Can we keep pace with the changing climate?

While Govt says India has a superior green record than other nations, experts say all is not good with the Indian environment, reports Chetan Chauhan. Special: World Environment Day

Updated on: Jun 5, 2007, 15:32:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Vanishing tigers, receding glaciers, an unpredictable monsoon and swathes of deteriorating forests. On the brink of losing some of its priceless wildlife and ecology, the government says India has a superior green record than other nations.

Independent experts are more blunt. “All is not good with the Indian environment," says RK Pachauri, chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that warned in its reports this year that India is hurtling toward a future of extremes: floods, droughts, intensive rainfall and food insecurity as glaciers that feed our major rivers retreat rapidly. But there is growing awareness about environmental hazards among all stakeholders. It is evident from the public interest litigations being filed by citizens — like the residents of Vasant Kunj in Delhi protesting the permission for construction of a wall, granted without environment clearance.

After a PIL saga in the Supreme Court led to governments in Delhi and Mumbai introducing the clean fuel alternative of compressed natural gas (CNG) for public transport, similar interventions are now taking place in Kanpur, Ahmedabad, Agra and Bangalore.

Air quality has improved, but it still remains within unsafe limits.But wildlife has not been so fortunate. A recent Wildlife Institute of India report estimated that the tiger population in Central India has decreased by 59 per cent since 2002.

In Orissa, the world’s only olive ridley turtle site is under stress from fishing trawlers. A huge loss to marine life has been witnessed off the Gujarat coast from oil spills. “The world’s richest bio-diversity is in India. But, we have damaged it more than conserving it,” says Kanchi Kohli of NGO Kalpvariksh.

Even the Planning Commission said in its approach paper that India’s forest cover has increased but the quality of the green cover has deteriorated. The World Wildlife Fund has put the Indus and Ganges among the world’s 10 most endangered rivers. Major Indian rivers are not even fit to bathe in.

A 2006 Comptroller and Auditor General’s report reflected the government’s callousness too. “The Ministry of Environment and Forest did not enforce the coastal regulation zone notification effectively, resulting in extensive destruction due to industrial expansion.” The new coastal regulation is expected this year.

Climate change is the new challenge. After 2020, India and China will be the world’s biggest emitters of heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming as our economic growth rate whizzes past nine per cent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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