:: Delhi Greens ::

A shaken Delhi

For a city where 98% of the total annual rainfall pours down in less than a month, planning can never be easy. When the latter is carried out hurriedly as if to meet a certain 2010 target, what can happen is what Delhi is witnessing today. A delayed monsoon that gave up to the changing climate met an infrastructure in the making of a ‘world class city’. Roads were flooded with water (and cars), parts of it went down, trees uprooted themselves, the Metro Rail stopped and the traffic came to a standstill. Urban mobility was yet again held ransom. Any by none other than the very forces of Mother Nature which only ask for a sustainable development in exchange.

The first of such downpours in this season, which took place during the evening hours of 27th of July, not just clogged the traffic, it also flooded Delhi and put the spaciously built Lodhi Colony under five feet of sewer water. The stretch from India Habitat Center to Kotla experienced a Mumbai that night and residents (some of whom were living here for the past 18 years) were shocked at something that had never before happened to their part of the city. The water entered the parked cars and stranded several including me in the flood. The rains stopped and so did the rising water level but most ground floor residents did not sleep that night.

Apparently, the nullah adjacent to Lodhi Colony (that separates it from Kotla) is being closed and concertized to make parking space for the nearby Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (for CWG 2010). The temporary stoppage of sewer water for the construction work could not hold the rains and stormed into Lodhi Colony. With the nullah gone and the sewer outfall into it closed, flood water had no place to go. A clear case of interfering with the natural drainage of the city, leading to a perfectly understood “man-made” disaster.

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Toxics Link’s Environment & Health Public Lecture Series

River Yamuna today is one of the most polluted and threatened river system in the country. This is despite more than a decade long effort by the state to rejuvenate it under the Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) with results that do not inspire confidence in either the state’s understanding of the problems facing the river or the approach taken by it to mitigate the ills facing the river till date.

Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan (YJA) – which is a research based campaign run by a consortium of a number of NGOs and individuals in the city – has studied the river for over two and a half years now, and have resultantly arrived at an understanding about the ills facing the river and possible solutions that would facilitate a rejuventaion of the river. This conference presentation is about the same.

Speakers:

• Shri Manoj Misra – Convenor, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan
• Shri Ramaswamy R Iyer – Former Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India
• Shri Himanshu Thakkar – Coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People

Moderator:

• Shri Samar Singh – Senior Advisor and Director, NHD, INTACH

Date: 18 th September 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, please contact:
Pragya Majumder – pragya@toxicslink.org
Tel: 24320711, 24328006
Email: info@toxicslink.org

Only a handful of architects and builders today know how to build sustainably. An even smaller number of entrepreneurs have been able to efficiently install and maintain decentralised solar energy to the rural areas.  We do not today have the capacity to do what we keep talking about doing for the environment. And there is a lot of talking!  The good news is that there is a world of opportunity for India’s economy to engage with the growing ‘green economy’.

However, its time to stop and think. If we believe that all new buildings should be low energy, our transport should run on clean energy, farming should use less water and chemicals, forests should be re-grown and our waste better recycled, then the next question is…Who will do all of this?

When you think that there are over half a million villages in India, each requiring water, waste and energy management services, or that another 250 million Indians will require low energy housing in cities over the next 50 years, the scope is huge. This new Green Revolution will easily dwarf the much vaunted IT revolution in its capacity to create jobs and to have those benefits trickled down to all sectors of the economy.

With this backdrop, TCP India and The Sierra Club, with the help of many partner organisations, are spearheading a campaign to promote Green Jobs in India. As a first initiative, India’s Largest Green Jobs Fair will be held at the India Habitat Center from September 24-26, 2009.

The fair has the following three objectives:

1. Make students and job seekers aware of the real and growing careers available in the sector
2. Demonstrate to key employers in the country that some of the best students and employees are seeking careers in this space
3. Make Vice-Chancellors, university leaders, and government officials aware of the potential of this sector and the urgent need to provide education that supports it

This is the first step in engaging a mass audience and mainstreaming the sustainability message such that individuals see personal benefit in engaging with the sector.  The fair is being held in conjunction with the Habitat Summit, which will discuss the growth of future sustainable cities.

09/09/09 के दिन 09:09 बजे लें यह नौ संकल्प:

1. पर्यावरण को बचाना है, प्रत्येक वर्ष एक पेड़ लगाना है.
2. प्लास्टिक बैग की जगह JUTE या कपडे के बैग का प्रयोग करना है.
3. AC व HEATER का प्रयोग कम से कम करना है.
4. PERSONAL VEHICLES की जगह BUS या TRAIN का प्रयोग करना है.
5. घर या OFFICE से बहार जाते समय ELECTRICITY बंद करके जाना है.
6. RED LIGHT पर गाड़ी का ENGINE बंद करना है.
7. PUBLIC PLACE पर गंदगी नहीं फैलानी है.
8. पानी का केवल सदुपयोग करना है.
9. COMPUTER पर काम करते वक्त उठकर जाने से पहले COMPUTER को बंद करके जाना है.

Your feedback and suggestions for the Blog are very valuable to me and I appreciate the time and efforts you put in providing them. I am hugely benefited by the feed back not only because it makes me feel good, but also because it gives me clues to the direction of your thinking and actions. It is particularly encouraging when I get feed back to past posts because it tells me that the writing is still in your memory. After all this is our blog and our city and we should support each other in making it a creative one.

I had earlier shared interesting statistics about the Delhi NCT region . In that it has 111 sq. km. of forest 40 sq. km. of tree cover against the geographical area of 1483 sq.km. Thus this cover represents only about 10.2% of total area of land. However as per government records, so much plantation has been done since 1950, by various agencies like CPWD, DDA MCD, etc. that 470 sq.km of area should be under dense forest. The responsibility of the contractors/ builders for tree plantation ends with depositing the money with the forest department. So much for trees affected by infrastructure projects.

Yesterday I met  few researchers, really committed and concerned about the people affected by infrastructure projects. They shared with me some insights into the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) issue related to infrastructure projects. They also informed that the responsibility and accountability for R&R ends with the private company depositing the relevant amount of money with the government. So unless the affected people are large enough or organized enough, the compensation package that they receive is ‘pereto optimal’ (affected people should be, at least as well off after displacement as they were before it, if not better) and nothing ever comes to the light.

Also, what remains not measured is the impact on people who were providing services to the displaced families and businesses, like the vegetable vendors, cloth vendors, tea and snack stalls which are ‘mobile’. They are impacted and take at least a few years to recover, if at all. At the same time, there are no figures available of families or small roadside businesses (Panwallas, Istri-wallas, cobblers etc.) who are affected due to a Delhi Metro project or road expansion/ widening for the Commonwealth Games. What I am aware of is that R&R happens over stretches. It is done almost overnight and clandestinely.

If any one has more information on this and would like to share, please do leave it as a comment. I would very much like a dialogue on this issue.

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an established policy research institution based in New Delhi, is expanding its work on aspects of industrial pollution, domestic sewage, water management, green urbanization. In this regard, CSE is looking for individuals with knowledge of environmental issues or pollution science or engineering or journalism combined with passion and commitment. The teams at CSE are small but focused on the need to bring policy and practice change. So the job will demand that you work in a collegiate environment and under pressure of deadlines.

Water programme: Researches and campaigns and trains on community based rainwater harvesting, groundwater policy, water pollution and decentralized sewage technologies etc.

Green rating programme: Prepares technical reports and public audits on industry’s resource performance, environment impact assessment and impacts of pollution on communities.

Green urbanization programme: To build awareness and to train on ways to build ‘green buildings’ and green cities, from energy efficiency to public transport

Climate Change Programme: Tracking international negotiations, new science of climate change, impact in India and South Asia. Reporting on all these issues, managing web-content for campaign, organizing training of various constituencies.

Food safety: Research and reporting on food – from pesticides and toxins– to ways of manufacture. The programme looks at regulations or the lack of it to protect our health and body from toxins

All programmes require a combination of graduates in civil/chemical/mechanical/environmental engineering or post-graduates in economics/environmental economics/environmental science or environmental management and people with training in research and journalism.

Apply if you have one or all these skills, ideally with track-record and work experience of 5-6 years for the positions of coordinators and senior researchers. The work involves travel, writing and networking, training and managing web-based databases and blogs. CSE offer a challenging work environment and competitive compensation. But apply only if you want to work to bring change.

For more information and to apply, contact:

Email your applications to jgupta@cseindia.org

Post your application to:

Ms. Jagdeep Gupta,
General Manager
Programme Management and Administration
Centre for Science and Environment
41, Tughlakabad Institutional Area, New Delhi-110062
Tel: +91 (011)-29955124, 29955125, 29956394
Fax: +91 (011) 29955879

UNESCO and The YP Foundation call for applications for a Youth Forum on Social Inclusion, to be held in New Delhi from the 13th to 16th of November 2009. The forum aims at promoting youth led dialogue and action in India, by bringing together young people from across the country to share best practices and examine strategies on how they can build youth action in an inclusive and cohesive manner.

The Youth Forum aims to facilitate the active engagement of young people, by focusing on youth led community work in four specific issues of gender and sexuality, education, disability and HIV/AIDS. 

The four-day forum will bring together 32 young people who are implementing existing youth led community work in these four cross cutting areas. All expenses relating to travel, accommodation and food will be covered for selected participants.

For projects/initiatives that are developed as an outcome of the 4-day forum, UNESCO and TYPF will make available small grants to support collective youth leadership and shall also provide mentoring and support in the development, implementation and assessment of these initiatives. Participants who are selected for the forum must be willing to conceptualize and design initiatives that incorporate the outcome of the learning’s of the forum.

Youth Forum Application | Last Date for submission: September 18, 2009

For more, write to: theypfoundation@gmail.com

Recently I got an opportunity to visit some of the colleges in Delhi for my project work. I must say that it was a good exposure for me and it helped me a lot in understanding the youth of the city. I believe that the young generation is the mirror of a city-country leading to the making of a great Nation.

The youth of Delhi are enthusiastic, energetic and remain cheerful always. But this is one side of the story. Just like many other young people across India, most of them don’t know what they want from their future. At the same time, Delhites must be thankful to their young adults. During my visits to not less than ten colleges, I could not find more than ten students smoking in their campuses. That is only about one student per college and is much less than what it is in other parts of the country. 

This may well be the outcome of  the ‘Delhi University Smoke Free Initiative’ which is an anti-tobacco campaign in the University of Delhi and was first launched in 2006. Initially, the campaign began with 10 colleges and 48 departments in the North campus. Now the university is planning to expand this initiative to other colleges across the city. This is something that needs to be shared with the larger society and is a campaign that should indeed be adopted by other public institutions as well. 

This post is an acknowledgment to the efforts of the University of Delhi and a compliment to the Delhi youth.

Rahul Dravid and Editor, Sanctuary, Bittu Sahgal Voice Their Concern

Cross posted from WWF-India by J. Ertmann

On the 28th of July 2009, a Tiger Rally was organised by the Delhi Greens (Editor’s Note: and by Sanctuary and a series of organisations) at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House. WWF India, after correspondence with Mr. Govind Singh, was also present at the Event. It was very important for the Tiger Rally to happen when it did, since reports on the diminishing number of Tigers in India have been increasing in recent days. Numerous Tiger Reserves have declared immense scarcity of Tigers and some even had to admit that there were no Tigers left.

The event included activities for Schools in the NMML garden and a conference inside the building. The key speaker of the conference was Dr. Karan Singh, whose speech illustrated his genuine concern for the Environment and the endangered Tiger. However, it is the responsibility of the politicians to implement their visions to ensure sustainability and the protection of the Tiger’s natural habitat.

 
Outside the doors, numerous schools had combined forces to symbolically fight against the human destructive force. About 300 students joined hands to form the number 350, which was visible from the sky. The number 350 represents the upper limit and target of the Global Carbon footprint in parts per million. Only if the 350 mark is reached will our atmosphere be able to recover.

In addition, there was a poster drawing workshop and many children joined the rally dressed up as Tigers and other relevant themes to climate change and global warming. As a pleasant surprise Rahul Dravid was present at the conference, voicing his interest in the environment and the need to preserve the Tigers of India.

It was a successful event, even though there is still a long way to go. We need to understand that we humans rely on the natural world to survive. In order to ensure survival of our children and their children’s children we need to act now to save nature.

First posted on WWFIndia.org | Top image and widget (c) Delhi Greens

Also Read:

• Top five reasons why you must act to save the tiger
• From tiger hunters to poachers, the epic journey of the Moghiyas of Ranthambore
• Invite: Save Tiger, Save Humanity Rally in Teen Murti Bhavan

All are invited  for a cultural evening “Woh Din Ki Jiska Wada Tha” on the occasion of the concluding ceremony of Sadhbhawna Diwas at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House.

Who Din Ki Jiska Wada Tha – Remembering Iqbal Bano

Presentations:

• Sohail Hashmi- ‘teri awaz ke saye- Iqbal Bano aur Faiz’
• Sunanda Sharma – ‘awaz ka tilism – Iqbal Bano Ki gayaki’

Musical Tributes by:

• Ms Rekha Raj
• Madan Gopal Singh
• Rabbi Shergill
• Jasbeer Jassi
• Tanveer Ahmed Khan (Dilli Gharana)

Concluding remarks by Professor Mridula Mukherjee, Director, NMML

Date: 4th September, 2009 (Fridya)
Time: 5 pm
Venue: Auditorium, Teen Murti House

Click here to find a clickable road map to Teen Murti