Environment

Nearly three years after the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 2019, the State Environment Department published the draft Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) and land use maps for Chennai and other districts in October 2022. The National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) prepared the base maps that have the demarcation of eco-sensitive areas (ESAs) like mangroves, coral reefs, sand dunes, mudflats and turtle nesting grounds and other coastal infrastructure in different colour codes. However, the fishing communities in Chennai have registered some strong objections to the draft Coastal Zone Management Plan as they have found many mistakes in the…

The Chennai Climate Action Plan (CCAP) is a document prepared and released by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) with the support of C40 and Urban Management Centre and aligned to C40’s Climate Action Planning framework. CCAP has some alarming findings that should make Chennaiites sit up and take notice.  According to the document, 100m of the coast is at risk of submersion as a result of a likely rise in sea levels by as much as 7cm in the next five years. North Chennai Thermal Power Plants are going to be impacted as well, which will require replacement by 2050,…

The lion safari in Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) was always a major attraction since its inception in 1975. However, it was discontinued earlier this year due to old, ailing animals. Now, things are about to change. With the arrival of two lions from Gujarat, through an exchange programme, the safari is all set to reopen. After the death of 17-year-old Ravindra on October 17th and of 12-year-old Jespa recently due to old age ailments, there were no lions left at SGNP. Jespa breathed his last on 27th November 2022 within two days after the arrival of the new pair…

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) is over, marking another close to global discourse on climate emergency. Amidst proclamations made on a global and national scale, Mumbai became the first Indian city to receive an 'A' on the CDP's 5th Annual Cities Report, which rates cities on the basis of their environmental action and transparency. To know and understand the details of this, Citizen Matters spoke to Saurabh Punamiya Jain, the former research and policy secretary to the former Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Aaditya Thackeray. He played an important part in drafting the Mumbai Climate Action Plan…

Weeks before her daughter was born, a heavily pregnant Chandni Bibi boarded a train to Murshidabad in West Bengal, from where she had another hour’s journey to her native village. Had she decided to deliver her baby in Mumbai, she would have to navigate the waist-high tidal waters that flooded the area around her home twice every day. A single room built of wood and sheets of scrap metal in a slum, her home stands on uneven wooden and bamboo poles driven into the soft soil where land meets the sea.  Among an estimated 6,000 homes built on the coastal…

A mangrove is a shrub that grows along coasts and has roots that are usually found underwater. Mangroves store ‘more carbon per unit area than any other ecosystem on Earth’, and aid in the fight against coral bleaching. They act as natural barriers against storms and rising seas, saving ‘more than $65 billion worth of property damage each year’, according to conservation.org. They thrive in subtropical nations since they are adaptive, and are the best option for mitigating the effects of climate change, be it sea-level rise or the frequency of natural disasters such as cyclones and storm surges. However,…

In a city that is increasingly concretised and with dwindling green cover, small pockets of green gardens are a sight for sore eyes. While there are avenue trees and public parks, the residents can do their bit to increase the greenery by opting to maintain terrace gardens.  Terrace gardens are no novelty, but the number of people taking the activity up in Chennai could stand to increase. While neighbourhoods in Chennai have come together to maintain community gardens, there is huge potential for the same networks to also disseminate information and help residents set up their own terrace gardens on…

For a conference sponsored by Coca-cola, it is not surprising that representatives of the most-polluting fossil fuel industries at the COP27 increased by 25% from last year, overshadowing the number of representatives from any global south nation. Moreover, COP27, which concluded recently, failed to highlight the irreversible damage caused by fossil fuels. The brief mention of fossil fuels was related to phasing out “inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies and not all fossil fuel subsidies. The pollutant’s very name was explicitly avoided in the final key decisions draft, despite India pushing for a Fossil Fuel phase-down. The slippery language used for the…

The power of consistent campaigning and pursuing a movement to its logical conclusion can be seen in Dattatraya T Devare's and his team's efforts. Since 2007, Devare, trustee of Bangalore Environment Trust (BET), has been working to preserve trees in the city, as part of which he filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking amendments to the Karnataka Tree Preservation Act, 1976. This eventually translated into path-breaking legal amendments to preserve Bengaluru's trees. "When I moved from Pune to Bangalore in 1986, I remember the city was very green," says Devare, "But it began losing its trees due to development…

“The idea for an emission trading system germinated after a team of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab research centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) came to Surat sometime in 2012”. This is Jitubhai Vakharia, president of the South Gujarat Textile Processors Association. “During a meeting with them, I realised we were wasting money on compliance with environmental laws under a corrupt inspector raj," he says. Jitubhai was recalling the days when some 300 dyeing and printing mills in Surat were notorious for vomiting noxious gases through their chimneys. Today, ten…