2,923 Killed in Daily Natural Disasters in India in Jan-Sept

Sandipan Talukdar | 29 Nov 2023

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Cold waves, cyclones, lightning, heavy rain, floods and landslides destroyed more than 1.84 million hectares of cropland and 80,563 houses, according to a report.

Commuters wade across a water-logged street surrounding the Ernakulam city after monsoon rainfall, in Kochi on Monday, July 16, 2018. Image Courtesy: PTI

Extreme weather events occurred in India daily from January to September, according to a latest report produced by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down to Earth (DTE). During these nine months, disasters like cold waves, cyclones and lightning to heavy rain, floods and landslides claimed 2,923 lives in the country.

Near-daily disasters this year destroyed more than 1.84 million hectares of cropland and 80,563 houses and killed nearly 92,519 livestock. Named as ‘India 2023: An assessment of extreme weather events’, the details of the report can be found here. 

Even the seemingly great amount of loss of lives and properties may be an underestimate, the report suggests, as data for each of the disaster events are not collated and the loss of public property and crops due to those events are not calculated.

The days with extreme weather events were highest in Madhya Pradesh (HP) occurring every second day. In terms of loss of human lives, Bihar topped with 642 deaths, followed by Himachal Pradesh at 365 and Uttar Pradesh (UP) at 341.

Punjab again reported the highest numbers of animal deaths at 63,649.

HP also reported the highest number of damaged houses at 15,407. From January 1 to September 30, that is in 273 days, extreme weather events were reported in all states and union territories on 235 days, which is around 86%.

The CSE/DTE report divided the nine months into three categories according to the seasons—winter (January-February), pre-monsoon (March-May) and monsoon (June-September). The summary of day-wise extreme weather events within the study period is portrayed in the figure below.

The figures are taken from ‘DTE’  about the ‘India 2023: An assessment of extreme weather events’ report, produced by CSE/’DTE’. Used here for representation only. 

During winter, January had mildly warmer temperature than average, but February appeared hotter at 1.86 degrees Celsius and 1.36 degrees Celsius warmer than the average. January and February also remained drier than usual—January had a rain deficit of 13% and February 68%. During those two months, 28 days out of 59 days had extreme weather events.

Punjab and Haryana reported the most extreme events on 15 days, followed by Bihar and UP having at 14 days.

During the pre-monsoon period, extreme events were reported on 85 out of 92 days. In this period, lightning and storms were reported on 79 days while heatwaves were recorded on 28 days. Heavy rains, floods and landslides went to extreme level on 16 days. 

Maharashtra was the worst hit with 41 days of extreme weather events while Rajasthan was second at 33 days. 

The monsoon started a week late on June 8, but the entire country was rapidly covered by June 30. In fact, it happened 15 days earlier than normal, according to the report. 

During the monsoon period, all the 122 days reported extreme weather events somewhere or the other, claiming 2,594 lives and damaging nearly a million hectares of cropland with 80,563 houses damaged.

Cyclone Biparjoy caused extreme rainfall in some states. HP had massive flash floods in July. The northeast and other mountainous regions had heavy rainfall in August while the rest of the country was dry. The monsoon had an overall deficit of 6%. 

The regionwise break up of extreme weather events, number of deaths, affected cropland, house damage and animal loss are summed up in the report as in the figure below.

The figures are taken from ‘DTE’  about the ‘India 2023: An assessment of extreme weather events’ report, produced by CSE/’DTE’. Used here for representation only.

INDIA

MP: Police Action on Patwari’s ‘Killing’ Raises Questions on Illegal Sand Mining ‘Nexus’

Newsclick Report | 29 Nov 2023

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A former Army man-turned-revenue officer Prasanna Singh, 40, was crushed to death in MP's Shahdol on November 27 while he was trying to stop illegal sand mining.

Bhopal: The issue of illegal sand mining and its 'nexus' has once again raised its head in Madhya Pradesh, which awaits the results of the Assembly polls on December 3.

The murder of a 40-year-old revenue officer (patwari), Prasanna Singh in Shahdol on the night of November 27 when he was trying to stop illegal transportation of sand, is raising questions on policing and governance in Madhya Pradesh.

The teenaged daughter of the patwari has questioned the intention of sending his father to intercept illegal sand miners at night without police force, alleging that the police were working hand-in-glove with the sand mafia. On the other hand, the kin of main accused, Shubham Vishkarma, 25, arrested for the murder, have claimed that he is innocent.

"He was told that he would get Rs 1,000 pending wage but was taken to the police station instead, where police not only confiscated the tractor but also arrested him for the murder of the patwari. He was at home all night," the mother of Vishkarma claimed in a written complaint to Shahdol superintendent of the police on November 28.

To back her claim, she brought witnesses to testify before the Shahdol SP, Kumar Prateek, and also urged him to check her son’s mobile phone locations and call details. 

The accused’s uncle, Ramprakash Vishkarma, who works in a road construction company, told mediapersons, "The thakurs involved with illegal trade of sand mining are trying to make him a scapegoat," and demanded justice.

According to the police FIR, a patrolling team of revenue officers, including Prasanna Singh, intercepted the tractor-trolley transporting illegally mined sand near Son river in the Gopalpur area. When Singh was trying to stop the vehicle, the driver fled after running over him. Two other revenue officers accompanying him, ran away from the spot. 

It was only in the morning that the police picked up the body and sent it for post-mortem.

Hours later, the Shahdol police claimed to have arrested two men -- the driver and tractor owner -- invoking murder [302] and other relevant Sections of the Indian Penal Code. "Two people were arrested and the tractor used for sand mining was seized," said Prateek.

When asked about Shubham's mother's complaint, a senior officer said, "We are looking into the complaints. The innocent will not be punished."

After the autopsy, Singh’s body was cremated at Barron village in Rewa district. He was survived by his wife Gunja Singh (38), two daughters - Diya (14) and Samriddhi (10), and 5-year-old twin sons, Prateek and Pratyaksh. Having retired from the Army in 2016, Singh had joined the revenue department as a patwari in 2018 and was posted in the Beohari revenue division.

Consoling her mother and three siblings, Singh's 14-year-old daughter Diya asked: "Why was my father sent to patrol at night without police protection?"

Alleging that the police was hand-in-glove with the sand mafia, she said, "My father often used to say that they catch trucks smuggling sand in the night risking their life, but in the morning, police releases them after taking bribes. He was killed because he was an honest man, who fulfilled his duties irrespective of the consequences."

"He would have been alive, if he was corrupt," Diya said, demanding justice and support for the family as Singh was the lone breadwinner.

Madhya Pradesh has witnessed a number such cases in the past decade. Attacks on journalists, officials and RTI activists have become common. In 2012, a 32-year-old IPS officer Narendra Kumar met with the same fate as Singh in Morena district while he was trying to stop a tractor smuggling sand.

Reacting to the killing of the patwari, the opposition Congress demanded strong action in a press statement, while former Chief Minister and BJP leader Uma Bharti termed it "a blot and shame on the state, society and administration". 

Are Roots of Terrorism in Religion or Politics?

Ram Puniyani | 29 Nov 2023

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The origins of terror groups and acts lie in deeper political issues that the media ignores.

Police personnel pay tribute to the martyrs who laid down their lives while fighting terrorists during 26/11 attack, on its 15th anniversary in Mumbai, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023. Image Courtesy: PTI Photo/Kunal Patil

Fifteen years ago, on 26 November 2008, Mumbai witnessed a horrific terror attack. Ten terrorists, armed to the teeth, landed in the city via sea route and indiscriminately killed 166 innocent citizens. The chief of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), Hemant Karkare, and two other police officers were also killed in these coordinated attacks. Today, as we remember the horrors of 26/11, the impact of another act of terror by Hamas in Israel is very much in the air. The Mumbai attacks fifteen years ago were engineered by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiaba (LeT). In all the years gone by, many parts of West Asia have witnessed terror acts, such as by the Taliban and the Islamic State or ISIS. In India, Kashmir has also suffered acts of terror, the roots of which lie in its complex political scenario.

A section of the dominant media and many political commentators present all these acts as resulting from a common thread—boundary-less religious extremism related to Islam. However, this position ignores the deeper dynamics of these painful acts. However, nothing can be further from the truth. While many terror acts and groups have in common an Islamic identity, the underlying reasons for terrorism are highly varied. The birth of Hamas lies in the injustices heaped upon Palestinians and the total violation of United Nations resolutions by Israel time and again. The issue of Kashmir has another political dynamic altogether. Al Qaeda and ISIS are products of United States-sponsored training camps in Pakistan. Therefore, rather than roots in Islam, the origins of terror acts lie in deeper political issues. 

One major cause of acts of terrorism is the policies pursued by global superpowers trying to control oil wealth. The imperialists and their allies have their eyes fixed on appropriating global oil resources. In recent years, a central phenomenon that spurred the rise of terrorist groups has been the United States cultivating fundamentalist Islamist groups through the CIA in client states such as Pakistan. 

The United States’ goal to dominate West Asia due to its “oil hunger" has been brought out very well by many commentators. Their research based on the CIA’s own documents has shown how the CIA funded the training of the Mujahideen, ultimately leading to the formation of Al Qaeda and later ISIS.

In his book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (Harmony, 2003), Mahmood Mamdani writes that funding these outfits cost around $8,000 million and 7,000 tons of armaments. On 19 May 2009, then-United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that her country “came in in the ’80s and helped build up the Mujahideen to take on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan….The Soviet Union fell in 1989, and we basically said, thank you very much…” 

Many commentators and the mainstream media deliberately underplay how the United States funded madrasas in Pakistan to train Al Qaeda and its clones, who later became Frankenstein monsters for the country. What is also underplayed is how these terrorist outfits have hurt Muslims around the world.

The Kashmir imbroglio has different dynamics. When the autonomy promised to Kashmir in Article 370 was undermined in the 1950s and 1960s, the disgruntled youth resorted to violent means instigated by Pakistan’s ISI, which had the backing of the United States. This situation was worsened by the entry of Al Qaeda clones in the 1990s, and the resistance in Kashmir, based on Kashmiriyat, or the synthesis of the region’s Buddhist, Vedantic and Sufi traditions, became a communal issue, and Kashmiri Pandits were targeted as a result. To restate: this terrorism had regional and local political undercurrents and expressed itself in the language of religion.

Hamas has a different mechanism as far as its roots and origins are concerned. The Zionists initially declared an intention to settle in Palestine but began to appropriate the land. Further, they blocked any democratic expressions of resistance of Palestinians. It kept expanding the areas under occupation to the extent that, through two major expansions, its existing hyper-representation in the land (55% of land for 30% Jews) expanded the occupation to nearly 90% of Palestine.

Zionists are occupiers who constantly try to extend their hold over the Palestinian lands. They resort to ancient holy books to claim that Palestine is their land and they are its chosen people. Their expansionism has reduced the Gaza Strip to an “open prison” and forced the West Bank Arabs to live with tremendous hardships.

These three phenomena—Palestine, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban—are propagated as being due to Islamic terrorism. Nothing could be more myopic than this deliberate propaganda about ‘Islamic terrorism’ that the United States media has expounded in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. This propaganda allowed the United States to invade Afghanistan, where it killed 60,000 people. Its oil hunger led it to attack Iraq on the pretext that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction”, which it did not have. They repeatedly claimed that Iraqis would welcome the invasion of their country and greet the invading army “with flowers and chocolates”. Instead, Iraqis resisted, and the Islamic State was eventually born.

The Mumbai terror attacks were also an outcome of sour Indo-Pak relations. As the army dominated Pakistan and was influenced by the United States, it harboured terrorist groups like the Lashkar e Taiba, which the Pakistan Army used to drive a wedge between Pakistan and India. As Pakistan’s civil leadership initiated some peace manoeuvres, the generals, uncomfortable with peace efforts, would unleash trouble—as when Pervez Musharraf occupied Kargil and later came the 26/11 attack.

The 26/11 attack also led to the murder of Karkare, who was investigating terrorism cases from Malegaon to the Samjhauta Express, in which the likes of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Swami Aseemanand, and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit were arrested. Sadhvi is still on bail in the Malegaon blast case and once said she had given a "shraap" or curse to Karkare.

While remembering the 26/11 tragedy of Mumbai and the killing of ordinary innocents and police personnel is very important, to think that it was due to religion is off the mark. To club all these geopolitical developments as ‘boundary-less religious extremism’ that is Islamic in nature serves the goals of imperialist nations and their allies who have wrought havoc in West Asia, particularly by training Al Qaeda. 

The media must go deeper into these developments instead of taking recourse to propaganda or easy ‘answers’ in blaming Muslims and Islam. Terrorism is not a religious but a political phenomenon with a range of instances from the Irish Republican Army to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and innumerable others.

The author is a human rights activist. The views are personal.

MODI'S CURSED TUNNEL 

Uttarakhand Tunnel Collapsed 20 Times in 5 Years: Report

Newsclick Report | 01 Dec 2023

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NHIDCL, the PSU overseeing the project, termed the cave-ins ‘normal, The Times of India reported.

Uttarkashi: Security personnel and others at the under-construction tunnel between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri national highway, days after a portion of the tunnel collapsed trapping several workers inside, in Uttarkashi district, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. The operation to rescue 40 labourers stuck in the tunnel has been suspended since Friday. (PTI Photo)

Uttarakhand’s Silkyara-Barkot tunnel, which partially collapsed on November 12 trapping 41 workers for 17 days, had collapsed around 20 times in the last five years.

According to a Times of India report, the 4.5 km-long two-lane bidirectional tunnel, in Uttarkashi district and the longest on the Char Dham all-weather road project, collapsed on both the Silkyara side and the Barkot end.

“Around 19-20 minor-to-medium-level collapses occurred during the construction of the tunnel,” Anshu Manish Khalkho, director (administration and finance) of the National Highways Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), the PSU overseeing the project, told the newspaper on Thursday,

Khalkho termed the collapses “normal”. “Such incidents happen during every tunnel construction project, but we were unlucky this time that workers got trapped.”

More collapses, also termed as ‘cavities’, “occurred on the Barkot side than the Silkyara side”.

An area of 160-260 meters inside the mouth of the tunnel from Silkyara end was identified as a ‘red zone’ having brittle rocks. “Additional protective measures will be taken to reinforce the area,” said Khalkho.

Another official involved in the construction requesting anonymity said , “The tunnel had faced numerous cavity collapses due to the challenging geology of the region and significant rock deformation.”

Bernard Gruppe, an European company providing design services to Navayuga Engineering, the construction firm that has got the contract for the tunnel construction, also had highlighted the region’s challenging geology.

“Geological conditions (at the tunnel site) proved to be more challenging than predicted in the tender documents,” the company had said.

Three years after the UPA government waived environmental clearance for road projects less than 100 km long in 2013, the NDA government used the waiver, according to report by The Wire.

The government ignored a big threat, according to Himanshu Thakkar, the coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.

The Main Himalayan Thrust, where the Indian plate pushes under the Eurasian plate, runs through Uttarakhand and is close to the tunnel site. Obviously, this has “seismic and shear zone implications”, Thakkar wrote last month.

“In the case of the Char Dham Highway project, even environmental impact assessment was avoided by breaking the 900-kilometre long highway into some 53 smaller projects,” he wrote.

“In case of the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel, it is not even clear if the geological alignment assessments included the existence of the Main Central Thrust close to the tunnel site, with seismic and shear zone implications,” he states.

Despite locals approaching the National Green Tribunal and Supreme Court, but the project continued.

In February 2018, the Cabinet approved the Barkot-Silkyara tunnel. In June, NHIDCL awarded the tender for construction to Hyderabad-based Navayuga Engineering Company. In the same year, Navayuga hired Bernard Gruppe to design and build the tunnel.

Release of 41 Workers a Victory for Every Indian and a Cautionary Tale

Rashme Sehgal | 30 Nov 2023

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A culture of respect is a must to ensure social justice and equality, especially in a nation with a shortage of both.

File Photo. Image: PTI

As India celebrates the release of the 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi on 12 November, we must remember that the credit for the rescue goes to the jubilant workers. Indeed, the government extended the care and concern every worker deserves in such a situation. But can we afford to forget that workers rarely get such privilege? 

The rescue in Uttarkashi is an opportunity for people and governments to comprehend the magnitude of the sacrifices of workers who labour under primitive conditions. The arduous rescue effort will hopefully inform the public about the risks of construction in mountainous regions, given constant seismic activity and inherent instability. 

We also cannot ignore that the trapped workers were employed in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government’s flagship Char Dham project. This 900-km road project, with a cost estimate of over Rs 15,000 crore, aims to connect the four Hindu shrines of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath with a two-lane paved road.

It would be fair also to point out that the Char Dham project, as its name indicates, is crucial to the central government’s Hindutva project. Is that why no stone was left unturned to rescue these 41 workers? From foreign consultants to local experts, practically every arm of the government and private sector was roped in for the rescue operations. Unfortunately, this has not been the experience of many workers (and their families) who have been in similar unfortunate accidents.

One of the worst tunnel disasters took place when over 200 workers died in February 2021 when flood waters swept away the Rishi Ganga hydel project and the NTPC’s Tapovan-Vishnugad project. But several families of the affected have reportedly still to be issued death certificates and are still awaiting the Rs 20 lakh compensation per worker announced by the government soon after the disaster.

Alok Verma, a retired chief engineer of the Indian Railways, points out that over 12 tunnel collapses have occurred in the Himalayan region in the recent past. The Indian Railways have been involved in building many of these tunnels, but while the collapses have been examined in internal government reports, they were almost unnoticed by the media.

Another 23 workers died when a railway bridge collapsed in the Aizwal district in Mizoram last year. In another accident, 61 people were killed when a massive landslide hit a mega railway project in Manipur’s Noney district, including three railway engineers in 2022. But none of these witnessed the kind of mobilisation of resources put into the Uttarkashi rescue operations. Nor did the media pay half the attention to the victims, survivors, or their next of kin as in Silkyara. 

Of course, what set the trapped workers in Silkyara apart was the miraculous situation—they were all alive and well, unlike other disasters in fragile zones, where survival is a big question after such a collapse. Nevertheless, the tremendous effort to provide provide the 41 workers with medical aid and rations right through their ordeal is very worth mention. During the last four days, they were fortunate to even receive hot khichdi in plastic bottles, dry fruits, and other essential items—even some games to help pass the time!

As the 41 workers were wheeled out of the cave two days ago, the first celebratory moments belonged to them entirely. At 8.30 pm on Tuesday, 51-year-old Gabbar Singh Negi was the last to be wheeled out, shaken but unhurt. He burst into tears when he saw the stars sparkling in the dark mountain sky. 

Negi, a foreman for the construction team hired by the Navayuga Engineering Company in charge of the tunnel construction, is from Uttarakhand and was the eldest among the trapped workers. Throughout the ordeal, he kept up the morale of the other workers. The fact that the outside world was in touch with them using walkie-talkies also helped keep hope alive.

Once they were brought outside, waiting ambulances whisked them away to a nearby health facility. On Wednesday morning, they were flown by helicopters to the Jolly Grant airport and taken for check-ups at an AIIMS facility in Rishikesh.

Efforts to clear the 60-metre blockage in the Silkyara tunnel and create an exit passage for the trapped workers faced several obstacles. Two augur machines, one flown to the site in a hastily prepared landing space for the large IAF Hercules aircraft and the other brought by road from Hyderabad, broke down while drilling.

Several alternate rescue plans were devised. The ONGC and the Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam, under the supervision of the Bengal Sappers of the Indian Army, were asked to start drilling vertically while workers hired by the National Highways Infrastructure Development Corporation supervised by the Border Roads Organisation and other agencies continued drilling horizontally.

After facing repeated obstructions and delays, the government brought twelve “rat miners” who dug the final twelve metres. Munna Qureshi, one of the most experienced miners, worked non-stop for 24 hours to clear the debris. His colleague, Feroz, helped dig through the last two metres. They were the first to meet the trapped workers as they were wheeled out. 

This moment of tremendous comradeship again was a blow against the divisive tunes Hindutva has been playing, ironically, even in the hilly state of Uttarakhand. “The workers stopped and hugged them and thanked us profusely for our assistance,” Qureshi told the media at the tunnel site.

Other developments at Silkyara sharply contrasted the attitude of state and central governments when major calamities afflicted the country. During the second COVID-19 lockdown, lakhs of migrants were forced to trudge back to their homes, often hundreds of kilometres away. Governments watched vast waves of old and young people carrying their meagre belongings, walking in the hot sun, with little help, if any. Many perished on their arduous journeys, receiving neither food nor water from those in power.

The same indifference manifested on 8 November 2016 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with only a four-hour notice, made virtually all the cash in the seventh-largest economy worthless. Modi described it as an attempt to curb black money. But for the next few weeks, it forced lakhs of people to stand in long queues clutching notes to exchange them for lower-denomination currency. It was a heartless act which neither curbed black money nor stopped, as claimed, terror financing.

Many questions remain unanswered about the partial collapse of the Silkyara tunnel, the most crucial being the alleged absence of safety exit routes that could have helped workers escape during any disaster. Hopefully, these questions will have answers at a more opportune moment. For now, we must celebrate the culture of respect displayed in this tremendous rescue effort—such a culture is a must to ensure social justice and equality, especially in a nation with a shortage of both. 

The author is an independent journalist. The views are personal.

 

COP28: Activists Expect Multiple Obstacles During Health Discussions

Peoples Health Dispatch |01 Dec 2023

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While health is on the agenda at the COP28 summit in the UAE, activists fear significant progress on climate and health will not be achieved due to a number of factors such as the presence of lobbyists from the fossil fuel sector.

COP 28 is inaugurated in Dubai. Photo: COP28UAE/X

The latest United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), which began on November 30 in Dubai, is unlikely to be the place where the world’s governments will decide to phase out fossil fuels. Instead, it might be the place where the 1.5 °C target from the Paris Agreement is silently abandoned.

These are two major concerns shared by some climate justice campaigners, including Juliette Mattijsen, a health worker and activist from the Netherlands. “I think those will be very important: the negotiations on fossil fuels, and whether 1.5 °C survives. I think on paper, yes, it survives. But in action, no,” she said.

The participants of COP28 are expected to continue discussing selected topics opened up during the last session, including the practicalities of the Loss and Damage Fund. While one of the conclusions of COP27 was that the fund would be established to provide support to countries most affected by the climate crisis, the details of its implementation are still to be decided. As Mattijsen explained, this means that for now, options on the table include the World Bank hosting the fund, as well as the development of alternative mechanisms.

Regardless of the outcome of this discussion, the fact remains that existing climate debts are already not being paid by high-income countries. To begin with, the promise to mobilize USD 100 billion a year for climate actions in low-and middle-income countries is not being fulfilled. Earlier this year, an Oxfam report estimated that approximately USD 25 billion was raised in 2020. In addition to that, the organization warned that much of the climate funding was coming to low- and middle-income countries in the form of loans, exposing them to even higher financial pressures.

The gap in funding is also recognized in the agenda documentation of COP28, making the negotiations on the dynamics of collecting funds and distributing them one of the key issues that will be confronted over the next two weeks.

Another significant outcome of the last COP was that “health was recognized and mentioned in the final text, which means it’s a topic for this year to discuss,” said Mattijsen. This means that health ministries are going to take part in the negotiations. “In a sense, that’s very positive because they have a lot to win based on climate action in terms of resilience, protecting the health of the people, and finding ways to deal with the climate-harming health systems that many richer countries have.”

Still, many of those working on issues related to climate and health, including Mattijsen, are not convinced significant progress on climate and health will be achieved at COP28. Considering the ongoing presence of fossil fuel industry representatives at the table, putting health on the agenda is not far from “health-washing,” as Mattijsen noted. In this situation, “Health is nominally endorsed, but we are not tackling the root causes of the climate crisis.”

At COP28, the space to articulate dissent from the grassroots is expected to be reduced compared to the standard. Civil society actions will be restricted to the conference venue and the people taking part in the event. Their number is small to begin with: if we put aside representatives of the private sector and academia, activists from fields other than climate represent a single-digit percentage of those taking part in the conversation.

“When I was at COP26 in Glasgow, I was told that there were 500 oil lobbyists. That’s only the oil lobbyists, and does not include the nuclear and all the agro-industries there. We were with 10 people from the health sector,” said Mattijsen.

Far from seeing improvements in broadening participation from the Global South and regulating the space for the private sector, Mattijsen warned that the preparation for COP 28 has seen concerns raised about the amount of information shared with the oil lobby beforehand – given the host’s own links to the sector.

“It’s not that things are happening that were not happening before, or that people are present that were not present before, it’s just it’s open and explicit. They’re openly having this kind of information that civil society does not necessarily have. And that’s why I worry very much that they will have more influence,” said Mattijsen.

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

Volcanic Iceland is rumbling again

Photo by Jonatan Pie on Unsplash
people standing on rock formation with fire during daytime

The Conversation

November 18, 2023

Thousands of earthquakes in recent weeks have shaken the Icelandic fishing town of Grindavík, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of the capital Reykjavik. They have triggered evacuations and warnings that a volcanic eruption may be imminent

While the idea of magma rising was no doubt scary for tourists visiting the nearby Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, which was closed as a precaution, Iceland’s residents have learned over centuries to live with their island’s overactive geology.

So, why is Iceland so volcanically active?

The answer has two parts: One has to do with what geologists unimaginatively call a hotspot, and the other involves giant tectonic plates that are pulling apart right beneath the island. As a geologist, I study both.


Eruptions in this region of Iceland tend to flow rather than being explosive, as residents saw in July 2023 and in 2021-22.
Kristinn Magnusson/AFP via Getty Images

Life on the edge of two tectonic plates

When plate tectonic theory was emerging in the 1960s, geologists realized that many volcanoes are located in zones where tectonic plates meet. Tectonic plates are gigantic chunks of Earth’s rigid outer layer that carry both continents and oceans and are constantly in motion. They cover the planet like large pieces of a spherical jigsaw puzzle.

Many of these volcanoes are in subduction zones, like the Pacific’s Ring of Fire, where thinner oceanic plates slowly sink into Earth’s mantle. These are the postcard stratovolcanoes like Mount Fuji, in Japan, or Mount Rainier, outside of Seattle. Because of their high gas content, they tend to erupt catastrophically, shooting ash high into the atmosphere with the energy of nuclear bombs, as Mount St. Helens did in 1980.

A second, typically quieter kind of volcano forms where plates pull apart.

The volcanic activity near Grindavík is directly related to this kind of plate tectonic motion. The mid-Atlantic ridge between the Eurasian and North American plates cuts right through that part of the island.



Iceland sits atop the meeting of two tectonic plates, the North American to the west and Eurasian to the east, indicated by the red line crossing the island. The maps show the earthquake swarms on Nov. 12-14, 2023.

Yasin Demirci/Anadolu via Getty Images




In the 1950s, cartographer Marie Tharp used echo soundings gathered by ships to develop the first map showing the ocean floor in detail. It clearly revealed the mid-ocean ridges. This hand-painted version of her map includes annotations showing hotspot tracks related to movement of the plates.

Heinrich C. Berann via Library of Congress; annotations by Jaime Toro

In fact, at Thingvellir National Park you can literally walk between the two tectonic plates. You can see the topographic scars of the rift in the long, linear valleys that extend to the northeast from Grindavík. They align with the recent swarm of earthquakes and the ground deformation that is happening.


Radar satellite data from the Icelandic Meteorological Office show that a broad area around Grindavík sank by about 3 feet (1 meter) over 10 days, and the GPS station in town moved about 3 feet (1 meter) to the southeast with respect to the North American plate from Oct. 28 to Nov. 9. Large cracks have broken streets and houses in Grindavík.



Estimates of how the ground deformed near Grindavík, Iceland, on Nov. 10-11, 2023. The vertical movements of more than 3 feet (dark purple), between Grindavík on the ocean and the Blue Lagoon north of it, were caused by the magma dike’s movement.

Icelandic Met Office


Where plates pull away from each other, the underlying mantle rises toward the surface to fill the gap, carrying its heat with it and moving into an area of lower pressure. Those two processes cause melting at depth and volcanic activity at the surface.

Starting in October 2023, this pressurized magma began pushing its way along a fissure toward the surface, triggering the earthquake swarms and creating the possibility of an eruption.

This is the same process that creates new oceanic crust underwater at mid-ocean ridges. After the magma solidifies as basalt rock, it will look like vertical walls intruded into the surrounding area. The Grindavík dike appeared to have reached within about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of the surface by Nov. 14 and could soon reach the surface.
Sitting on a hotspot

In Iceland, the large volcanoes in the interior also appear to be over a mantle plume, similar to Hawaii.

This kind of volcano typically erupts basalt lava, which melts at very high temperature and tends to flow easily. Eruptions are generally not explosive because the runny lava allows gases to escape. This is the reason why tourists often can safely watch lava flows in Hawaii or Iceland.

Exactly what causes hot material to rise at hotspots is still debated, but the most commonly accepted idea is that they are caused by plumes of super-heated rock that originate at the transition between Earth’s metallic core and rocky mantle. Hotspots are a mechanism for the Earth to give off some of its internal heat.

How hotspots develop. Video by Volcano Museum.

If there is an eruption in Iceland, the basaltic lava will most likely flow relatively peacefully downhill, as it did when Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted in 2021-22 just east of Grindavík, until it reaches the sea. However, when lava that is 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,000 Celsius) hits water, it will flash to steam, causing explosions that can scatter ash over a large area.
A silver lining of Iceland’s volcanoes

Living in an active volcanic area has some advantages, particularly for energy.

Iceland derives 30% of its electricity from geothermal sources that use underground heat to drive turbines and produce power. It’s almost like a controlled version of a lava flow hitting the sea, and it helps make Iceland one of the cleanest economies on earth.


Iceland has a lot of natural hot springs, but its Blue Lagoon has an unusual origin linked to geothermal energy.
Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash, CC BY-ND

A hydrothermal plant called Svartsengi, near Grindavík, uses the underground heat to provide hot water for several thousand homes plus 75 megawatts of electricity. The plant pumps water through wells drilled into the volcanic field. This water boils to steam, which is then fed to turbines that generate power and to heat exchangers that make hot water for direct heating of homes.

That power plant is also part of the reason the Blue Lagoon is so popular. When the power plant was built in 1976, the plan was to discharge its still hot wastewater into an adjacent low area, expecting that it would seep into the ground. However, the geothermal water was loaded with dissolved silica, which became solid minerals when the water cooled, creating an impermeable layer. A small lake began to form.

Because of its high silica content, the water in this lake is a spectacular blue color that inspired the creation of the geothermal spa. The Blue Lagoon is now one of the top tourist attractions in the country.

Jaime Toro, Professor of Geology, West Virginia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.