Bird islands (GS-III: Environment & Ecology | Biodiversity Conservation | Wildlife Management) - The Hindu

Context

• Species-centric conservation is insufficient: The conservation of the Great Indian Bustard shows that while species-specific protection can produce results, India needs to move towards landscape-level conservation that balances wildlife, human activity and ecological integrity.

Key Concerns

• Great Indian Bustard remains highly vulnerable: The conservation programme now has 97 birds, including 57 captive-bred birds, with captive birds producing 29 chicks this year and 24 last year; however, the overall population remains only around 120, keeping the species close to extinction.
• Historical human pressures: The Great Indian Bustard declined from around 1,260 birds in 1969 to 600 in 2000, with hunting, agricultural expansion, roads and habitat transformation contributing to its decline.
• Grassland conversion: Irrigation in Rajasthan transformed grasslands once dismissed as “wastelands” into irrigated and pesticide-intensive agricultural fields, reducing suitable habitat and increasing risks to the species.
• Power-line mortality: High-tension power lines pose a major threat because the heavy-bodied bustard tends to fly at a similar height to power lines and has poor vision; conservation therefore requires addressing infrastructure within critical habitats.
• Conservation-development conflict: The Supreme Court’s 2021 direction to underground low-voltage lines in priority habitats was subsequently modified after concerns that extensive undergrounding could affect the economics of renewable-energy projects, illustrating the need to balance biodiversity protection with development objectives.
• Conservation by symbolism: Greater attention to culturally prominent species such as the Great Indian Bustard, tiger, cheetah and Asiatic lion can create a perception of conservation success while less visible species and ecosystems remain under pressure.
• Broader avian decline: Nearly 1,256 bird species, around 11.5% of the world’s total, are classified as threatened; skylark populations have declined nearly 80% and Indian rollers around 30% in 12 years, highlighting the wider biodiversity challenge.
• Artificial ecological homogenisation: Conservation interventions that introduce or promote species or vegetation outside their natural ecological setting can undermine the ecological character of landscapes, as illustrated by concerns over planting peepal and banyan in Delhi’s dry Ridge ecosystem.
• Human-wildlife conflict: Concentrating wildlife within protected enclosures can create ecological islands; when animal populations expand beyond these spaces into villages and agricultural fields, human-wildlife conflict can intensify, as seen in the case of elephants.

Way Forward

• Make landscapes the unit of conservation: Conservation policy should move beyond protecting individual flagship species and focus on entire landscapes and ecological systems, including habitats, food chains and interactions between species and communities.
• Promote coexistence-based conservation: Conservation must reconcile wildlife protection with human livelihoods and infrastructure rather than treating protected areas as isolated islands disconnected from surrounding landscapes.
• Protect critical habitats: Infrastructure planning, particularly power transmission and roads, should incorporate the ecological requirements of vulnerable species and minimise threats within their critical habitats.
• Move beyond flagship species: Conservation priorities should also address less visible and threatened species, ensuring that biodiversity policy does not become disproportionately focused on animals with greater cultural or political visibility.
• Balance conservation and development: Renewable energy, infrastructure and conservation objectives need to be integrated through landscape-level planning, rather than treating ecological protection and economic development as mutually exclusive goals.

India’s conservation challenge is not merely to save individual species but to preserve the landscapes and ecological relationships that allow wildlife and human communities to coexist.

“Landscapes, rather than individual species, should be the fundamental unit of biodiversity conservation in India.” Examine the limitations of species-centric conservation and suggest a landscape-based approach. (10 marks)

Mains Enhancer

(GS-II: Social Justice | Disability Inclusion | Digital Governance | Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Disabled citizens and the future of AI

Context

• AI and disability inclusion: AI can significantly enhance the independence of persons with disabilities, but unless accessibility, representation and accountability are built into AI systems from the beginning, the technology may reproduce existing inequalities.

Opportunities

• AI-enabled independence: AI can help persons with disabilities perform everyday tasks such as reading documents, interpreting photographs and completing inaccessible government forms, reducing dependence on others.
• Accessible public services: As AI increasingly enters government services, recruitment and healthcare, it has the potential to make public systems more accessible if disability needs are incorporated into their design.

Key Concerns

• Accessibility remains weak: The Rajive Raturi judgment (2024) recognised accessibility as a facet of the fundamental right to life and dignity, while holding that accessibility requirements needed to be treated as binding rather than merely advisory.
• Digital exclusion persists: Despite the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 requiring accessible digital services, the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities has penalised 155 establishments, including government ministries, for inaccessible websites and applications.
• AI can reproduce disability bias: Testing through AccessEval, covering nine kinds of disability, found that language models became more error-prone, more negative in tone and more likely to stereotype when disability-related contexts were introduced.
• Biased visual datasets: A study of the CLIP image model found it 15 percentage points less accurate on photographs taken by blind and low-vision users, while disability-related objects such as white canes and Braille displays were significantly under-represented in training datasets.
• AI does not always provide independent accessibility: Among 2,462 users of the NClude platform, 1,313 reported completing tasks that were previously inaccessible, but only 543 managed to do so through AI alone; many still required human assistance.
• Accessibility without fallback can exclude: AI systems that fail without providing a human or institutional fallback can leave persons with disabilities to create their own workarounds, undermining the promise of independent access.

AI, Energy and Disability

• Rising infrastructure footprint: India’s data-centre capacity is projected to exceed 6.5 GW by 2030, increasing electricity demand, heat generation and pressure on urban infrastructure.
• Energy vulnerability affects disabled citizens disproportionately: Persons dependent on powered wheelchairs, oxygen machines and other electrically powered equipment can be particularly vulnerable to power disruptions and inaccessible emergency alerts.
• Sustainability must include disability: AI expansion cannot treat energy and environmental impacts as separate from social inclusion because infrastructure failures can disproportionately affect persons with disabilities.

Reforms Needed

• Mandatory disability-bias testing: Government-deployed AI systems should undergo systematic testing for disability-related bias, accuracy and accessibility before and during deployment.
• Representative training datasets: AI datasets should include genuine representation of different disabilities, with such data collected ethically and with informed consent.
• Accessibility by design: Digital public services and AI systems should incorporate accessibility from the design stage, rather than expecting disabled users to adapt to inaccessible systems.
• Human fallback mechanisms: AI-enabled government services should retain accessible human assistance and alternative channels where automated systems fail.
• Include disabled persons in AI governance: Persons with disabilities should participate in decisions concerning AI design, training data, deployment standards and evaluation, ensuring that systems reflect lived experiences rather than assumptions about disability.
• Link AI incentives with sustainability: Government incentives for data centres should incorporate conditions relating to renewable-energy sourcing, grid impact and heat management, while ensuring that sustainability measures do not undermine access to essential assistive technologies.

Inclusive AI requires more than making technology available; it requires accessible design, representative data, bias testing, human safeguards and meaningful participation of persons with disabilities in AI governance.

“Artificial Intelligence can become a powerful instrument of empowerment for persons with disabilities. Discuss ( 10 marks) 

(GS-II: Governance | Decentralisation | Community Participation | GS-III: Water Resources) From India to Global South, a Gujarat water-governance model

Context

• Water security as a governance challenge: Gujarat’s experience demonstrates that sustainable water security depends not only on infrastructure but also on political leadership, financing, institutional capacity, administrative implementation and community participation.

Key Lessons from the Gujarat Model

• Governance before hardware: Water security requires strong institutions and political prioritisation alongside infrastructure; the “4 Ps” — Political leadership, Public financing, Partnerships and People’s participation — provide a framework for building water security at scale.
• Political leadership: Water must remain a sustained governance priority through initiatives focused on universal tap-water access, Ganga rejuvenation, community-based groundwater management and campaigns such as Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain.
• Public financing: Water governance requires financing not only for infrastructure but also for recurring operational and maintenance costs, making sustained public and private financing essential.
• Partnership-based governance: Effective water management requires coordination among national, State and local governments, community organisations and knowledge institutions, including multilateral development institutions.
• People’s participation: Communities should participate directly in water decision-making through mechanisms such as village-level water security plans, local water management institutions and community-led sanitation and conservation initiatives.

Manage Resource + Service Together

• Infrastructure without water is unsustainable: Taps, canals and other infrastructure cannot deliver water security unless the underlying water resource and the service delivery system are planned and managed together.
• Plan for future demand: Rapid urbanisation and rising industrial and irrigation demand, particularly across the Global South, require countries to anticipate future water demand rather than retrofit systems after shortages emerge.
• Integrate water reuse: Forward-looking water planning should incorporate reuse of treated water for non-potable purposes, particularly for emerging high-water-demand sectors such as data centres and semiconductor manufacturing.
• Economic opportunity from reuse: India’s market revenue from the sale of treated used water is projected to reach around ₹73,000 crore annually by 2047, at current prices, indicating the potential of a circular approach to water management.

Community Ownership

• Empower local institutions: Water access becomes more sustainable when communities have effective local institutions such as Pani Samitis, reliable infrastructure and a balance between community resources and external support.
• Link governance across levels: Gujarat’s Chintan Shivirs (2001–2014) helped bring stakeholders together to prioritise water governance and develop actionable solutions aligned with community expectations; similar approaches were subsequently adopted at the national level.
• Institutionalise local planning: Village-level water security plans and community participation can make water governance more responsive to local needs, resource conditions and community priorities.

Scaling Up

• SDG 6 financing gap: The world remains off track on SDG 6, which seeks universal access to safe water and sanitation and sustainable management of water resources, wastewater and ecosystems by 2030; an estimated additional $500 billion annually is required.
• Think and implement at scale: The implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) demonstrates the possibility of combining large-scale political prioritisation, financing and institutional implementation for nationwide water service delivery.
• Global South relevance: Countries facing rapid urbanisation and rising water demand can adapt the Gujarat experience by combining political commitment, financing, institutional reform, integrated resource-service planning and community ownership.

Political Leadership + Public Financing + Partnerships + People’s Participation

Water security is not merely an engineering challenge; it is an institutional and governance challenge requiring political commitment, integrated planning, community ownership and sustained financing.

“Water security is as much a challenge of governance and institutions as it is of engineering.” Comment (10 marks)