P-HDI

• Vaid's ICS, Lucknow
• 22, Jan 2022

Why in  News?

The 2020 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), titled “The Next Frontier – Human Development and the Anthropocene”

It proposed a planetary pressure-adjusted Human Development Index:

It indicates that biodiversity loss, climate change, land system/land-use change, disruption of biogeochemical cycles, and scarcity of freshwater availability are a threat and increase the vulnerability of society

An integrated perspective is necessary as social and environmental problems cannot be addressed in isolation anymore.

Human-induced change:

1. The concept of the planetary boundary was introduced by a group of scientists across the world, led by J. Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2009.
2. It highlights that human-induced environmental change can irrevocably destabilise the long-term dynamics of the earth system, thereby disrupting the life-supporting system of the planet.
3. The purpose of the planetary pressure adjusted HDI, or PHDI, is to communicate to the larger society the risk involved in continuing with existing practices in our resource use and environmental management.
4. It exposes the retarding effect that environmental stress can perpetuate on development.

Impact on country rankings:

1. When planetary pressure is adjusted, the world average HDI in 2019 came down from 0.737 to 0.683.
2. This adjustment has been worked out by factoring in per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emission (production), and per capita material footprint.
3. The global ranking of several countries was altered, in a positive and negative sense, with the adjustment of planetary pressure.
4. Switzerland is the only country in the group of high human development countries whose world rank has not changed with adjustment of planetary pressure,
5. Among 66 very high human development countries, 30 countries recorded a fall in rank values ranging from minus 1 for Germany and Montenegro to minus 131 for Luxembourg.
6. It brings out the nature of planetary pressure generated by the developed countries
7. It indirectly indicates their responsibility in combating the situation.
8. In the case of India, the PHDI is 0.626 against an HDI of 0.645 with an average per capita CO2 emission (production) and material footprints of 2.0 tonnes and 4.6 tonnes.
9. India gained in global rankings by 131st rank under HDI and 123rd rank under PHDI
10. India’s per capita carbon emission (production) and material footprint are well below the global average.

Challenges in India:

1. India’s natural resource use is far from efficient, environmental problems are growing,
2. India has 27.9% people under the Multidimensional Poverty Index ranging from 1.10% in Kerala to 52.50% in Bihar, and a sizable section of them directly depend on natural resources for their sustenance.
3. The twin challenges of poverty alleviation and environmental safeguarding still remain unattended.
4. Wide gaps in managing the environment despite of widespread awareness about the environment.
5. Nesting human development including social and economic systems into the ecosystem, and biosphere building on a systematic approach to nature-based solutions that put people at the core.
6. There is a need to consider people and the planet as being a part of an interconnected social-ecological system.
7. We need to strengthen Local governance through constitutional provisions in the form of the 73rd and 74th Amendments.
8. We need to reorient the planning process by adopting a decentralised approach
9. Needed a plan for proper institutional arrangements, and steps to enable political decisions.

Loopholes in the law:

Those against say that voters elect individuals in the election and not parties and hence the Anti-Defection law is infructuous.

Can the courts intervene?

Courts have, in certain cases, intervened in the workings of a legislature.

1. In 1992, a five-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court held that the anti-defection law proceedings before the Speaker are akin to a tribunal and, thus, can be placed under judicial review.
2. In January 2020, the Supreme Court asked Parliament to amend the Constitution to strip legislative assembly speakers of their exclusive power to decide whether legislators should be disqualified or not under the anti-defection law.
3. In March 2020, the Supreme Court removed Manipur minister Thounaojam Shyamkumar Singh, against whom disqualification petitions were pending before the speaker since 2017, from the state cabinet and restrained him “from entering the legislative assembly till further orders”.

Facts for Prelims :

Xenotransplantation :

David Bennett, a 57-year-old from Baltimore, Maryland, the U.S. became the first person to receive a heart transplant from a genetically-modified pig.

2. It is any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation or infusion into a human recipient of either (a) live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or (b) human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues or organs.
3. Pig immune system is different from humans for the simple reason that the porcine organs are anatomically similar to those of humans.
4. The donor pig underwent 10 genetic modifications, by which the genes responsible for the rapid rejection of foreign organs by the human body were inactivated or knocked out.
5. Gal Safe pigs, or pigs that had undergone editing to knock out a gene that codes for Alpha-gal (a sugar molecule) were used.
6. Alpha-gal can elicit a devastating immune response in humans.
7. These pigs have 10 of their genes genetically modified to reduce the possibility of rejection.