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Jun 5, 2013, 2:27:52 AM6/5/13
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KILL ENVIRONMENT, KILL HUMANKIND
By Prerna Singh Bindra
Op-Ed
The Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
We are looking at an India with an ailing population,
with one form of ill health (including respiratory and
water-borne diseases and cancer) or the other due to a
toxic environment. Yet, we fail to wake up and take
effective measures
It’s that time of the year again — June 5, the World
Environment Day, celebrated all over the world for
‘positive environment action’. Time to dust our
consumerist conscience, step out of our climate-
controlled bubbles of air-conditioners and heaters, to
plant (but not nurture) a tree, vow anew to shift from
plastic to recycled paper, and such like — before we go
back to business as usual. Forgive the cynicism, but that
is what such tokenism, doled out routinely on each such
‘day’, merits.
Most of us are aware of the state of the environment: Our
mighty life-giving rivers are being killed by the very
civilisation they nurture — reduced to toxic soups. Even
the holiest of the holies, the Ganga, is dammed and
doomed by a series of hydel projects that threaten to
reduce her flow to a trickle. Mining has laid to waste
swathes of the pristine Western Ghats across Karnataka
and Goa, and rich tiger habitat in central and eastern
central India; villages are buried under the waste of
urban India. Punjab, India’s grain bowl, is afflicted
with cancer owing to the intensive and extensive use of
pesticides; our water has mercury, the air is loaded with
lead, our food is laced with carcinogenics — all of which
have imperiled public health.
We are looking at an India with an ailing population
suffering with one form of ill health (including
respiratory and water-borne diseases and cancer) or the
other due to a toxic environment. Yet we, Governments and
people alike, make the collective and convenient choice
to behave ostrich-like, ignoring the elephant in the
room.
While not dwelling too much on history, our contemporary
environment movement can be traced broadly to two main
incidents: A people’s movement, Chipko, in the Himalayas
in 1973 to stop the felling of trees and, born in the
same year, the biggest conservation initiative of its
time: Project Tiger. The movement was strengthened by
policy and legislation — the Wildlife Protection Act,
1972, to be followed later by the Forest Conservation
Act, 1980, and the Environment Protection Act, 1986.
The willful destruction of the environment and the
dilution of protectionist laws — particularly the EPA and
its notifications, Environment Impact Assessment
Notification, 1994, and the Coastal Regulation Zone
Notification, 1991 — run parallel to our growth story,
essentially with the liberalisation process that began in
the early 1990s. India’s economic growth has come at a
huge environmental cost — so much so, that the rate of
growth itself is undermined, and questioned.
For instance, a paper, authored by Professor Sir Partha
Dasgupta, among others, calculates that in the period
1970-2001, the estimated growth of India’s per capita GDP
of 2.96 per cent drops to 0.31 per cent per year after
taking into account environmental costs. This, of course,
is a global phenomenon. The cost of environmental
degradation in China was estimated in 2010 to be 3.5 per
cent of the nation’s GDP, according to an official
Chinese news report. According to a United Nations study,
global environmental damage from human activity cost the
world $6.6 trillion in 2009 which is roughly about 10 per
cent of the global GDP.
Another disquieting thought: Who has benefited by
‘development’? Has ‘growth,’ as we understand it,
enriched a few and impoverished many others? This is the
subject of a separate debate. But the level of disquiet
and agitation across the country against projects, be it
mining at Mahan, Chhattisgarh, Posco in Odisha, dams in
Arunachal Pradesh or the thermal power projects in Konkan
region, and their increasingly violent suppression by the
Government raises questions not just on the inequity of
growth benefits, but more seriously on the subversion of
the basic tenets of democracy.
Most such projects ignore the law of the land, prompting
the former Union Minister for Environment and Forests
Jairam Ramesh to say, “We have taken these laws and the
discipline they enforce for granted. Industry has assumed
that somehow these laws can be ‘managed’ and Governments
too have not insisted that the laws be implemented both
in letter and spirit.”
Have there been any studies to understand the ecological,
social, livelihood and even health impacts of mining,
thermal projects or the series of mega dams (over 200,
just in one State of Arunachal Pradesh) across the
country? The environment impact assessment of projects,
in the words of the same Minister, “is a bit of a joke.”
He is right. Take the case of JSW Energy’s 1,200 MW
thermal power plant in Jaigad along the Konkan coast. Its
EIA ignored the existence of reserve forests, mangroves
and corals, and the myriad, unique flora and fauna of
this biodiversity hotspot, and listed “dog, cat, pig, cow
and buffalo” as species endemic to the region.
It’s not funny; it breezed through the portals of the
Ministry of Environment and Forests and also the
National Environment Appellate Authority. Worse, EIAs are
authored by the project’s proponents themselves. Nor do
we have the systems or the manpower to monitor the
compliance of conditions laid down to safeguard the
environment.
The most disturbing fact in a democratic India is the
suppression of voices of dissent — force, and a
crackdown, on the people and environmentalists who
protest or ask inconvenient questions. One such tragic
instance was the death of two people, who were killed in
Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam district in protests against
a thermal power plant which would destroy the Naupada
wetlands, which supported their livelihood as fishermen.
Incidentally, the EIA of the plant failed to mention this
fragile wetland area, rich in birdlife.
One reason for the environmental catastrophe is the lack
of vision or an environmental consciousness among our
political leadership, be it at the State or the national
level. The Prime Minister has made his views on
environment regulation clear, calling it the “new licence
raj”. He believes that “saving the environment cannot be
at the cost of development.”
But will there be development at all, if our environment
is in shambles? I will let that be answered in the words
of another Prime Minster, the late Rajiv Gandhi, “We have
learned to our cost that development which destroys the
environment eventually destroys development itself.”
The fault, however, lies not only in the political class,
but also the masses. The political class is a mere
representation of the mindset of the vast majority of the
people. As citizens we have failed to understand and
appreciate that a healthy environment — safe, clean
drinking water, air, soil, healthy forests and species
diversity are the key to not just a better quality of
life, but life itself.
In a recent essay, eminent historian and author
Ramchandra Guha called India “an environment basket
case”. It is true, and it doesn’t bode well for the
future. Think beyond your token contribution, of shifting
from conventional bulbs to LED, from plastic to paper.
Think beyond June 5. Treat every day as World Environment
Day. Conserving the environment and reducing our
footprint should be a way of life, not a day’s fad.
(The columnist is senior consultant, WCS India, and
founder-director of ‘Bagh’. She is also a member of the
National Board for Wildlife)
More at:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/kill-environment-kill-humankind.html
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj
o o o
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used
for the educational purposes of research and open
discussion. The contents of this post may not have been
authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the poster. The contents are protected by copyright
law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely
not be read, considered or answered if it does not
contain your full legal name, current e-mail and postal
addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views
expressed by others are not necessarily those of the
poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted
material the use of which may or may not have been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This
material is being made available in efforts to advance
the understanding of environmental, political, human
rights, economic, democratic, scientific, social, and
cultural, etc., issues. It is believed that this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material on this site is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research, comment,
discussion and educational purposes by subscribing to
USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more
information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article
for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Since newsgroup posts are being removed by forgery by one
or more net terrorists, this post may be reposted several
times.
By Prerna Singh Bindra
Op-Ed
The Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
We are looking at an India with an ailing population,
with one form of ill health (including respiratory and
water-borne diseases and cancer) or the other due to a
toxic environment. Yet, we fail to wake up and take
effective measures
It’s that time of the year again — June 5, the World
Environment Day, celebrated all over the world for
‘positive environment action’. Time to dust our
consumerist conscience, step out of our climate-
controlled bubbles of air-conditioners and heaters, to
plant (but not nurture) a tree, vow anew to shift from
plastic to recycled paper, and such like — before we go
back to business as usual. Forgive the cynicism, but that
is what such tokenism, doled out routinely on each such
‘day’, merits.
Most of us are aware of the state of the environment: Our
mighty life-giving rivers are being killed by the very
civilisation they nurture — reduced to toxic soups. Even
the holiest of the holies, the Ganga, is dammed and
doomed by a series of hydel projects that threaten to
reduce her flow to a trickle. Mining has laid to waste
swathes of the pristine Western Ghats across Karnataka
and Goa, and rich tiger habitat in central and eastern
central India; villages are buried under the waste of
urban India. Punjab, India’s grain bowl, is afflicted
with cancer owing to the intensive and extensive use of
pesticides; our water has mercury, the air is loaded with
lead, our food is laced with carcinogenics — all of which
have imperiled public health.
We are looking at an India with an ailing population
suffering with one form of ill health (including
respiratory and water-borne diseases and cancer) or the
other due to a toxic environment. Yet we, Governments and
people alike, make the collective and convenient choice
to behave ostrich-like, ignoring the elephant in the
room.
While not dwelling too much on history, our contemporary
environment movement can be traced broadly to two main
incidents: A people’s movement, Chipko, in the Himalayas
in 1973 to stop the felling of trees and, born in the
same year, the biggest conservation initiative of its
time: Project Tiger. The movement was strengthened by
policy and legislation — the Wildlife Protection Act,
1972, to be followed later by the Forest Conservation
Act, 1980, and the Environment Protection Act, 1986.
The willful destruction of the environment and the
dilution of protectionist laws — particularly the EPA and
its notifications, Environment Impact Assessment
Notification, 1994, and the Coastal Regulation Zone
Notification, 1991 — run parallel to our growth story,
essentially with the liberalisation process that began in
the early 1990s. India’s economic growth has come at a
huge environmental cost — so much so, that the rate of
growth itself is undermined, and questioned.
For instance, a paper, authored by Professor Sir Partha
Dasgupta, among others, calculates that in the period
1970-2001, the estimated growth of India’s per capita GDP
of 2.96 per cent drops to 0.31 per cent per year after
taking into account environmental costs. This, of course,
is a global phenomenon. The cost of environmental
degradation in China was estimated in 2010 to be 3.5 per
cent of the nation’s GDP, according to an official
Chinese news report. According to a United Nations study,
global environmental damage from human activity cost the
world $6.6 trillion in 2009 which is roughly about 10 per
cent of the global GDP.
Another disquieting thought: Who has benefited by
‘development’? Has ‘growth,’ as we understand it,
enriched a few and impoverished many others? This is the
subject of a separate debate. But the level of disquiet
and agitation across the country against projects, be it
mining at Mahan, Chhattisgarh, Posco in Odisha, dams in
Arunachal Pradesh or the thermal power projects in Konkan
region, and their increasingly violent suppression by the
Government raises questions not just on the inequity of
growth benefits, but more seriously on the subversion of
the basic tenets of democracy.
Most such projects ignore the law of the land, prompting
the former Union Minister for Environment and Forests
Jairam Ramesh to say, “We have taken these laws and the
discipline they enforce for granted. Industry has assumed
that somehow these laws can be ‘managed’ and Governments
too have not insisted that the laws be implemented both
in letter and spirit.”
Have there been any studies to understand the ecological,
social, livelihood and even health impacts of mining,
thermal projects or the series of mega dams (over 200,
just in one State of Arunachal Pradesh) across the
country? The environment impact assessment of projects,
in the words of the same Minister, “is a bit of a joke.”
He is right. Take the case of JSW Energy’s 1,200 MW
thermal power plant in Jaigad along the Konkan coast. Its
EIA ignored the existence of reserve forests, mangroves
and corals, and the myriad, unique flora and fauna of
this biodiversity hotspot, and listed “dog, cat, pig, cow
and buffalo” as species endemic to the region.
It’s not funny; it breezed through the portals of the
Ministry of Environment and Forests and also the
National Environment Appellate Authority. Worse, EIAs are
authored by the project’s proponents themselves. Nor do
we have the systems or the manpower to monitor the
compliance of conditions laid down to safeguard the
environment.
The most disturbing fact in a democratic India is the
suppression of voices of dissent — force, and a
crackdown, on the people and environmentalists who
protest or ask inconvenient questions. One such tragic
instance was the death of two people, who were killed in
Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam district in protests against
a thermal power plant which would destroy the Naupada
wetlands, which supported their livelihood as fishermen.
Incidentally, the EIA of the plant failed to mention this
fragile wetland area, rich in birdlife.
One reason for the environmental catastrophe is the lack
of vision or an environmental consciousness among our
political leadership, be it at the State or the national
level. The Prime Minister has made his views on
environment regulation clear, calling it the “new licence
raj”. He believes that “saving the environment cannot be
at the cost of development.”
But will there be development at all, if our environment
is in shambles? I will let that be answered in the words
of another Prime Minster, the late Rajiv Gandhi, “We have
learned to our cost that development which destroys the
environment eventually destroys development itself.”
The fault, however, lies not only in the political class,
but also the masses. The political class is a mere
representation of the mindset of the vast majority of the
people. As citizens we have failed to understand and
appreciate that a healthy environment — safe, clean
drinking water, air, soil, healthy forests and species
diversity are the key to not just a better quality of
life, but life itself.
In a recent essay, eminent historian and author
Ramchandra Guha called India “an environment basket
case”. It is true, and it doesn’t bode well for the
future. Think beyond your token contribution, of shifting
from conventional bulbs to LED, from plastic to paper.
Think beyond June 5. Treat every day as World Environment
Day. Conserving the environment and reducing our
footprint should be a way of life, not a day’s fad.
(The columnist is senior consultant, WCS India, and
founder-director of ‘Bagh’. She is also a member of the
National Board for Wildlife)
More at:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/kill-environment-kill-humankind.html
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj
o o o
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used
for the educational purposes of research and open
discussion. The contents of this post may not have been
authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the poster. The contents are protected by copyright
law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely
not be read, considered or answered if it does not
contain your full legal name, current e-mail and postal
addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views
expressed by others are not necessarily those of the
poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted
material the use of which may or may not have been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This
material is being made available in efforts to advance
the understanding of environmental, political, human
rights, economic, democratic, scientific, social, and
cultural, etc., issues. It is believed that this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material on this site is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research, comment,
discussion and educational purposes by subscribing to
USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more
information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article
for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Since newsgroup posts are being removed by forgery by one
or more net terrorists, this post may be reposted several
times.
dav...@agent.com
Jun 5, 2013, 1:47:02 PM6/5/13
to
(Dr. Jai Maharaj) wrote:
>KILL ENVIRONMENT, KILL HUMANKIND
>
>By Prerna Singh Bindra
>Op-Ed
>The Pioneer
>http://www.dailypioneer.com
>Wednesday, June 5, 2013
>
>We are looking at an India with an ailing population,
>with one form of ill health (including respiratory and
>water-borne diseases and cancer) or the other due to a
>toxic environment. Yet, we fail to wake up and take
>effective measures
It's not fair to force future generations to live in
>KILL ENVIRONMENT, KILL HUMANKIND
>
>By Prerna Singh Bindra
>Op-Ed
>The Pioneer
>http://www.dailypioneer.com
>Wednesday, June 5, 2013
>
>We are looking at an India with an ailing population,
>with one form of ill health (including respiratory and
>water-borne diseases and cancer) or the other due to a
>toxic environment. Yet, we fail to wake up and take
>effective measures
overcrowded conditions. We need to stop suppressing
measles, mumps, chicken pox, influenza, malaria, and
tuberculosis, in order to enact limited longevity.
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