Carbon cycle: How mountain Stream plays an important role in it?
Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Environment
Recently, Scientists have reported the findings of the first large-scale study of the carbon dioxide emissions of mountain streams, and their role in global carbon fluxes (the carbon exchanged between various carbon pools on Earth).
Major details
- The international study led by Switzerland-based research institute École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
- Mountain streams have a higher average carbon dioxide emission rate per square metre than streams at lower altitudes, due in part to the additional turbulence caused as water flows down slopes.
- Mountain streams account for 5% in the global surface area of fluvial networks. 10%-30% is the share of mountain streams in carbon dioxide emissions from all fluvial networks.
- The findings indicate that the carbon dioxide comes from geological sources. The result shows importance of including mountain streams in assessments of the global carbon cycle.
Track of employment: in Indian Scenario
Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Indian Economy: Employment
- A new study, commissioned by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), and undertaken by Laveesh Bhandari of Indicus Foundation and Amaresh Dubey of Jawaharlal Nehru University, has highlighted the broad trends for employment in India between 2004 and 2018.
About:
- A key feature of this study is that instead of focusing on unemployment, it focuses only on the “employment” data.
- It does so by looking at three comparable surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) — the Employment-Unemployment Surveys (EUS) of 2004-05 and 2011-12, and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of 2017-18.
Study finds out the following major points
- The total employment in the country grew by 4.5 crore in the 13 years between EUS 2004-05 and PLFS 2017-18. This represents a growth of just 0.8 per cent — less than half the rate at which the overall population grew, which was 1.7 per cent.
- Of the 4.5 crore increase in employment, 4.2 crore happened in the urban areas while rural employment either contracted (by 0.01 per cent between 2004 and 2011) or was stagnant (grew by 0.18 per cent between 2011 and 2017).
- Male employment grew by 6 crore but female employment fell by 1.5 crore.
- Youth employment (those between the ages of 15 and 24) has fallen from 8.14 crore in 2004 to 5.34 crore in 2017. However, employment in the 25-59 age group and the 60 years and above group has gone up.
- The share of organised sector in the total employed has risen from 8.9 per cent in 2004 to 14 per cent in 2017. The share of unorganised sector in the total employed has gone up from 37.1 per cent in 2004 to 47.7 per cent in 2017.
- Both these sectors – Organised and Unorganised – have grown at the expense of the agri-cropping sector, where employment has fallen from 21.9 per cent in 2004 to 17.4 per cent in 2017. In essence, those who are poor, illiterate, and unskilled are increasingly losing out on jobs.
Pros and cons of Randomised control trials: The new gold standard
Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Indian economy
Development economics has changed a lot during the last two decades or so, mostly due to the extensive use of ‘randomised control trials’ (RCT).
- ‘Randomistas’ are proponents of RCTs to assess long-run economic productivity and living standards in poor countries.
The process of evolution
- The concept of RCT is quite old; instances of RCTs can be traced back in the 16th century.
- The statistical foundation of RCT was developed by British statistician Sir Ronald Fisher, about 100 years ago, mostly in the context of design of experiments.
- ‘Control’ and ‘randomisation’ together constitute an RCT. In 1995, statisticians Marvin Zelen and Lee-Jen Wei illustrated a
clinical trial to evaluate the hypothesis that the antiretroviral therapy AZT reduces the risk of maternal-to-infant HIV transmission. - A standard randomisation scheme was used resulting in 238 pregnant women receiving AZT and 238 receiving standard therapy (placebo).
- It is observed that 60 newborns were HIV-positive in the placebo-group and 20 newborns were HIV-positive in the AZT-group. Thus, the failure rate of the placebo was 60/238, whereas that of AZT was only 20/238, indicating that AZT was much more effective than the placebo.
- Drawing such an inference, despite heterogeneity among the patients, was possible only due to randomisation.
- Randomisation makes different treatment groups comparable and also helps to estimate the error associated in the inference.
Marking a change
- Social scientists slowly found RCT to be interesting, doable, and effective. But, in the process, the nature of social science slowly converted from ‘non-experimental’ to ‘experimental’.
- Numerous interesting applications of RCTs took place in social policy-making during the 1960-90s, and the ‘randomistas’ took control of development economics since the mid-1990s.
- About 1,000 RCTs were conducted by Prof. Kremer, Prof. Banerjee and Prof. Duflo and their colleagues in 83 countries such as India, Kenya and Indonesia.
- These were to study various dimensions of poverty, including microfinance, access to credit, behaviour, health care, immunisation programmes, and gender inequality.
- While Prof. Banerjee thinks RCTs “are the simplest and best way of assessing the impact of a program”, Prof. Duflo refers to RCTs as the “tool of choice”.
Critics of RCTs in economic experiments
- Critics of RCTs in economic experiments think that in order to conduct RCTs, the broader problem is being sliced into smaller ones, and any dilution of the scientific method leaves the conclusions questionable.
- Economists such as Martin Ravallion, Dani Rodrik, William Easterly, and Angus Deaton are very critical of using RCTs in economic experiments.
- Randomisation in clinical trials has an additional impetus — it ensures that allocation to any particular treatment remains unknown to both patient and doctor. Such kind of ‘blinding’ is central to the philosophy of clinical trials and it helps to reduce certain kinds of bias in the trial.
- It is believed that the ‘outcome’ or the ‘treatment-response’ might be influenced if the patient and/or the physician are aware of the treatment given to the patient.
- Such kind of ‘blinding’ is almost impossible to implement in economic experiments as participants would definitely know if they get any financial aid or training.
- Thus, randomisation must have a much less impact there. Often, economists miss such an important point.
Way forward
- Unless randomisation is done, most of the standard statistical analyses and inference procedures become meaningless.
- Thus, “RCT or no RCT” may not be just a policy decision to economics; it is the question of shifting the paradigm.
- The “tool” comes with lot of implicit baggage. With randomisation dominating development economics, implicitly, economic experiments are becoming more and more statistical.
- This is one philosophical aspect which economists need to settle.
WASH scheme: Analysis and significance
Relevance: Mains: G.S paper II: Health
Context
- Whatever their differences, and wherever they’re located, adequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) amenities, including waste management and environmental cleaning services, are critical to their safe functioning.
- When a healthcare facility lacks adequate WASH services, infection prevention and control are severely compromised.
- This has the potential to make patients and health workers sick from avoidable infections. As a result (and in addition), efforts to improve maternal, neonatal and child health are undermined.
- Lack of WASH facilities also results in unnecessary use of antibiotics, thereby spreading antimicrobial resistance.
WHO data
- As a joint report published earlier this year by the World Health Organization and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) outlines, WASH services in many facilities across the world are missing or substandard.
- According to data from 2016, an estimated 896 million people globally had no water service at their healthcare facility.
- More than 1.5 billion had no sanitation service.
- One in every six healthcare facilities was estimated to have no hygiene service (meaning it lacked hand hygiene facilities at points of care, as well as soap and water at toilets), while data on waste management and environmental cleaning was inadequate across the board.
Primary healthcare
- In WHO’s South-East Asia region, efforts to tackle the problem and achieve related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets are being vigorously pursued.
- As outlined at a WHO-supported meeting in New Delhi in March, improving WASH services in healthcare facilities is crucial to accelerating progress towards each of the region’s ‘flagship priorities’, especially the achievement of universal health coverage.
- Notably, improving WASH services was deemed essential to enhancing the quality of primary healthcare services, increasing equity and bridging the rural-urban divide.
- A World Health Assembly Resolution passed in May is hoping to catalyse domestic and external investments to help reach the global targets.
- These include ensuring at least 60% of all healthcare facilities have basic WASH services by 2022; at least 80% have the same
by 2025; and 100% of all facilities provide basic WASH services by 2030.
WHO and UNICEF recommended practical steps
- The health authorities should conduct in-depth assessments and establish national standards and accountability mechanisms.
- Across the region, and the world, a lack of quality baseline data limits authorities’ understanding of the problem.
- As this is done, and national road-maps to improve WASH services are developed, health authorities should create clear and measurable benchmarks that can be used to improve and maintain infrastructure and ensure that facilities are ‘fit to serve’.
Educating the health workers
- The health authorities should increase engagement and work to instil a culture of cleanliness and safety in all healthcare facilities.
- Alongside information campaigns that target facility administrators, all workers in the health system from doctors and nurses to midwives and cleaners should be made aware of, and made to practise, current WASH and infection prevention and control procedures (IPC).
- To help do this, modules on WASH services and IPC should be included in pre-service training and as part of ongoing professional development.
Promote demand for WASH services
- In addition, authorities should work more closely with communities, especially in rural areas, to promote demand for WASH services.
- The authorities should ensure that collection of data on key WASH indicators becomes routine.
- Doing so will help accelerate progress by promoting continued action and accountability.
- It will also help spur innovation by documenting the links between policies and outcomes.
- To make that happen, WHO is working with member states as well as key partners to develop a data dashboard that brings together and tracks indicators on health facilities, including WASH services, with a focus on the primary care level.
Conclusion
- As member states strive to achieve the ‘flagship priorities’ and work towards the SDG targets, that outcome is crucial.
- Indeed, whatever the healthcare facility, whoever the provider, and wherever it is located, securing safe health services is an objective member states must boldly pursue.