Environment pays progress price

India's growth towards economic prosperity has put its environment in stress, the State of Environment Reports from 32 states indicate, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 30, 2007, 04:02:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India's growth towards economic prosperity has put its environment in stress, the State of Environment Reports from 32 states indicate.

Completed after five years by four organisations with the help of state governments under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the reports, for the first time, provide a valuable database on the level of degradation and areas of concern at the micro level. The reports and future action for strengthening data collection at the ground level was discussed at a workshop here on Wednesday.

The growing human population, industrial growth and natural calamities have been cited as major reasons for the environmental degradation in most reports. The exotic backwaters of Kerala have undergone degradation due to the tremendous growth of tourism. Similarly, in Himachal Pradesh, the picturesque Manali and Shimla have witnessed ecological losses because of the pressure of tourists during peak seasons.

However, in states such as Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir, law and order problems have been identified as a major hurdle to protecting and conserving biodiversity and wildlife. For example. no tiger census could be conducted in the Indravati tiger reserve in Chhattigarh as it is under the control of Naxals, state government officials said.

Experts at the workshop said there is a need for micro-level mapping of the losses and formulation of remedial policies. Most officials also agreed that the environment is secondary to development for most policy formulators and its impact can be seen in the reports.

SP Sharma, advisor in the ministry, said, “We want data collection to be brought down to the lowest level in the 11th Plan.” The ministry had allocated Rs 6 crore for preparing these reports in the 10th Plan period but joint secretary Sudhir Mittal said the state governments will have to come forward in a big way in the 11th Plan to implement the second phase of the project.

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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