The Stream, November 27, 2024: In India’s Tea Country, Water and Soil Health Depend on Local Revitalization Efforts

A mat of plastic garbage fouls a boat propeller in the Mekong River Delta near Can Tho, Vietnam. Some 60 percent of the plastic that enters the world’s oceans originates from just five countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN 

• More than seven weeks after Hurricane Helene, residents in the Asheville, North Carolina, area finally have access to drinking water.  
• In southern India, where a booming tea economy is at odds with soil health, clean water, and forest biodiversity, Indigenous communities and climate-conscious farmers are working to revitalize the region.
• A heavy overnight rainstorm added to the suffering in Gaza, destroying thousands of tents being used as shelter.
• World leaders are convening this week for the fifth time in an attempt to create a legally binding treaty that addresses global plastic pollution.

A grant program incentivizing English farmers to engage in more sustainable and river friendly practices has suddenly paused its funding, angering participants.

— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Stream Editor

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

• Huge Organic Farm In Iowa Thrives Without Chemicals — An invitation to other farmers to increase profits and limit water pollution.
• Brackish Groundwater Is No Easy Water Solution for Arizona — Substantial impediments to using state’s large reserves of slightly salty groundwater.

The Lead

Two centuries ago in southern India’s Nilgiris region, British colonists razed thousands of native trees and groves in favor of installing hundreds of thousands of tea shrubs, spurring a tea economy that continues to dominate the area. Of the roughly 700,000 people who live in the Nilgiris district, nearly everyone is connected in some way to the tea growing business, Al Jazeera reports. 

This tea farming expansion — now occurring on an industrial scale — has had detrimental effects on soil and water health. Some 55,000 hectares of land is devoted solely to the crop, “damaging close to 70 percent of native grasslands and forests.” There are few other options for community members here to make a living. According to the  Observatory of Economic Complexity, India exported $761 million of tea in 2022, the fourth-most in the world. 

Surrounding the region’s mountainous tea farms are forests the United Nations has classified “as one of the world’s eight ‘hottest hotspots for biodiversity’,” though its ecological complexity is tied to its soil health. Pesticide usage, commercial farming, and clearing land to support tourism has made it difficult for other species — plants and wildlife alike — to thrive in these neighboring, so-called “green deserts.”

In the absence of healthy soils and hardy native trees, the impacts of landslides, heat, droughts, and flooding have been more pronounced. 

But efforts are ongoing to make a positive change — the Adivasi Indigenous communities, the forests’ “original custodians” — continue to plant native trees, and local officials pledged $24 million to encourage farmers to stop using the “chemical-laden fertilizers” that have historically harmed Nilgiris’s waters.

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

52

Days the residents of Swannanoa, a town just east of Asheville, lived without access to clean drinking water in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the Guardian reports. The community relied on bottled water, creek water, and water truck deliveries for household usage, adhering to the boil-water advisory that lasted until November 18. For much of the seven weeks, uncertainty pervaded: it was unclear if water access would be restored until 2025. Now that it is, many are still skeptical of its quality. Lead was detected in the water at seven Asheville schools, and some community members have shared anecdotal evidence of cloudy or dirty water coming from the city’s supply. 

10,000

The number of tents on the Gaza Strip that were washed away or ruined following a heavy winter rainstorm earlier this week, Reuters reports. Almost all of the plastic and cloth tents were being used as temporary shelter for displaced Palestinian communities suffering from continued Israeli airstrikes, famine, and a lack of clean water. The overnight rains ruined food supplies and turned mattresses to sponges; an estimated 81 percent of all displaced persons’ tents are considered unusable, according to Gaza’s government. 

On the Radar

All eyes are on South Korea this week, as international negotiators are meeting in Busan to attempt to create a treaty addressing plastic manufacturing and pollution, AP reports. This is the fifth such global meeting of its kind, with the first four establishing only that there are “sharp disagreements…” around the world “…on whether to limit plastic production.” 

Christian Thorsberg

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.