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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The unanimous conclusion of legal scholars, environmental and social justice activists, researchers, etc. is that all of the proposed Bills must be withdrawn immediately.
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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 video by Belmont Forum and International Science Council on ‘Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations” (GoST) project in which ESG is a partner to discover pathways of Transformations to Sustainability.
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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.
Read MoreESG projects and campaigns cover a wide range of issues, a common theme across which is that of encouraging community
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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 @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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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 1st webinar as part of the ESG Imaginaries To Make Cities Work was on the theme Waste And Governance and held on 7th July 2022 (5-7 pm). Kirthee Shah, Founder President of INHAF set the tone by explaining the background to the series. The webinar was anchored by Leo F. Saldanha, Coordinator and Trustee of ESG, and Bhargavi S. Rao, Trustee and Senior Fellow at ESG, who also provided an introduction to ESG’s diverse efforts on governance of waste management, and its implications to governance overall. Respondents were Prof. Amita Bhide, Dean, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences; Rizwana Hasan of Bangladesh Environmental Law Alliance; Maitreyi Krishnan of Manthan Law and Shibu Nair of Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.
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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 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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For over two decades, ESG has focussed on emerging urban environmental and socio-economic challenges and worked with multiple communities, government agencies, academia, media, etc. in attending to these issues and conflicts.
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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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An unprecedented and prolonged heatwave is sweeping across the Indian subcontinent. As we thoughtlessly reach out to our fans and air conditioners to keep ourselves cool, it is essential that we remember coal miners who are slogging through impossible, even inhumane, conditions to keep the energy supplied to us.
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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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ESG conducted an interactive day-long workshop on Human-Centred Approach to Planning and Decision Making of Mega Projects For Students of Srishti School of Design
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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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The war is also a reminder for the urgent need for stringent international control necessary in the use of thermobaric, cluster and nuclear weapons, owing to the brutality and highest dangers arising from the use of these inhuman tools of mass destruction.
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A key strategy promoted to tackle climate change, especially from the North, is to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground and shift to renewables. Which, as Thea Riofrancos argues in Foreign Policy, is fraught with serious inconsistencies even if this involves shifting the mining of minerals critical to the renewable energy transition to the Global North. ”Global north onshoring does not repair the forms of environmental harm disproportionally meted out in the global south”, he argues. Besides, this would create new problems which primarily affect oppressed populations within affluent countries.
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