Deep sea mining (GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Why in news?
- The International Seabed Authority (ISA) which regulates the world's ocean floor, is planning to resume negotiations to open the seabed for mining.
- It is currently accepting mining permit applications, raising concerns about the potential impact of this decision on the marine world, particularly the ecosystems and habitats of the deep sea.
What is Deep Sea Mining?
- Deep sea mining is an emerging industry that aims to extract minerals from the ocean's surface, including manganese nodules, seafloor massive sulfides, and cobalt crusts.
- These minerals are of interest for their potential economic value and their use in various industries, including technology, manufacturing, and energy production.
- There are three types of deep-sea mining: extracting deposit-rich polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor, mining massive seafloor sulfide deposits, and stripping cobalt crusts from rock. These nodules, deposits, and crusts contain materials such as nickel, rare earths, cobalt, and more, which are essential for batteries and other applications.
What are the concerns about Deep Sea Mining?
- Growing concerns revolve around the environmental impact of deep-sea mining, including damage caused by noise, vibration, and light pollution. Only a small portion of the deep seabed has been explored, leading conservationists to worry about potential damage to ecosystems.
- The physical disturbance resulting from mining activities can lead to habitat loss and a decline in biodiversity, potentially affecting the entire food chain within these ecosystems. The extraction of minerals involves removing layers of sediment and disrupting the natural structure of the ocean floor.
- Sediment plumes generated by certain mining processes are a major concern. Once valuable materials are extracted, slurry sediment plumes are sometimes pumped back into the sea, which can harm filter-feeding species like corals and sponges.
- Deep-sea mining operations can also release harmful chemicals and heavy metals into the surrounding water, with long-lasting effects on marine life.
Way Forward:
- The ISA's Legal and Technical Commission, responsible for developing deep-sea mining regulations is scheduled to meet in early July to discuss the draft mining code.
WHO releases policy recommendations to protect children from harmful effects of food marketing
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Why in news?
- The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released new guidelines on shaping policies to protect children from the harmful impacts of food marketing that promote unhealthy dietary choices.
Details:
- The guideline recommends implementation of comprehensive mandatory policies to protect children of all ages from the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages that are high in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars and / or salt (HFSS).
- The most frequently marketed food categories were fast food, sugar-sweetened beverages, chocolate and confectionery, salty and savoury snacks, sweet bakery items and snacks, breakfast cereals and desserts, according to WHO.
- Evidence showed that food marketing mainly promoted HFSS foods.
Concerns:
- The guidelines build on the 2010 WHO ‘Set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children’ and take into consideration more recent evidence specific to children and to the context of food marketing.
- Since then, the evidence on the harmful impact of food marketing has grown. However, there has been limited national action and children continue to be exposed to marketing for HFSS foods.
- New marketing media have also evolved, most notably digital marketing, which poses a growing concern.
Key Guidelines:
- WHO recommended mandatory regulation of marketing of HFSS foods and non-alcoholic beverages, having previously made more allowances for a range of policy approaches.
- The guideline used the definition of a child from the Convention on the Rights of the Child to be unequivocal that policies should protect all children.
- The guideline called for countries to use a nutrient profile model and adopt policies comprehensive enough to minimise intra- and inter-medium migration to avoid restrictions on marketing in regulated channels or settings.
Nutritional criteria:
- In March 2023, WHO published a set of nutritional criteria which aimed to protect children from marketing that promoted unhealthy food and non-alcoholic beverages.
- The WHO Europe nutrient profile model helped in the classification of food products to determine whether they are healthy enough to be advertised to children.
The irrevocable connection between anaemia and maternal health
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Why in news?
- Anaemia has been in the news with the government proposing to remove a question on it from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and instead do a more elaborate test to determine haemoglobin levels in the blood as part of the Diet and Biomarker (DAB) survey.
Anaemia and pregnancy:
- Anaemia has a very strong link with postpartum haemorrhage (excessive vaginal bleeding after delivery), and the risk of death or near miss is very high.
- As per the study, by the WOMAN (World Maternal Antifibrinolytic )-2 trial collaborators, worldwide, more than half a billion women of reproductive age are anaemic.
- Each year, about 70,000 women who give birth die from postpartum haemorrhage, almost all of them in low-and middle-income countries.
Research & outcome:
- While a known risk of anaemia or low haemoglobin levels is postpartum death, researchers decided to examine in detail the association between anaemia and the risk of postpartum haemorrhage.
- This trial enrolled over 10,000 women with moderate or severe anaemia giving birth vaginally in hospitals in Pakistan, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia, countries where anaemia in pregnancy was common and established by other trials.
The outcome was defined as an occurrence of postpartum haemorrhage, defined in three ways:
- clinical postpartum haemorrhage (estimated blood loss ≥500 mL or any blood loss sufficient to compromise haemodynamic stability);
- WHO-defined postpartum haemorrhage (estimated blood loss of at least 500 mL); and
- calculated postpartum haemorrhage (blood loss of ≥1,000 mL).
Blood loss & shock:
- The mean age of the women from Pakistan, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia was just over 27 years. There was clear evidence from the study that lower haemoglobin values had a direct relationship with volume blood loss, and clinical postpartum haemorrhage.
- Anaemia reportedly reduces the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood, and therefore, women with anaemia cannot tolerate the same volume of bleeding as healthy women, and become shocked after a smaller volume blood loss.
- The authors recommended that attention should be given to the prevention and treatment of anaemia in women once they hit reproductive age.
Initiatives by Indian government:
- The Indian government has a well-structured project to provide weekly iron and folic acid supplements to adolescent girls (and boys), in order to tackle the looming crisis of anaemia.
- The climb to a barely-acceptable haemoglobin content of 12 for women seems very steep, given the nutrition status of these children, primarily in rural areas, where quality and quantity of what they eat is less than ideal,and is only exacerbated by malabsorption, public health.
- The task has already been cut out for the Indian public health programme. Health managers are aware of the risks of anaemia and know what to do to handle it.
- However, the rising levels of anaemia in the country is a source of concern and mandates that any project to bring down anaemia in the country must be on mission mode. The solution is not to bring down the gold standard laboratory readings literally.
Way Forward:
- While the argument to detach anaemia from the NFHS is that the DAB would be undertaking a more elaborate blood draw to measure haemoglobin levels accurately, the argument against it is also that such a measure may not be feasible for a large group of people, who may say okay to a capillary blood draw (finger prick) but baulk at a venous blood drawal.
- Any public outreach programme must be mindful of the cultural, social realities and have a sense of the attitudes of the people they are targeting.
