'Pandemic will leave 375 million children with health, economic impacts'

A study by the Centre for Science and Environment says that COVID-19 has made the world's poor poorer, as at least 115 million additional people might get pushed into extreme poverty by the pandemic, and most of them live in South Asia.

Hyderabad: The country is all set to usher in a 'pandemic generation' with 375 million children (from newborns to 14-year-olds) likely to suffer long-lasting impacts, ranging from being underweight, stunting and increased child mortality, to losses in education and work productivity, according to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report.

The pandemic also has its hidden victims as over 500 million children forced out of school globally and India accounted for more than half of them.

Sunita Narain, Director General of CSE, stated that COVID-19 has made the world’s poor poorer as at least 115 million additional people might get pushed into extreme poverty by the pandemic – and most of them live in South Asia.

India ranked 117 among 192 nations in terms of sustainable development and was now behind all South Asian nations except Pakistan.

India's air, water and land have become more polluted between 2009 and 2018.

Of 88 major industrial clusters in the country, according to the Central Pollution Control Board, 35 showed overall environmental degradation, 33 pointed to worsening air quality, 45 had more polluted water and in 17, land pollution became worse.

Tarapur in Maharashtra emerged as the most polluted cluster.

CSE experts pointed out that this data clearly indicated a lack of action over the years to control and reduce pollution even in areas that were already identified as 'critically' or ‘severely’ polluted.

When ranked on the basis of achieving Sustainable Development Goals, the best performing States were Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. The worst performers were Bihar, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh.

Forestland diversion continued unabated in the country. Over 11,000 hectares were diverted in 22 States in 2019.

Eight coal projects granted clearance in ‘No-Go’ areas would divert 19,614 hectares of forestland, fell over 1 million trees, and evict over 10,000 families.

Sixty-seven million Indians died due to air pollution in 2019. The economic cost was over $36,000 million, equivalent to 1.36 per cent of the country’s GDP.

Further, environmental crime cases are piling up, and disposal is slow. 34,671 crimes were registered in 2019, and 49,877 cases are pending trial. To clear the backlog in a year, courts need to dispose of 137 cases a day.

There is data confusion on tigers as well. India has added 714 more tigers, but the area occupied by tigers has shrunk by over 17,000 sq km (in the last four years), the release added.