Union Cabinet clears Bill to regulate pesticide business - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Union Cabinet clears Bill to regulate pesticide business.

It provides for compensating farmers in case of losses from use of spurious agro chemicals

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Pesticides Management Bill, 2020, which, the government claims, will regulate the business of pesticides and compensate farmers in case of losses from the use of spurious agro chemicals.

“As far as farmers are concerned, that is our primary concern. The Pesticides Management Bill will be introduced in this session. Today the pesticide business is regulated by 1968 rules which have become age-old and need immediate rewriting,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters.
Mr. Javadekar said farmers would also be empowered to get all information as the data would be in open source and in all languages. “More importantly he will know about the strength and weakness of pesticides, the risk and alternatives and this will be an open data in digital format also.”
Centre’s draft
In February 2018, the Centre released a draft of the pesticides Bill that aims to replace the existing Insecticides Act of 1968. A key proposal in the 2018 version of the Bill was to raise penalties on the sale of prohibited or spurious pesticides to ₹50 lakh and up to five years’ imprisonment, from the current ₹2,000 and up to three years’ imprisonment. It is unclear if these provisions have been retained in the latest version of Bill that was cleared by the Union Cabinet.
“If there is any loss because of the spurious or low quality of pesticides then there is a provision for compensations This is the unique feature of this Bill. If required, the government will form a central fund which will take care of compensation,” Mr. Javadekar said.
Power to States
The Centre for Science and Environment, in 2018, had criticised the Bill for falling short. “State governments must have a greater role in case of decision making on pesticide management. The existing draft provides inadequate representation to States in both pesticide board and the registration committee. The States should have a say in final decision making on pesticide, as they have the best understanding on the agro-ecological climate, environment and soil conditions,” it said in a statement. (Source: The Hindu)


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Union Cabinet clears Bill to regulate pesticide business

Natural gas drives record CO2 emissions in 2019 - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Natural gas drives record CO2 emissions in 2019.

The report will make for further uncomfortable reading for delegates gathered at UN climate talks in Madrid, with the warnings from the world's top climate scientists still ringing in their ears.

Global carbon emissions boosted by soaring natural gas use are set to hit record levels in 2019 despite a decline in coal consumption and a string of countries declaring a climate emergency, researchers said Wednesday. In its annual analysis of fossil fuel trends, the Global Carbon Project said CO2 emissions were on course to rise 0.6 percent this year -- slower than previous years but still a world away from what is needed to keep global warming in check.
In three peer-reviewed studies, authors attributed the rise to "robust growth" in natural gas and oil, which offset significant falls in coal use in the United States and Europe.
"We see clearly that global changes come from fluctuations in coal use," said Corrine Le Quere, from the University of East Anglia, an author on the Carbon Budget report.
"In contrast the use of oil and particularly natural gas is going up unabated. Natural gas is now the biggest contributor to the growth in emissions." Atmospheric CO2 levels, which have been climbing exponentially in recent decades, are expected to hit an average of 410 parts per million this year, Le Quere said.
That's the highest level in at least 800,000 years.
The report will make for further uncomfortable reading for delegates gathered at UN climate talks in Madrid, with the warnings from the world's top climate scientists still ringing in their ears.
Last week the UN said global emissions needed to fall 7.6 percent each year, every year, to 2030 to stand any chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C (2.6 Farenheit).
With just 1C of warming since the industrial era so far, 2019 saw a string of deadly superstorms, drought, wildfires and flooding, made more intense by climate change.
The UN said Wednesday that the 2010s was almost certain to be the hottest decade on record and as many as 22 million people could be displaced by extreme weather this year.
The authors pointed out 2019's rise in emissions was slower than each of the two previous years.
Yet with energy demand showing no sign of peaking even with the rapid growth of low carbon technology such as wind and solar power, emissions in 2019 are still set to be four percent higher than in 2015, the year nations agreed to limit temperature rises in the Paris climate accord.
While emissions levels can vary annually depending on economic growth and even weather trends, the Carbon Budget report shows how far nations still need to travel to drag down carbon pollution.
"Current policies are clearly not enough to reverse trends in global emissions. The urgency of action has not sunk in yet," said Le Quere.
She highlighted anticipated emissions falls of 1.7 percent in the US and Europe as the power sector continues its switch away from coal.
The most polluting fossil fuel saw its usage drop by as much as 10 percent in the two regions this year, the report said.
But such savings were offset globally by the likes of India and China, the biggest overall emitter, and specifically by an increase in energy from natural gas.
"Compared to coal, natural gas is a cleaner fossil fuel, but unabated natural gas use merely cooks the planet more slowly than coal," said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research.
For Joeri Rogelj, lecturer in Climate Change at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, the small slowdown in emissions growth this year "is really nothing to be overly enthusiastic about".
Without drastic and sustained reductions, he said, "it is clear that we are not only continuing to make climate change worse, we're doing it at a pace faster than ever before."


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Natural gas drives record CO2 emissions in 2019.

Union Cabinet approves Personal Data Protection Bill - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Union Cabinet approves Personal Data Protection Bill.

The Union Cabinet approved the Personal Data Protection Bill on Wednesday. Among a host of things the bill proposes broad guidelines on the management of personal data by public and private corporations. It has also proposed penalties for the violation of the same.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that the bill has been approved by the Cabinet and would be introduced in the Parliament. The bill comes after a Supreme Court judgment in August 2017 declared the 'Right to Privacy' a fundamental right. The apex court also upheld in a subsequent judgment in September 2018 the need for a strong personal data protection regime.
Here's what the Data Protection Bill entails:
The bill states that critical data of individuals by internet companies must be stored within the country. Sensitive data can be transferred overseas only after approval of the data owner, as per news agency PTI. Moreover, the data to be transferred overseas can only be for purposes permissible under the proposed legislation.
Critical data would be defined from time to time by the government and would include data related to health, religious or political orientation, biometrics, genetic, sexual orientation, health, financial etc.
If found guilty of violation, a penalty of up to Rs 15 crore or 4 per cent of an entity's global revenue would be imposed on the violator. When it comes to minor violations, the Data Protection Bill proposes penalty of Rs 5 crore or 2 per cent of the global turnover. The bill also proposes jail term for officers of the entity found violating the provisions.
If a company's executive in-charge is found guilty of knowingly matching anonymous data with publicly available information to find out the identity of an individual, then that individual would face jail term of up to three years.
Social media companies would need to frame a mechanism to identify users who are willing to be identified on a voluntary basis. "Under the provision, a social media fiduciary will have to give users on its platform an option to get verified. It will be voluntary for individuals if they want to get verified or not," a source informed the news agency.
The right to be forgotten has also been proposed for data owners in the bill. Users have the right to erase, correct or port their data, the bill states.
The Data Protection Bill also encourages entities to process data in India for lawful purposes. Processing of personal data in case of national security issues or court orders have been exempted.
"Any data which can identify an individual has been defined as personal data. While all entities will need to obtain the explicit consent of the data owner, in some cases like the security of the state, providing relief in case of a medical emergency, detection of unlawful activity, whistleblowing etc an explicit consent may not be required," the source said.
Entities involved in the data processing business must register with the government as data fiduciary for the purpose of data processing. "The government will have the right to direct data fiduciary to share anonymised or non-personal data for better targeting of service, policymaking, relief work, etc," said the source as mentioned in a report in the news agency.


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Union Cabinet approves Personal Data Protection Bill.