Alternative sources of energy like solar is the way ahead but going forward in this realm requires a need to understand that mega power plants spanning thousands of acres, commissioned by converting habitable lands may not be the right way to do it. Solar plants can coexist with farming, animal rearing and other rural livelihoods. It just needs more dialogue and local people’s participation to suit the local landscapes.
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ESG conducted the Young Climate Explorers summer workshop for kids, an experiential workshop to sensitise children to climate change through the themes of water, waste, food and forests in an event packed, exciting 5 days summer camp.
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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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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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Report of the workshop organised by Karnataka Tank Conservation and Development Authority (Chitradurga division), Deputy Commissioner – Chitradurga, District Lake Protection Committee – Chitradurga and Environment Support Group
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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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In December 2021, ESG organised an experiential learning certificate course “Environmental Justice: Visiting Different Social and Ecological Landscapes and Areas of Environmental Contestations in Karnataka, India” for 28 students from O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat.
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The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 appears poised to be the next victim of the continuing onslaught on environmental protections by the Union Government. The Wildlife Protection (Amendment) Bill, 2021 endangers several common but declining species of wildlife by allowing them to be classified as “vermin” and thus be opened up to being hunted. Several species that were previously protected under the Schedules of the Act have been removed in the amendments without any justification.
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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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This issue of the news digest takes a detailed look at the environmental and social justice issues that marked 2021, and how ESG engaged with them.
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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“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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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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Download the Bengaluru’s Climate Action Report by ESG India. Available for download in English & Kannada.
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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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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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In a most shocking development, officials of the Bangalore Development Authority, backed by Bangalore Police, destroyed about 10 houses of villagers of Doddabettahalli. Each and every one of the families affected were from Dalit communities. In a similar drive, about 22 houses had been demolished at Somashettahalli, Meda Agrahara and Lakshmipura villages of the same region a few days ago, which resulted in widespread protests.
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The first ‘Lake walk’ (originally scheduled for Saturday, 7th August 2021) is now rescheduled for Saturday, 21st August at Subramanyapura kere and Uttarahalli kere in Bangalore South. By participating in this walk, you would be able to appreciate the importance of protecting the natural terrain to ensure lakes are functional, besides also appreciating distinctive narratives of the lakes: their history, ecology, life of lake communities, in addition to overarching legal frameworks that assist in building progressive imaginaries.
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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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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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