Extreme wildfires set to get worse globally, says UN
PARIS: The number of major wildfires worldwide will rise sharply in coming decades due to global warming, and governments are ill-prepared for the death and destruction such mega-blazes trail in their wake, the UN warned Wednesday.
Even the most ambitious efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions will not prevent a dramatic surge in the frequency of extreme fire conditions, a report commissioned by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded.
“By the end of the century, the probability of wildfire events similar to Australia’s 2019-2020 Black Summer or the huge Arctic fires in 2020 occurring in a given year is likely to increase by 31-57 percent,” it said. The heating of the planet is turning landscapes into tinderboxes, and more extreme weather means stronger, hotter and drier winds to fan the flames.
Such wildfires are burning where they have always occurred, and are flaring up in unexpected places such as drying peatlands and thawing permafrost. The western US, northern Siberia, central India, and eastern Australia already are seeing more blazes, according to the report.
“Fires are not good things,” said co-author Peter, an expert in forest fire management at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “The impacts on people — socially, health-wise, psychologically — are phenomenal and long-term,” he told journalists in a briefing.
Large wildfires, which can rage uncontrolled for days or weeks, cause respiratory and heart problems, especially for the elderly and very young.
A recent study in The Lancet concluded that exposure to wildfire smoke results, on average, in more than 30,000 deaths each year across 43 nations for which data was available.
Areas once considered safe from major fires won’t be immune, including the Arctic, which the report said was “very likely to experience a significant increase in burning.”
Tropical forests in Indonesia and the southern Amazon of South America also are likely to see increased wildfires, the report concluded.
“Uncontrollable and devastating wildfires are becoming an expected part of the seasonal calendars in many parts of the world,” said Andrew Sullivan, with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, one of the report’s authors.
But UN researchers said many nations continue to spend too much time and money fighting fires and not enough trying to prevent them. Land use changes can make the fires worse, such as logging that leaves behind debris that can easily burn and forests that are intentionally ignited to clear land for farming, the report said.
Economic damages in the United States — one of the few countries to calculate such costs — have varied between $71 to $348 billion in recent years, according to an assessment cited in the report.
In the United States, officials recently unveiled a $50 billion effort to reduce fire risks over the next decade by more aggressively thinning forests around “hot spots” where nature and neighborhoods collide. However, the administration of President Joe Biden has so far identified only a fraction of the funding called for in the plan.
Major blazes can also be devastating for wildlife, pushing some endangered species closer to the brink of extinction.
Nearly three billion mammals, reptiles, birds and frogs were killed or harmed, for example, by Australia’s devastating 2019-20 bushfires, scientists have calculated.Even the Arctic — previously all but immune to fires — has seen a dramatic increase in blazes, including so-called “zombie fires” that smoulder underground throughout winter before bursting into flames anew. But wildfires also accelerate climate change, feeding a vicious cycle of more fires and rising temperatures.
Last year, forests going up in flames emitted more than 2.5 billion tonnes of planet-warming CO2 in July and August alone, equivalent to India’s annual emissions from all sources, the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported.
Compiled by 50 top experts, the report called for a rethink on how to tackle the problem.
NEW DELHI: The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has decided not to participate in the common entrance test for admission to central universities that will be conducted from the coming academic year, university officials said, asserting that it will maintain the status quo on its admission policy as the case on its minority status is sub-judice.
The ministry of education has already announced that it will conduct a Central Universities Entrance Test (CUET) for admission to all undergraduate and postgraduate courses from academic session 2022-23. CUET, which is envisaged in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, was scheduled to start in the 2021-22 academic session, but the government put it on hold in view of the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Several universities, including Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, have already decided that their admissions will be through CUET.
However, officials at AMU said that the university has decided not to do this.
“We are pursuing a case in the
Supreme Court against an Allahabad high court judgment rejecting minority status to AMU. The Supreme Court granted status quo to AMU. The university will maintain the status quo on its admission policy as the case of minority status is sub-judice,”University spokesperson Shafey Kidwai said.
Kidwai said the proposal regarding CUET was placed before the University’s academic council as well. “The council members decided to continue with the existing admission policy till the case is sub-judice. It means AMU will conduct its own admission test like previous years. Article 30 of the Constitution grants us that right,” he said. Under Article 30 of the Constitution, all minorities, whether based on religion or language, have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.
Meanwhile, Jamia Millia Islamia, another university whose minority status is also sub-judice, is yet to take a decision regarding CUET. While Jamia reserves 50% of their seats for minority candidates, in AMU, it is reserved for internal candidates. A senior official at the ministry of education said that CUET will consider the needs of minority institutions.
“The ministry had also considered the issues of minority institutions and universities having their internal reservations at the time when common entrance examinations for medical and engineering courses were introduced. The government will do the same in the case of CUET,” the official added.
CENTRAL VARSITIES LIKE DELHI UNIVERSITY, JNU HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO HOLD ADMISSIONS THROUGH CUET