Holocene year 1 issue 8

Year – 1/Issue – 8/Apr – May’16

World after 5th Extinction Featured Topic : We are at….

WAR RISK (Part – 6) Editors’ Desk : Water is Life.

Contested Spaces: Living in the shadow of humans : Disappearing Kans (Sacred Groves) of Uttara Kannada Arnab Basu

The Long Environmental Legacy, a Century after Conflict.

The environmental legacy of warfare and mass violence has recently emerged as a recognized dimension of environmental history. Military historians have routinely written about the significance of terrain and weather for the planning and management of campaigns. Moreover, they have frequently traced military planners' concern for manipulation of the natural resources that are essential (or at least valuable) for their strategic purposes, and even the use of natural processes (such as fire) as weapons. But their interest lies almost exclusively with the human drama; they almost never go beyond that to consider the resulting transformations of ecosystems.

They see Nature as context, but not as consequence, of mass violence.

To assess and understand the impact of war on environment, we would focus on fifth period of the war and specifically discuss The Long Environmental Legacy, a Century after Conflict - in this edition of Holocene.

Story Room : Panorama of Graskop Theme Poster : Indian Chameleon

Fundamental to the assessment of long-term legacies of war is the study of soils that have been impacted by conflict. Chroniclers of the wars of empires and kingdoms have often asserted that the resource base for human societies was permanently degraded. This is plausible, wherever soil character and harsh climates make recovery from conflict difficult, slow or ultimately only partial.

Nutrient-poor soils, even on relatively flat terrain, or thin soils on steep slopes, have been badly damaged, making the return of vegetation (whether by natural processes

The discussion will be based on Joseph P. Hupy and Randall J. Schaetzl, “Soil Development on the WWI Battlefield of Verdun, France,” Geoderma 145: 1-2 (May 2008), 37-49, and Hupy’s influential companion article, “The Environmental Footprint of War,” Environment and History (2008), pp. 405-21.

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or human efforts at reconstruction) difficult and slow at best.

But lacking ecological field studies until recent times, our conclusions must remain general or tentative.

But even on highly fertile soils and in favorable climates, the land has been vulnerable to severe compaction or churning by the machines and high explosives of the industrial age, followed by long-term processes in the life of the soil. One rigorous approach is illustrated by Joseph Hupy’s studies of military geography, a model of what can be accomplished by soil specialists. Hupy has conducted intensive field surveys of the trenches of World War I in the battlefields around Verdun, and the battlefields of Khe Sanh, one of the most heavily damaged battle areas during the Vietnam War. In his “Environmental Footprint …” essay he defines the broad orientation of his work: “The destruction associated with modern warfare is particularly catastrophic due to the extent, magnitude and duration of contemporary wars. These large magnitude disturbances radically alter the shape of the landscape, limiting the ability of the landscape to revert back to its original state. This article addresses the direct impacts of war on the physical landscape and why the magnitude of disturbance has increased significantly over the past century.” (p. 405).

on the worldwide history of war's ecological consequences is still to emerge. Brief but provocative surveys of premodern regions and long historical themes have begun to appear, as building blocks toward a full global history.

Beyond that, what outlines can be sketched?

Exploring Nature will try to illustrate several themes that appear in the emerging synthesis.

In subsequent issues of Holocene, we will discuss about following aspects of impact of war on ecology: •

Campaigns of Conquest and Frontier Wars

•

Foraging Armies

•

Fortifications and Sieges

In the same year’s study of Verdun he and Schaetzl dissect the soil structure a century after the construction of deep trenches and the repeated bombardment of fields and forests. They report:

•

Globalization: The Modern Empires

•

Wars of the Industrial Era

“The WWI battle of Verdun in 1916, remains one of the most intense battles fought between two nations (Germany and France) in all of human history. … Historically the Verdun battlefield is one of the best documented and, in the decades since the war, unaltered battlefields in the world. (p. 38) The millions of artillery craters … have changed the area’s surface hydrology, water table characteristics, and soil development processes and rates. (p. 47). … Many craters penetrated the shallow limestone bedrock, and blasted out fragments of limestone on nearby undisturbed [locations] had already been incorporated into the profile. Despite the short period of time since the battle (88 years), measurable amounts of weathering and pedogenesis have occurred in the soils within the craters. A major pedogenic process operative here is the accumulation and decomposition of organic matter, which is intimately associated with (and aided by) earthworm bioturbation.”

•

The Century of Total War

•

The Cold War

West's

Till then keep reading Holocene.

Environmental historians have often discussed elements of the history of warfare. But until recently they rarely considered the dynamics of mass violence or the structures of military operations in relation to state, society, economy and ecology as the organizing focus of their work. To date, most of the work has centred on the industrial era, beginning with the American Civil War, and thus has addressed the leading industrial countries.

Centering at first on the global devastations of two world wars, studies have broadened to consider the structures and consequences of massive permanent military establishments, especially during the Cold War. Themes include the global reach of the major economies for control of strategic resources, and the impacts on economies and ecosystems. Yet a full perspective 2|Page

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Typically most of the state of art wastewater management strategies comprises of:

Editors’ Desk :

Water is Life.

Water is the source of life, but in India water pollution has always been a serious environmental issue. 70% of the surface water resources and a growing percentage of ground water reserve of this country of about 1.25 billion is contaminated with biological, toxic, organic and inorganic pollutants. In many cases, water sources are unsafe for human consumption and other activities like irrigation, industrial use etc. It is contributing enough towards the damage of ecosystem.

In 1995, the Central Pollution Control Board identified severely polluted stretches in 18 major rivers across the country. Most of those stretches were, not surprisingly, in and around large urban areas. The high incidence of severe contamination near urban areas indicates that the industrial and domestic sectors’ contribution to water pollution is much higher than their relative importance implied in the Indian economy. Agricultural activities also contribute in terms of overall impact on water quality. Besides a rapidly depleting groundwater table in different parts, the country faces another major problem on the water front—groundwater contamination—a problem which has affected as many as 19 states, including Delhi. Geogenic contaminants, including salinity, iron, fluoride, and arsenic have affected groundwater in over 200 districts spread across 19 states.

Lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene results in the loss of 0.4 million lives while air pollution contributes to the death of 0.52 million people annually in India (WHO 2007). Environmental factors contribute to 60 years of ill-health per 1,000 population in India compared to 54 in Russia, 37 in Brazil, and 34 in China. The socio-economic costs of water pollution are extremely high: 1.5 million children under 5 years die each year due to water related diseases, 200 million person days of work are lost each year, and the country loses about Rs. 366 billion each year due to water related diseases. The adverse effect of water pollution on ecology is the other side. Ecology in Indian rivers, lakes, ponds are being grossly demolished by this growing water pollution. Increasing salinity in Sundarvan Delta is causing extinction of many plant and animal species there.

Wastewater treatment and disposal has witnessed a variety of challenges in the recent past. The most important of them include stringent regulatory compliance, technological limitations, increasing cost of wastewater treatment, and failure of treatment systems, post commissioning disputes, environmental liability and Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD). This necessitates professional, scientific and defendable advisory support in managing these challenges. Many multinational sustainability consultancy farms have been working with major water intensive and process industries worldwide in addressing these wastewater management challenges.

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• Identification of Source wastewater reduction opportunities; • Identification of toxic wastewater streams; • Pipeline Condition Assessment using CCTV; • Wastewater segregation; • Wastewater characterization (quantity and quality); • Assessment of design Adequacy of Effluent Treatment Plants; • Assessing operational efficiency of ETP; • Odour management in ETP; • Opportunities and Conceptual design of Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) systems etc.

In ‘The Future We Want’, the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 2012), United Nations Member States clearly highlighted the importance of good management of wastewater to support the future sustainable development agenda.

The following year, in May 2013, the Secretary-General’s HighLevel Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda released its report, which provides recommendations on advancing the development framework beyond the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In its report, the High-Level Panel presents, among others, an illustrative goal on water and sanitation, including a target on wastewater management.

Meanwhile, between the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013 the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) facilitated,

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under the umbrella of UN-Water, the World We Want 2015 Water Thematic Consultation co-hosted by the Governments of Jordan, Liberia, Mozambique, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

As a part of the Water Thematic Consultation, discussions on wastewater highlighted the options and opportunities in wastewater management as an untapped resource.

In June 2013 the Sustainable Development Solutions Network released its report ‘An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development’ in which wastewater management is included at the indicators level. Building on the lessons learned from the MDG implementation and monitoring as well as on the water dialogues in selected countries, UN-Water conducted broad inclusive consultations and consolidated the experience and expertise of the UN system into a technical advice on a possible water goal in the Post-2015.

This April, whole world will be busy in celebrating Earth Day. The celebration of Earth Day is on April 22nd and it began 1970. It has grown into a global event recognized by over 192 countries. Devoting special a day to helping for the earth is a way to demonstrate how much we care about the future of our planet. No matter what we like to do best, there's a way to get involved in Earth Day. We could plant a tree, make a meal with locally-grown vegetables, educate a family member, clean up trash in our neighbourhood, set up a bird feeder or save power — the possibilities are endless. Exploring Nature, strongly believe we don't have to wait for Earth Day to show our love for the planet we call home.

To start with we all can think about two basic activities: •

•

If we live in a city, we can look into urban water contamination issues like contaminated drinking water and discharge of waste water by household, hotels, local shops, restaurants and butcher houses into surface water streams (sewerage, lake, pond etc.) and report such cases to local pollution control board, ground water authority, municipality board. Also spread the news across through social media, social networking sites with detail of location and photographs. The Voice for Nature section of Exploring Nature website can also be used (http://forum.exploringnature.org.in/) If we live near a body of water, we can also do research to find out whether it's healthy or in need of help.

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“Water, thou hast no taste, no colour, no odour; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Year – 1/Issue – 8/Apr – May’16

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Year – 1/Issue – 8/Apr – May’16

Contested Spaces: Living in the shadow of humans:

Disappearing Kans (Sacred Groves) of Uttara Kannada Savitha Rammohan

The Kans evergreen forests are known for their rich biodiversity. They have preserved several species that are no longer found in other areas.

The Kans are sacred groves of the coastal belt of Karnataka. The Kans are different from Kadu or supply forests where resources can be used as they cannot be touched and the living wildlife cannot be disturbed.

The Kans have origins tracing back to periods beyond the Aryan age when communities practiced nature worship. Traditional communities lived in forests and practiced shifting land cultivation. They cleared forests for cultivation but operated with the ethics of leaving small pockets of forests or large areas absolutely untouched.

The Kans of Uttara Kannada and Shimoga district form a part of such sacred forests. Traditional communities worshipped these forests as gods and believed that gods occupied these forests. Each forest had a male and a female deity. Image worship and construction of temples were not practiced for a very long time and since nature provided all the resources, it was revered and protected. The Uttara Kannada was thus noted for its rich biodiversity with a variety of wildlife like tiger, panther, elephant, bear, wild pig and birds. In 1989 as many as 419 species of birds were identified.

Figure 1.1: Kans converted for monoculture in Shimoga

felled to build temples although in Uttara Kannada this activity remained limited. During the British reign, the state governments claimed ownership of forests. The Indian Forest Act of 1878 denied local people any rights to the forests. The forests were given to Europeans and Indians for plantation activities.

With the shift in ownership, these forests were opened for commercial exploitation without any restrictions. The Kans got invaded by weeds, pigs and also saw a huge shrinking of area due to heavy pressure.

The government gave the Kans to spice gardeners as leaf manure forests.

In Sirsi, 769 hectares of Kans were added to minor forests enabling exploitation by all.

The arrival of Christianity and Islam accelerated the process of exploitation as more persons stopped believing in nature worship. With increasing number of shifting cultivators moving into Karnataka, (the Kunbis from Goa and Kumri Marathis from Maharashtra) over many centuries, the traditional concept of sacred groves was lost.

(Chandran & Gadgil, 1998) References: Chandran, S., & Gadgil, M. (1998).

Sacred Groves and Sacred Trees of Uttara Kannada. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.

Source: Centre for Ecological Studies, Indian Institute of Science

However these Kans are no longer protected. Large number of these sacred groves were designated as forests and converted into common resource. The Kans suffered a setback when spice gardens were created

by Havik Brahmins. The spice gardens used the Kans for water, shade and leaf manure. Brahmins worshipped the Kans but their deities were still superior to the Kans and therefore opened the forests for usage.

However they did not cut the trees.

With the arrival of the Hindu pantheon of gods, local deities lost their importance and sacred groves were replaced by temples. The Talacauvery temple of Coorg is an example of sacred forests that were 5|Page

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set further back on a private farm and due to Quarry operations and tree plantation farming this actual rock that looks like a square window could not be used; therefore the site was moved by the government to the edge of the escarpment.

Story Room :

Arnab Basu

Graskop is a small town in Mpumalanga province, South Africa.

It was set up in the 1880s as a gold mining camp but it now serves as a tourist destination and the timber industry. The name is Afrikaans for grassy peak. “God’s Window”, a scenic view from the escarpment of the Lowveld below, is located outside the town. Town 14 km southeast of Pilgrim's Rest and 28 km north of Sabie. It was laid out between 1880 and 1890 on a farm belonging to Abel Erasmus, Native Commissioner of the Transvaal Republic. Named after a grassy hillock (Afrikaans gras, ‘grass’, kop, ‘hillock’). Originally it was a mining camp. It is the best place to view the "Edge of the Lowveld", with a sudden drop of 700 metres. God’s Window (24°52′28″S 30°53′29″E) is a popular vantage point along the Drakensberg escarpment, at the southern extremity of the Nature Reserve. Here, sheer cliffs plunge over 700 metres to the lowveld. From this escarpment—a mostly unbroken rampart of cliffs—opens a vista into the lowvelt expanse and escarpment forests, the Eden-like aesthetic appearance of which prompted the name. On a clear day it is possible to see over the Kruger National Park towards the Lebombo Mountains on the border with Mozambique.

God’s Window features prominevntly in the plot of the 1980 cult film The Gods Must Be Crazy. Near the end of the movie, the Bushman character Xi (played by Namibian bush farmer N!xau) travels to God’s Window, and due to some low-lying cloud cover believes it to be the end of the Earth. The original Window is a rock that is 6|Page

The Lowveld or lowlands, below about 500 m (1,640 ft) altitude, along South Africa's northern border with Botswana and Zimbabwe, where a 180million-year-old failed rift valley cuts into Southern Africa's central plateau and locally obliterates the Great Escarpment is known as the Lowveld. The Limpopo and Save rivers run from the central African highlands via the Lowveld into the Indian Ocean to the east. The Limpopo Lowveld extends southwards, east of the Drakensberg escarpment through Mpumalanga Province and ultimately into eastern Swaziland. This southern limb of the Lowveld is bounded by South Africa's border with Mozambique to the east, and the north-eastern part of the Drakensberg to the west. This region is generally hotter and less intensely cultivated than the Highveld.

Besides the God’s Window, the panorama route of Graskop is special because of the Lisbon

Falls - the highest waterfalls in Mpumalanga, South Africa.

They are located close to God's Window and the many other waterfalls in South Africa's Mpumalanga province, like Berlin Falls, Lone Creek and

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the Mac-Mac Falls. The Lisbon Waterfalls lie in the Lisbon Creek just north of Graskop on the R532 road, just outside the Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve. The waterfall is 94 metres (308 ft) high and named for the capital city of Portugal. The waterfall lies on the Panorama Route.

The key attraction of this panorama route is, however, Blyde River Canyon. Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve (or Motlatse Canyon Provincial Nature Reserve) is situated in the Drakensberg escarpment region of eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa.

The reserve protects the Blyde River Canyon, including sections of the Ohrigstad and Blyde Rivers and the geological formations around Bourke's Luck Potholes, where the Treur River tumbles into the Blyde below. Southwards of the canyon, the reserve follows the escarpment, to include the Devil's and God's Window, the latter a popular viewpoint to the lowveld at the reserve's southern extremity. The Mogologolo (1,794 m), Mariepskop (1,944 m) and Hebronberg (1,767 m) massifs are partially included in the reserve. Elevation varies from 560 m to 1,944 m above sea level. Its resort areas are F.H. Odendaal and Swadeni, the latter only accessible from Limpopo province. The area of approximately 29,000 hectares (290 km2) is administered by the Mpumalanga Parks Board.

The high plateaus are inhabited by mountain reedbuck, baboon troops and rock hyraxes. Hippo and crocodile are present in the Blyderivierpoort Dam. Impala, kudu, blue wildebeest, waterbuck and zebra roam the wooded lowveld area. Exotic fish like smallmouth bass, brown and rainbow trout occur in the river, which have reduced the range of the local Treur river barb to upper catchments of the Blyde River system.

Thanks to reintroductions after its rediscovery in the 1970s, it now flourishes here. The Natal mountain catfish occurs as an isolated population in the Limpopo system, and the Belvedere creek is the only place in the Limpopo system where the Rosefin barb is found.

African fish eagle and African finfoot are found along the Blyde River. The lowveld woodlands harbour purple-crested lourie, emerald cuckoo, red-backed mannikin, golden-tailed woodpecker, gorgeous bushshrike, white-faced owl and a number of raptors like white-backed vulture, gymnogene, blackchested snake eagle, Wahlberg's eagle and long-crested eagle. A number of raptors frequent the mountains and cliffs, including cape vulture, black eagle, jackal buzzard, peregrine falcon, lanner falcon and rock kestrel. Birds associated with flowering plants of the higher slopes include Gurney's sugarbird and 7|Page

malachite sunbird. A breeding colony of bald ibis occurs in the grassy uplands, besides small numbers of cape eagleowl and red-breasted sparrowhawk.

Forest birds include crowned eagle, Knysna lourie, cinnamon dove, olive bushshrike, green twinspot and wood owl.

The reserve's vegetation is classified as the Northeastern Drakensberg High-Mountain Sourveld ecoregion, an area prone to lightning-induced burning. Its very diverse flora is ascribed to the variation in altitude and rainfall (541 mm to 2,776 mm p.a.), and the extremes in geology and pedology. It is topographically complex with a variety of habitats which include grassland plateaus, wetlands and sponge areas, grassland slopes, afromontane forest, riparian forest, moist woodlands, dry woodlands and shrublands. Its four veld types are Afromontane Forest, Northeastern Mountain Sour Grassland, Sour Lowveld Bushveld and Mixed Lowveld Bushveld.

Around a 1,000 plant species have been recorded. This includes cycads, of which the Blyde river cycad is almost endemic to the reserve, with some 200 individuals remaining.[5] A variety of orchid, lily and protea (genera Protea and Faurea) species occur. Tree ferns grow along seepages in the uplands.

Indigenous forest covers 2,111 ha of the nature reserve, or 7.3% of its surface area. These

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are fragmented into some 60 patches between 0.21 ha and 567 ha in extent. They are assigned to two forest communities, high altitude moist and low altitude dry afromontane forest. The altitudinal gradient accounts for most of their variation in plant communities.

For Team Exploring Nature Editors’ Desk : Dwaipayan Ghosh Arnab Basu Title & Logo Design : Arijit Das Majumder Saitak Chakraborty Newsletter Design : Dwaipayan Ghosh

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Theme Poster

:: Indian Chamaleon – Photography by Vincent Vinay Kumar :

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