Environment

I don't find it necessary to go to jewellery shops, as Nature provides me plenty of jewels! All the photographs below are from local gardens in Bangalore. Do I want pearls for a necklace? Here are the pearls of the Sterculia foetida, locally called the Jungli Badam. The monsoon season, or even a dewy morning, provides so many diamonds. Here are hundreds,sprinkled over a spider web: One of the bugs we see often is, indeed, called the Jewel Bug. It appears in rainbow glory, with a metallic sheen, on top of our most common plants and weeds: And when the…

Tiruvottiyur and Padur, two localities in north and south Chennai respectively, with very different socio-cultural identities, are bound by one thing in common today, something they can truly take pride in.  Both these localities have been able to adhere to and implement the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016  to a large extent.  Private kitchens with neatly displayed posters guiding residents on how to segregate waste into biodegradable, recyclable and reject waste; like-minded enthusiasts campaigning on segregation, and conservancy workers meticulously insisting on segregated waste -- such sights and action are common in Tiruvottiyur and Padur, thanks to the willingness of the people…

Urban commuting has become one of the most energy- and pollution-intensive activities in India, contributing to increased greenhouse gas emissions, finds a diagnostic analysis of key cities of India by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based think tank. The study, released at a seminar in Kolkata, made an assessment of the 14 most populous cities of India based on toxic emissions of particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOx), heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2), and energy consumption from urban commuting practices. These cities include Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad (henceforth called megacities); and Ahmedabad, Pune, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kochi, Bhopal,…

On the occasion of India's 72nd Independence day, when Bengaluru should have observed the plastic ban effected two years ago on March 11, 2016 through a gazetted notification, bulk manufacturers of the national flag remained unaware of the environmental impact of using common polyester fabric to make these flags. Despite the Ministry of Home Affairs issuing a notice advising state governments to keep a strict vigil on the usage of plastic flags this year, the purpose was defeated, primarily because most vendors did not grasp the real implication of making and selling polyester fabric flags. The manufacturers, distributors, and shops often…

Sixteen years after the Karnataka High Court ordered the closure of all abattoirs within Bengaluru city limits and instructed the state government and the municipal authority to construct alternative facilities on the outskirts of the city, the first steps in that direction are visible. According to Dr K P Ramesh, official working at the Animal Husbandry Department in the Bangalore Bruhat Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), a new abattoir is being built on a 40-acre site within the KSIDC industrial estate at Harohalli, 34 km from the city and is expected to be commissioned by mid-2019. Not only this, concrete steps are…

Will environmental issues finally bask in the electoral limelight? If events across some of the major Indian cities in the past few years are to go by,  it is definitely the time for green issues to shine. The environmental issues plaguing the internet-savvy electorate as well as the poor sections of these major cities may finally become an integral part of the election discourse. Over the past year, the national capital has garnered the most attention for environmental issues, compared to other major cities in the country. Cleaning of the polluted river Yamuna, considered holy by Hindus, has been a…

We have all heard of carnivorous plants like the Venus Flytrap, that trap and devour insects. But less known is the fact that some plants of the Ceropegia species, actually deceive and entrap insects, for pollination! Here's how the Ceropegia flowers work, and it's quite complicated. Spiders and other insect predators often trap and eat honeybees, and there are some flies that love to eat these honeybees, too. The flies are able to smell the scent of the dying honeybees, and congregate to feed off the bees even as the predators are eating them. Since they are, in this sense,…

Karnataka government’s ambitious project of supplying treated water from Bengaluru to the arid districts surrounding Bengaluru ran into problem, when the Karnataka High Court directed the government to stop the pumping of treated water until further instructions. However experts say the idea of reusing treated water is a good one by itself, if proper processes can be put in place. But with protests by residents of the districts supported by their elected representatives growing louder by the day, will this project get killed even before the government attempts to make it work right? The idea of using treated water to…

After intense overnight showers, Bhubaneswar woke up on a Saturday morning in July with half the city under water. The situation at the capital of the eastern state of Odisha in many ways typifies poor urban management in India that is crumbling under adverse climatic conditions. Residents in many parts of the city were stranded in their homes and the condition was so dire in some parts that the state’s disaster response team had to start rescue operations. Roads in the state capital looked like gushing streams. Disaster response forces moved to waterlogged areas with floating pumps to drain out…

Bengaluru has 11,000 acres of designated forest land on record, but the draft master plan released recently doesn’t show even a part of this, said Dipika Bajpai, Indian Forest Service officer, who is a Deputy Conservator of Forests (DCF) in charge of Bengaluru. She said her department has compiled a list of objections to the master plan to dispute the non-inclusion of forest area. Dipika was talking in a discussion organised by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and Citizen Matters, in collaboration with Bangalore International Centre on July 14, 2018. Vidhi Centre and Citizen Matters have joined hands to publish…