Editorial 1: The New Asana
Recent Context:
- This year the International Day of Yoga (IDY), 21st June has a special significance as it is celebrated at the UN headquarters in New York with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attendance.
- Since Nine years after June 21 was declared the International Day of Yoga, the IDY has been receiving a huge response. There is now greater awareness about the benefits of practising yoga for physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Yoga has become a global phenomenon:
- With the rise of social media and digital platforms, yoga has transcended geographical boundaries to reach people across the world. 192 countries, including 44 Islamic countries, celebrated the first IDY in 2015 reveals its popularity.
- According to an informal assessment, over 400 million people participated in the 2022 IDY celebrations. The impact has been positive with a number of people in many countries practising yoga for wellness and health benefits.
National and international support for Yoga promotion:
- As compared to the pre-2015 era, more people today know that yoga is not magic, religious ritual or gymnastics. The integrative and holistic approach central to the yogic science is now more intelligible than before.
- Yoga is more about practice and less about preaching
- The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and the Ministry of External Affairs with the support of AYUSH ministry have been promoting yoga.
- Since 2018, the ICCR has been organising an annual international conference aimed at creating a sound understanding of the holistic nature of yoga.
- This conference has also sought to trace the similarities between yoga and other traditional wellness practises in Africa and Southeast Asia.
- The World Health Organisation in collaboration with the Ministry of AYUSH and major yoga institutions has developed a new mobile app (mYoga) to educate people about the therapeutic benefits of yoga.
Role of International Day of Yoga to promote Yog:
- The IDY has also helped to promote research in yoga. Research has established that the regular practice of yoga can help reduce stress, improve flexibility and balance, and lead to better physical and mental health.
- Many countries have incorporated yoga into their healthcare systems. The WHO has now initiated the process of developing a benchmark document for standards in yoga training.
- After IDY 2015, the Government of India established 150 Swami Vivekanand District Yoga Health Centres and 1,25,000 AYUSH Health & Wellness Centres. Yoga therapy has become popular for post-Covid rehabilitation.
- Notably, the IDY has popularised yogasanas as probable components of a competitive sport. For the first time, yogasanas have been included as a sport in Khelo India as well as the National Games.
- India has rightly taken the lead in establishing National Yogasana Sport Federation and World Yogasana Federation, which are going to standardise and introduce yogasana-based competitions at national and international levels.
Yoga opens new areas of Economy:
- Yoga, apart from being a wellness strategy, has also facilitated the creation of start-ups focused on yoga accessories (such as apparels, mats, props, etc.) and yoga services (studios, therapy centres, lifestyle centres etc.).
- With the global yoga industry revenues crossing $100 billion, yoga-based start-ups are expected to increase significantly in the next one decade.
- Meditation-based mobile applications, specialised yoga mats, specialty yoga therapy and integrative medicine centres/Mind Body Medicine centres within conventional medical hospitals also have gone up substantially.
- Vivekananda Health Global, a chain of integrative medicine clinics that began as a startup in Bengaluru, has gone global with branches in China, South Korea, Singapore and the US. Multiple fitness chains have added yoga as a premium service and introduced yogic diet to combat lifestyle disorders.
Conclusion:
- IDY has helped create a sense of community among yoga practitioners and enthusiasts. With lifestyle issues posing health and wellness challenges, yoga could offer solutions derived from Indian traditional knowledge traditions.
- With yoga spreading globally, the next challenge could be about protecting the purity of yoga and preventing trivialisation, adulteration and distortion of the science.
Editorial 2: Bonn climate meet takeaways: old conflicts, some forward movement
Recent Context:
- Recently, The Bonn climate change conference was concluded that was built up as an opportunity for course correction.
- Bonn was expected to act as the springboard for accelerated action. As current global efforts to immediate scale-up in climate action is essential to keep alive any realistic chance of meeting the 1.5 degree or 2-degree Celsius targets
Discussion on Global Stocktake:
- One thing that the countries did manage to conclude was discussions on global stocktake, or GST.
- Mandated by the 2015 Paris Agreement, GST is an exercise aimed at assessing the progress in the fight against climate change, and deciding ways and means to enhance global action to bridge the adequacy gap (see box).
- The Paris Agreement says GST must be conducted every five years, starting in 2023.
- The actual meat in GST would come in at COP28, the year-ending climate conference, this time being held in Dubai. The technical discussions just produced a short ‘framework’ on the elements to be included in the stocktake exercise.
Recognising the historical responsibilities of Developed nation:
- Main concern during the meet was related to finance and ‘historical responsibility’ of the developed countries.
- As, A bulk of the accumulated greenhouse gas emissions, the reason for global warming, have come from a group of about 40 rich and industrialised countries, usually referred to as Annex I countries because they were mentioned in Annexure I of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC.
- This historical responsibility has been the basis for the differentiated burden-sharing on developed and developing countries in the climate change framework.
- It is pointed out that since 1992, about 57% of the carbon dioxide emissions had come from non-Annex I countries. It said that 70% of the incremental warming since 1992 due to emissions from carbon dioxide, methane and sulphur dioxide had come from non-Annex I countries.
- However, few developed nations do not recognise historical responsibility as Australia highlighted during the meet that
- historical emissions happened at a time “when there was no alternative to fossil fuel-based energy sources”, and when there was little understanding or consensus on the harm caused by greenhouse gases.
- Therefore, bridging the adequacy gap was not the sole responsibility of the developed nations and that it would not agree to references to pre-2020 commitments in the GST.
- This could lead to further delay in achieving the climate targets as Erasure of historical responsibility is the most sensitive red line for developing countries. This issue would likely come back at COP28 and has the potential to result in major fireworks.
Financial Mechanism to fight against climate change:
- Apart from GST, another mechanism was set up at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 for climate action. Called Mitigation Work Programme (MWP), this is a temporary emergency exercise focused only on increasing emission cuts.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says global emissions have to come down by 43% from 2019 levels by 2030 to keep alive hopes of meeting the 1.5-degree target.
- Discussions at the MWP ran into trouble after developing countries complained that while they were being asked to strengthen their climate actions, developed countries were yet to offer the enabling finance and technology transfers.
- As Most developing countries, including India stands that they would be able to act more if international support in the form of money and technology transfer was made available.
Obligation of Developed nation:
- Developed countries are under an obligation to support the implementation of climate action plans of developing countries through money and tech transfers. But money has been in perennial short supply.
- According to one assessment, developing countries need as much as US$ 6 trillion between now and 2030 just to implement their climate action plans. The loss and damage need of developing countries are assessed to be about US$ 400 billion every year.
- More funds are needed for all kinds of other purposes, the total estimated to be running in several trillions of dollars every year.
- Against this, even a minuscule-looking US$ 100 billion per year that the developed countries had committed under Global climate fund , to raise from 2020 is not fully available.
Way forward
- A fresh effort at raising financial resources for climate change is being made in Paris this week with a two-day meeting beginning in June, 2023 that several heads of states are going to attend.
- The Summit for a New Global Financial Pact is an attempt at redirecting global financial flows and raising new money to fight climate change, and dealing with associated problems like biodiversity loss and poverty.