Environment

At Versova jetty one morning some months ago, I asked Ramji bhai, who was sitting on a rock at the edge of the creek, what he was doing. “Timepass,” he replied. “I’ll take this home and eat it.” He pointed to a small tengda (a type of catfish) he’d just caught. I saw other fishermen cleaning nets they had floated in the creek the night before – they had caught loads of plastic but no fish. “Fishing in the khadi [creek] today is barely possible,” says Bhagwan Namdev Bhanji, who has lived all his 70-plus years in Versova Koliwada, a fishing village in north Mumbai’s…

What is the environmental cost of a big music event? Can art afford to be for its own sake and not think about all the plastic bottles and banners left behind without being recycled? What about the emissions from generators or the decibel levels? These questions led Roshan Netalkar to come up with Echoes of the Earth (EOE), an annual music festival, three years ago. Held on the outskirts of Bengaluru on a sprawling 150-acre property, it was aimed at marrying music and art with the theme of sustainability. Netalkar hoped to prove that music festivals of such scale could…

Twenty-seven-year-old Chandra, a house help in Chennai, does not know much about deficient rainfall, rainwater harvesting or the city’s degraded water bodies. All she knows is that once in two days, a lorry supplies the 20 pots of water that her household requires, and that she has to carry those pots to the first floor of her small flat in Vardapuram, a locality in Kotturpuram, Chennai.  A vast majority of the people in the city are like Chandra, ignorant of the harsh reality of water supply and its management as a resource. Arun Krishnamurthy of the Environmentalist Foundation of India…

Crores have been spent on cleaning up lakes in the city, but these lakes still receive sewage. This is because of the peculiarity of Bengaluru's lake system - lakes here cascade into one another, and the land gradient supports this. So, once a lake is cleaned up, it will remain so only if the lakes and rajakaluves upstream of it are also clean. The infamous Bellandur lake is being rejuvenated now. But this exercise would be pointless unless the upstream Doddanekkundi and Kaggasadapura lakes too are cleaned, because it's from these two lakes that sewage enters Bellandur lake. So, even…

Farmers, drivers and street food sellers in Guwahati are the occupations most vulnerable to climate change impacts in the northeastern city, while doctors are the least vulnerable, found a study that blends society and science for clues that can aid urban planning. Global climatic models and climatic predictions fail to explain the impacts on a very small scale, challenging planners and decision-makers in providing location- and ecology-specific solutions. Plugging this gap by incorporating people’s voices – like this study by IIT-Guwahati has done – is especially necessary for cities like Guwahati that have rapidly and silently expanded, barging into eco-sensitive…

Most Indian cities have a distinct historic past, rooted in the natural, social, economic and cultural contexts of different times. A strong relationship with nature and its processes is the most significant aspect of these cities’ development and survival. Landscape Foundation, India initiated the pilot study of the city of Delhi (Delhi – Hills, Forests and a River, 2017) in this context. This was followed by the study of Pune (The City of Hills and Rivers, 2018). This year, the study of Bengaluru was undertaken. The research, in each case, is produced in English and the regional language, as to…

Opening a hornet’s nest among the community, the city corporation has declared recent construction by fishermen around Thiruvanmiyur beach in Chennai as encroachments. Several additional structures have been constructed close to the beach, by the fishermen residing in the fisher-colony near Kuppam Beach Road, in the interest of better mobility and livelihood. “We received a lot of complaints from the residents of Thiruvanmiyur,” says K.B. Vijayakumar, Regional Deputy Commissioner at Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), Adyar. “When we enquired, we found shanties with temporary roofs and a road built within 200 metres from the sea belt, which comes under Coastal Regulation…

The new chief minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray may have granted interim stay pending review on the development of the Metro car shed inside the Aarey forest for now, but the battle to save Aarey – the 4.8 lakh trees that the forest is made up of --  is far from over.  Though work on tree cutting and the Metro car shed inside Aarey was already under a stay ordered by the Supreme Court since the en masse overnight cutting of over 2141 trees on October 5th, the state support for Aarey comes as a huge boost for the Save…

The new chief minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray may have granted interim stay pending review on the development of the Metro car shed inside the Aarey forest for now, but the battle to save Aarey – the 4.8 lakh trees that the forest is made up of --  is far from over.  Though work on tree cutting and the Metro car shed inside Aarey was already under a stay ordered by the Supreme Court since the en masse overnight cutting of over 2141 trees on October 5th, the state support for Aarey comes as a huge boost for the Save…

While grown-ups are busy figuring out the logistics of COP25 in Madrid, given that Chile is not an option anymore, student strikers in India are busy organising mass movements across their cities. Students from across the city of Mumbai have been striking every Friday at Marine Drive, a promenade in South Mumbai where currently, the 37th week of the protest is underway.  Tanmay Shinde, 23, a student striker from the city noted that his motivations to join the movement arose from observing the “ample environmental issues in the city itself” like flooding during monsoons, water shortages, air pollution and environmentally…