:: Delhi Greens ::

Dastkar is celebrating the Annual Craft and Environmental Fair NATURE BAZAAR – India’s largest crafts fair – with 200 stalls and participants from all over India…selling handicrafted products in a myriad different materials and techniques.

Also to be checked out, music, dance and folk performances throughout the day. And a food court with Indian and International cuisine.

Date: 5th to 14th November, 2009
Time: 10.30 am to 7.30 pm
Venue: Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts (IGNCA), 1, C.V. Mess, Janpath, New Delhi

A MUST check out: Beej Bachao Andolan and Vividhara Stalls — one selling organic produce, farm, natural and wild products (Stall No. 103) and an Organic Food Cafe selling organic khana and a huge tea, etc. range…in the Food Court.

The 14th of November, also known as Bal Divas, is the birthday of Chacha Nehru–our first Prime Minister and to put it in the current context–Rahul Gandhi’s great grand father. Continuity, complexity of relationships and interrelatedness to the web of life is the celebration.

A beautifully done film festival called CMS Vatavaran recently reflected it. One film of particular appeal was a Japanese one titled Kishke filming complex environmental issues with a very simple narrative. At the very first level, it is the story of a little boy named Kishke–about 10 years of age–who has just lost his grandfather. Once when had spent a summer with his grandfather on the sea coast village in North Japan, he had made a promise to his grandfather that he will plant a seed in his name, when he is no more. He now lived with his mother in Tokyo and has just had a summer break. Before the school closed for the break, he learns about the various environmental problems that cities in Japan have faced since 50’s due to industrial pollution, smog, water pollution, mercury poisoning, etc.

Very subtly, the film comments on the present. When Kishke walks back to his house in an apartment block, the backdrop is that of factories letting out white smoke. He lives with his mother alone, as his parents have separated and are on the verge of divorce. He spends many an evenings alone as his mother is coping  with this stress by drinking. He is shown to buy his own food from the nearby restaurant and misses the family, when he sees his classmate out with his parents. Each frame is well thought of. Multiple and complex interpretations are possible and it is left for the audience to use their imagination.

He fulfills the promise he made to his grandfather. He takes his pocket money and travels alone to the same island. He has to take a train, a flight and a bus to reach it and even gets lost once.  He is helped on the way by strangers who are only inspired by his commitment. He is not irresponsible or running away, just committed to the cause. On the way, he inspires others equally committed to the cause of saving the planet. A woman marketing executive in a chop stick manufacturing company in her thirties wanting to market reusable and eco-friendly chop sticks. An environmental activist, in his 50s, who has successfully enrolled villagers to clean up the beaches, and village council to treat the waste harmful to sea creatures. Finally, there is a Professor of Oceanography in his 70s, with an assistant in his thirties studying the coral reefs. Kishke succeeds in not only finding the seed and planting it but also becomes cause in the matter of bringing his parents to communicate with each other.

The film is very creatively produced with layers upon layers of interpretations in each frame. The final one that I am most inspired is about Coral Reefs that are multi-coloured when alive and get bleached when dead. Its parallel to human institutions that we create to sustain ourselves–leading to our complex multi-coloured cultures–is uncanny. Losing out on our institution of marriage and family and the impact it will have on our society in the long run is a parallel to the bleached and dead reefs.

Image Source

When we say ‘Our Delhi’ we mean it is our city, the city belongs to us and not to all those ‘others’ who are coming to the city in search of jobs or higher education. Therefore we have some preconceived notions about who we consider as outsiders, migrants. The popular belief about migrants is that they are losers, dregs of society who could not adjust to their parents or neighbours. Or they are here to compete with us and taking away our jobs. And that determines our attitude toward migrants.

The difference between migration and exodus is why people leave their origin. Migration is a choice that they exercise. Exodus is persecution and plight. Interestingly even animals migrate from one habitat which is basically seasonal, and for better options and opportunities. Why can’t we grant the same grace to us humans?

The Human Development Report 2009 was recently released by UNDP with the theme as migration. The report highlights that contrary to popular belief, no such clear migration pattern emerges in mobility and development. On the other hand, the report indicates that people from developed countries tend to migrate to other developed countries, and people from developing countries tend to migrate to other developing countries. Elites from developing countries migrate to developed countries where they are ready even things that they would not do in their own country, work wise.

Mobility and development are related and mobility is a reality. Mobility allows us to better our social development indicators for us, our family, and our next generation. The impact of migration on migrants and on the host population are both positive and negative. Finally the report says that not the poorest of poor, but those relatively better off, those who can afford to be mobile, migrate. Interesting isn’t it? My own field work in East Delhi Slums substantiates this.

Starting from the 70s, our skilled Delhi/ Punjabi rich agrarian farmers migrated to Canada, while the south Indian skilled craftsmen migrated to the Middle East and our top of the top class doctors to USA. In the 80s and 90s, the IT boom attracted our skilled professionals.

You know of any such friends or relatives and their stories? How about sharing some of those with us?

Are you (being planned to be used as) a Lab Rat?

The I Am No Lab Rat Campaign and a coalition of NGO’s and civil society groups invite you to a day-long orientation session on the impacts of introducing and cultivating Genetically Modified (GM) crops, that (will) eventually end up on your dining table.

The interactive session is being held on the “Intricacies of Genetic Engineering in Agriculture AND Scientific Evidence on the impacts of GMOs and will be led by Dr. Michael Antoniou, Reader in the Department of Medical & Molecular Genetics, King’s College, London.

Date: 2nd November, 2009 (Monday)
Time: 10.30 am to 3:30 pm
Venue: USO House (Near Katwaria Sarai Bus Stand), USO Road, Jeet Singh Marg, Delhi

Those interested to attend are requested to register themselves latest by 30th October, 2009 (Friday)

For further information and to register, contact:

Radha Kapuria
Mobile: 9818248459
Email: iamnolabratdelhi@gmail.com

Previously on Delhi Greens:

• Brinjal Festival Showcases Diversity of Veggie in India
• Public Lecture: GM Foods and Our Health
• Film Review: Poison on the Platter

To recap, water available per person has been decreasing since 1950 and it will be 70% of what we have by 2025 if no action is taken today. Although water is usually considered a renewable resource, it is actually a finite one with physical limits on its sustainability not because there is a change in the total water in the world but there are human institutional and financial capital limit to accessing water. Let me explain this.

If we need to store water for 12 months, we need a bigger storage tank than if we needed to store it for only say six months. Thus, if the water flowing through the perennial rivers due to melting of glaciers reduces because there are smaller glaciers to melt, then the barrages to store water will have to be taller. All this deepening of tanks or building of higher barrages needs more money. Another issue is the significant leakages of water in transition, along the pipelines. Finally, we need more manpower and a sophisticated system in place, if the water is to be delivered for more time. Clearly, water supply in relative terms is decreasing in many parts of India, including in our city.

Apart from the physical scarcity of water, the imbalance between demand and supply has put a severe strain on water management and institutional systems. We take care of our needs/ demands through any means/supply possible. In the local context, richer housing societies use ground water supply to augment the municipal supply as per their water demand. Or we make personal arrangements through private hand pumps if we have to take care at individual household level among the rich or poor. This is the ‘big picture’.

What is missing in the big picture is each of us willing to take responsibility for the situation, instead of pointing fingers at others. You know the drinking water we need every day is 20 liters per capita per day (lpcd). What we all get is 60 lpcd in Delhi! So, we get more than enough water to drink and cook. That is all the safe water we need.

What we CAN do is to “create” our own water–locally by simply collecting it instead of letting it flow. Rain Water Harvesting, using recycled water in lawns and gardens are all possible ways to recharge the ground water. It cannot be done unless each of us take appropriate action for this. We in the city are blessed with neighbourhood gardens and almost every colony has its own little patch of greens. We can collect our waste water from kitchen and washing  in a cavity in the ground and divert it to these gardens. It is not very expensive. The technology exists. The (Delhi) Government has schemes to support it. But the initiative has to come from you, as RWAs, institutions, etc.

What we will have in return is – control over our own water, a greener and cleaner Delhi and ultimately a replenished water table and a sustainable city.

Also Read:

• Water Sector Impacts of Climate Change: Part I

350.org is organizing a  Giant 5 human formation at the Red Fort. This formation would be a part of the Global 350 with 3 is being formed at Sydney Opera House and 0 being formed at Copenhagen. The mega action would take place after the culmination of clean up drives at Qutub Minar and the Tuglaqabad Fort, cycle rallies, plantation drives and dozens of similar actions happening across Delhi, and more than 500 hundred young people would gather for the formation.

October 24 comes six weeks before those crucial UN meetings in Copenhagen. It’s a great chance to take a stand—maybe the last great chance, given what the scientists tell us about the momentum of global warming.

350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand. Our mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis—to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet.

Our focus is on the number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number–it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.

For further information, please contact:

Pinaki- 9873935480
Snigdha Kar- 9818745466

Previously on Delhi Greens:

• Sanskriti 350: An Ecoclubs unite against Climate Change
• Palash Sen Calls for 350: On the sets of India’s first Green Song Video

A Guinness World Record shattered last weekend when 173,045,325 citizens gathered at over 3,000 events in more than 120 countries, demanding that their governments eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The “Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now!” campaign, now in its fourth year, has been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest mobilization of human beings in recorded history, an increase of about 57 million people over last year.

“The more than 173 million people who mobilized this weekend sent a clear message to world leaders that there is massive, universal, global demand for eradicating poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals,” said Salil Shetty, Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign. “In particular, we have seen citizens determined to show their governments that they will hold them accountable for keeping their promises to end hunger, improve maternal health and abolish trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. They will not accept excuses for breaking promises to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, who have already been hardest hit by the global food, economic and climate crises they had no role in causing.”

More than 100 million people participated (101,106,845) this year in Asia alone. Currently 1 billion people around the world are hungry and 500,000 women continue to die annually as the result of pregnancy and childbirth. The vast majority of these deaths are preventable. The mobilization was organized globally by the United Nations Millennium Campaign, in partnership with a range of organizations including the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). “Stand Up” was also supported by the entire United Nations system, with events organized by United Nations Information Centers (UNICs) across the globe.

Join this global movement and be the first generation who can end poverty.

My vivid memory of Manmad–a township, due to major Railway junction in Maharashtra that I visited in the 60s–is that of early morning chaos, shouting and screaming over a common tap outside my uncle’s residence for collecting water. When I was growing up, the typical humorous short stories in my mother-tongue Marathi used to depict quarrels over common taps to collect water for domestic consumption in local communities, described as ‘Nala che Bhandan”. These stories were humorous portrayal of fights over water in local settings that began with minor issues. Jokes apart, this often led to communal tensions in real life. Typically, the water supply would last for two to three hours and water had to be collected and stored in that short span of time–one tap for twenty households.

I am sure similar scenarios exist in the villages and slums of Delhi as they do in parts of Patparganj. Delhi is an expanding city. We attract people in search of employment and new livelihood opportunities. This leads to additional population pressure and a much increased demand for fresh water. Then we settle in the city, get our families, and create wealth. Then expect to move into houses with bigger better bathrooms and taps, and an ever increasing demand for water. Typically, most of us migrated to Delhi either in this generation or in the past few generations.

This increasing water demand can be met only by a limited set of options like building more storage in dams and reservoirs, creating underground storage and transfer structures. Our city is mainly supplied by Yamuna river a perennial supply fed by the Himalayan Glaciers and we generously tap into ground water to augment it. These have yielded some positive results and also have potential for further extension. But there are inherent limitations to these strategies.

As if this was not enough, climate change has introduces a whole new dimension to the water challenge. The impact of climate change on rainfall patterns, river flows, dependent upon glacial melt and sea levels has only recently begun to be scientifically assessed with some degree of accuracy. Nevertheless, a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that it is “very likely (a greater than 90 percent probability) that most river basins are likely to become drier leading to persistent water shortages.” Moreover, glacial melt that today supplies 80 percent of the dry season flow to the major northern rivers including Yamuna, could see this contribution reduced to 30 percent over the next 50 years, i.e in our life time.

So the possibility of a 24/7 water supply is going to remain a dream for most of us and we need to think of a new strategy to ensure that we have enough water for our consumption in the future. So what next?

Toxics Link’s Environment & Health Public Lecture Series

The most popular lakes of NCR have disappeared. The 2 billion year old water bodies of the Aravallis – Surajkund, Badkhal and Damdama, have all dried up.

This film looks at the nexus between the corrupt bureaucracy with the construction and the mining mafia. With exclusive bytes from Retired Forest officers, Environmentalists and Scientists, we piece together the whole story behind the current mess. This film opens with a few short interviews, which talk about what led to the disappearance of the lakes due to illegal & irresponsible mining and construction of farm houses in the notified forest area of the Aravallis. We talk to experts on the principle of sustainable mining and through their comments, the land-mafia-admin-police-miner nexus comes out, and the utter helplessness of the situation gets revealed.

The latter part of the film explores the realm of PILs filed by Magsaysay award winner Advocate M. C. Mehta that led to the court banning all mining operations in the area. The Haryana government, apparently oblivious, to the ruling went ahead with inviting bids for mining leases for Sirohi and Khori Jamalpur mines.

The climax questions the Haryana Government’s claim of bringing back water to its lakes before the Commonwealth Games without any concrete plans for the same. The residents of the area — who have seen the tourist flow getting reduced to a trickle over the years — complain that no effort was ever made to maintain the water flow to the historical Surajkund which is now a fleeting shadow of its past.

An alarm had been sounded in the hydrological report submitted by the Ministry of Environment in its affidavit before the forest bench of Supreme Court in August last year. It had mentioned that these used mining pits were found ‘‘filled with water’’ leading to ‘‘massive evaporation of groundwater’’ — about 8.86 lakh ccm of fresh water.

The film ends with a ray of hope in spite of apparent ecological disaster and offers a way-ahead in devastated areas.

Speakers:

• Ms. Ishani K Dutta – Director, The Land Of Vanishing Lakes
• Mr. R. K. Srinivasan – Senior Research Officer, Centre for Science and Environment
• Mr. R. P. Balwan – Retd. Forest Officer, Haryana Govt.

Date: 23rd October 2009, Friday
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Venue: Conference Room I, India International Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi

(In collaboration with India International Centre)

For further information and RSVP, please contact:
Pragya Majumder – pragya@toxicslink.org
Tel: 24320711, 24328006
Email: info@toxicslink.org

Looks like we still have time, or do we?

On 17th October 2009, the President of the island nation of Maldives called for the world’s first ever underwater Cabinet Meeting. In the meeting, the President, Vice President, and the entire cabinet of Maldives signed a declaration calling for concerted global action on climate change, ahead of the UN climate conference (COP) in Copenhagen.

And even as the world prepares for this grand climate meet, a large part of South India went under water only a few weeks back. And while talks have already begun on coming up with an equitable deal and the very fear that there may be none, over 300 people lost their lives while millions have been displaced and missing in that global warming related freak weather event, predicted well in advance by the IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

The Earth will never come to the negotiating table and the earth will never die. Humans will and thus the need to understand that very strong emissions reductions of the magnitude emitted by leading Northern countries is not just the only way but also not-negotiable.

Image Source: Telegraph and PresidencyMaldives