Stray Dogs and Poor Waste Management

Stray Dogs and Poor Waste Management

Subject :Environment

Section Monetary policy

Context:  Frequent reports of dogs chasing people down the road, attacking and even “mauling” people to death have made the management of stray dogs an administrative and legal issue.  But what also determines how frequently, and where, these attacks happen is how efficiently a city’s sanitation and waste disposal facilities operate, experts say.

What do dog bites have to do with poor waste management?

• The “carrying capacity” — the ability of a city to support a species — is determined by the availability of food and shelter. Free-ranging dogs, in the absence of these facilities, are scavengers that forage around for food, eventually gravitating towards exposed garbage dumping sites.
• Dogs thus congregate around urban dumps, such as landfills or garbage dumps, due to feeding opportunities.
• A population boom in Indian cities has contributed to a staggering rise in solid waste. Indian cities generate more than 1,50,000 metric tonnes of urban solid waste every day
• United Nations Environment Program report, an estimated 931 million tonnes of food available to consumers ended up in households, restaurants, vendors and other food service retailers’ bins in 2019. Indian homes on average also generated 50 kg of food waste per person, the report said.
• This food often serves as a source of food for hunger-stricken, free-roaming dogs that move towards densely-populated areas in cities, such as urban slums which are usually located next to garbage dumping sites and landfills.

What role do urbanisation and urban planning play? 

• Cities have witnessed a sharp increase in the stray dog population, which as per the official 2019 livestock census stood at 5 crore. However, independent estimates peg the number to be around 6.2 crore.
• The number of dog bites has simultaneously doubled between 2012 and 2020 (researchers however note there is a paucity of data on dog bite deaths due to neglect in the management of rabies).
• India also shoulders the highest rabies burden in the world, accounting for a third of global deaths caused due to the disease.
• In 2015, a study conducted in 10 Indian metro cities — including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bengaluru — found a strong link between human population, the amount of municipal and food waste generated, and the number of stray dogs in the cities.
• Experts agree there may be a correlation between urbanisation and solid waste production, made visible due to the mismanagement of waste disposal. Tepid animal birth control programmes and insufficient rescue centres, in conjunction with poor waste management, result in a proliferation of street animals in India, research argues.
• Urban local bodies are struggling to implement and sustain rules under the Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, such as the door-to-door collection of segregated waste, studies show.
• All the waste collected should be transported to designated landfill sites, but estimates by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India show that only 75-80% of the total municipal waste is collected, and only 22-28% of it is processed. The rest is dumped across cities, becoming food for stray dogs or clogging sewerage
• The proximity of residential areas to dumping sites and the rise in dog attacks speak to “core issues of unplanned and unregulated urban development, the lack of serviced affordable urban housing for all, lack of safe livelihood options and improper solid waste management”, researchers at the World Resource Institute (WRI) wrote in a blog.

More about issue: https://optimizeias.com/stray-dog-population-control-is-dogged-by-bad-science/

Prevention of cruelty of animal act,1960: https://optimizeias.com/stray-dog-beaten-to-death-police-launch-hunt-to-nab-accused/

Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016: https://optimizeias.com/kochi-dump-yard-smoke-to-be-contained-in-two-days/