Environment

There are natural disasters, and there are those that are man-made. The ones usuallly most catastrophic are natural disasters that are compounded and accentuated by man-made factors. When Mumbai was ravaged by just 900mm of rain over a 24-hour period leading to almost 450 fatal casualties, one might have thought that planners and policymakers would have sat upright and taken note of the ecological degradation in their own backyards: that of the wetlands both within the city limits as well as...

The advantage with hindsight is that even the proverbial fool, after the event, gets the chance of a lifetime to become wise. No, the event one is alluding to here is not the Chennai cataclysm, but the one that had ravaged Mumbai ten monsoons back. There had been a lesson in urban planning for all and sundry there; for coastal city Chennai, especially so. The Mumbai floods had been as much about unbridled concretisation and unabated corruption, as it had been about frenetic altering of land...

Early this summer, a couple of incidents threw the issue of Bangalore’s lakes back into the limelight. Not that they ever deserved to fade away from the headlines, but a couple of bizarre happenings at two lakes, and an order from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) over unauthorised constructions has since ensured that the issue does not disappear all over again, as many lakes themselves have. Buried and gone Close to 50 major lakes have lost their character due to developmental activities, some...

On Wednesday last, many news establishments diligently reproduced a press release announcing Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) as the first Indian company to partner with the Global Goals Campaign that aims to reach seven billion people in seven days with news of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Among other things, this campaign seeks to tackle climate change for everyone by 2030. What went unnoticed, however, was that this news came just a few days after RIL figured miserably in...

The ancient Romans had a widely-used adage: Ovem lupo committere. Translated into English, the Latin expression would mean: to set a wolf to guard the sheep. The construct has had many variations and mutations over time and across geographies, but the essence remains the same. This thought would cross one’s mind many times over while going through the report of the High-Level Committee (HLC) that was constituted to review Acts administered by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may or may not have succeeded on many fronts in the one year that his party has led a coalition government at the Centre. Many issues are debatable, but one that cannot be denied is the unabashed and relentless assault on those who speak for the environment. But examining the issue only through a saffron-hued prism, or one that selectively blocks out saffron light would not be correct – both are equally fallacious and self-defeating. It is important to understand...

For a business to keep operating legally, the process is not as easy as it may sound. Businesses must comply with a number of requirements regarding the company’s transactions, labour practices, safety procedures and of course environmental obligations. Compliance regulations can be internal or external, with environmental compliance being of the latter kind. What is unfortunately true in India is that most businesses, especially smaller ones, don't have the faintest clue about what actually...

One might remember the biofuel craze of a decade-and-half back when it was thought that this was the panacea for all climate change problems. But as it turned out, there were innumerable studies which cast aspersions on the emphasis of biofuels as an eco-friendly energy alternative. A 2011 study on palm oil plantations confirmed what activists were fearing: plantations were causing deforestation and hurting biodiversity. Researchers from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich and the...

For all the environmental degradation that Bangalore is made to endure, the city still has considerable biodiversity left to talk about. Here, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. The biodiversity is there, breathing right under our noses, not exactly teeming as it might have been till even a few decades ago, but it's there. Biodiversity is a subject that rarely finds itself making it to the headlines. In fact, the International Day for Biological Diversity just went by (on May 22). How...

There is something surreal about the way people – from politicians to citizens – have been reacting to two incidents: the order of the National Green Tribunal penalising two real estate developers for unauthorised constructions in the city's lakes, and the frothing over of Varthur lake. The decay and obliteration of Bangalore's lakes is not news, and neither are the reactions of one and sundry. The outrage is misplaced, since it seems politicians and real estate developers are the only ones...