India, Brazil care most for environment

A survey by National Geographic magazine and pollsters Globalscan puts India and Brazil together on the top spot with 60 green index points while Americans are the most polluting.

Updated on: May 8, 2008, 02:56:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Indians and Brazilians are the most environment friendly people while Americans are the most polluting, a survey by National Geographic magazine and pollsters Globalscan on consumer behaviour has revealed.

The survey of a thousand people each from 14 high-polluting nations listed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has India and Brazil tied for the top spot with 60 green index points. Americans had the lowest score with 44.9 points.

The survey, released in Washington on Wednesday, rates Indian eating habits the best, with 84 per cent eating local vegetables at least once a week. Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment said unlike the west, Indians don’t waste much and are very good at recycling. The Indian green index is high on account of low per capita energy consumption — at 0.7 kilowatt — and large-scale recycling. India and China are the best users of solar energy.

About 42 per cent of Indians were concerned about environmental problems whereas 35 per cent believe these problems can have adverse impact on their health. While 27 per cent said they were working to reduce the impact, 24 per cent claimed to have attended a demonstration related to environment (against the global average of 9 per cent). About 15 per cent wrote to government or a company on environment issues, the highest for any nation.

Terry Garcia, executive vice-president, National Geographic, said the idea was to inspire consumers in countries with low scores to adopt best behaviours.

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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