MAINS DAILY QUESTIONS & MODEL ANSWERS
Q1. What are the causes of urban waterlogging? Discuss some of the remedial measures.
Paper & Topic: GS III à Environmental Conservation
Model Answer:
- Urban water logging are a man-made calamity caused by overworked drainage, unchecked building, disregard for the natural topography, and hydro-geomorphology.
- Cities like Hyderabad and Mumbai rely on a century-old drainage system that only serves a small portion of the central city.
- The original built-up area of Indian cities has increased significantly over the past 20 years.
- When the city expanded past its original boundaries, little was done to rectify the lack of suitable drainage systems.
- Flattening the ground and changing the natural drainage systems have caused the city long-term, irreparable harm. This damage was caused by developers, property owners, and government organisations.
- Reducing Seepage: Indian cities are growing more water-impervious due to increased building as well as the type of materials utilised (hard, non-porous construction material that makes the soil impervious).
- Lax Implementation: Despite the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA(a )’s regulatory tool) inclusion of provisions for rainwater harvesting, sustainable urban drainage systems, etc., user uptake and enforcement remain poor.
- Encroaching on Natural Spaces: From 644 wetlands in 1956 to 123 wetlands in 2018, wetlands have decreased in number.
- Only 9% of the land is covered in vegetation, when it should be at least 33%.
Moving Forward:
- Holistic Engagement Is Required Because Municipal Authorities Alone Cannot Control Urban Floods Of This Scale. Without coordinated and targeted investments of time, effort, and money, flooding cannot be controlled.
- Municipal corporations should collaborate on this task along with the Metropolitan Development Authorities, National Disaster Management Authority, State revenue and irrigation departments.
- Such investments can only be made in a mission-driven organisation with the active involvement of metropolitan-scale civil society organisations.
- Creating Sponge Cities: The goal of a sponge city is to make a city more permeable so that it can capture and utilise the water that it receives.
- Rainwater is absorbed by sponge cities, where it is organically filtered by the soil before entering metropolitan aquifers.
- This enables the use of urban or peri-urban wells to draw water from the earth.
- This water is simply treatable and suitable for use in city water systems.
- Wetland Regulations: Wetland management must be given more attention, and local communities must be included.
- Without a doubt, there needs to be stringent regulation of terrain modification and a moratorium on further changes to the landscape.
- New porous technologies and materials need to be promoted or required on a wide scale in order to increase the city’s capacity to absorb water.
- These technologies include green roofs and harvesting systems in buildings, bioswales and retention systems, permeable materials for roads and pavement, drainage systems that allow storm water to trickle into the earth, and permeable materials for roads and pavement.
Q2. What is Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. Discuss its key features.
Paper & Topic: GS I à Geography related concepts
Model Answer:
About ITCZ:
- It is a region where winds blowing equatorward from midlatitudes and winds blowing poleward from the tropics collide between the northern and southern hemispheres. Seasonally, it moves from north to south in accordance with the Sun’s motion. As an illustration, the southeast trade wind transforms to a southwest wind as it crosses the Equator when the ITCZ is relocated to the north of the Equator. Based on the distribution of land and water, the ITCZ only moves between 40° and 45° of latitude north or south of the equator.
ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone) causes:
- The convergence of the northeast and southeast trade winds in the region encircling the Earth around the equator is what creates the ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone).
- Trade Winds: Easterly winds that travel in a ring around the planet close to its equator.
- Air masses: A measurement of the volume of air based on the temperature and water vapour content. This air mass brings unstable weather to tropical latitudes where it is hot to very hot and has a high relative humidity.
- Due to the convergence of the trade winds, it appears as a ring of clouds that surrounds the world close to the equator and consists of showers with sporadic thunderstorms.
