On World Water Day, we release the report of the Second Anil Agarwal Dialogue: Excreta Does Matter. This two-day meeting attempted to join the dots between improper and inadequate sewage treatment and India's growing water crisis. It brought together about 500 people from NGOs, private sector, academia and the government to present and debate the challenges of urban sewage treatment and water supply. Please click here for the full report.
The Yamuna River continues to attract bad press for being a sewage canal.
Maha Kumbh in Allahabad has perhaps no parallel in terms of the sheer size of the congregation. In less than two months over 100 million people are expected to come to this city, which sees the confluence of two rivers of India—the Ganga and the Yamuna. People come to worship on the banks of the Ganga. Even as they celebrate the river it seems they don’t see the river, but only the ritual.
Pollution in Sonbhadra area is not new and has been talked about for many years but no action has been taken to check the pollution. This has led to long term health impacts which have now started to show up in the population of the region. CSE took up a study to look at these health impacts and to investigate the possible causes.
Today, I want to tell you a true story of extraordinary courage. The past week, I was in Kasaragod, a district in Kerala, splendid in beauty and with abundant natural resources, but destroyed by the toxic chemical, endosulfan. The pesticide was aerially sprayed over cashew plantations, for some 20 years, in complete disregard of the fact that there is no demarcation between plantations and human habitation in this area. It is also a high rainfall region and so, the sprayed pesticide leached into the ground and flowed downstream.
Water is life and sewage tells its life story. This is the subject of the Citizens’ Seventh Report on the State of India’s Environment, Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta. It has a seemingly simple plot: it only asks where Indian cities get their water from and where does their waste go. But this is not just a question or answer about water, pollution and waste. It is about the way Indian cities (and perhaps other parts of the world that are similarly placed) will develop.
By: Savvy Soumya Misra
Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa in December announced that his government would consider banning endosulfan. The highly toxic pesticide is banned in over 70 countries.
By: Dahr Jamail
Erika, who is a photographer, and myself, headed out in a boat from Fourchon, US state Louisi ana’s southernmost port. We had four co-travellers: Jonathan Henderson, Randy, Craig and guide. It was August 16, the day several of Louisiana’s fisheries were reopened for catching shrimp.
On October 29, 2009, scientists from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)-Pollution Monitoring Laboratory had jointly collected soil samples from inside the former Union Carbide plant at