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Environment Justice Matters- Vol 2. Issue 10

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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COVID-19 PandemicESG Opinion
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Restoring ecosystems to address NCD pandemic

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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AdvocacyCOVID-19 PandemicDisaster Management, Relief & RehabilitationESG Opinion
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COVID-19: Why we must reorganise cities to deal with the third wave

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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BengaluruBengaluru Climate Action PlanEventsUncategorized
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Week 7: Securing Clean Air and Inclusive Mobility for Bengaluru

Everyone pays a very high price for mobility in Bengaluru. Incredible traffic snarls cost precious time, money, infrastructure and public health, and substantially erode the ‘salubrious’ quality of the metropolis. With an astonishing 0.8 to 1 vehicle to population ratio, Bengaluru metropolitan area is amongst the most fossil fuel dependent urban spaces globally. Air quality is significantly deteriorating, resulting in severe health impacts, especially for the poor and marginalised.

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AdvocacyBengaluru Climate Action PlanEnergyESG Workshop ReportsWebinars
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Week 6 Webinar Report: Making Bengaluru Energy Independent

“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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AdvocacyBengaluru Climate Action PlanBiodiversityESG Workshop ReportsWebinars
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Week 5 Webinar Report: Securing Biodiversity Rich, Healthy, Socially Inclusive and Economically Viable Commons in Bengaluru

“Commons bring people of the city together. It gives an opportunity to mix people from various communities…In a public park you will find people from a diverse set of communities; people from across caste and class economic status and so on and that is important for us to broaden our minds also. Otherwise we are just limited and living in our own silos”

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BengaluruBengaluru Climate Action PlanBiodiversityEventsWebinars
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Week 5: Securing Biodiversity Rich, Healthy, Socially Inclusiveand Economically Viable Commons in Bengaluru

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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Bengaluru Climate Action PlanEventsWebinars
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Week 4: Food for Thought: Towards an Environmentally Sustainable and Socially Just Food System

Bengaluru metropolitan area every day takes a lot of effort, energy, land, water and complex logistics. From a time when the city was growing and sourcing almost all its foods from the local region and backyard gardens, rising wealth and associated consumer capacity has resulted in foods with a high carbon and environmental footprint being fetched from far away, even from across the world. The metropolitan region now contributes far less food production than before, even as its expansion strains rural areas close by in sustaining farming.

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Bengaluru Climate Action PlanCampaignsCommonsWaterWebinars
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Week 3: Making Bengaluru Water Secure

Bengaluru’s insatiable demand for water has not only exhausted its replenishable ground water reserves, and overdrawn its share of the Cauvery, but now plans are afoot to extract water from the far away Sharavathi river. Meanwhile, the acute financialization of land sans rigorous and democratic land use planning has resulted in lakes and other water commons that once sustained the city’s water needs being cannibalised.

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Bengaluru Climate Action PlanCampaignsESG Workshop ReportsPublic HealthWaste ManagementWebinars
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Week 2 Webinar Report: Public Health, Sanitation And Waste Management: Is A Decentralized Approach The Way Out?

Public health, sanitation and waste management sectors are intricately linked in not only ensuring all are healthy, but that the toxic impacts of our living are not a burden for future generations. It has been argued time and again that centralised response strategies are resource heavy and cause societal dysfunctionality, and the way forward is to ensure ward-level governance becomes real in every way, especially in securing public health and sanitation for all.

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Bengaluru Climate Action PlanWebinars
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Week 2: Public Health, Sanitation and Waste Management: Is a Decentralised Approach the Way Out?

One of the first challenges that climate planning throws up is: how to deal with climate change and its impacts? Is decentralisation of governance the most optimal way out? Public health, sanitation and waste management sectors are intricately linked in not only ensuring all are healthy, but that the toxic impacts of our living are not a burden for future generations.

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ESG Opinion
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Making Turahalli a model for urban forests

by  Bhargavi S Rao. As the world has become predominantly urban, with the impact of climate change being experienced worldwide, protecting forests everywhere, particularly close to urban areas, is critical.

Forests, especially those near cities, serve in regulating local temperatures, cycling water and nutrients, as repositories of biodiversity, and as a critical resource for the sustenance of rural, pastoral and forest dependent communities. Forests are also sacred spaces for communities that continue to revere shrines inside such spaces. 

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Let the Chamoli disaster be the final wake up call for our government

The Chamoli avalanche flood is starkly reminiscent of the Uttarakhand flood of 2013 and is a strong indicator of the impending high risks associated with reckless development of such fragile mountainous regions. This event highlights the harsh truth of how little the Government of India and various regional Himalayan states are focussing attention on appreciating the fragility of this range. There will be wide-ranging political arguments claiming it to be a natural disaster, but it is anything but that.

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EJ Matters Newsletter Jan15’21

2020 was a year that brought unprecedented challenges for the whole world. The COVID pandemic upended lives everywhere and forced us to adjust to a new normal. As the aftereffects of 2020 press on challenging us to live with a new world order, replete with massive restrictions and constant adjustments to the diminishment of our fundamental freedoms and rights, ESG persists with its work to expand fundamental liberties and advance environmental and social justice.

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