Earth Overshoot Day 2020 is Madras Day 2020: August 22

 

August 22, 2020 is both Madras Day locally and Earth Overshoot Day globally. As the coastal metropolis, Chennai formerly known as Madras celebrates its 381st birthday, the COVID19 pandemic's global lock down and quarantines has pushed the Earth Overshoot Day by 24 days to August 22nd. 

Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature's budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

 The coronavirus that affects the respiratory system of living things has affected the global transportation infrastructure disrupting supply chains and reducing human consumption. At the start of the pandemic there were many stories of wildlife reclaiming urban spaces and hope of our earth's environment healing and climate stabilizing. The disruption of aviation, shipping and transport sectors had reduced the fossil fuel consumption as well as generally resource intensive products. Local suppliers and locally grown food have addressed the shortfall. 

Yet for all the disruption to our lifestyles and the economy our consumption still outstrips our planet's resources by a whole quarter. So the priority as we envision the post-COVID19 world is to be responsible and sustainable in our consumption and production (SDG12) so that we #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day to the year end. Thus we stop borrowing and living off the resources of future generations: 

https://www.facebook.com/2040Film/videos/2583969951914239

As Chennai celebrates 381 years a future as a Sustainable City, Sustainable Community (SDG11) as well as a Smart City needs to adopted. Chennai's coastal position, expansion eating into vital wetlands, and dependence on ground water we are vulnerable to the buffets of global warming, climate change and climate catastrophe. The flood-drought cycles, unbearable summers in urban heat islands, creeping salinity as well as seawater ingress are vicious byproducts locally of global over-consumption which calls for robust climate action (SDG13). Chennai's green spaces as well as incentives and interests urban and rooftop farming as well as the Tamil Nadu's wind energy harnessing successes are powerful manifestations of sustainable development.   

Hence in the quest to move the date of Earth Overshoot Day should make robust adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by all entities from cities, institutions to nations.

"Keep Oil in the Soil": Key to #StopSoilPollution

Soil sustains life! Yet, soil health across the planet is rapidly worsening and top soil loss is worryingly prevalent. This soil loss leads to food insecurity due to reduced soil fertility and reduced capacity to store water, desertification, biodiversity loss, and inability of the soil to perform its natural function as a powerful carbon sink. Soil pollution, bad agricultural practices such as excessive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides, overgrazing by farm animals and introduction of invasive animal and plant species, as well as deforestation all lead to soil degradation and soil erosion.

 This World Soil Day, December 5, 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sought to raise awareness about the dangers of soil loss and reduced soil health by calling for people to be part of the "Solution to Soil Pollution" and #StopSoilPollution.

One key way to #StopSoilPollution is to stop the use of fossil fuels. Extraction, fracking, refining and use of fossil fuels are all leading causes for soil pollution. Even exploration for fossil fuels is highly damaging to the soil in particular and the environment in general. Thus the fact that People's Demand for Climate Justice that mandates keeping fossil fuels in the ground, i.e., halting further extraction, is not just positive climate action but also essential to preserve the soil and #StopSoilPollution. Thermal power plants produce fly ash after burning coal that if left as is and dumped on lands can pollute soil, water and air as well as affecting the health of humans and their environment. Fossil fuel mines devastate the soil, environment and lives of communities near them, as do refineries. Hence, the call to "Keep Oil in the Soil" and "Coal in the Hole" must become a war cry of people's movements for climate justice and the environment.

Instead of "Smart Agriculture" the soil needs organic farming to regenerate.  Organic agricultural practices improves the health of the soil and enables the soil to be transformed into a powerful carbon sink. As seed warrior and activist and physicist Vandana Siva reiterates, regenerative organic agriculture has the capacity to trap current carbon emissions in just three years.

Organic farming is the epitome of natural climate solutions and climate justice. And its practice using ancestral methods and know-how and women farmer-- and smallholding farmer--friendly, keeps people not corporations at the heart of the climate solution. Thus organic agriculture builds soil health and helps

"Reject false solutions that displace real, people-first solutions to the climate crisis." 

Chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides are produced from crude - that most insidious of fossil fuel guises. More use of fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides means more fossil fuel and emissions. Thus by promoting organic agriculture, the use of these fossil fuel derived chemicals is cut. The carbon emissions are cut and finally the organic soil performs the function of a powerful and natural carbon sink. Hence combined with a halt to all fossil fuel extraction, globally scaled-up practice of organic agriculture can save the soil and save the planet. Policies that ensure this twofer can help speed up achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement - ensuring that a world where global warming is kept under 1.5 degrees can become a reality faster.