The Make Bengaluru Climate Friendly – A Blueprint for Integrated, Participatory and Inclusive Urban Governance was evolved by the Environment Support Group, with deeply engaged participation from key representatives of multiple sectors: from the governments, academia, media, civil society, trade unions, vulnerable communities, etc.
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The All Saints Church congregation and the wide public came together on 28th November demanding the 150-year-old heritage church be protected from a concrete station box which Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) proposes to build by destroying the biodiversity-rich sacred grove. Steps for emergency acquisition of the grove were initiated by Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB). This section of the Metro is financed by the European Investment Bank. Besides destroying the biodiversity-rich garden, which foregrounds the heritage Church, it is a space used for all church gatherings. Besides, students of Arpana Special School and residents of the Old Age Home run by the church use this space every day. Cutting soil, uprooting 150-200 years old trees, digging deep, blasting and construction activities merely 20 meters from the fragile church could result in its collapse.
Read More“In response to the aforesaid notification inviting public comments on the Draft Regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility under the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, please find enclosed our detailed comments and objections.
Given the enormous impacts of plastic on public health and the environment, we believe that every last producer in the chain, including petrochemical corporations, should be held accountable under any EPR regime. However, not only have petrochemical corporations been completely let off the hook, the proposed regulations fail to define the very subject of the regulations – “plastic packaging” and “EPR Targets”. This will undoubtedly make efforts to ensure compliance incredibly difficult, if not impossible.”
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The project involved creating a network of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) – a form of self organised local parastatal and outside the representative Panchayat Raj institutional network. The project thus sidestepped the mandate of the 11th Schedule of the Constitution which requires “agriculture including agriculture extension” to be governed through Panchayats. There was no extensive debate or discussion in launching the project, even in the State Assembly.
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“Despite its obvious failures to step up to the grave impacts of climate change the world is now suffering from, the conservative view is that “it is better than letting the effort slide, just as the UN-sanctioned circus of the COPs is better than leaving the world without any such forum at all”.
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Environment Support Group conducted Making Mangaluru an Environmentally Just City of South India, the second session in a 3-part workshop conducted across India with support from Break Free From Plastic. The session was attended by representatives of local waste worker unions, fishing unions, student unions, local administrators, and NGOs. This was the latest in ESG’s longstanding efforts to work with communities in different parts of the country to address the challenges posed by waste mismanagement to environmental and public health and to use these as an opportunity to promote decentralized and democratic urban governance.
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” This Diwali Don’t Burn Your Money, instead help ESG do more to advance environmental and social justice. “
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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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Environment Support Group is pleased to invite you to Managing Imphal’s Solid Waste: Advancing Socially Just and Environmentally Sustainable Solutions. This is the first session in a 3-part workshop being conducted across India with support from Break Free From Plastic. The session will be conducted in Meitei and English and will be attended by representatives of local waste worker unions, fishing unions, student unions, local administrators, and NGOs. This is the latest in ESG’s longstanding efforts to work with communities in different parts of the country to address the challenges posed by waste mismanagement to environmental and public health and to use these as an opportunity to promote decentralized and democratic urban governance. Join the session to hear from local representatives about the unique context of Imphal, followed by a discussion by ESG on how it has promoted progressive solutions to tackling waste in Karnataka over the last two decades.
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On 9th October 2021, the floating village Champu khangpok at Loktak Lake, Manipur celebrated World Migratory Bird Day organised by All Loktak Lake Areas Fisheries Union Manipur (ALLAFUM) in partnership with Ngamee Lup, Pumlen Pat Khoidum Lamjao Kanba Apunba Lup, Environment Support Group and Indigenous Perspectives. Renowned ornithologist Dr. S. Subramanya spoke on the critical importance of protecting wetlands like Loktak for protecting and conserving water birds, as he highlighted the wetland is a habitat of the Central Asian-Indian Flyway and East Asian-Australasia Flyway for migratory birds.
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Cyclone Gulab, and it’s Arabian Sea counterpart Shaheen, are drawing interest from experts who have commented on the rarity of cross-peninsula cyclonic activity. This is only the latest evidence of how the climate crisis is manifesting in India, bringing with it new vulnerabilities and amplifying existing ones. Anil Padmanabhan, drawing upon the work of meteorologist Sulochana Gadgil, argues that it is time for a tectonic shift in how we understand the monsoon and its increasingly uneven distribution – across regions and time – due to climate change.
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During March and June 2021, ESG worked with administrators of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and Karnataka Government, senior representatives of regulatory agencies, representatives of multiple sectors across Bengaluru, academicians and experts, and importantly the wide public, in 9 webinars held through the 2nd major lockdowns imposed due to COVID in developing “Make Bengaluru Climate Friendly: A blueprint for integrated, participatory and inclusive urban governance”.
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Happy Ganesh Chaturthi to one & all.
Let us amply please Ganesha with lots of laddoos while ensuring his favourite lakes are saved from acid reflux, as sages did back then using Cynodon dactylon (kan: garike hullu; hin: durva grass) to save him from acid reflux after he consumed a polluted demon!
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Collated here are petitions, affidavits, memos and notes filed by ESG to protect lakes of Karnataka before Karnataka High Court (WP 817/2008 & WP 38401/2014) and Supreme Court of India (Civil Appeal 17166/2013). You will also find here judicial orders, reports and laws that are an outcome of this ongoing effort. This section will be updated frequently.
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Scientists have provided fresh evidence linking heatwaves that ravaged western Canada and the US with climate change. They termed the occurrence of the phenomenon “virtually impossible” without human influence. This explainer in the Indian Express decodes the phenomenon of ‘heat dome’, the basis of the unprecedented heatwave in North America. Lou Del Bello in conversation with climate resilience entrepreneur Barath Mahadevan, provides a glimpse of what went wrong in the West and some lessons for South Asia in countering heatwaves.
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Week 9 of “Bengaluru’s Climate Action Plan: Making it Participatory and Inclusive”An initiative of Environment Support Group, Bengaluru Background Earlier
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The Judiciary is the Defence of the Innocent. Or so we thought. Fr. Stan Swamy is dead. The bail which
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As we resume our bi-weekly newsletter, we invite you to also read the unpublished issues of EJ Matters, which we have archived on our website.
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Week 8 of the series saw rich discussions on how to build climate-resilient and inclusive infrastructure for Bengaluru. A major theme that emerged was the need to plan infrastructure for all sections of society, utilising consultative processes from the ward-level up. Read our previous session reports here.
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“Environmental justice, transportation justice, street justice are all deeply political matters, and to see it merely from a technical perspective will not give us the answers…It is also important to try and create a network where it doesn’t become a government-driven system alone. As consumers we have power. As consumers, we are not effectively networked to propel the transformation that is essential”
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Who would have thought that in 2021, an American corporation known to harvest private communications for corporate profit would stand up against the Indian Government, defending the Right of Privacy of Indians. Ironically, here we are in the middle of the pandemic, worrying about how police can zoom in to suspend our fundamental right of expression, or walk into our homes and take away all that is ours, when the administration should, in fact, be ensuring that not one more person suffers, or dies, of COVID.
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Environment Support Group invites you to participate in a conversation with Dr. Kashinath Dixit, an Endocrinologist who has worked for decades in the United Kingdom and been closely involved in responding to the COVID waves that affected the region. He is now also helping a variety of vulnerable communities across India to take precautions, stay healthy and recover from the disease
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Dr. Tekur, a dear friend and trustee of ESG, left us on 16th May 2021 after he lost his valiant struggle with Covid. As a young doctor he served in the Indian Army, and was even selected to be one of three who would be India’s first cosmonaut, till a training injury put him out of contention. He left the Army as a Captain and dedicated his life to being the People’s Doctor. A very popular General Physician and pediatrician, Dr. Tekur also helped shape Community Health Cell, now Sochara, in its formative years. He spared no effort to be of help and to the very end was in the midst of patients working to save thousands from COVID and other ailments. Yet he found time to paint, and did so with such professional dexterity and beauty. Dr Tekur will be remembered by so many he trained in public health through his work life, and by thousands of children who were eager to see their doctor who always sent them away with a polo mint and an evergreen smile. All of us at ESG miss him so very much.
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Electric vehicles have often been touted as a panacea to reduce particulate emissions from automobiles. But data has emerged that the biggest source of PM 2.5 is tire wear, not vehicle exhaust. This could raise questions about the viability of mass transition to Electric Vehicles.
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The rise in these two NCDs is largely attributed to degradation of our ecosystems due to urban proliferation with decreasing open green spaces, change in lifestyle over the years driven by the nerve-wracking GDP based economic engines, and socio-cultural changes, with a host of other factors contributing to these conditions.
Bengaluru’s ecosystem once comprised of open green spaces such as parks, urban forests, lakes and open public spaces. Such spaces help reduce temperature, improve air quality, cut noise, and provide space for physical activities such as walking, cycling, playing, exercising that help reduce the burden of these NCDs.
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