Vandana is an Environmental Policy expert and has written extensively about environmental issues and governance specifically in Asian countries and USA. She holds advanced degrees in Public Administration and Economics. She lives in the bay area and has taught Public Policy and NGO Management. Vandana has also served in Government of India as Class 1 officer.
Much of environmental management has been reactive. Human action (excess or unwise use or both) created problems; overtime, the problems became apparent and need for solutions inescapable. Remedies had to be found and put in place.
Picture: Smog in Los Angeles, Courtsey: Nathan via Flickr.com under creative commons license.
When I was looking at Delhi’s environment almost a decade back, Delhi was entering its bitter battle against being the ‘fourth most polluted city’ in the world. Much thought and action (or shall we say reaction) was devoted to the problem. Delhi was able to remedy both its ‘fourth most polluted’ status and its air quality with unprecedented ‘hyper-activity:’ remarkable for being so well concerted across the different levels and different arms of the government.
Picture: Delhi Smog in January 2009
As I revisited the problem more recently, I was both shocked and saddened to see a decline so visibly and so quickly. Examining Delhi’s data, in January this year, I found an increase in vehicular pollution. I was not expecting this to happen in face of the phenomenal and difficult measures that Delhi had undertaken: like relocation of industries out of residential areas (something that had come about as a result of the developmental dream for Delhi in the 1950s) and conversion of the entire fleet of Delhi Transportation Corporation (DTC) buses into Compressed Natural gas or CNG (resulting in the largest CNG-operated public transportation in the world).
California is trying many different initiatives to make its contribution to mitigate climate-change, many different ways to reduce its GHG emissions- drop by drop. Diverse attempts themselves improve its chances of success. But what in my mind, greatly improves its chance is the ability of California to think on behalf of the consumer, the common person.
As we evolve towards a new global climate change policy regime at Copenhagen later this year via the negotiations currently going on in Bonn, a willingness to step in each other’s shoes gets more and more critical and primary.
The Bhagidari of Delhi (India) Government, a citizen-government partnership initiative, has been making serious attempts at creating awareness amongst the citizens of Delhi regarding environment and pushing them towards more environmentally friendly lifestyle.
The India’s stand that the current climate change negotiations under the auspices of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) are being skewed in favor of of the industrialized nations got another shot in the arm this week. Purported pre-release of a McKinsey report projects that India will continue to be one of the LEAST Carbon Intensive countries in the world despite an economic growth rate of 7.5%. This second endorsement follows the recent report by the World Bank saying that India is right in resisting the mandatory emissions reduction.
Picture: A Coal Man in Mysore (India)
The arguments that CITES ban must be lifted because it has failed needs to be addressed heads-on as it is a falsity used with clear intent of misinforming. The argument of raising tigers in the farms to re-populate in the wild, as of now, seems as facetious. Tiger-farms do great injustice to Traditional Chinese Medicine when they seek to justify their breeding of tigers for their parts for practice of TCM and the associated lifestyle.
NASA’s new ingeneous design calls for using large plastic bags, made of forward-osmosis membranes, and filled with sewage for offshore harvesting of algae for bio-fuel. Don’t expect any protests against this “offshore” oil-generation!
A recent NY Times articles brings to fore the contribution of Soot, also known as Black Carbon, in the global warming. And how efforts are underway to reign in the global warming by replacing the mud-stoves in villages of India! On the Earth day, a legislation was introduced in US Senate for EPA to assess the options for reducing the black carbon pollution.
The algae! Yes – the same slimy brown-green ‘plant’ that makes a pond or a lake look yucky – is the creating a great buzz as the most promising source of alternative energy. And now nanotechnology is being leveraged to add some more zing to the promise!
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