ABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people used personal protective equipment (PPE) to lessen the spread of the virus. The release of microplastics (MPs) from discarded PPE is a new threat to the long-term health of the environment and poses challenges that are not yet clear. PPE-derived MPs have been found in multi-environmental compartments, e.g., water, sediments, air, and soil across the Bay of Bengal (BoB). As COVID-19 spreads, healthcare facilities use more plastic PPE, polluting aquatic ecosystems. Excessive PPE use releases MPs into the ecosystem, which aquatic organisms ingest, distressing the food chain and possibly causing ongoing health problems in humans. Thus, post-COVID-19 sustainability depends on proper intervention strategies for PPE waste, which have received scholarly interest. Although many studies have investigated PPE-induced MPs pollution in the BoB countries (e.g., India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar), the ecotoxicity impacts, intervention strategies, and future challenges of PPE-derived waste have largely gone unnoticed. Our study presents a critical literature review covering the ecotoxicity impacts, intervention strategies, and future challenges across the BoB countries (e.g., India (162,034.45 tons), Bangladesh (67,996 tons), Sri Lanka (35,707.95 tons), and Myanmar (22,593.5 tons). The ecotoxicity impacts of PPE-derived MPs on human health and other environmental compartments are critically addressed. The review's findings infer a gap in the 5R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Redesign, and Restructure) Strategy's implementation in the BoB coastal regions, hindering the achievement of UN SDG-12. Despite widespread research advancements in the BoB, many questions about PPE-derived MPs pollution from the perspective of the COVID-19 era still need to be answered. In response to the post-COVID-19 environmental remediation concerns, this study highlights the present research gaps and suggests new research directions considering the current MPs' research advancements on COVID-related PPE waste. Finally, the review suggests a framework for proper intervention strategies for reducing and monitoring PPE-derived MPs pollution in the BoB countries.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , Ecotoxicology , Ecosystem , Plastics/toxicity , Pandemics , Microplastics , Personal Protective EquipmentABSTRACT
India experienced two of the major cyclones in the month of May and June, in the midst of the outbreak of COVID-19. Super cyclone on May 20, hit east coast of India, West Bengal and Odisha. Thereafter Cyclone Nisarga hit west coast of Maharashtra on June 2. Later on it was needed to put people in cyclone shelters in the context of COVID-19. It has become an extremely challenging task. While maintaining social distancing the cyclone shelter capacity is reduced to around 40 percent. Tropical Cyclones are one of the dearest and exceedingly baneful natural calamities happen around the world. Generally tropical cyclones are formed over warm ocean surfaces;consist of high sea surface temperature (SST), lower magnitudes of vertical wind shear and larger magnitudes of low-level relative curl of the velocity field, carioles' force along with middle tropospheric relative humidity. If we see cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal are greater in numbers than those formed in the Arabian Sea. In order to predict the occurrence of tropical cyclone precisely, it is important to understand the various factors that act upon tropical cyclone activities. For seasonal forecasting of tropical cyclone activities we will use El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) as one of the vital predictors. The phenomenon to understand the relationship between tropical cyclone activity in various ocean basins and the El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) has gone up during the last two decades. In this paper impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) combining El Niño(warm phase of ENSO) and La Niña(cool phase of ENSO) events on frequency of Tropical Cyclone over the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and land mass of India during April to December over the period 1950-2015 has been studied based on statistical models. Aggregated frequency of tropical cyclone and ONI index in Niño 3.4 region has been used as the measures of frequency of tropical cyclone and ENSO events. It has been found that La Niña events significantly enhance tropical cyclone activity during pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons (April to September), particularly during the monsoon season (July-August-September). The amount of enhancement has been quantified.
ABSTRACT
Climate diplomacy is the strategy and technique for building and implementing an international environmental framework, which is now one of the leading reasons for deprivation in the Bay of Bengal’s coastal belt. South Asia and the Bay of Bengal Coastal Region are among the highly endangered regions due to climate change impact and natural clamaties, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Southeast Asia will be one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change unless countries make dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and ensuring to reduce the environmental degration. Global warming poses a threat to food security, hobbles economic growth, prompts political instability, and catalyzes pandemics like Covid-19 severity. The government and policy makers are trying to fix the climate issues and to develop some mitigation strategies but the initiatives are not working well. Because the initiatives are based on the belief that considerable ideological commitment is required at the international, regional, and county level in South Asian nations in order to further enhance awareness of environmental disruption and security and to obtain support for preventative measures. Climate change might have a significant influence in South Asia, and then it will affect regions in different ways depending on how it is perceived spatially and temporally. The region encompasses several different climatic conditions spread over a wide and diverse geographic area. Landscapes in the region include arid areas subject to severe droughts, low-lying coastal areas subject to flooding and coastal erosion, islands whose survival is challenged by the expected sea-level rise, tropical zones subject to increasingly frequent and devastating cyclones, and mountainous ranges affected by the melting of glaciers. Apart from taking early steps for climate change adaptation, South Asian country has enacted any laws or regulations to directly address climate change adaptation. Despite the considerable progress that the Government of Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi people have made, they face continuous challenges associated with climate change. Though the SAARC has taken several initiatives on regional cooperation in the areas relating to climate change that have a bearing on adaptation, India can still play a vital role to develop a smart policy for climate change adaptive capacity in South Asia. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Remoteness is an attribute that has often been negatively attached to island-spaces like the Andaman Islands, separated from the Indian mainland by the vast Bay of Bengal, located at the ‘liquid borderlands’ of South and Southeast Asia. The Covid-19 pandemic, on the other hand, has popularised the use of ‘remote’ methods of enabling religio-social interaction. The islanders of these geographically ‘remote’ locations use these ‘remote’ ways of connecting to perform their religious practices and maintain their faith networks, which is otherwise compromised due to the pandemic-induced restrictions on social gatherings. By exploring the ‘online’ global faith networks of the little-known Matua religion, as well as, the social, technical and logistical constraints in the devotees’ access to ‘remote’ religion, the paper addresses two questions: first, how do individuals play out their identities, both as islander and as devotee, ‘online’;second, what are the corresponding technological and logistical conditions that enable their ‘presence’ and who are the ‘absent’ actors. Drawing from remotely collected data, particularly online ethnography and telephonic interviews, the paper explores the mediating role of technology in destabilizing, as well as, solidifying concepts of remoteness and isolation, particularly in the peripheries of nation, during times of restricted mobility. © 2021 Institution for Marine and Island Cultures, Mokpo National University.
ABSTRACT
Assessing the dynamics of Bhasan Char is very crucial, as the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has recently selected the island as the accommodation of the FDMN. This article critically evaluates the spatiotemporal morphological variations due to erosion, accretion, and subsurface deformation of the island through multi-temporal geospatial and geophysical data analysis, groundwater quality-quantity, and also determines the nature and rate of changes from 2003 to 2020. This is the first study in this island on which multi-temporal Landsat Satellite Imagery and seismic data have been used with geospatial techniques with Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) and petrel platform, respectively. The analysis of satellite images suggests that the island first appeared in 2003 in the Bay of Bengal, then progressively evolved to the present stable condition. Significant changes have taken place in the morphological and geographical conditions of the island since its inception. Since 2012, the island has been constantly accreted by insignificant erosion. It receives tidally influenced fluvial sediments from the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) river system and the sedimentary accretion, in this case, is higher than the erosion due to relatively weaker wave action and longshore currents. It has gained approximately 68 km2 area, mostly in the northern part and because of erosion in the south. Although the migration of the Bhasan Char was ubiquitous during 2003–2012, it has been concentrated in a small area to the east since 2018. The net shoreline movements (NSM) suggest that the length of the shoreline enlarged significantly by around 39 km in 2020 from its first appearance. Seismic and GPS data clearly indicate that the island is located on the crest of a slowly uplifting low-amplitude anticline, which may result in a stable landform around the island. Based on the analysis of historical data, it has been assessed that the current configuration of Bhasan Char would not be severely affected by 10–15-foot-high cyclone. Therefore, FDMN rehabilitation here might be safer that would be a good example for future geo-environmental assessment for any areas around the world for rehabilitation of human in remote and vulnerable island. The findings of this research will facilitate the government’s decision to rehabilitate FDMN refugees to the island and also contribute to future research in this area.
ABSTRACT
Tropical cyclone "Amphan" developed as a super cyclone on 19 May 2020 and caused severe impact on the landmass with very high torrential precipitation (>250 mm day-1), and extremely high wind speed (>150 km h-1) after landfall on 20 May 2020. The tropical cyclone Amphan largely affected agricultural land (78.2%) and forest, including mangroves (10.8%) in eastern India and Bangladesh. The built-up area over the trajectory of the cyclone and its proximity, including eastern parts of the Kolkata metropolitan area, was considerably affected by the cyclone due to the high population density and poor structural and community planning. Although the regions with close proximities to cyclones' trajectory (2033 km2 area under <2 km proximity) were affected severely, the presence of mangrove forest in Sundarban substantially reduced the magnitude of the tropical cyclone. A considerable decrease (~30%) in aerosol optical depth (AOD) in April-May 2020 as compared to that in 2019 is considered one of the major causes of the development of the warm pool and cyclogenesis in the Bay of Bengal. The number of COVID-19 cases increased by ~70% in the post-cyclonic period (29 May 2020) compared to that in the pre-cyclonic period (19 May 2020) illustrating the impact of the cyclonic hazard.