Vetivar System

Vetiver System

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Vetiver System (VS) is a system of soil and water conservation whose main component is the use of the vetiver plant in hedgerows. It is promoted by theVetiver Network International (TVNI), an international non-governmental organization.

The Vetiver System is used in more than 100 countries for soil and water conservation, infrastructure stabilization, pollution control, waste water treatment, mitigation and rehabilitation, sediment control, prevention of storm damage, and many other environmental protection applications (through bioengineering and phytoremediation).

The vetiver plant, Chrysopogon zizanioides, is the main component to all Vetiver System bioengineering and conservation applications. It can be used in the tropics and semi-tropics, and areas that have a Mediterranean climate where there are hot summers, and winters are temperate.

When Vetiver is planted as a hedgerow across a slope, it forms a very dense vegetative barrier that slows down and spreads rainfall runoff. Combined with a deep and strong root system, a wide range of pH tolerance from about pH 3 to pH 11, a high tolerance to most heavy metals, an ability to remove from soil and water large quantities of excess nitrates, phosphates and farm chemicals, the vetiver plant can be used for soil and water conservation, engineered construction site stabilization, pollution control (constructed wetlands), and other uses where soil and water come together.

The variety of vetiver that is promoted for VS applications originates in south India, is non-fertile, non-invasive, and has to be propagated by clump subdivision. Its massive, finely structured root system can grow very fast - in some applications, rooting depth can reach 10-12 ft (3-4 m) in the first year. This deep root system makes the vetiver plant very drought-tolerant and difficult to dislodge by strong current. It also has stiff and erect stems, which can stand up to relatively deep water flow. New shoots will develop from the underground crown, making vetiver resistant to fire, frosts, traffic and heavy grazing pressure. Vetiver grass is not affected to any significant extent by pests and diseases, nor does it act as a host for pests or diseases that might attack crop or garden plants.

The basic technique of soil stabilization using vetiver consists of one or more hedgerows planted on the contour. Nursery plants or slips (clumps) of about 3 tillerseach, are typically planted 4-6 inches (10 - 15 cm) apart on the contour to create, when mature, a barrier of stiff grass that acts as a buffer and spreader of down slope water flow, and a filter to sediment. The development of strong plants and a deep root system requires full sun. Partial shading stunts its growth, and significant shading can eliminate it in the long term by reducing its ability to compete with more shade-tolerant species.

Multiple hedgerows may be required for a secure slope stabilization, in which case the separation between rows will depend on the slope, soil condition and composition, and the severity of the problem. Typical distances range between three and six feet. Some published guidelines recommend a distance between rows of about 5.7 ft. (1.7 m) for a 30° slope, and about 3 ft. (1 m) for a 45° slope.

A good hedge will reduce rainfall runoff by as much as 70% and sediment by as much as 90%. A hedgerow will stay where it is planted and the sediment that is spread out behind the hedgerow gradually accumulates to form a long-lasting terrace. It is a low-cost, labor-intensive technology claimed to have a very high benefit/cost ratio. When used for civil works protection, its cost is claimed to be about 1/20 of traditional engineered systems and designs.

The variety of vetiver used in the Vetiver System does not have stolons or rhizomes, does not produce fertile seed, and stays where it was planted. In some countries vetiver has even been used to define property lines. Hedgerows will not invade other areas of the property.

The Vetiver System is a developing technology. As a soil conservation technique and, more recently, a bioengineering tool, the effective application of the Vetiver System in large-scale projects that involve significant engineering design and construction requires an understanding of biology, soil science, hydraulics, hydrology, and geotechnical principles.

The Vetiver Network International (TVNI) is an international NGO, with members in over 100 countries promoting the Vetiver System (VS)for a sustainable environment particularly in relation to land and water. Its active members include people working in government, research institutions, international development agencies, NGOs and the private sector and farming communities.

[edit]Educational and research sites

• The Vetiver Network International (TVNI) Official Site for The Vetiver System

• The Vetiver System Knol Collection A collection of scientific documents about The Vetiver System

• Information Sources for The Vetiver System A collection of trusted information sites on the Vetiver plant and the Vetiver System

[edit]References and bibliography

• Chengchun Ke, Ziyuan Feng, Xijing Wu and Figen Tu, Design Principles and Engineering Samples of Applying Vetiver Eco-Engineering Technology for Steep Slope and Riverbank Stabilization PDF

Climate Change- An Indian Perspective

Climate change scenario prevalent in India

Many studies have pointed to the nation’s vulnerability to climate change. With changes in key climate variables, namely temperature, rainfall and humidity, crucial sectors like agriculture and rural development are likely to be affected in a major way.

Impacts are already being seen in unprecedented heat waves, cyclones, floods, droughts, salinisation of the coastline and effects on agriculture, fisheries and health.India is home to a third of the world’s poor, and climate change will hit this section of society the hardest. India, set to be the most populous nation in the world, overtaking China by 2045, the economic, social and ecological price of climate change payable by her citizens will be tremendous. The future impacts of climate change include:

· Decreased snow cover, affecting snow-fed and glacial systems such as the Ganges and Bramhaputra. Notably, 70% of the summer flow of the Ganges comes from melt-water.

· Drop in wheat production by 4-5 million tones, with even a 1ºC rise in temperature.

· Rising sea levels causing displacement along one of the most densely populated coastlines in the world, threatening freshwater sources and mangrove ecosystems like the Sunderbans.

· The various studies conducted in the country have shown that the surface air temperatures in India are going up at the rate of 0.4 ºC per hundred years, particularly during the post-monsoon and winter season. Using models, they predict that mean winter temperatures will increase by as much as 3.2 ºC in the 2050s and 4.5 ºC by 2080s, due to Greenhouse gases. Summer temperatures will increase by 2.2 ºC in the 2050s and 3.2 ºC in the 2080s.

· Extreme temperatures and heat spells have already become common over Northern India, often causing loss of human life. In 1998 alone, 650 deaths occurred in Orissa due to heat waves.

· Climate change has had an effect on the monsoons too. India is heavily dependent on the monsoon to meet its agricultural and water needs, and also for protecting and propagating its rich biodiversity. Subtle changes have already been noted in the monsoon rain patterns by scientists at IIT, Delhi. They also warn that India will experience a decline in summer rainfall by the 2050s, summer rainfall accounts for almost 70% of the total annual rainfall over India and is crucial to Indian agriculture.

· Apart from monsoon rains, India uses perennial rivers, which originate and depend on glacial melt-water in the Hindukush and Himalayan ranges. Since the melting season coincides with the summer monsoon season, any intensification of the monsoon is likely to contribute to flood disasters in the Himalayan catchment. Rising temperatures will also contribute to the raising of snowline, reducing the capacity of this natural reservoir, and increasing the risk of flash floods during the wet season.

· Increased temperatures will impact agricultural production. Higher temperatures reduce the total duration of a crop cycle by inducing early flowering, thus shortening the `grain fill’ period. The shorter the crop cycle, the lower the yield per unit area.

· A trend of sea level rise of 1 cm per decade has been recorded along the Indian coast. Sea level rise due to thermal expansion of sea water in the Indian Ocean is expected to be about 25-40 cm by 2050. This could inundate low lying areas, down coastal marshes and wetlands, erode beaches, exacerbate flooding and increase the salinity of rivers, bays and aquifers.

· Deltas will be threatened by flooding, erosion and salination. Loss of coastal mangroves will have an impact on fisheries. The major delta area of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Indus rivers, which have large populations reliant on riverine resources will be affected by changes in water flow, salt water intrusions and land loss.

· Increase in temperature will result in shifts of lower altitude tropical and subtropical forests to higher altitude temperate forest regions, resulting in the extinction of some temperate vegetation types. Decrease in rainfall and the resultant soil moisture stress could result in drier teak dominated forests replacing sal trees in central India. Increased dry spells could also place dry and moist deciduous forests at increased risk from forest fires.

· Medical Science suggests that the rise in temperature and change in humidity will adversely affect human health in India. Heat stress could result in heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and damage physiological functions, metabolic processes and immune systems. Increased temperatures can increase the range of vector borne diseases such as malaria, particularly in regions where minimum temperatures currently limited pathogen and vector development.

Mitigating Climate Change

While knowledge about the impact of climate change on current water and crop production is still nascent, mitigating and bringing a halt to climate change is not within the capability of one country alone. Hence adaptation strategies by Indian government are more likely to save livelihoods and ensure food security rather than be wholesome mitigation strategies.

At the outset we need to maintain the sustainability of water-based ecosystems by ensuring adequate water supplies to meet the food and non-food needs of a growing population. As agriculture is the largest user of water in India (using more than 80 percent of usable freshwater) and a large proportion of the population derives its livelihood directly or indirectly from it, we need to build efficient irrigation systems and adopt water conservation strategies. This we need to do more in semiarid regions through combined use of surface and groundwater in India.

The main thrust of the program to combat the impact of climate change in the rainfed areas should be on activities relating to rainwater harvesting, soil conservation, land shaping, vegetative bunding and water resources conservation on the basis of the entire compact micro-watershed which would include both cultivated and uncultivated lands. In the preparation of the watershed development plans, for which the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) funds can also be used, user groups and other people depending directly on the watershed should be actively involved. However, there are strong social and political constraints leading to modest success.

Although the Government have been implementing watershed projects for more than a decade, evaluation reports show that these projects cannot succeed without full participation of project beneficiaries and careful attention to issues of social organization and motivation. This is because success depends on consensus among a large number of stakeholders. Further, the costs and benefits of watershed interventions are location specific and unevenly distributed among the affected people. Unfortunately, most projects have become unsustainable because of the extremely limited success of government agencies to involve the people and build their social capital. Finally, there is political reluctance to control water hungry crops in low rainfall regions, such as sugarcane in Maharashtra and paddy in Punjab. One would need stricter implementation of environmentally sound cropping patterns and regulation of use of groundwater. Incentives should be given to cultivators to move away from crops that tempt them to ‘rob’ water from their neighbours.

In view of the impending threats caused by climate change, regulating the unrestrained exploitation of groundwater and aggressive pursuit of water conservation should become a national priority. Drip irrigation and water sprinkler approach, mulching and bed plantation, construction of tanks and “Hapa”s should be promoted for water harvesting and conservation. Its impact is visible in blocks of Bankura , Purulia where there has been a large scale digging of Hapa/ Jaladhar models and 30-40 models for water and soil conservation.

Forest is a natural carbon absorber. A programme for massive tree plantation and control on open grazing will help in the regeneration of forests and slow down the process of desertification. Agro-forestry can be the answer. For instance, trees may fertilise the soil for agricultural crops or may provide shade from sun or shelter from wind. Complementary relationship between trees and crops may also be in labour use, especially when the two outputs draw labour resources at different time of a year.

With unpredictable weather in future, farmers will have to change crop management practices, grow tougher plant varieties and be prepared for constant innovation in the way they operate. In some areas one may consider developing strategies for crop substitution that is to replace wheat with millets, tubers like potato, yams and cassava.

As occurrence of flood is likely to increase in many parts of India, one needs better systems for detection and forecasting of floods and popularise rainfall tolerant and short duration varieties or shift cropping pattern to the rabi (winter crop) season by increasing access to irrigation in those months. Income diversification provides a robust way of mitigating flood risks. In coastal areas aquaculture holds considerable potential if the supply chain and marketing are improved.

Some Sustainable New Technology Tips for Election Managers

Sustainable Non Force Measures for Free and Fair Election

Cell phones turned into webcam with the help of software can be handed over to Observers, Magistrates and Micro-observers moving from booth to booth on the election day for transmitting live streaming videos of occurrences that need special attention or as a means of general surveillance. The no. of frames captured and transmitted by the webcam is based on the data transmitting speed of internet wherever accessible over cell phones.

At present though the above is technically and theoretically possible, the practical and technical aspects on the field needs to be assessed and for this purpose the service of the software engineers need to be taken and the internet service providers will have to be talked with.

SMS based monitoring: In many elections held all over the World in the recent past this tool has been quite effectively used. In the Indian context, the microobservers and /or booth level contact persons may be provided with cashcards for their mobiles they may be given a set of codes which have preassigned meaning and they may be asked to sms to a particular number. This number may be tagged with a computer kept in the district headquarters which will interpret the codes and set a standard reaction pattern wherin the operator in charge of the computer sends parts of the message to Returning officer/Observer/Magistrate on duty as per the predetermined response protocol.

For this bulk SMS ing will have to be dealt with. SMS gateways and the Election Commission will have to come to an agreement for operationalisation of the system.

Citizen-reporting: Again here the SMS technology may be utilized. SMS to a particular number may be made of subsidized rate wherein the citizens may report any untoward incident in the vicinity of the polling booth from a week before poll date to about three days after the poll day. It is the time manipulations if any are generally organized by political parties, these if dealt with in a firm hand will serve two purpose. Firstly, it will increase the confidence and the participatory spirit of the General Electorate in the democratic process. Secondly, it will weed out unfair interference and manipulations by the Political Parties. The subsidized mobile number where such SMS can be sent will have to be adequately publicized in the local newspapers, cable channels. The SMS received will be monitored from a PC where the complaints will be categorized and action will be taken as per a standard protocol.

For this, the SMS gateways , the mobile service providers and the Commission will have to finalise the terms of the workability of the above arrangement.

Participation of Community Based Organization: Violence is the greatest threat to free and fair elections. A useful distinction can be made between violence aimed at disrupting an election by those who are not stakeholders in any way, and violence triggered due to rivalry between the political parties and their candidates. The former can be tackled by good local surveillance by citizens and community-based organizations (CBOs) can help to prevent such mischief from taking root by reporting suspicious behaviour in the neighbourhood in a timely manner.

For this, the CBOs may be trained by the Police on the kind of suspicious behaviour/ objects to be detected. Thereafter, the CBOs may develop a workforce to track such suspicious objects/ behaviour at the field level.

The electoral legislation should pronounce itself clearly and firmly by way of stiff penalties for election violence.

Savings- Habit Formation among the Poor

Financial inclusion refers to the timely delivery of financial services to disadvantaged sections of society. Recent research shows that a well-functioning and inclusive financial system is linked to faster and equitable growth.

This simple definition encompasses two primary areas. Firstly, financial inclusion refers to the poor having access to a range of formal financial services, from simple credit and savings services to the more complicated such as insurance and pensions. Secondly, financial inclusion implies that disadvantaged customers have access to more than one financial services provider, which ensures a variety of competitive options.

The Committee on Financial Inclusion defines financial inclusion as “…ensuring access to financial services and timely, adequate credit where needed, to vulnerable groups such as weaker sections and low income groups, at an affordable cost”. The wording reveals a bias towards credit. In fact, until recently, the discussion on financial inclusion in policy circles tended to revolve around the extension of institutional credit at the expense of providing savings, in spite of evidence that poor people save.

Measures of Financial Inclusion

While in developed nations almost everyone has access to banking services, in less developed countries, access is often limited to small segments of the population. Further, as one might expect, levels of income inequality are negatively correlated with levels of financial inclusion .

Thus, the egalitarian Northern European countries like Sweden and Denmark– States with low levels of inequality–have extremely high levels of financial inclusion while mid-level egalitarian countries like the UK and the USA show inclusion levels of 91% and 88%,

respectively. Finally, high levels of inequality, such as those which persist in South Africa and Tanzania, correspond to higher levels of exclusion.

Is Financial Inclusion Important?

Thus, the question becomes, does a well-developed financial system serve the poor?

There are, in fact, ample justification and evidence indicating that a well developed financial system can be an effective poverty alleviation instrument. Firstly, there are large costs to small and poor entrepreneurs for the market imperfections in a poorly developed financial system. These barriers include informational asymmetries, transaction costs, and contract implementation costs, lack of collateral, credit histories, and contacts. For these entrepreneurs, broad access to financial services would smoothen project financing, positively impacting growth and poverty alleviation.

Studies also show that small firms in countries with greater outreach and access face lower financing obstacles and grow at a higher rate. Access to finance is also an important incentive for new ideas and technologies. In addition, a strong financial system encourages expansion in the market and competition for existing firms. It ensures that poor households and small entrepreneurs need not depend upon middlemen.

Child labour, which is positively correlated with poverty, has been found to be influenced by the financial inclusiveness of a country. This could be because poor households in countries that have well-developed financial systems in place are less vulnerable to economic shocks. Finally, provision of financial services to poor people need not only be for increasing income, empowering women, or starting small businesses – it may simply aim to help them to manage better whatsoever, the little money they already have.

Rural households may feel intimidated by banks and develop a belief that banks are intended for more educated and richer individuals. This self-exclusion by low-income households may be as important a cause for exclusion as direct exclusion by banks. Lastly, banks have historically promoted banking transactions specifically at bank branches. As prior microfinance practice has shown, poor clients, especially in rural areas, may respond better to ‘doorstep’ banking, that is banking which takes place at a location which is both convenient and comfortable, usually the client’s home. Research also points out that currently banks do not have the option to recruit local staff. This might allow the bank staff to better respond to client needs.

Jaladhar Model, or, 5% Model ,or, Hapa for Water Conservation

The 5% model for water conservation ,locally known as hapa in the districts of Bankura and Purulia, is an area of great improvisation in the field of agriculture- water conservation in particular and sustainable development in general. Here, the farmer in possession of a plot/plots of land dedicate 5% of land under his possession, adjacent to the area he intend to cultivate crops. This water so stored is used for irrigation of the adjacent land belonging to the farmer. This results in self sufficiency, recharges ground water, and if done on a massive scale with number of hapas in adjacent plots, the result in reduction of soil erosion in the locale, by reducing the run off velocity of rain water, especially in undulating terrain so common in Bankura, Purulia and some parts of Birbhum and Midnapore.

In Bankura district, especially in the gram panchayet of Andharthole under Bankura I block and in some GPs of Bankura District there has been a major shift of priority towards "hapa" construction in place of building checkdams along the natural canals called "jore"s provided by the undulating topography of the terrain. This entailed almost a psychological revolution on part of the villagers, they had to change their mindset so long attuned to construction of checkdams.

A checkdam do cost approximately 20 times the cost of construction of a hapa. Further, there are maintenence cost of a checkdam. This is generally annual in nature. For each checkdam, the cost of such maintenence is almost 10% of the preliminary construction cost. Not to say of the costs that may accrue due to faulty construction which may result in loss of huge chunk of agrarian land due to soil erosion caused by the huge load of water gathered at the checkdam. The land generally belonging to poor farmers with plots of land just adjacent to the checkdam. It has got its concomitant legal aspects too.

Moreover, the water that has been collected at the site of the checkdam has to carried, often long distances, by means of diesel pumps, which has its associated costs.

It is therefore clear that the "hapa"s are at a definite advantageous position in cost benifit ratio in comparison to the other measure of water conservation.

System for this blog for All Authors

Let us make a system:
1. Each Author take a turn every week, at least, to contribute something meaningful and worth reading in the Blogspot, this is the "new post".For example on gangotri glacier if their is anything informative and substantial, that may come under "new post", all the others like seeking information, any emotional comment etc should come under "comment"
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Please comment on this.

Conservation is power

our glaciers are receding.. our forests are shrinking.. our water is getting polluted.. and our air is filthy.. lets resolve to fight for survival... individually we can do a lot.. people may start with smoking less.. turn off ur monitor while u are not at work, use electricity judiciously, depend more on nature and less on technology.. talk less on mobile.. ur microscopic contributions can hav macroscopic effect.. and please please celebrate dewali without sound..its a festival of light after all... just mind it.. we can afford to let ourselve die, but CANNOT AFFORD TO LET MOTHER INDIA DIE