10 Million People Die A Year In India

suchandra · June 14, 2007

"Tears of Trees", a new movement in India started , http://www.mokshda.org/ , to stop people using insted of 20 kg wood more than usually 400 kg to perform a cremation ceremony.

Forests play an important role in maintaining environmental stability and ecological balance. Forest policy of Government of India envisages a forests and tree cover of 33% of the geographical area by 2012. This can be achieved only by (a) putting in place an effective forest regeneration plan and (b) conserving the existing cover in every possible manner.

Indian Funeral Pyres go Green

BY: TRIPTI LAHIRI

Jun 13, NEW DELHIA, INDIA (AGNECE FRANCE-PRESSE) —

The average Indian may go through an entire life without contributing a huge amount to the world's production of greenhouse gases, but in death their carbon footprint jumps. Alarmed by the fuel-intensive nature of the funeral rites of Hindus who practice open-air cremation using firewood, an environmental group in New Delhi is promoting a new, more eco-friendly pyre.

"Our faith tells us we must do our last rites in this way,'' said Vinod Kumar Agarwal, 60, a mechanical engineer who has developed a raised pyre that cuts the amount of wood required and ensuing carbon dioxide emissions by over 60 per cent.

Hindus believe that burning the body entirely helps to release the soul in a cycle of reincarnation that ends only with salvation. But "all the ashes go into the rivers and carbon dioxide is creating global warming,'' said Mr Agarwal.

UN figures show close to 10 million people die a year in India, where 85 per cent of the billion-plus population are Hindus who practice cremation.

That leads to the felling of an estimated 50 million trees, leaves behind half a million tonnes of ash and produces eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, according to research by Mr Agarwal's Mokshda environmental group.

He got the idea for what he calls the Mokshda Green Cremation System after an unpleasant experience in 1992 at Haridwar on the banks of the river Ganges.

While attending a funeral in the northern Indian city, considered holy by Hindus, he saw a poor family struggling to carry out a cremation with sparse damp wood. The fire went out repeatedly and the partially burned corpse was finally flung into the Ganges.

The engineer thought there had to be a better way.

Mr Agarwal said it should take only 22kg of wood to cremate the average human body. But Hindu funerals often use much more because of inefficient combustion. A formal Hindu cremation - in which a dead body is burned for more than six hours in a 1m-high open-air pyre - can consume more than 400kg of wood to reduce the body to ashes, he said.

In 1993, Mr Agarwal built his first pyre, a raised human-sized brazier under a roof with slats that could be lowered to maintain heat. The elevation allowed air to circulate and feed the fire.

"But no one used it,'' said Mr Agarwal.

"We had to get religion on our side.''

Consultations with priests, bureaucrats and environmentalists led to major design modifications and Mr Agarwal settled on a system that included finer touches such as marble flooring and a statue of the god Shiva.

Since then the Mokshda group has been actively promoting it across the country.

Mokshda has installed 41 pyres, while some cities, including India's financial hub Mumbai, have independently adapted the design. The group expects to put up about 20 more pyres this year. Mokshda hopes its projects will eventually be registered under the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism, which encourages green projects in developing countries.

It allows industrialised countries that have committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to count reductions achieved through investments in projects in developing countries towards their undertakings.