What's behind India's farmer protests? For one thing, climate change

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This week:

• What's behind India's farmer protests? For one thing, climate change
• The changing cherry blossom season
• A natural solution to road salt pollution

What's behind India's farmer protests? For one thing, climate change

When Moninder Singh first heard that farmers in northern India were marching again to the country's capital in protest, he thought of something that the late actor-activist Deep Sidhu once said.

"This is a generational fight," said Singh.

Singh, who speaks for the B.C. Gurdwaras Council, a Sikh organization, has been watching the protests in India unfold. Many of his members have ties to the country and some have even sent money overseas to support people who were on the march, he said.

In mid-February, thousands of farmers from rural areas in Punjab and Haryana states started making their way to New Delhi to demand — among other things — minimum price guarantees for their crops.

This would not only help farmers mitigate the rising costs of production, but it would also help them adopt more sustainable practices and adapt to the impacts of climate change, said Jayati Ghosh, an economist with the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

"At the moment, we are growing rice in places that we shouldn't grow rice in, and it's depleting the water table," she told What On Earth.

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi guarantees a minimum purchase price for rice and wheat. This system, which was introduced in the 1960s, protects the two crops from market fluctuations.

But the farmers — who were allowed into New Delhi on March 14 after being blocked from the city for weeks — want similar support for a much wider variety of crops. 

The attitude of farmers is "if you provide the minimum support price, we will diversify into better crops, more sustainable crops and better types of cultivation," said Ghosh. 

Balshar Singh Sidhu, who teaches at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, says crops such as millets and hardy cereals are more indigenous to Punjab and its surrounding states, a region known as India's bread basket. 

But because of guaranteed prices for rice and wheat, farmers are inclined to grow mostly those two crops, which are much more water-intensive, Sidhu said.

Roughly two-thirds of India's people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and they rely heavily on groundwater to irrigate. But as rain patterns change, and extreme heat waves and drought become more frequent, the farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to pump water out of the ground, said Sidhu.

"If your neighbour is digging 300 feet [91 metres] into the ground and they start pumping, then that also impacts your access to groundwater. So you have to dig even deeper."

Sidhu said those without the means to dig deep into the ground must rely on canal and river-fed irrigation. But extreme weather events are impacting those water sources, too.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified India as one of the most vulnerable countries for crop production.

Besides guaranteeing prices for crops other than wheat and rice — which may encourage farmers to grow crops that use less water — Ghosh also wants the government to regulate water use, invest in crops that are more resilient to climate change and help farmers access more eco-friendly fertilizers. 

This latest protest comes three years after tens of thousands of farmers camped outside New Delhi for months, eventually forcing the Modi government to repeal three agricultural reform laws.

Singh, who has family in Punjab, said a lot of young people in the diaspora feel deeply connected to what farmers in that region are going through, even though many, like himself, were born and raised in Canada.

"There's an affinity and this love for the land where we come from that … we've grown up around, between the culture, the music, the language," he said.

"This truly is a generational fight for the people of Punjab, and the status quo will lead to … pretty much the annihilation of Punjab's agriculture if they don't do something soon about it."

— Vivian Luk

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Check out our podcast and radio show. This week: making public transportation awesome. We ask how to build buses and trains people will actually want to ride. What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app, or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m. ET, 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Is this year's spring strange where you are? Check how it compares to past years with CBC's Climate Dashboard.

Reader feedback

Responding to Emily Chung's story about the use of Toronto's sewage to heat buildings, Marie Christenson wrote in with concerns about potential contamination from the sewage. "I can see if it is paper plant wastewater that you also described, but wastewater, no matter how much you filter, will … never be disease-free. So what if the pipes break?"

Good question, Marie. As mentioned in the article, the heat gets transferred to clean water in heat exchangers. Stephen Condie, chief technology officer of Noventa Energy Partners, the company behind the project, told CBC News that the sewage and clean water are physically separated within the heat exchanger, and a pressure difference is maintained between them. "So if there was ever an issue, we would always be leaking into the sewer system," he said. "So there's no potential for contaminating the clean water stream." It's similar to the way negative pressure rooms for COVID-19 patients in hospitals pull air into them when the door is opened, preventing air in the room from flowing out and contaminating other areas. You can read more about the heat exchangers here.

Craig Jansen of Halifax, N.S. wrote: "Thanks for your recent article on wastewater heat recovery in Toronto. Simple ideas like this can add up to big efficiency gains. I added a drainwater heat recovery pipe into my own home to pre-heat the cold water inlet on my hot water tank. Simple, cheap and effective."

Nancy Murphy wrote: "I don't know if you are aware, but Charlottetown, P.E.I., has an energy, heat and cooling, and waste plant that heats/cools the university with its massive sports facilities, as well moderating hospital costs for air quality/heat/cooling/equipment sterilization…. And [provides heat to] about 145 other city buildings from burning biomass ... and municipal waste.... It diverts 90 per cent of municipal waste from landfill and reduces fuel use for these buildings. This facility has been operating for 30 years. With new funding, there are going to be even greater savings, and pollution control features."

Thanks, Nancy. Anyone who is interested can read a profile of Charlottetown's district energy system and profiles of a few other district energy systems across the country here and about the Charlottetown DES expansion here. Want to know more about district energy? Check out our explainer.

For a future issue, we're interested in your tips to live more sustainably and save money at the same time. Do you have some to share?

Write us at whatonearth@cbc.ca. 

Have a compelling personal story about climate change you want to share with CBC News? Pitch a First Person column here.

The Big Picture: The changing cherry blossom season

Spring officially sprang earlier this week. The start of the season means we can expect an abundance of spring blooms such as cherry blossoms — just not at quite the same time they used to come. For more than 1,000 years, people in Japan faithfully recorded when cherry blossoms bloomed in Kyoto. On average, until about 1900, you could expect the annual spectacle between April 10 and April 20. But things literally took a turn over the last century, a graph produced by Our World in Data shows. Now, in a warmer climate, you'd better plan your cherry blossom picnic for the first half of the month (or right now, if you're in Vancouver or Washington, D.C.).  — Emily Chung

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web

• Meats such as beef and lamb have a huge carbon footprint. But scientists think they've found a more sustainable source of meat — pythons. 

• The world's emissions hit a record high in 2023. One big reason was climate change itself, especially droughts that hobbled hydropower production around the world.

• Food prices are soaring, partly because of extreme weather from climate change, writes Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, a professor at George Washington University. In Yale Climate Connections, Colón-Ramos argues that talking about food prices is more likely to make people raise their voices about climate change than talking about fossil fuels.
   
• Some heartening conservation news: A bald eagle nest has been found in Canada's biggest city for the first time in recorded history.

Moncton effort to protect waterways from road salt gets encouraging results

A Moncton project to reduce the salt and sediment reaching waterways from a city snow dump is showing positive results, according to Ducks Unlimited Canada. 

There has been a roughly 20 per cent increase in water quality since the creation of a new wetland to filter pollutants from snow melt, said Adam Campbell, the Atlantic manager of operations for the conservation group.

"It was quite acceptable not that long ago to dump the snow right into rivers and right into the bay." 

But that's changing.

"I think there is a knowledge that this can be detrimental," Campbell said.

The Moncton project has been underway since 2015, when local officials were concerned that run-off from snow being trucked to the Berry Mills dump site from different parts of the city would flow into an adjacent brook.

Since the snow dump is filled with snow plowed from roads, it is filled with sand, salt and other pollutants.

The city and Ducks Unlimited worked together to design a skinny wetland to mimic a natural one. The run-off is forced to flow all through the new wetland feature before exiting in a more filtered state into the brook.

"It does a pretty good job of reducing a number of things, but in particular salt," Campbell said. "The amount of salt coming into the system compared to the outlet is quite reduced, as we had hoped."

If salt enters a freshwater system, Campbell said, it can be fairly toxic to fish and other species living there.

He said a wetland needs to have three things: water, vegetation that can grow in those conditions and the right soils to keep the water in place. 

Once a wetland feature is established, it acts as a filter. But it took a few growing seasons before the new Moncton wetland was functioning properly. 

Elaine Aucoin, the general manager of sustainable growth and development for the city, said during routine testing of the water, the inlet (or start of the wetland) and the outlet (the part of the wetland that goes into the brook) are tested to see if the wetland is properly filtering out pollutants.

The results show that along with the decrease in road salt in the outlet of the wetland, there is also a decrease in hydrocarbons, metals and other sediments in the runoff.

Aucoin said that while the waterway has been good for the brook, it has also helped create an environment for other wildlife.

Since the creation of the Berry Mills wetland, the city has constructed three other wetlands, or naturalized stormwater ponds, for storm-water management purposes, also with the help of Ducks Unlimited.

Campbell said there is probably an opportunity to explore doing more wetlands in response to snow-melt run-off. 

"I think everyone's kind of headed in the right direction."

— Hannah Rudderham

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Editors: Emily Chung and Andre Mayer | Logo design: Sködt McNalty