People For Nature

Gurgaon goes green!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-09-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

If you are in Gurgaon, you have one more reason to smile inside the comfort of your air-conditioned cars and apartments (or even pan shops). Yes, Gurgaon goes GREEN!!!!!!!

Gurgaon’s innovative and in-built green features are numerous. They bear testimony to the fact that money power can rejuvenate nature (yes, trust the bill boards). There was a time when everybody criticised Gurgaon administration for eating away the Aravalli mountain range to feed the high-rise apartment and the real-estate developers. After all, if we do not keep the real estate industry booming, what will become of our economy and GDP? Environmentalists had warned that the disappearance of Aravalli would bring the Thar (the desert and not Mahindra thar!!) to the door steps of Delhi. Phew, poor chaps they did not know that we would build apartments higher than the Aravalli, replacing it completely. These apartments would acts as a barrier between the thar desert and New Delhi, stopping the heat wave. Nearly a decade after the New and shining Gurgaon found its feet, heat waves still seep into the city, but through the gaps between residential apartments that dot along the deceased Aravalli. We would soon build commercial/ residential buildings in these gaps so that this seepage could be stopped!!

Gurgaonites have successfully occupied the entire road space with their eco-friendly SUV’s and cars. Gone are the days when people wanted polluting and dirty public transport to move within Gurgaon. Thanks to new technologies, we are now able to travel, albeit at a snail’s pace through the jammed roads. Moreover, we are able to breathe chilled and clean air inside our cars while simultaneously enjoying the mindblowing beauty of the skyscrapers (yes, many have lost their ‘mind’)…

Gurgaon is also home to a sizeable population of migrant Bangladeshi bicycle rickshaw owners. They offer an eco-friendly mode of outdated transport and stress-busting services, as they also bear the brunt of that well-educated lady who yells at them when they demand five rupees more. Well, isn’t that a big stress for her? How can they expect her to pay more? After all, if it was one of Gurgaon’s many shopping malls, she would have spent even 500 Rs for a piece of baked flour (is it called pissssa?) as it is a pleasurable experience.

Well this is not the end, Gurgaon is also seeing a lot of green movements one of which is ‘PLANT A MILLION TREES”.. is it not an example for the green consciousness of Gurgaonites? The stage is well set..

Billboards proclaim our intentions to plant a million trees
Sign boards ask for donations and
Facebook pages keep building up support.

Soon, very soon we would launch the drive as we have run into a major hitch for the timebeing- LACK OF SPACE TO PLANT THEM!!!

Meanwhile, Aravalli- R.I.P!!

Land Marvel!!

2011-02-18T04:45:00.000-08:00

Encroach a public lake, fill it up with soil, and call it as 'Land Marvel'...what would you do for water then? Go to the farmlands beyond Chennai and usurp the ground water...Love you, Chennai!!

Antiseptic minds...

2009-06-20T02:35:00.000-07:00

Human beings seem to have forgotten their biological nature. I often wonder if we are really endowed with the ‘common sense’. From the so called ‘well educated’ to the illiterate, we all seem to fall prey for the marketing gimmicks. For instance, take the case of antiseptics. From toilet cleaning liquids to dishwashers, the market is flooded with antiseptic ‘wonder’ formulae. What benefit do these wonder stuffs provide? We see advertisements claiming to banish all the micro organisms in the toilet and run to purchase it so that we would be safe from them. As a child, I used to ask for Lifebuoy soap because I thought that the soap would make me healthy and muscular. Recently, Hindustan Lever even came up with an advertisement which misleads people in the name of research. Are all microorganisms really dangerous? Is it necessary for a toilet or the kitchen sink to be 100% germ-free? What would happen to a child’s immunity if she/he is not exposed to germs? A plethora of such questions naturally arise in the minds of the common sensed.

I know a friend of mine who was crazy about antiseptic soaps. He used to tell me that they kept him free from skin diseases. One evening, I was asked to accompany him to the skin doctor’s clinic. He was suffering from severe itching in his private parts. Having known him for years, I knew he had no chance of contracting STD’s. The doctor after examining him, enquired about his bathing habits. My friend was proud to tell him about his 'antiseptic bath' and the problem was solved. It was simple: avoid antiseptic soaps! Reason- they disrupt the normal microbial diversity on the body. Our skin is known to harbour diverse range of microbes, mostly belonging to the Fungal and Bacterial groups. These two groups exert a mutual pressure so that their population doesn’t explode. In the case of my friend, his antiseptic soap was able to wipe out the bacterial population but was helpless against the Fungi. And the fungal members (yeast) in the absence of an antagonistic factor, thrived well to create problems.

We all know that the world remains clean because of decomposing bacteria. Living in our septic tanks, they quickly degrade the faecal matter, thus reducing the volume and also releasing the nutrients back to the ecosystem. When antiseptic solutions are used to clean toilets, they end up in the septic tank, reducing or eliminating the microbial population. what good are we doing to our body and the ecosystem by purchasing such products? When is this induced quest for hyper-cleanliness going to end? When are we going to learn that human beings have to co-exist with various organisms, both small and big? Questions remain and the answers appear elusive….

Cultural and Ecological Importance of Sacred Groves of Kondhs

2008-05-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

Sacred groves are remnants of natural vegetation, protected and conserved by the spiritual beliefs of local people. Since these sacred groves are free from disturbances, they reflect the original vegetation of that area. A number of human societies in Asia, Africa, Europe, America and Australia have preserved sections of their natural environment as sacred groves. Besides catering to the spiritual and cultural needs of the host community, they also play an important role in conserving biodiversity by facilitating the conservation of medicinal as well as endangered flora and fauna and hence of great ecological value….

Hard Facts About Tender Coconut

2008-05-17T02:38:00.000-07:00

Very often we see people rushing to declare ‘rediscover you roots’ without assessing the current form our so-called ‘roots’. The issue of people declaring tender coconut is good for health is one such case. If you think I am somebody working for the colas, a big NO for you. I am against Consuming colas-for all the environmental damage (Add cellular and cultural damage too) they bring with them. I oppose colas for these reasons and not fore their pesticide content. What else can the Colas do when they use the groundwater loaded with pesticides (courtesy: green revolution)?

A quick Google search for ‘Tender coconut’ will give you a minimum of 10¹⁰number of Google pages. Now search for ‘pesticides in tender coconut’, you will get almost nothing. The internet (Or any media for that matter) is filled with half-baked information with information providers rushing to prescribe natural remedies, often detached from ground reality.

Ask any farmer from the countryside about the way coconut farming is done. Green revolution succeeded in imparting scientific English knowledge to the peasants. Thanks to it, now Indian farmers who are largely illiterates are now able to pronounce otherwise unknown terms such as ‘Monocrotophosphate, Furitan, Malathion, etc etc.

Coconut farmers in India are known to poison the palms with systemic poisons such as Monocrotphosphate and Furitan to protect them against Rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros). These poisons are tied to the roots of these palms and effectively work against the beetle menace. However, we forget that this poison can also be found in the tender coconut. So next time when you rush to drink this ‘pure’ source of energy, please remember that it is not cultivated in a ‘pure’ way.

What could be the solution for this?

Go Organic!

Links: www.issg.org/database/species/ecology.asp?si=173&fr=1&sts=sss - 49k

How Green Are Our Green Concepts?

2008-05-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Al Gore’s ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ and the publicity given by various media, climate change and other environmental issues have started drawing attention. Green labels stuck to carbon producing industries and automobiles have become big hits. All of a sudden we see a lot of ‘green products’ mushrooming everywhere. Green high rise buildings, green cars, green energy, green electrical appliances the list is growing rapidly. The realisation of industries that brand environment can also be marketable has sown seeds for such a condition where terms that imply the opposite meaning otherwise, are coupled together to give an entirely new connotation. How else can one explain the coming into existence of terms such as green buildings and green cars?

Automobiles are one of the major sources of pollution, and will continue to be so even if their emission levels are brought down to near zero. The greenness of an automobile cannot be judged on the basis of the exhaust emission alone. The pollution caused at the place of origin, the junk non-recyclable material dumped into the ecosystem at the end of a car’s life, the public spaces the private vehicles usurp greedily-all these are issues that have to be taken into account before they could be branded ‘green’.

Same is the case with ‘green buildings’. Rating a building as ‘green’ based on the energy consumption alone defies rationalism. For a building to be green, it has to be made up of completely recyclable materials. In other words, it should use the materials available in the surroundings and later when the building is demolished, the end-materials should be usable and not damned to landfills. Unfortunately, today’s green buildings extensively use glass, a non-recyclable material to reduce energy consumption and for aesthetic purpose. India is rapidly losing its mountains to its super highways and high rise buildings. We have completely vanquished the forests available on the plains and today they are doomed to exist only in mountains and other areas considered unfit for cultivation. These mountains that are home to India’s last standing forests have already lost a considerable forest cover to urbanisation and deforestation.

While we are much concerned about the loss of forest cover, less attention is paid to the loss of the mountain terrain to which most of our forests are confined. Mountains by virtue of their elevation increase land surface area, thereby holding more flora and fauna. Mountain ecosystems harbour rich biodiversity since the plant species have evolved with respect to the various altitudinal striations offered by mountains. Thus when a mountain is lost, we lose a large land area along with the vegetation and biodiversity it bears. The intensity of this problem is clearly visible in Kanyakumari district where lot of quarrying activities can be seen when one travels from Nagercoil to Martandam, thanks to the mushrooming ‘green concrete hollow block’ industry claiming to be less polluting than the traditional mud brick kilns. As a result of extensive quarrying, the ponds that were fed from run-off water from these mountains receive less water today and are increasingly getting filled up with debris that these quarries generate. Owing to the growing breed of urban conservationists who stigmatise cutting of trees, substituting wood with concrete has started appearing ‘green’. Timber unlike rocks is a renewable source of construction material, the only concern being proper management and the source where it is extracted from.

The need of the hour is raising awareness on lifestyle issues such as reducing consumption levels and trying to adapt to the surroundings rather than keep on adding to the ‘green consumables’ list. Imagine the quantity of carbon and other noxious gases that can be saved by a simple switching over to cotton clothes than using a green rated air-conditioning system. Is it right to re-label the agents of environmental degradation as ‘green’ simply because the degree of damage brought about by them has become lesser than before? It is time to ask this question ourselves; for environmental problems are bound to increase with increase in consumption patterns and the world’s poor will be compelled to pay for the rich’s luxurious life style, never matter even if it comes with a ‘Green’ tag attached.

The Bonda

2008-04-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

The Bonda are an Indigenous community, inhabiting the Malkangiri district of Orissa, India. The part of Eastern Ghats they inhabit is also called as Bonda Ghat. They are visible as two groups viz., the lower Bonda who are mostly Hindus and the Hill Bonda who follow their own religion

The Bonda are one of the most abused communities in the Indian Mainland. Living in an area aggressively defended until very recently, they have evolved their own pattern of dressing. Their society, which gives equal rights to women doesn't recognise the feminine body as something to be hidden. Unfortunately, this maturity of the Bonda community has been misrepresented in the media, courtesy: NGO's, Government and the greedy tour operators. This noble community is often commented as savage, barbaric and uncivilized. We fail to understand that these people are far better than the so called 'civilised societies' where women have to hide every bit of their skin to protect themselves from preying eyes. Check into any website dealing with photographs and you will find pictures of at least a few Bonda women. It is sad that such a noble community is viewed as a commodity.

The Bonda are now caught between the self-righteous Christian missionaries and the Hindu right wing fanatics. Both of these groups want to convert them. While the Christian missionaries aim at converting them into Christians, the Hindu political organisations operating with the help of Lower Bonda claim these people to be Hindus, eclipsing the fact that the Bonda are Beef eaters and follow their indigenous religion. The fact that the government doesn’t recognise indigenous faith as a separate religion adds to the problem.

The Bonda are known to be aggressive. How else they could have defended their homeland from land hungry and voyeuristic mainstream people? It is their aggressiveness, which has helped them survive all these years.

The Bonda live on minimal resources thanks to their minimal requirements and ability to seek from their own lifestyle. However, this is fast changing due to short-sighted Government policies. For instance, the 'organic by default' Bonda agriculture is pressurised to shift towards conventional farming.

The noble side of Bonda is not yet fully understood. Their art forms, the Remo language, Traditional ecological knowledge, and folk songs have more to offer than just kindling our curiosity…

Ten commandments to stop Aggravated Climate Change!

2008-04-01T02:49:00.000-07:00

Ten Commandments to Stop Global (Aggravated) Climate Change

Lead simple life
Consume only what you need and not what the media dictates you; avoid popular brands
Use public transport
Consume local food; encourage local farmers; go organic
Avoid flying
Wear eco friendly and climate friendly clothes
Avoid disposable plastic; use cloth bags or paper substitutes
Protect forests, grow more trees and use them sustainably
Reduce electricity consumption
Use sustainable building technology

1.Lead a simple life

Leading a simple life means a smaller ecological footprint. This means that a human being can live happily without feeling guilty about his/her impact on the environment. This is the first of all commandments and the other commandments in way speak about leading a simple life. Hence this can also be considered as a ‘title commandment’

2. Consume only what you need

Consume only what you need and not what the media dictates you; avoid popular brands. Are you a shopaholic? Then you can be guaranteed of leaving a larger ecological footprint. Shopaholism is the result of consumeristic lifestyle-the primary reason for pollution and climate change. A careful audit of a month’s shopping list will reveal that a good percentage of our list comprises of goods dictated by media-goods that we might not have needed if we hadn’t allowed the advertisements to influence us. And beware the corporate are back with greater ideas to get rid of the guilt you may incur due to your consumeristic attitude. Goods that were polluting in nature are refined to be lesser polluting and are marketed as “GREEN”. All of a sudden we have markets flooded with green products, which are simply lesser polluting this time and not essentially eco-friendly as claimed.

Every time you change your car or update your hardware or switch over from cathode ray televisions to LCD’s, ask yourself if it is really indispensable. It is a market technique to keep on adding new products or variants so that you will be tempted to consume more. If you have mistaken this attitude of corporate bodies as their endeavour to improve the quality of your life, then you are wrong!

3.Use public transport

Heavy buses are certainly more polluting than your small car. But they transport more people thereby reducing individual ecological footprints. A private car might seem eco-friendly when its emission level is compared with that of a public bus. But the carbon foot print of the passengers in a car are higher than the passengers in a bus because, the carbon footprint of a bus gets divided among the larger number of passengers in the bus thereby reducing per capita carbon emissions. Moreover, private cars add to the traffic congestion levels and marginalize the public transport users. More congestion means higher demand for infrastructure like roads and bridges, which means destruction of mountains (for rocks) and forests.

4. Consume local food

Consuming local food will reduce food miles-carbon emitted in transporting foodstuff from one place to another. It can also be rewarding to the local farmers and traders. Going organic will reduce soil and water pollution. It also reduces pollution at industrial levels by bringing down the need for pesticide and fertilizer industries. Besides, organic agriculture is not detrimental to the constituents of any food web.

5. Avoid flying

Aeroplanes have a great thirst for refined fuels. Airports also require larger land area, often at the cost of marginalized communities and farmlands. Flight operators are also known to fly planes with vacant seats just to keep themselves in business.

6. Wear eco-friendly and climate friendly clothes

Eco-friendly clothes mean lesser pollution at the textile unit. Adapting suitable climate friendly clothes reduces the need for air conditioners or room heaters. It doesn’t make sense to wear woollen suits in a tropical country like India (Aping the west!).

7. Avoid disposable plastic

In developing nations, plastic pollution is enormous. Disposable plastic can be avoided. Plastic carry bags can be substituted by cloth bags, thus supporting smaller cloth bag enterprises (Rural livelihood)

8. Protect forests, grow more trees

Protect the existing meager extent of forest cover. Trees are renewable natural resources. They should be grown on non-forest lands and harvested sustainably for various needs. Saving trees from the axe encourages the use of concrete. Remember concrete is obtained by destroying mountains-the home to last standing forests.

9. Reduce electricity consumption

Electricity generation is highly destructive. Hydroelectric dams eat away the forests. Thermal plants emit higher quantities of smoke and nuclear plants are highly potential sources of radiation pollutions.

10. Use sustainable construction technologies

Make sure that your building is recyclable with fewer side products and hazards. Use eco-friendly materials. Avoid glass and minimise use of concrete. Build a house that suits your family’s requirements and not to flaunt your wealth!

Justice done, finally!

2008-03-18T02:24:00.000-07:00

January 8, 2008 was a historic day in the political history of India. It was the day when the Indian government notified the Scheduled Tribes and Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, attempting to undo the decades of injustice done to Tribal communities throughout India. Though it was a half- hearted effort by the ruling party, it is a bold step-may and probably the first step in ensuring Eco-justice.

Independent India, along with the depleted forest cover also inherited a set of draconian forest laws which were caught in the dilemma of ‘to preserve, conserve or to manage’ forests. Instead of conserving forests, they only ended in escalating the rate of forest loss. Apart from failing in their duty, the forest laws also alienated the Tribal communities who were dependent on the forests for their livelihood. One good example is the Irula community of Tamil Nadu who were deprived of their Traditional occupation of Snake catching. Luckily, they were able to survive the laws with help from Dr. Romulus Whittaker, who organised them into co-operative societies where snake venom is extracted for medicinal purposes. This was also possible only because of the partial support from the Tamil Nadu government.

The immense debate that preceded (and still continuing to some extent) the passing of the FRA exposed the ugly side of our Urban Elites. We people who are based in urban societies and are the cause of environmental destruction, jumped into the scene to protect the forest from ‘tribal encroachers’. All of a sudden we became more concerned about forest degradation and the missing tigers (who cares for the Temple Elephants?). How many of us who oppose the bill are aware of our own ecological foot prints? Cruising in SUV’s and living in metropolitan cities, we show our love for nature by feeding sparrows, hugging trees and organising seminars. How many of us lead an eco-friendly life? The urban conservationists are the ones who have the largest ecological footprints. A careful scrutiny of our homes would reveal the ecological sins committed by us. Do we know from where our electricity comes or from where the timber from our doors was extracted or the mountains lost to materialise our concrete dreams? Have we ever dared to skip a meeting conducted in a ever-polluting air-conditioned hall? And for every ecological sin that we had committed, there was some tribal affected somewhere down the chain.

Extent of forest cover diverted for non-forest purposes

From 1981-2007	Area in Sq. Km
Defence	1208.72
Forest village conversion	409.87
Hydel	1107.30
Irrigation	1082.91
Mining	1116.33
Rahabilitation	170.58
Road	226.65
Thermal	43.09
Transmission lines	259.99
Wind power	13.80

Source: Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (Cited in Down to earth, March 15, 2008)

It is indeed true that Tribals do cause forest destruction to some extent. But it is equally true that India has lost more forest cover to dams, paper industries, timber mafia, highways and the ubiquitous railways (Refer to table above). On the other hand, shifting cultivation, which is often accused of shaving off the forest covers, had a sustainable crop cycle of 20 years until recent years when market pressure compelled the Tribals to reduce this cycle to 3 or less years for the sake of paper currency. Market pressure is also one reason for the rampant tree felling. A tribal labourer in Orissa or Bihar working for a whole day will receive only 30 rupees a day as wages while a tree felled will fetch him a minimum of 100 Rs. It is indeed the right of a tribal to live in par with the mainstream people who reap the benefits of industries set up by displacing tribal communities thereby robbing their natural resources. So let us show maturity to address the root cause than to pass blanket accusations based on superficial wisdom.

It is time to undo the injustice done to these marginalized communities. Tribals are definitely better than the governments that maintain the ‘forest corporations’ for the sake of profits. Indian still can do a lot to protect its forest cover of course by involving the Tribal communities. These communities have a lot to offer than the stereotyped black magic stories cooked up by media and writers...