Press Release: We want justice for Patancheru
An epidemic which has been brewing in the outskirts of Hyderabad for more than 20 years, awaits justice at the National Green Tribunal, Chennai May 9th 2013. The valley of Patancheru in south-central India lies downstream from scores of pharmaceutical factories. Its waters have suffered heavy pollution by all sorts of industrial effluents for decades, [...]
Urban employment generation through biodiversity conservation
Biodiversity Conservation and urban poverty alleviation through employment generation, can they go together? Many will argue that urbanity sustains itself by plundering the biodiversity of surroundings. So the usual answer for it is going to be “No”. For many the whole idea of conservation is very elite. Only those who have time and money will [...]
Catch the rain drops wherever they fall
Urban diaries from India One hour of rain in Bangalore brings the city on its knees. Traffic halted, no space to walk, all the roads flooded and one is cursing the government and municipal bodies etc. On the other hand many parts of the city are water deficit even after the rain. Water starvation with [...]
Dusty, Dusty Cities & Infrastructure development
Urban diaries from India Some might think I am throwing tantrums in my reflections. The infrastructural development especially the construction of flyovers for both roads and tracks, metro-railway stations, malls, shopping complexes etc. is making the air in urban India un-breathe-able. I have nothing against such developments as there is an assumption that it will [...]
Are pedestrians fooling around?
Urban Diaries from India Who owns Indian roads? Who decides who can use the roads? I never got the answer through any written theory or a law. It seems that there is some unwritten law book locked in the minds of the designers of cities. One must be wondering why am I in the whirlpool [...]
All is not doomed, a new order is possible
Not so structured reflections of Conference of Parties 11 Hyderabad The happenings (better word to use “mishappening”) of Conference of Parties 11 on Convention of Biodiversity is a reminder of the fact that we need to look beyond the fabric of “Nation”- “State” framework which is moving 20 years behind the urgency. There are few [...]
India should take leadership as it has highest number of endangered species
Reflections of Mr Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias(Executive Secretary of Convention of Biodiversity) on India being a host nation for CBD as shared with Indian youth delegation (Swetha Stothra Bhashyam, N.S. Prasad, Vinay Bandari). India had passed a Biodiversity Act ten years ago in 2002, which is one of the few countries who has a [...]