociferous supporters of the flawed FRA, agreed with us in principle but went forward with other groups who threw such suggestions to the wind. Today, much too late, Kalpavriksh agrees that a site-specific amendment to Section 3 (1) of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, should have been made in Sonitpur to roll back the 2005 cut-off date to 1980, “in consonance with the Forest Conservation Act.” Subsequent to that admission, no further action was taken.

As we have seen happen time and again with urban slum rehabilitation and regularisation schemes, the horse had bolted. The barn door was never shut. What ails the FRA?

To begin with, the Act was intended only for tribal communities, but this was later extended to all forest “dwellers”. Second, individual rights trumped community rights which is evident from the statistics taken from the website of the ministry of tribal affairs from the report on FRA implementation. According to these statistics, people are predictably keen to claim individual rights as this enables them to encash real estate and other financial opportunities. Third, no time limit was definitively set. Had a cut-off date been effectively applied, we would not be in a position where even today “deforest, encroach and claim rights” continue unabated because gram sabhas would have finalised all rights within two years. And the date was 1980 in the first version of the bill.

Here is what the learned Supreme Court judges had to say in an order passed in response to Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s) 109/2008 and 50/2008.

“Mr Shyam Divan, learned senior counsel for the petitioner placed before us certain statistical data which indicates that as on September 30, 2015, approximately 44 lakh claims for recognition of the rights under the above-mentioned Act and grant of pattas came to be filed before the authorities competent to deal with those claims in various states out of which some of the claims were accepted and some were rejected. From the information placed before this court by the petitioners, it appears, approximately 20.5 lakh claims were rejected in the above-mentioned 44 lakh claims. Obviously, a claim in the context of the above-mentioned Act is based on an assertion that a claimant has been in possession of a certain parcel of land located in the forest areas. If the claim is found to be not tenable by the competent authority, the result would be that the claimant is not entitled for the grant of any patta or any other right under the Act but such a claimant is also either required to be evicted from that parcel of land or some other action is to be taken in accordance with law.”

Nevertheless, encroachers are not being evicted even after their claims have been rejected. What is more, most lands allotted are unfit for agriculture, condemning claimants to work as landless labour on the properties of richer landholders. The allotment of such lands means that the tribal families have to survive on sustenance farming without access to water, sanitation, health, education and medical facilities.

Even today, the cutting of trees continues. None of the cutting was or is legal. The tribals never had and still do not have title to the land. The elephant herds have vanished, but every once in a while, they return to raid crops. As many as 30 were poisoned in Sonitpur by angry farmers. Neither humans nor elephants are safe any longer. The Kameng-Sonitpur Elephant Reserve (KSER) offers refuge to elephants, in a small measure, but almost daily, as a direct result of human interventions, reports of “wild elephant herds creating havoc in Sonitpur,” appear in the media.

The situation is equally distressful in states such as Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Here, too, in order to grow food on forestlands, locals were encouraged to deforest areas with political patronage. The objective is achieved by burning trees and ground vegetation, then planting food crops on the ash-fertilised remains. But, because the vast bulk of the forest nutrients are quickly washed or blown away, such farms are incapable of offering anything more than borderline livelihoods to farmers. This is precisely what gave rise to “marginal farming”, coined by economists to describe millions condemned to penury. Far from creating self-sufficiency, this has ended up eroding India’s food security, in part because downstream farms find themselves deprived of the flood, drought-control and nutrient-spread gifted by upstream forests.

As I write, the discussion seems Daliesque. The FRA provides a 90-day limit for filing claims. The Act was passed in 2005 (Rules in 2007). Can we seriously be discussing new claims even today? Surely we should collectively agree that no limits be allowed or extended under any circumstances? Remember, that our protected area network barely covers three per cent of our land and acts as an insurance against climate change, floods and droughts. Under no circumstances should such lands be open to the claim of any private rights whatsoever. In fact, it is vital that the long-pending rules to define Critical Wildlife Habitats be framed without further delay and that those deemed to be encroachers vacate such biodiverse lands.

Social activists and wildlife groups must both accept that no rights can be championed, nor wildlife saved, if the forests at the centre of the tussle vanish. Social activists talk of “harmonious co-existence”. But I ask — can 6,000 people live in harmony in 600 sq km with 60 tigers and over 600 elephants with the nearest market for forest produce being six km away? Given that the FRA is a reality and without going into the merits or demerits of the legislation itself, I wonder whether it might be possible for those living next to forests to form cooperatives with the singular purpose of restoring eco-systems back to health on their own lands. This may be easier said than done, but it is possible if a basket of benefits can be channelled to communities that opt for eco-system farming, instead of bajra, wheat or paddy. If this is achieved, the answer to the rhetorical question “Can the Forest Rights and Wildlife (Protection) Acts be friends?” might well be “Yes!”. But I am not holding my breath.

The writer is editor, ‘Sanctuary’ magazine

MASS EXTINCTION

Major extinction events

Although the Cretaceous-Tertiary (or K-T) extinction event is the most well-known because it wiped out the dinosaurs, a series of other mass extinction events has occurred throughout the history of the Earth, some even more devastating than K-T. Mass extinctions are periods in Earth's history when abnormally large numbers of species die out simultaneously or within a limited time frame. The most severe occurred at the end of the Permian period when 96% of all species perished. This along with K-T are two of the Big Five mass extinctions, each of which wiped out at least half of all species. Many smaller scale mass extinctions have occurred, indeed the disappearance of many animals and plants at the hands of man in prehistoric, historic and modern times will eventually show up in the fossil record as mass extinctions.

Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction

The third largest extinction in Earth's history, the Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction had two peak dying times separated by hundreds of thousands of years. During the Ordovician, most life was in the sea, so it was sea creatures such as trilobites, brachiopods and graptolites that were drastically reduced in number.

Late Devonian mass extinction

Three quarters of all species on Earth died out in the Late Devonian mass extinction, though it may have been a series of extinctions over several million years, rather than a single event. Life in the shallow seas were the worst affected, and reefs took a hammering, not returning to their former glory until new types of coral evolved over 100 million years later.

Permian mass extinction

The Permian mass extinction has been nicknamed The Great Dying, since a staggering 96% of species died out. All life on Earth today is descended from the 4% of species that survived.

Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction

During the final 18 million years of the Triassic period, there were two or three phases of extinction whose combined effects created the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event. Climate change, flood basalt eruptions and an asteroid impact have all been blamed for this loss of life.

Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction

The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction - also known as the K/T extinction - is famed for the death of the dinosaurs. However, many other organisms perished at the end of the Cretaceous including the ammonites, many flowering plants and the last of the pterosaurs.

Importance of mass Extinction events in Evolution

Mass extinctions have sometimes accelerated the evolution of life on Earth. When dominance of particular ecological niches passes from one group of organisms to another, it is rarely because the new dominant group is "superior" to the old and usually because an extinction event eliminates the old dominant group and makes way for the new one.

For example mammaliformes ("almost mammals") and then mammals existed throughout the reign of the dinosaurs, but could not compete for the large terrestrial vertebrate niches which dinosaurs monopolized. The end-Cretaceous mass extinction removed the non-avian dinosaurs and made it possible for mammals to expand into the large terrestrial vertebrate niches. Ironically, the dinosaurs themselves had been beneficiaries of a previous mass extinction, the end-Triassic, which eliminated most of their chief rivals, the crurotarsans.

Causes of particular mass extinctions

Flood basalt events: Eleven occurrences, all associated with significant extinctions. Only five of the major extinctions coincided with flood basalt eruptions and that the main phase of extinctions started before the eruptions.

Basaltic eruptions can have series of interrelated effects. A basaltic eruption could have

1.     produced dust and particulate aerosols which inhibited photosynthesis and thus caused food chains to collapse both on land and at sea

2.     emitted sulfur oxides which were precipitated as acid rain and poisoned many organisms, contributing further to the collapse of food chains

3.     emitted carbon dioxide and thus possibly causing sustained global warming once the dust and particulate aerosols dissipated.

Flood basalt events occur as pulses of activity punctuated by dormant periods. As a result they are likely to cause the climate to oscillate between cooling and warming, but with an overall trend towards warming as the carbon dioxide they emit can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

It is speculated that massive volcanism caused or contributed to the End-Permian, End-Triassic and End-Cretaceous extinctions.

2. Sea-level falls

Sea-level falls could reduce the continental shelf area (the most productive part of the oceans) sufficiently to cause a marine mass extinction, and could disrupt weather patterns enough to cause extinctions on land. But sea-level falls are very probably the result of other events, such as sustained global cooling or the sinking of the mid-ocean ridges.Sea-level falls are associated with most of the mass extinctions, including all of the "Big Five"—End-Ordovician, Late Devonian, End-Permian, End-Triassic, and End-Cretaceous.

3. Impact events

The impact of a sufficiently large asteroid or comet could have caused food chains to collapse both on land and at sea by producing dust and particulate aerosols and thus inhibiting photosynthesis. Impacts on sulfur-rich rocks could have emitted sulfur oxides precipitating as poisonous acid rain, contributing further to the collapse of food chains. Such impacts could also have caused megatsunamis and/or global forest fires.

The Shiva hypothesis proposes that periodic gravitational disturbances cause comets from the Oort cloud to bombard earth every 26 to 30 million years.

4. Ocean asteroid impact

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is soluble in sea water and is present in very large quantities. It mostly reports as the bicarbonate radical (−HCO3) which is only stable at temperatures below 50°C.Sea surface temperatures are normally below 50°C, but can easily exceed that temperature when an asteroid strikes the ocean thereby inducing a large thermal shock. Under those circumstances very large quantities of CO2 erupt from the ocean. As a heavy gas, the CO2 can quickly spread around the world in concentrations sufficient to suffocate air breathing fauna, selectively at low altitudes.Asteroid impacts with the ocean may not leave obvious signs, but these impacts have the potential to be far more devastating to life on earth than impacts with land.

5. Sustained and significant global cooling

Sustained global cooling could

·      kill many polar and temperate species and force others to migrate towards the equator;

·      reduce the area available for tropical species;

·      often make the Earth's climate more arid on average, mainly by locking up more of the planet's water in ice and snow.

The glaciation cycles of the current ice age are believed to have had only a very mild impact on biodiversity, so the mere existence of a significant cooling is not sufficient on its own to explain a mass extinction.

It has been suggested that global cooling caused or contributed to the End-Ordovician, Permian-Triassic, Late Devonian extinctions, and possibly others. Sustained global cooling is distinguished from the temporary climatic effects of flood basalt events or impacts.

6.Sustained and significant global warming

This would have the opposite effects:

·      expand the area available for tropical species;

·      kill temperate species or force them to migrate towards the poles;

·      possibly cause severe extinctions of polar species;

·      often make the Earth's climate wetter on average, mainly by melting ice and snow and thus increasing the volume of the water cycle.

It might also cause anoxic events in the oceans.

Global warming as a cause of mass extinction is supported by several recent studies.The most dramatic example of sustained warming is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which was associated with one of the smaller mass extinctions. It has also been suggested to cause the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, during which 20% of all marine families went extinct. Furthermore, the Permian–Triassic extinction event has been suggested to have been caused by warming. Human-caused global warming is contributing to extinctions today.

7.Clathrate gun methane eruptions

Clathrates are composites in which a lattice of one substance forms a cage around another. Methane clathrates (in which water molecules are the cage) form on continental shelves. These clathrates are likely to break up rapidly and release the methane if the temperature rises quickly or the pressure on them drops quickly—for example in response to sudden global warming or a sudden drop in sea level or even earthquakes. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so a methane eruption ("clathrate gun") could cause rapid global warming or make it much more severe if the eruption was itself caused by global warming.

It has been suggested that "clathrate gun" methane eruptions were involved in the end-Permian extinction and in the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, which was associated with one of the smaller mass extinctions.

8. Anoxic events

Anoxic events are situations in which the middle and even the upper layers of the ocean become deficient or totally lacking in oxygen. Their causes are complex and controversial, but all known instances are associated with severe and sustained global warming, mostly caused by sustained massive volcanism.

It has been suggested that anoxic events caused or contributed to the Ordovician–Silurian, late Devonian, Permian–Triassic and Triassic–Jurassic extinctions, as well as a number of lesser extinctions. On the other hand, there are widespread black shale beds from the mid-Cretaceous, which indicate anoxic events but are not associated with mass extinctions.

9. Hydrogen sulfide emissions from the seas

During the Permian–Triassic extinction event the warming also upset the oceanic balance between photosynthesising plankton and deep-water sulphate-reducing bacteria, causing massive emissions of hydrogen sulphide which poisoned life on both land and sea and severely weakened the ozone layer, exposing much of the life that still remained to fatal levels of UV radiation.

10. Oceanic overturn

Oceanic overturn is a disruption of thermohaline circulation which lets surface water (which is more saline than deep water because of evaporation) sink straight down, bringing anoxic deep water to the surface and therefore killing most of the oxygen-breathing organisms which inhabit the surface and middle depths. It may occur either at the beginning or the end of a glaciation, although an overturn at the start of a glaciation is more dangerous because the preceding warm period will have created a larger volume of anoxic water

It has been suggested that oceanic overturn caused or contributed to the late Devonian and Permian–Triassic extinctions.

11. A nearby nova, supernova or gamma ray burst

A nearby gamma ray burst at the End-Ordovician extinction would be powerful enough to destroy the Earth's ozone layer, leaving organisms vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Gamma ray bursts are fairly rare, occurring only a few times in a given galaxy per million years.

12. Geomagnetic reversal

Increased geomagnetic reversals will weaken Earth's magnetic field destroy magnetosphere, long enough to expose the atmosphere to the solar winds, causing oxygen ions to escape the atmosphere, resulting in a disastrous drop on oxygen. Additionally, Magnetosphere destruction will cause the earth to be bombarded with Alpha, beta, gamma and X rays, wiping out lives.

13. Plate tectonics

Movement of the continents into some configurations can cause or contribute to extinctions in several ways:

·      by initiating or ending ice ages;

·      by changing ocean and wind currents and thus altering climate;

·      by opening seaways or land bridges which expose previously isolated species to competition for which they are poorly adapted (for example, the extinction of most of South America's native ungulates and all of its large metatherians after the creation of a land bridge between North and South America).

Occasionally plate tectonics creates a super-continent which includes the vast majority of Earth's land area, which is likely to reduce the total area of continental shelf (the most species-rich part of the ocean) and produce a vast, arid continental interior which may have extreme seasonal variations.