Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Jagan Prasad Tehriya Vs State of Uttar Pradesh dated 23/05/2025. The applicant has alleged large-scale illegal felling of green trees within the Agra district, Uttar Pradesh. The application revealed instances of illegal tree felling at Fatehabad, Sadar, Kiraoli and Agra …
CLEANING BRIDGE Iqbal Malik, director of Vatavaran, started work on solid waste management way back in 1992. With the help of a few residents in Asiad Village Complex in New Delhi, she launched the Cleaning Brigade (cb) scheme. It was to be a practical, eco-friendly, scientific, zero investment yet income-generating …
India is today one of the filthiest countries in the world but urban India"s garbage disposal can be easily managed if we get rid of the highly-bureaucratised, incompetent and corrupt municipal collection system and make it the responsibility of urban households and communities - literally implement the same participatory paradigm …
Notwithstanding protests from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that it encroached upon their jurisdiction, the Delhi government launched its "Clean Delhi' campaign in the Nirman Vihar colony in east Delhi on December 21. Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit had made no bones about her disapproval of the MCD's way …
Four years after a plague that claimed many lives in Surat, Gujarat, the city has become one of the cleanest in India. Out of a total of 1,008 metric tonnes of solid waste generated in the city every day, the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) handles around 960 metric tonnes. This …
Thirty two-year-old Mannoj Ahuja has been living in Janakpuri colony in west Delhi for the last eleven years. He is part of a group of residents who literally live in a lane overflowing with garbage. The stench of rotting wastes and stray dogs rummaging through them, their bodies sullied with …
There is just too much of it. And all of us contribute liberally every day. But what if the ragpicker doesn't come one day? What if the garbage-collecting truck doesn't arrive? What if
only one of 10 us metropolitan areas required to submit anti-pollution plans in 1999 have met the government's goals to crack down on smog into next millennium, the Environmental Protection Agency (epa) said recently. The 10 urban areas, that have violated the federal ozone standards, are mandated under the Clean …
ten cities in the us have dramatically improved their air quality, with ozone levels registering a reduction from 75 per cent to 40.7 per cent. The hallowed list includes Rochester, New York, Buffalo, Newark, Milwaukee, San Diego, Boston, Sacramento, Detroit, Chicago, New Jersey and Los Angeles. "People in these cities …
nature flourishes most alone, far from the towns where (humans) reside, wrote the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. According to him, cities do not have an ecosystem of their own. Frederic Clements, the American plant ecologist went a step further and describes habitats as a series of closed loops that …
China's investment in environmental protection totalled US $9.6 billion in 1998, in the process exceeding one per cent of its GNP for the first time in the nation's history. Xie Zhenhua, administrator of the State Bureau of Environmental Protection said that China invested around US $2.93 billion in pollution control …
the city of Atlanta experienced a yellow deluge. Pollen, the male reproductive agent of plants from northern Georgia regularly poured over Atlanta with sticky mounds all over the city. The city was cleaned every evenings but the pollen was back the next morning. The city reached an all-time high of …
On why Indian towns cannot take the pressure of heavy rainfall: Town planning is always based on certain probabilities. If the flood level is higher or the rainfall is much heavier than what is anticipated, it may be difficult to protect the town. As far as flood management is concerned, …
Rainwater harvesting started in the country in 1989 as a part of an income-generating programme assisted by the International Development Research Centre, Canada. Under the programme, some 500 storage tanks with capacities between two cubic metre (m3) and 10 m3 were built in the Capiz Province. The project involved building …
Rooftop catchments and cisterns have met the water needs of many small Caribbean islands for over three centuries. More than 500,000 people depend on such systems of water storage. In Saint Lucia, storage systems include 200-litre steel drums, large polyethylene plastic tanks with a capacity of 1,300*2,300 litres, and underground …
Thailand is one of the world's leading rainwater harvesting nations. The National Jar Programme was launched to supply clean drinking water to rural areas under the United Nations Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990). It was aimed at catching rainwater in jars. Since the programme was started, there has been …
Captured rainwater has regenerated degraded lands in Kenya. Eroded grazing areas have been rejuvenated by building mini-catchments using a 'pitting and ridging technique' known as katumani. This is accompanied by re-seeding of native grasses and legumes. Pits are dug at the top of an eroded slope below a cut-off drain, …
Builder R Jeyakumar's technique is simple and cost-effective. The areas surrounding building complexes in Chennai are cemented. The rain water is allowed to flow on to the road. The first step, says Jeyakumar, is to prevent this run-off by two to three-inch-high kerbs near the gates. To collect the run-off, …
At Besant Nagar, Chennai, each Sunday morning sees a middle-aged man on a door-to-door campaign distributing pamphlets and talking spiritedly. Meet Sekhar Raghavan, a lone warrior fighting for a cause. Even at 50 and a PhD in physics, he painstakingly explains the merits of rainwater harvesting (RWH) to anyone witling …
Exnora international, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), is involved mainly in solid-waste management and sorting out rural problems. Recently, however, they have entered the field of rainwater harvesting (RWH), propagating water harvesting methods and offering technical support. The NGO has atso succeeded in motivating the villagers of Kovalam, near Chennai, to …
