sustainability

On February 10th, 2021, Citizen Matters organised an online round-table discussion on ‘Climate Crisis and Environmental Sustainability: Lessons for Tier 2 cities’. The discussion was a logical extension of a series published on Citizen Matters, and supported by Climate Trends, that looked at climate change and environmental sustainability in cities like Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Shimla, Rishikesh and Varanasi. The intense session saw a deep exploration of the various sustainability challenges before India's Tier 2 cities and towns, and the systemic gaps underlying such manifestations. Read more: What’s causing climate risks in our smaller cities and towns? The primary objective of this…

A discussion with a difference Over the latter half of 2020, Citizen Matters commissioned a series of articles, supported by Climate Trends, to look at climate change and environmental sustainability in Tier 2 towns like Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Shimla, Rishikesh and Varanasi. Why Tier 2, one may ask. Because if and when there is a spotlight on issues of sustainability or the urban climate crisis, it is usually the metros that are at the centre of it. Air Pollution is invariably associated with Delhi/NCR, discussions around water crisis are more often than not Chennai-centric, while waste and mobility issues are mostly…

“COVID-19 has hit us really hard, we are finding it really difficult to survive,” says B.S. Ranawat, owner of a tour agency in Jaipur . “I had three branch offices in Jaipur but had to shut down two of them, release a majority of the staff and take credit from the family for payment of loans. I have lost 80% of my business,”says Ranawat, who worked with Railways in Delhi, had come back to Jaipur in 2007 and started his own tour agency. Today, his business and dreams seem to be falling apart because of the impact of COVID-19 on…

Kanika*, a 15-year-old girl, carries her two-year-old sister Alisha in her arms. The portions of her hands and arms visible outside her half-sleeved magenta kurta are full of abrasions. “I’ve shown it to the doctor many times and he’s given me medicine but it remains itchy,” she says. She attributes the itchiness to the purportedly contaminated water in her home of one and a half years, in Anand Parbat transit camp. Her move to this central Delhi neighbourhood -- five kilometres from her former home – was forced and put her out of school, Kanika recalls. “Alisha was an infant…