Environmental, Social Justice & Governance Initiatives
Read the report of a workshop ESG organised to introspect how Bengaluru metropolis’ blue green commons can be reclaimed & transformed into healthy, sylvan, inclusive and accessible spaces.
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ESG invites you to a public workshop on:
“Reclaim and Turn Inclusive Bengaluru and its Blue-Green Commons” on Saturday, 4th February, 2023 at SCM House, 2nd Cross Road, CSI Compound, Mission Road, Sampangi Rama Nagar, Bengaluru, 01:30 pm to 07:00 pm.
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A webinar on Lake Conservation was conducted by ESG on 20th December 2022. This session was mainly organised to benefit activists, researchers, public officials and also concerned citizens to explain how to use judicial orders, government orders and various other laws relating to lakes for the protection, conservation and rehabilitation of tank/lakes, ponds, raja kaluves, and such other water commons.
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In “Seed Activism”, Karine Peschard explores how patenting seeds and turning them into financialised, corporatised and commodified industrial products threatens farm and food securities of the world now and into the future.
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The bedrock of sustainable human futures is in conserving biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge, and ensuring local community’s right to seed sovereignty and seed purity is protected. A variety of corporate and state efforts, however, are systematically accessing these bioresources without priorly informing and seeking permission from communities who have conserved these resources for millenia, and then turning them into corporatised, industrialised, commodified, chemicalised, transgenic and proprietary products.
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PIL raises grave concerns on prevailing weaknesses in Biodiversity Act that is contributing to biodiversity loss and associated traditional rights
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Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change is proposing to amend all environmental laws of India, by a process that is widely considered as undemocratic and intransparent. ESG in collaboration with NLSIU organised a National Consultation on these proposals. Access the report of this consultation.
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Over the past several weeks, Bengaluru has witnessed unprecedented rainfall and severe flooding in several parts of the city, especially the ill-planned newly developed areas such as Bellandur Varthur corridor
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With Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitching 500 GW as a target for energy production from renewable sources, mainly solar and wind, there has been a substantial increase in mega solar park installations across the country in various landscapes.
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A conversation to discuss what caused 2022 Bengaluru Floods, and how this is a recurring phenomenon.
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Good research-based approaches to skill building are the need of the hour in order to identify the right approaches in building a broad spectrum of jobs. Anticipating Skill Needs for Green Jobs is a study that offers practical guidance on building employment opportunities and developing short term job oriented skill courses. From the experiences of the pandemic it has been learned that it is certainly more beneficial for society overall to provide a range of skill training – from farm-based activities to non-farm skills – and speaking to the needs of the region, even at the very local levels. It is such an approach of care that will help youth in making wise choices to secure their futures, in ensuring economic security of their households and to look to the future with dignity and confidence.
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At a time when the United Nations General Assembly has finally passed a resolution making Right to Clean and Healthy Environment a Human Right, Indian Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change is doing everything to destroy India’s progressive environmental jurisprudence.
We invite you to endorse a statement demanding Indian Government must step back from its proposals to comprehensively dilute India’s and devastate India’s environmental laws. And it must stop yielding to corporate pressures and instead defend our Constitutional rights over our health, environment and our futures.
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India’s environmental jurisprudence has been torn between the competing demands of prioritising environmental protection and securing economic progress. While there are several judgements that speak to the need for balancing development with environmental priorities, it is not necessarily an exercise that can be easily rationalised. There is overwhelming evidence in the pollution flowing in every river and lake across the country, in the extensive degradation across the Western Ghats and the Himalayas – resulting in catastrophic impacts on human settlements, in the breakdown of our cities every time it rains or when there is an unrelenting heat wave, and in commons that are extensively encroached, diverted and polluted, that the state of India’s environment is precariously hinged. The damaging consequences of such extensive degradation are irreversible and will seriously impede the country’s socio-economic progress.
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The current proposed amendments to four major environmental laws, are effectively a big step away from India’s long held statutory tradition of protecting environmental and natural resources and is a clear indicator of prevailing priority: putting business and commercial interest over environmental protection and safeguarding human rights. The draft Bills were put out on 1st July 2022 by the Ministry in English, not any of the other Scheduled languages, and the commenting period ends on 21st July 2022. Never in the history of India has there ever been such a rush to put interests of international and national business empires over that of peoples of India and its biodiversity.
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The most important aspect of a sustainable house or infrastructure is to create one that consumes less energy in both its production and operation. As human civilization settles down comfortably into a lifestyle of energy and product consumption, we lead ourselves to believe that we can become green by just shifting the source of energy generation, unwilling to fathom that unnecessary product and process creation is the underlying issue. Energy reduction and lifestyle changes can pave the way for true sustainability.
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22nd April 2022 will be the 52nd year since the observation of Earth Day. A day that marked the birth of the modern environment movement across the West. Earth Day in the 1990s became a global call for action drawing attention of the world to the developing environmental crisis as a fallout of the Rio Summit 1992. Now we are enduring climate change impacts. The IPCC report 2022 warns if global carbon emissions are not reduced substantially, heat and humidity will surpass human tolerance and this can seriously impact human health and the economy.
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Demand immediate and complete withdrawal of proposed Biodiversity Act Amendment Bill 2021. A Statement issued by Coalition for Environmental Justice in India on the occasion of 73rd Republic Day of India, 26 January 2022
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By: Janani S, The author is an architect and researcher on inclusive urbanism at Environment Support Group. Pachnady was still over 2 kilometres away but the stench of garbage reached us early. In 2019, the Pachnady landfill was in the news due to its slide down during the monsoons engulfing the residences and a temple in the vicinity. The solid waste of the city has polluted the groundwater here beyond repair rendering it unfit for drinking. Many of the farmers and other victims await their full compensation even after two years and their livelihoods witness a standstill as they are unable to cultivate in these degraded lands. In this context, we, researchers from the Environment Support Group, visited the waste management facility of Pachanady, Mangalore to get a better understanding of the prevailing situation.
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The Coalition for Environmental Justice in India and a broad array of environmental and community rights activists had also rejected both the Report and the draft Policy. CEJI again categorically demands that the MOEFCC withdraw the proposed amendments.
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By Malvika Kaushik, ESG. The NMEO-OP intends to make India, one of the largest importers of palm oil in the world, self-reliant in edible oil production. It proposes price assurances and other economic incentives to persuade farmers to cultivate oil palm. The move is touted as essential for national economic security. Meanwhile, activists are highlighting the dangers of widespread cultivation of oil palm monocultures in the north-east and in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (ANI). There are two key threats. The first is the destruction of fragile ecosystems in these biodiversity hotspots. In the north-east, the diversion of land cultivated under shifting agriculture or jhum could also be an issue. Jhum entails rotation between cultivation and regeneration in different patches of land. It seems to support more biodiversity than monoculture plantations.
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There have been innumerable efforts in the past by civil society, trade unions, academia, public health experts and others who repeatedly stressed the crucial importance of strengthening local governance as key to mitigating and managing problems. These efforts have reached various High Courts and the Supreme Court too as Public Interest Litigations, trying to make local governance work. But the hubristic reliance and faith in centralised management has been such that even court orders directing public involvement in decision-making have all been disregarded. The whims and fancies of a few in power have prevailed with technology-based solutions for the pandemic.
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View Full Conference Report Report of Press Conference held via Zoom on 6th May 2021, 3 pm Opening the press
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We also draw your attention to urgent steps needed to address sufferings of those reeling under COVID.
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“Is it possible to keep this city running with this pattern of consumption and demand for energy? How are BESCOM and KPTCL sustaining this supply? What are the challenges of the petrochemical sector in supporting fuel demands? Is there a way that we could shift to more sustainable sources, such as renewable energy, and can those transitions be just for all involved? Will such just transitions require Bangalore Metropolitan Planning Authorities to imagine futures that are based on sustainable energy systems, in contrast with the prevailing extractive and unsustainable systems? And can we ensure all homes (be they of rich, poor or middle classes), institutions, offices, government buildings will find ways to consume less power and shift to alternate forms of locally generated power?”
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Densely crowded, polluted, non-inclusive and stress-inducing concretised spaces are making neighbourhoods increasingly vulnerable to various impacts of climate change such as flooding and the ‘heat island’ effect. How, into the future, can the metropolis secure biodiversity rich, healthy and economically viable spaces for all?
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