Environmental, Social Justice & Governance Initiatives
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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When: 20 December 2022, 4pm to 6pm
This workshop will explain how to:
Legally Protect Lakes and Raja Kaluves from encroachment and pollution.
Build a Lake and Raja Kaluve Protection Committee.
Rehabilitate Lakes and Raja Kaluves in ecologically sensitive and socially inclusive ways.
Where : Via Zoom
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27th COP of United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change at the seaside resort city of Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt during 6th – 20th November 2022. The main gain, it appears, is the decision to establish and operationalize a ‘loss and damage fund’ which most vulnerable countries have been demanding for decades now
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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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The concretising didn’t stop with roads; like a cancer it spread across to pavements, as paved regions into parks, and even into urban forests like Turahalli where, thankfully, public resistance stopped it. But the phenomenon is so widespread now, that it shows up in satellite imageries, and when it rains, the city floods in no time as there is simply no open ground for water to percolate. And in summer ‘heat islands’ result, desiccating what little greenery is left.
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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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How did the city manage such flooding, being the epicentre of India’s science & technology prowess? Were the software giants located along the city’s Outer Ring Road aware of the risks? Could they have worked on mitigating and managing it better?
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The IT Capital of India which was well on the path of becoming the second Silicon Valley of the world couldn’t wait for carefully and inclusively planned Bengaluru.
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It is the 25th year of Environment Support Group (ESG), as India turns 75! It has been a remarkable journey
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‘ESG Imaginaries to Make Cities Work’ is a webinar series co-organised by ESG in collaboration with Habitat Forum – INHAF
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The @CompCoRe_STS project organised the first (semi-)in person meeting at @HarvardSTS . Leo Saldanha and Bhargavi Rao of ESG are part of this network and writing the India paper as part of a 50 country study on how COVID was managed, an international research effort led by Prof. Sheila Jananoff of Harvard Kennedy School and Prof. Stephen Hiltgartner of Cornell University.
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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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ESG has worked with this problematique of the commons and demonstrated how securing them can be a win-win for all. Working with communities to resist privatisation of commons, such as lakes, and then asking for a policy to protect them with Public Trust Doctrine and the principle of intergenerational equity as the basis, has resulted in path breaking outcomes – rehabilitation of lakes as inclusive commons and as sacred spaces that deserve community and statutory protection to advance ecological and water security.
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There has been systematic dilution of India’s forest and biodiversity protection laws for several years now. But the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change now proposes to fundamentally change the essential characteristic of India’s environmental jurisprudence with fundamental changes that it proposes to India’s umbrella environmental law, the Environment Protection Act, 1986, and also the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 and Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991.
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The Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University’s Earth Institute issued the 2022 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) report recently. It is projected as a “data-driven summary of the state of sustainability around the world” and uses “40 performance indicators across 11 issue categories” to rank “180 countries on climate change performance, environmental health, and ecosystem vitality”. India has been ranked at the bottom of this list, scoring merely 18.9 points of a possible 100.
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At Environment Support Group(ESG), every day is Environment Day. And it has been the case for us ever since the organisation was founded, 25 years ago. Yes, it is the 25th year of this initiative and we hope we are doing our bit to be grateful for the incredible opportunity of being a part of this living planet.
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ESG, along with Karnataka State Legal Services Authority, organized a seminar on Decentralised, Socially Inclusive & Ecologically Wise protection &Rehabilitation of lakes, kaluves and Water Commons of Karnataka.
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At a time when the meeting of minds is so very rare, this effort by the All Saints Church congregation, BMRCL, Government of Karnataka, and various supporters of the cause, including ESG, stands out as representative of the enormous possibilities of democratic engagement. The conciliation mechanism organised by EIB helped in this process. This also helped ensure that the contestations did not end up in Court, burdening further the judiciary, and without a clear outcome in sight.
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The IPCC sixth assessment report released early April notes that climate misinformation can jeopardise climate action and weaken public demand for mitigation and adaptation measures. The report acknowledges the role of misinformation in fuelling polarisation, saying, “Together with the proliferation of suspicions of “fake news” and “post-truth”, some traditional and social media contents have fuelled polarisation and partisan divides on climate change in many countries.”
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Karbi and Adivasi farmers belonging to Mikir Bamuni Grant village in Nagaon district of Assam reported that about 93 acres of the land they were cultivating was taken over forcibly during 2020 by Azure Power Forty Private Limited, a subsidiary of international power corporation Azure Power Global Ltd. The farmers reported that their land was taken for establishing a 15 MW solar power plant by the company. In the process, ripened paddy crop raised on over 200 bighas of land was razed to the ground on 8th October, 2020 by the company. Villagers report that the local police and district authorities backed this forced dislocation of the farmers and forcible takeover of their lands.
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Environment Support Group has been involved in initiating resilient and sustainable structural reforms in waste management through field, policy and legal interventions for over two decades now. Our work, primarily based out of Bangalore metropolitan area (14 million) and Karnataka State, is in coordination with similar efforts nationwide. We work closely with trade unions advancing labour, occupational and health rights of those handling waste, and we also work with vulnerable communities suffering serious contamination due to waste disposal, to ensure their Rights to Health, Clean Environment, Life and Livelihoods is upheld.
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In the final hours of the 2021-22 Financial Year, we invite you to support ESG’s critical efforts advancing environmental justice.
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