Friday, July 11, 2025

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its 7th Frontiers report, *The Weight of Time*, in July 2025. It warns of growing threats from extreme heat and toxic pollution to the world’s ageing population. The report marks how climate change and environmental hazards increasingly endanger older adults, especially in urban and low- to middle-income regions.

Rising Heat Threats to Older Adults

Heat-related deaths among people aged 65 and above have surged by 85% since the 1990s. If global temperatures rise by 2°C, deaths could increase by 370% by 2050. Older adults have reduced ability to regulate body temperature. Extreme heat raises risks of cardiovascular, respiratory, and cerebrovascular diseases such as stroke and pneumonia. Tropical and mid-latitude regions face doubled or even tenfold rises in dangerous heat exposure. India already shows increased heatwave days for the elderly.

Urban Ageing and Climate Vulnerability

Cities will house 68% of the global population by 2050, with a rising share of older residents. In 2015, 58% of people aged 60+ lived in urban areas. Older people often move to cities for healthcare and social access. However, urban heat islands and pollution worsen risks during heatwaves and climate disasters. The report urges cities to become age-friendly, resilient, and greener to protect elderly residents.

Legacy Pollutants and Flood Risks

Flooding can release toxic legacy pollutants buried in sediments. These include heavy metals like lead and cadmium, and persistent organic chemicals from pesticides and industrial waste. Such pollutants do not degrade easily and accumulate in rivers, lakes, and coastal sediments. Floodwaters can spread these toxins into the environment and food chains, causing neurotoxicity, cancer, and reproductive harm. Examples include floods in Texas (2017), Niger Delta (2012), and Pakistan (2010, 2022).

Environmental and Health Impacts of Pollutants

Cadmium and other pollutants harm sediment-dwelling organisms and humans. Cadmium is carcinogenic and disrupts endocrine functions. It can damage kidneys, bones, and affect pregnancies. UNEP calls for more research on pollutant release during floods to assess risks to ecosystems and health. Monitoring polluted sediments is crucial as rainfall intensity and flood events increase globally.

Solutions – Urban Planning and Flood Management

The report recommends the ‘15-minute city’ model to support ageing in place by ensuring essential services are within walking or cycling distance. This reduces car use and pollution. Flood-control strategies should combine nature-based solutions like wetlands restoration with traditional infrastructure such as dikes and retention basins. River basin management plans must balance flood retention with ecosystem conservation. Adaptive management and community involvement are vital for effective response to contaminant remobilisation.

Strong unity

Ambedkar and Gandhi’s dream of a functional form of consensual democracy is dead in the Houses of elected representatives. But in scattered villages that thought is still alive

A motley group of villagers are engaged in a quiet consultative meeting. Each one of them speaks his or her mind on the issue at hand: which millets to take up for this season; the challenges they will confront in planting a new crop; if and how the millets would benefit them. They speak freely and frankly, and without any agitation in their voices, even when they differ on some points with others. After the day’s proceedings, consensus is sealed and decision taken. This is a recent incident in the tiny, nondescript village of Bijapur, inhabited by Gond tribals, in the north of Gadchiroli district, one of the most economically backward districts in Maharashtra.

Miles away from Bijapur, in an equally backward and often cut-off region of Melghat, a hilly and forested part of Amravati district in the same state, poor and uneducated Korku tribals of Sosokheda village are brooding over their problems. At the gram sabha, one by one, they speak of their problems and discuss possible and potential solutions — administrative, technical, and social. Again, it is a dialogue, not confrontation.

Move to Enabavi, a non-tribal village in Telangana’s erstwhile district of Warangal which became one of the first fully-organic villages of the country. Here too, decisions are not taken by a majority vote but through a long consultative process which M.K. Gandhi would see as a working model of consensual democracy. Differences are honoured; contrarian views and opinions respected with humility.

These are but a few samples of the functional forms of consensual democracy at the grassroots; there are thousands of such villages, even small towns, where people participate and engage with their issues, and do not leave it to the elected few to evolve solutions to their complex problems. Remarkably, while most of rural India wilts in the face of a deepening economic distress, these villages stand up to the test of time and deal with their problems collectively, with all their wisdom.

This writer has observed the workings and functioning of these and many such villages across India with a sense of adulation, as they portray a refreshing contrast to the dysfunctionality of our country’s higher Houses of elected representatives where, for over a decade now, dialogue seems to be an anathema. Even the media, supposed to be platforms for dialogue and different points of view, do not reflect the maturity that the tiny and dispersed pool of such villages demonstrate in dealing with the poly-crises they confront. They are economically lagging, but evolved in their behaviour.

A veteran advocate of the consensual form of democracy, Devaji Tofa, from Mendha Lekha — the place where the slogan, “Mawa Nate, Mawa Raj” (my rule in my village) first echoed loudly — told this writer once: “there could be delays in our decision-making, because it takes time to forge a consensus, but once a decision is taken by all of us, it clears a robust path for a better future. We are in it or out of it together.”

Some of these villages have people belonging to different faiths, castes, and classes, and yet they have found a way in collective decision-making and problem-solving. They function mostly without the backing of the Indian State. If at all, the State complicates their existence with an endless list of impractical and often autocratic rules.

B.R. Ambedkar and Gandhi’s dream of a functional form of consensual democracy is dead in the Houses of elected representatives. One helplessly watches the pointless proceedings of the legislatures, the abdication of basic responsibilities by those in power, autocratic governance at every level, the lack of answers on questions of national importance and so on. But in scattered villages, even small towns, in the nook and corner of this vast and diverse land, that thought is still alive as seeds waiting to germinate.

Jaideep Hardikar

Source: Telegraph India, 11/07/25

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