EnviStats – India 2023 (Volume II: Environmental Accounts)

The Economy-Wide Material flow accounts (EW-MFA) provide a metric for physical measurement, in tonnes, of the amount of natural resources that flow as input into the economy from imports and domestic extraction, get accumulated inside the national economy for utilisation, and return back to the environment through emissions, disposal or are processed for export.

The core account for EW-MFA is based on the physical supply and use of natural resources. Specifically, it accounts for the domestic extraction, imports, and exports of biomass, metal ores, non-metallic minerals, and fossil fuels in terms of both physical quantity (tonnes) and value (rupees). Data from EW-MFA is used to compute Domestic Material Consumption (DMC), which is an important indicator for global Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ and SDG 12 ‘Sustainable Consumption and Production.

The report presents the observation that between 2011-12 and 2020-21, DMC in tonnes increased by 22 per cent, whereas DMC in rupees increased by 63 per cent. Similarly, DMC per capita increased by 0.18 tonnes – from 1.92 in 2011-12 to 2.10 in 2020-21.

In the SEEA framework, residuals are defined as “flows of solid, liquid and gaseous materials and energy that are discarded, discharged or emitted to the environment by establishments and households through processes of production, consumption or accumulation.” Residuals are grouped into different classes for accounting, some of which are solid waste, waste water, emissions, natural resource residuals.

The report uses data from the Central Board of Pollution Control to present its solid waste accounts. The components included in this category are municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, e-waste, bio-medical waste, plastic waste, and construction and demolition waste.

The solid waste accounts compiled in this report show that a considerable amount of municipal solid waste generated in Chandigarh, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu in 2020-21 was collected in an organised manner. Among them, Chandigarh also recorded 100 per cent of the collected waste as having been managed in controlled facilities.

Among the seven states and union territories included in the report, the state of Gujarat generated the highest amount of hazardous waste in 2020-21 at 39 lakh tonnes. It also recorded the highest per capita at 5.6 tonnes. Hazardous waste generation was the lowest in Mizoram, at 51 tonnes. In Mizoram and Jammu and Kashmir, more than 93 per cent of such waste was treated by recycling. In Gujarat, the majority (30.5 per cent) of the hazardous waste generated was treated by dumping in sanitary landfills. Recycling and reuse accounted for five per cent and 5.6 per cent of waste treatment, respectively.

Soil erosion is the process that transforms soil into sediments and leads to land loss. It leads to loss of land productivity, degradation of water quality and economic loss from reduced crop yields. This report presents information on soil loss in two districts – Gondia in Maharashtra and Balrampur in Chhattisgarh.

Using the empirical soil loss model called Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), the report predicts long-term annual averages of soil loss by using rainfall, topography, soil, land use and cover, and support practices as inputs.

In the presence of forest ecosystems, the soil loss in Gondia is estimated at 2.89 tonnes per hectare per year. In the absence of forest cover, this estimate increases to 5.79 tonnes per hectare per year. Soil erosion prevention services by forests is thus computed as 2.9 tonnes per hectare per year.

Soil erosion in the absence of forest cover is estimated to be 33.18 tonnes per hectare per year in Balrampur. But estimates show that 32.5 tonnes per hectare per year of soil loss could be prevented by the presence of forest cover. However, these drastic estimates are uncertain and limited by challenges in validation of data, possible data errors and assumptions, non-consideration of hydrological factors, changes in vegetation dynamics and imperfect calibration of computing models.

Focus and Factoids by Niharika Choudhury.