How green is my country? Indians are asking the question but not doing enough.


Wasted river: A fisherman's boat sails through the foam on the Yamuna, caused by industrial and domestic pollution

Numbing Numbers

    * Air pollution in India causes 5,27,700 deaths every year (WHO)
    * 21% of communicable diseases in India are related to polluted water. In India, diarrhoea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily (WHO)
    * Only 22% of the wastewater generated in urban India is treated, severely polluting rivers. The total wastewater from Delhi and nearby areas flowing into the 19 drains that connect to the Yamuna is around 3,296 million litres a day, of which 630 MLD is untreated.
    * India’s getting about 5% less sunlight than it did 20 years ago because a cloud of tiny airborne particles released by its industries hovers above the subcontinent, preventing light from reaching the Earth. Results: less rainfall, reduced agricultural productivity and green cover.
    * Unregulated dumping of old PCs and batteries is contaminating our soil, air and groundwater with highly toxic, carcinogenic chemicals. With over 2 million old PCs ready for disposal in India, that means 14,427,000 kg of plastics, 3,962,700 kg of lead and 1,386 kg of mercury.
    * Large metros generate thousands of tonnes of solid waste every day, much of it not biodegradable. Delhi generates about 4,000 tonnes of solid waste each day. How long before there’s no space left to dump it?
    * Fast depleting forest cover is threatening our fauna with extinction as their habitats vanish. In the 20 years alone, nearly 12,000 sq km of forest has disappeared with the government’s permission.
    * Pollution costs India about 4.5 per cent of its GDP each year. The figure for China has been estimated at 2.6 percent of the country’s GDP, and less than 1-2% for industrialised nations.

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Gurgaon has long been celebrated as a shining example of a vibrant, flourishing, 21st-century India. But last month it presented itself as a showcase of the grave environmental crisis that stares India in the face. Residents of this Delhi suburb, faced with crippling power and water shortages, disappearing green cover, and a permanent haze of cement dust hanging over the air thanks to the frenzied construction of malls and highrises, were compelled to petition the Supreme Court in May. They urged the court to save Gurgaon from "complete disaster" and put an end to its unplanned development, which had made their lives untenable "financially, environmentally and mentally".

Growing middle-class concern about the fast deteriorating state of our environment is not restricted to Gurgaon alone, it’s reflected in our nationwide survey too, where people rated environmental pollution second to inflation in the list of problems they face living in cities. This awareness has come not a moment too soon: air pollution from growing vehicular traffic, the indiscriminate cutting down of trees to build expressways and flyovers and the hazards from industrial effluents have sharply increased the incidence of a range of diseases, from asthma to cancer to mental retardation, caused by increasing levels of lead in the bloodstream. Exactly how much, you can learn from the statistics (see Numbing Numbers). Our rivers resemble giants sewers, infecting our water supply with deadly bacteria and microbes. Our rapidly dwindling forest cover threatens much of our fauna with extinction. And while the world debates the likely impact of climate change, people in India are already battling it: in some parts of the country, thousands have been forced to leave their homes because of persistent drought, while in other parts they are being displaced by rising sea levels.

With booming economic growth has come accelerated environmental damage.

As historian Ramachandra Guha, who has authored several seminal works on the environment, observes, "The green movement was strong in the ’70s and ’80s. But, in the ’90s when economic liberalisation set in, green activists were sidelined as party-poopers. Now, belatedly, we’re coming around to acknowledging that the greens may have had a point after all."

A new sense of urgency about India’s environmental degradation has compelled a number of ordinary individuals to make eco-conscious lifestyle changes. There is vocalist C.N. Mukherjee in Delhi’s nondescript Krishna Nagar area, who harvests rainwater on his rooftop.

Mumbai engineer Sudhir Badami has stopped using his private car for his daily commute to work and switched to public transport instead. Calcutta chartered accountant Subhas Datta has replaced his generator with a solar-powered back-up. In Ernakulam, urban planner A.R.S. Vadhyar
has started growing organic food on his terrace, while Calcutta sociologist Aruna Seal prepares the family meals in a solar cooker. Delhi architect Sanjay Prakash has built himself a "green home" that reduces his energy consumption by a third.

Thousands of middle-class householders all over the country have integrated green habits into their daily routines—such as segregating their garbage into recyclable and non-recyclable bags, switching to CFL bulbs, and reverting to the age-old Indian ways of taking bucket baths instead of showers.

But some environmental experts feel these measures, though well-intentioned, are too few and far between to make a real difference.
They’re tailored mainly towards improving an individual’s immediate environment. "The middle class is increasingly self-centred and insensitive to the environmental consequences of what it does. The few concerned ones among them also have the same mindset, in the sense that they extend their concern just to the air they breathe or the food they eat," says Smitu Kothari, director of the Delhi-based thinktank, Intercultural Resources.

Meanwhile, national policies to reverse environmental degradation display either a complete lack of vision or a blinkered one. Thus, while the introduction of compressed natural gas for public vehicles reduced air pollution in many cities some years ago, the government’s unwillingness to tackle the unchecked growth of private vehicles on our city roads has pretty much negated those gains today. Apart from the Delhi Metro, there has been no real effort to improve public transport. For many states and cities, saving the environment today in India has largely come to mean planting trees and saving a few flagship species such as the tiger. But, as the late Anil Agarwal, founder of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), used to say, environment goes beyond "pretty trees and tigers". This lopsidedness, writes Cambridge University lecturer Emma Mawdsley in a paper titled ‘India’s Middle Classes and the Environment’ published in the journal Development and Change, is a result of the disproportionate influence the Indian middle class wields in shaping the terms of public debate on environmental issues, through their strong representation in the media, politics, the scientific establishment, NGOs, bureaucracy, environmental institutions and the legal system.

The urban development model in India, agree many critics, is largely dictated by the growing size and affluence of the middle class. The transportation infrastructure in Delhi is one such example, designed to keep out pedestrians and slower-moving but more eco-friendly modes of transport such as bicycles from roads

And whenever a different model has been tried, like the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Corridor in Delhi, there has been a huge backlash. A boon for public transport commuters with separate lanes for buses and cycles, the BRT project is overwhelmingly opposed by car owners—a fact confirmed in our survey.

While some environmentalists argue that environment-friendly policies benefit the poor as well as the well-to-do, others hold that many environmental measures are in fact discriminatory, and hit the poor. Examples of this contradiction abound—for instance, in the eviction of slum-dwellers from Yamuna Pushta in New Delhi in 2004 to make way for a "green belt". It’s a different matter that a Games Village is being built for the Commonwealth event in 2010 on the riverbank, adjacent to the Akshardham temple spread over a hundred acres. Mawdsley points out that "with a growing ‘wildlife’ sensibility, stronger efforts may be made to expel adivasis and other forest-dwellers from National Parks and other Protected Areas.... At the same time, some park authorities are willing to allow luxury hotels and more roads to be built in the same parks, servicing the demands of rich domestic and foreign tourists while displacing the poor."

This growing disconnect between the environmental priorities of urban Indians and those of the nation as a whole is a point that Kothari of Intercultural Resources also emphasises. He quotes as an example projects of dams like the Tehri, which displace thousands of people, deprive them of their livelhihoods, and cause environmental degradation in order to "generate power that is mainly consumed by urban Indians".

Despite the actions that many middle-class, urban Indians now take out of concern for the environment, environmental awareness is low among Indians as a whole. A recent study—Greendex—by National Geographic in May this year ranked Indians at the bottom of the list of 14 nationalities in environmental awareness. For example, only a fourth knew that nearly all plastic is made from crude oil. Guha gives a telling example of Indians’ lack of awareness about their ecological footprint. "They will drive 500 miles in a gas-guzzling SUV to see a tiger, and then feel that they are pro-environment," he says.

The middle class, Kothari adds, is "completely oblivious" to how its "criminally wasteful" lifestyle is causing disruption and social conflict elsewhere. For example, as middle-class Indians demand more and more construction material, rural folk are being pushed out of their homes to make way for steel plants to feed that demand, he points out. A recent instance was in Kalinganagar in Orissa, when 13 people were killed in police firing when they protested the construction of a steel plant.

And if things are to get better, says Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) will have to be a much better guardian of our environment and natural resources. Under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, the MoEF must assess the environmental impact of development projects before granting them clearance. In reality, however, it rarely withholds such clearances. "The MoEF has become more of a ‘ministry of development’," says Narain.

"Our studies show that very few projects have been denied clearance despite protests from local people." That the whole EIA process is a farce is evident from one instance where the MoEF granted clearance to Ashapura Minechem Ltd for bauxite mining in Ratnagiri in 2006, despite the fact that the data submitted by the company was copied wholesale from a Russian mining project. If the mining company’s data is to be believed, Ratnagiri has forests of "mixed spruce and birch!"

Most experts are agreed that saving the environment will get the required attention from the people only when it gets the same from the government. "That’s unlikely to happen as long as the government continues to subsidise energy prices and insulate the people from the supply-demand situation," says Leena Srivastava, executive director, The Energy and Resources Institute. "There is no incentive for the middle class to change its lifestyle," adds Deepti Sastry, an environment and development studies scholar at Birbeck College, University of London. "Any attitudinal change that takes place without policy intervention will probably be just a fashion statement, likely to be short-lived."

But, until far-reaching policy changes to save India’s environment come into effect, individuals must give more serious thought to the impact on the environment of their lifestyles, and make sustained and consistent efforts to reduce their ecological footprint (see How to Go Green). And then demand that the government give them incentives for doing so. ‘Be the change you want to see around you’, environmentalists don’t tire of telling you. It may begin to sound like a cliche, but put it into practice and it could well usher in India’s green evolution.

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Solar cooking: Tasty, and healthy too

How To Go Green

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Renew. This was once the eco-warrior’s credo. Add to this: deconsume. ...

Smruti Koppikar

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Renew. This was once the eco-warrior’s credo, recommended to consumers in Europe. Today, however, environmentalists say that more critical than the 4 Rs is a simple word that ought to become a slogan: deconsume.

Deconsume sounds like Mahatma Gandhi’s mantra: Live simply, so that others may simply live. Easier said than done in urban settings, where economies are built on consumption and demand. So, how about green consumerism? Every time you spend a rupee, you vote for or against the environment.

Here are some ways to be eco-conscious in your everyday life:

Deconsume: It means you pare down. Eco-consciously examine your needs and indulgences, see what can be deleted from your shopping list. For example, if your modest-sized apartment complex decides to "deconsume" aerated drinks for a week, it still saves that much groundwater (manufacturing), plastic (packaging) and fuel (transport).

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Small choices go a long way: For instance, you can choose bucket baths over showers every day; instal a low-flush toilet, stop brushing your teeth with the tap running, use household waste-water to water plants, use washing machines only with a full load. Switch to CFL bulbs, make sure your appliances are energy-efficient, switch off unnecessary lights, and try to cut down use of the airconditioner. Stop using plastic bags, and go shopping with a reusable cloth bag. Segregate your garbage, with recyclable stuff separated. You can control the amount of environmentally harmful substances used around the house—banish styrofoam products, lead-based paints, aerosol cans. Use bay leaves, cucumber slices, garlic to keep away cockroaches instead of toxic chemical sprays, natural pesticides and fertilisers like neem and leaf compost on your plants.

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Watch what you eat: For those who can afford it, the world’s produce can be on their dining tables. If you are one of them, pause and ask: is the earth-price reflected on the price-tag? It never is. That’s the Slow Food Movement—organic, locally-produced food, sometimes called The 100-mile-Diet (you consume what’s grown 100 miles around where you live). Ask yourself if you really need those kiwi fruit and Chinese apples, imported from halfway around the globe, burning up thousands of litres of fuel.

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Watch your footprint: How you travel determines your carbon footprint. Think: can I use public transport, or walk, or cycle; can I buy a dual-fuel car, can I persuade companies to think hybrid cars; can I keep one instead of two cars, can I car-pool, can I seat at least two others going my direction? And if you’re an Ambani or in that league, think: do I really need a fleet of personal jets, helicopters to get from the airport to my south Mumbai home?

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Eco-map your house: Explore the possibility of solar water heating, especially if you live in an apartment complex; it’s economically viable when many people club together to instal the solar panels. Buy a solar cooker and discover what delicious and healthy food you can prepare in it. If building a new house, discuss natural construction methods and materials with your architect to cut down energy consumption. For instance, good ventilation, roof insulation with earthen pitchers, can keep your house naturally cool.

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Clean Rivers: 77%

In which we attempt to assess what average Indians living in big cities think about India’s environment, and to gauge their levels of awareness, attitudes, perception and concerns

Methodology

The State of Environment in Indian Cities survey attempts to assess what average Indians living in big cities think about India’s environment, and to gauge their levels of awareness, attitudes, perception and concerns. The findings are based on interviews among 1,732 respondents spread across 36 locations in six cities—Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore and Hyderabad—chosen to adequately represent both genders, different age and income groups, and localities in each city.

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Highlights

    * 77% of urban Indians consider environmental pollution the most serious problem of urban life, second only to inflation 82%.

    * Air pollution is considered the biggest problem 34% followed by lack of green cover 21%, water pollution 17%, noise pollution 14% and garbage disposal 11%.

    * 77% want the government to tackle river pollution but there is widespread unawareness of what causes the problem. Only 5% of people are aware that household sewage flows into the river.

    * While 94% of people favour a law banning the use of polythene bags, 17% still use them for shopping.

    * 10% of people dispose of their garbage in the nearest ditch or on the road, only 13% regularly separate recyclable waste from garbage

    * 86% favour a law banning use of diesel engines in private vehicles

    * Among upper income groups, 30% had solar heaters, 42% had power-saving devices and 30% had set up means of rainwater harvesting. In contrast, only 11% of people in lower-income groups had solar heaters and 14% had power-saving devices or set up rainwater harvesting devices.

    * Most people believe that pollution will increase over the next five years, with 77% believing that air pollution will increase, 71% that noise pollution will rise, and 55% that water pollution will increase.

    * There is widespread pessimism about the state of India’s environment as a whole. 44% feel it will get worse while 27% feel it will stay the same.

    * 94% feel environmental studies should be made a compulsory subject in schools.

    * Calcutta citizens have the highest awareness level on environmental issues 53%, followed closely by Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore. Chennai citizens rank the lowest by far, with only 16% having a high level of awareness.

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Citywise Findings

In Calcutta, the majority 52% are willing to pay extra taxes to clean up the environment. Paradoxically, a majority 52% also blame the government for environmental degradation caused by extinction of lakes and water bodies.

In Mumbai, the overwhelming majority of both middle and lower income (74% and 80% respectively) groups believe land reclaimed from the sea should be planted with mangroves, but 49% of upper income groups prefer to build houses there. 77% support cleaning the Mithi river.

In Chennai, water shortage is a major concern, and though 85% are aware of the desalination plant set up by the government, only 12% believe it will work. 88% support the government’s policy of installing rainwater harvesting systems in every household.

In Hyderabad, 73% say the Hussain Sagar Lake is under threat from commercial activity nearby, which should be immediately banned.

In Delhi, 64% feel expanding the Metro is the best way to solve the city’s transport problems.Opinion on the brt is divided though, with 42% of upper income groups wishing to scrap it, as opposed to only 12% of people from lower income groups. Concern about the state of the Yamuna is immense across the board, at 93%

In Bangalore, 57% of the people feel that protecting trees is much better than cutting them to widen roads. Only 14% feel that cutting trees is necessary. 47% of the people are aware that the city’s lakes are being leased out to private companies, but opinion is evenly divided on whether private or government action would protect the lakes. 20% feel neither will make a difference.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080616&fname=Cover+Story&sid=1&pn=1

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