| Eco-logic
/ Darryl D'Monte |
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Exit endosulfan
India manufactures 70% of the world's endosulfan, which explains why there has been such a strong lobby against its ban, despite evidence of its health hazards. But India has finally dropped its opposition to a ban on endosulfan, thanks largely to the campaign against the pesticide by Kerala's people and government More... |
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Making sanitation as popular as cricket
700 million Indians have cell phones, but 638 million still don't have access to proper sanitation. At this year's South Asian Conference on Sanitation, social solutions to the problem were discussed, including "naming and shaming" and the CLTS programme which gets villagers to map the open areas where they defecate More... |
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Rethinking fossil fuel subsidies
The government has proposed direct cash transfers instead of subsidies on essential items including kerosene and diesel to the poor. The country certainly cannot permit the huge losses from subsidies any more, says Darryl D'Monte, but it remains to be seen whether cash transfers or a coupon system, or even a combination of such reforms, will work More... |
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Ecological illiteracy regarding Mumbai
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh recently increased the floor space index in Mumbai's coastal belts. It's a move doomed to fail; and will only add to the city's cup of environmental woes, writes Darryl D'Monte More... |
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Renewable energies as big business opportunities?
Biomass and biogas are the cheap, decentralised renewable energies to choose for India. But the ministry of renewable energies -- and the technocrats and entrepreneurs surrounding it -- appear to favour hi-tech solutions such as grid solar power, with only a few exceptions such as the project to produce power from rice husk in 10,000 villages in eastern India More... |
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The wrongs and rights of 'watsan'
Why has it taken so many years for the UN to pass a resolution on water and sanitation as a human right? Why did countries like the US, UK and Canada oppose such a resolution, leaving it to Bolivia, which has experienced the negative impact of privatisation of water, to propose the resolution and the poorest nations to support it? More... |
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The real costs of oil
The recent Mumbai oil spill ought to serve as a wake-up call to the authorities on the reckless manner in which the country is building and maintaining its ports. In Mumbai, the outdated MbPT was to have made way for the modern JNPT on the mainland, but MbPT is hanging on to its 1800 acres of prime real estate, exposing the city to the threat of more oil spills and hazardous chemicals More... |
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A new measure of poverty
On the 20th anniversary of the Human Development Report, Oxford University and UNDP are bringing out a Multidimensional Poverty Index that will replace and refine the Human Poverty Index. The new measure, which uses 10 different indices, threw up a startling fact: just eight Indian states have more poor people than the 26 poorest African countries combined! More... |
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Putting a price-tag to nature
Can you put a price-tag to nature and biodiversity? Unfortunately, we may have to, as all decision-makers today base their choices on economic considerations. Which is why there have been attempts to put a value on, for instance, natural forests, fuelwood, animal species and so on More... |
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The environmental fallout of conflict
Since the time the US army dropped the terrible defoliant, Agent Orange, on the Vietnam countryside, war and conflict have had a devastating impact on people and the environment More... |
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Brave green world
Things are not all doom and gloom on the global environmental front. In France, 1,000 homes are being renovated every day to make them more energy-efficient. And California has a comprehensive plan to reduce emissions by 29% below 1990 levels, by 2020 More... |
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Cities should be for people, not cars: Enrique Penalosa
Denver, San Francisco and Seoul are demolishing their freeways and highways and attempting to return their cities to their people, not their cars, says Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota and founder of the BRTS in his city, advising India to learn from the mistakes of these cities More... |
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India's climate volte face: Tragedy or farce?
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has suggested to the PM that India opt out of the Kyoto Protocol, jettison the G77 developing countries, and voluntarily accept cuts in emission without any guarantee of funding or technology from industrial nations in return. This goes against every principle which India has articulated on behalf of all developing countries, says Darryl D'Monte More... |
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Watching our wasteline
Every year the UK alone chucks 484 million unopened tubs of yoghurt, 1.6 billion untouched apples, bananas worth £370 million and 2.6 billion slices of bread. In his recent book Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, Tristram Stuart documents the extent of waste in the food industry worldwide More... |
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Negotiating on climate change
The Indian position on climate change ought to be unequivocal -- we should not agree to any cap or cuts on emission until G8 countries agree drastically to cut their own emissions, says Darryl D'Monte, adding that the Global Responsibility Capacity Index might serve as a more progressive climate tax More... |
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How cities are changing the world
Cities do play key roles in contributing to and combating climate change. But is Jeb Brugman, author of 'Welcome to the Urban Revolution' going too far when he extols slums like Dharavi for the environmental economies of scale, density and association when 200,000 residents live and work in the same location? More... |
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Greener borders
The world is only just beginning to focus on environmental threats posed by legal and illegal trade, with hazardous substances crossing borders and putting human health and the environment at serious risk More... |
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How now, Brown Cloud?
In 1991, India dismissed the Asian Brown Cloud theory as "unfounded". Environmentalists termed it a ploy to distract attention from the contribution of rich countries to climate change. Today, most people accept that there is indeed a pall of "black carbon" hanging over Asia, the result mainly of millions of wood stoves burning in South Asia and China. What do we do about it? More... |
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Media in the time of crises
Did the media – and indeed all the economic gurus – miss the telltale signs of the impending financial meltdown? The Asia Media Forum in Bangkok recently analysed media in the time of crisis More... |
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Crouching and creeping disasters
At a recent workshop in Delhi, participants discussed how there are two kinds of disasters: one, sudden and unpredictable like the 2005 floods in Mumbai and the earthquake in Pakistan; the other, the slow-onset phenomenon of which the most alarming and widespread is climate change. In both, perhaps the single biggest lack is information More... |
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Time to get tough on emissions
At the Delhi Summit on Sustainable Development in February, US
Senator John Kerry remarked that India's National Action Plan on Climate Change lacked
fixed targets and timetables. Is it time for developing countries to move beyond old
uncompromising positions? More... |
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Living in an Urban Age
Sao Paulo is arguably the most violent city in the world, with
120 murders per 100,000 population in the poorer areas of the city. At the second Urban
Age conference in Sao Paulo, participants discussed the problems of crowded urban areas
and looked for ways to make these spaces less violent and more inclusive
More... |
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Emphasise quality of life, not growth
The present financial crisis may signal a shift from
globalisation to a deglobalised economy. This would mean production for local markets,
equity in income and asset distribution, more democratic arrangements, progressive
taxation, and a move from fossil fuels to renewables, says Darryl D'Monte More... |
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Living sustainably, Asian-style
Japan has introduced the 3R approach to waste management,
China has introduced the Circular Economy and Green Growth, and Thailand's Magic Eye
drive coaxes children not to waste. What exactly has India done to promote sustainable
development? More... |
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Corporates consult on climate change
Given the projected rise in energy costs within the next
20-30 years, reducing the ecological footprint of companies has become a corporate
necessity. And corporate India is finally getting its act together on the environment
front More... |
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The crow and the broom: Progress on
sanitation in the South
Kerala has made remarkable progress in the area of sanitation. As many
as 96% of its houses have toilets -- close to 600,000 have been built in the last
decade. The state’s cleanliness campaign has a strong parallel with the literacy
movement for which Kerala is famous throughout the world. Other Southern states are not
far behind More... |
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Re-imagining public spaces in
cities
By conventional standards, Mumbai has perhaps the least amount of open space per
person -- 0.03 acres per 1,000 people. But, as a recent study by the design cell of the
Kamala Raheja College of Architecture in Mumbai shows, a little
‘re-imagining’ can throw up innovative solutions to enhancing public spaces
in Indian cities More... |
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Hot air in Hokkaido
One of the worrying outcomes of the recent G8 summit in Hokkaido was
the general euphoria about the revival of the nuclear industry, supposedly in the fight
against climate change. This is an illusion at best. Only 3% of India’s
electricity is produced by nuclear plants, and with the Indo-US deal this will increase
to 7%, which is by no means radical More... |
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Lille: City of the future
The city of Lille on the French-Belgian border likes to describe itself
as a ‘Eurometropolis’. A major European industrial and services hub, the
most interesting dimension of Lille is its greening. Lille is the only city in France
to convert household waste to biogas, which is then used in public transport More... |
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Green or greenwashing?
At one stage, Bajaj Auto was using captive wind power to generate 90%
of its electricity from its own turbines and “banking” the rest. There are
indeed businesses that are going green, but the majority of these claims are still
greenwash, says Darryl D’Monte More... |
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Green capitalism
Can the collateral damage of a growth-at-all-costs economic model be
addressed by a “regenerative” economy as opposed to a
“degenerative” one based on fossil fuels and outmoded notions of
industrialisation?Veteran social activist K R Datye believes it can More... |
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We are what we
eat
There are three ideal attributes of food, according to Carlo Petrini of the Slow Food
movement: It should appeal to the senses; it should be clean and environment-friendly;
and most of all these days, it should be fair More... |
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Genuine progress, or so much
'Balihoo'?
The best that can be said about the recently concluded Bali climate
change conference is that negotiations didn’t break down altogether. Although
India is being unnecessarily self-congratulatory about the correctness of its stand at
the UN conference, it should adopt a much more proactive position on energy consumption
at home More... |
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The role of cities in
climate change
The danger of treating climate change only as a man-made phenomenon that impacts
nature's systems is that it posits the problem in some distant remoteness and absolves
all of us of immediate responsibility. The facts tell us that three-quarters of the
carbon dioxide in the world, which is the biggest greenhouse gas, is emitted by cities
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