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C
O V E R S T O R
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Green Grammar |
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Biomass is all
plant material or vegetation, raw or processed, wild or
cultivated. Essentially, biomass is stored solar energy
that man can convert to electricity, fuel, and heat.
Biomass economy is the economy that runs on biomass
energy |
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Women are the primary
gatherers and managers of biomass goods in poor rural
households. They perform key roles not only in the
gathering but also in the processing, storing,
utilisation and marketing of free biomass goods.
Their roles and responsibilities are pivotal not only to
the management of natural resources but also to the
management of domestic economy. Studies have shown that
women work longer hours, pool more of their income to
the household budgets and manage day today consumption. |
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Do you make rotis using cowdung as fuel? Unlikely, because you are part
of what is called the fossil fuel economy — people who use petroleum and
natural gas as their primary form of energy. So how many Indians survive
by using traditional fuels like gobar and firewood? At least 50 per cent
of the total population in the rural areas.
Biomass energy comes from three sources: agricultural crop residues,
municipal and industrial waste, and energy plantations. It consists of
fast growing trees and grasses, agricultural residues like used
vegetable oils, wheat straw or corn, wood waste like paper trash, yard
clippings, sawdust or wood chips, and methane that is captured from
landfills, livestock, and municipal waste water treatment.
The
Indian rural economy is biomass subsistence whereby forests
play a major role in supporting rural livelihood. Urban Indians, mostly
poor, purchase 14-20 million tones of firewood every year, worth over Rs
500 crore.
Since rural and urban poor, the majority, survive from biomass economy,
why not have a ‘Gobar Mantri’?
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Ecological justice is
that which respects, seeks to preserve, and advocates
for just relationships among all living beings. It
concerns the future of all life upon this planet, the
condition of the natural world and human impact or
footprint upon it |
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Only now the term does not refer to only ecological systems. It includes
what rights individuals and communities have on their environments. For
example, in Chhattisgarh's Korba district, tribals dominate the
population. They depend heavily on forest lands to earn
their living. They collect mahua flowers to sell bagfuls in the local
markets, and graze their animals in the forests around which they live.
But now, these lands are being leased out by the government to
corporations, who plan to clear the forests and set up sponge iron
manufacturing plants. So the tribals have clearly lost their share of
‘environment’ here. They have been denied ecological justice.
Now the scope of the term is much wider, including such diverse issues
as the state of urban housing, the quality of drinking water and food
sources, the safety of workplace conditions.
A couple of years ago, outside New Orleans, US, citizens of a mostly
black-populated town launched a battle against a major chemical company
to prevent it from erecting a toxic emitting plant in their district.
They were fighting for their share of clean air.
An ecologically ‘just’ society requires a moral economy where people are
empowered to participate in decisions affecting their lives, where
public and private institutions are held accountable for the social and
environmental consequences of their activities.
The problem is that now we are dramatically out of balance with nature.
And this is particularly stark in indsutrialsied nations. For
example, it would take a land area
more than twice the size of Britain to produce all the food and raw
materials it needs, and to absorb its waste and pollution. Because there
is only one Britain, it uses other people's land and expect the
environment to soak up its pollution and waste.
The results are all around us: climate change, deforestation, the spread
of deserts and the loss of species and habitats.
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