Author: cprindia

SECOND DISCUSSION OF THE CPR-TCPD (TRIVEDI CENTRE FOR POLITICAL DATA, ASHOKA UNIVERSITY) DIALOGUES ON INDIAN POLITICS
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS

Watch the full video (above) of the talk by eminent political scientist, Dr Milan Vaishnav on the current state of Indian politics in the run up to the 2019 national elections.

The talk focused on the seedy underbelly of electoral politics — how candidates are chosen, how parties and campaigns are financed, and how it all affects electoral outcomes.

Milan Vaishnav is Director & Senior Fellow, South Asia Program, at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.

About the CPR-TCPD Dialogues

This was the second event in the CPR-TCPD Dialogues on Indian Politics series, launched in a partnership between Centre for Policy Research and Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TPCD) at Ashoka University. This is a monthly event that brings together academicians, policy and political practitioners, and civil society actors to grapple with important social and political issues in India. It provides a forum for intellectually rigorous, non-partisan commentary to strengthen public discourse on politics in India. In these polarised times, debates on politics in India have tended to be increasingly noisy, blurring the lines between critical engagement and partisan endorsement. This dialogue series is an effort to carve out a space for critical, nuanced engagement to understand the changing dynamics of Indian political parties, the impact of new and emerging social movements and the use of new instruments of mobilisation in our polity.

Watch the full video (above) of the panel discussion between Dr D Prabhakaran and Dr Preet K Dhillon, moderated by Bhargav Krishna, on the health effects of air pollution, particularly looking at cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Drawing from global evidence as well as in low- and middle-income country settings like India, the panel discussed biological pathways and available evidence on the linkages between air pollution and these health conditions.

Dr D Prabhakaran is a cardiologist and epidemiologist by training. He is an internationally renowned researcher and is currently the Vice President- Research & Policy, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Executive Director of Centre for Chronic Disease Control, New Delhi, India and Professor (Epidemiology) London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. His presentation on Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease in India can be accessed here.

Dr Preet K Dhillon is a trained Epidemiologist who has worked on cancer and other NCDs as a Senior Research Scientist and Associate Professor at PHFI’s Centre for Chronic Conditions & Injuries and Centre for Environmental Health where she is involved in scientific research, management, teaching, mentorship and capacity building. Her presentation on Air Pollution and Cancer can be accessed here.

Bhargav Krishna manages the Centre for Environmental Health at PHFI, a role which involves coordinating the Foundation’s work on environmental health, leading engagements with the government, corporate sector, multilateral and bilateral agencies. His presentation on Air Pollution and Health in India can be accessed here.

This is the second seminar in the Clearing the Air Seminar Series, organised by the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment (ICEE) at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). This seminar was organised in collaboration with the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). The series aims to promote sustained and informed public understanding around the data, impacts, sources and policy challenges involved in clearing Delhi’s air. While it will focus on the context of Delhi, the series will also reflect on the fact that the problem extends far beyond Delhi. The seminar series will present the work of experts in a range of areas to help promote informed public discussion about what changes are needed, what is possible, and how to get it done. Clearing the air in terms of knowledge and public information, we hope, will make a small contribution toward actually clearing Delhi’s air.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. The full video of the last seminar can be accessed here.

Watch the full video (above) of the presentations and panel discussion between Amit Bhatt, Parthaa Bosu, and Sumit Sharma, moderated by Mukta Naik, on the role of the transport sector in Delhi’s air quality. Deliberating on key technical and policy drivers for reduction and management of emissions from the transport sector, the presentations and panel discussed opportunities for intervention in the sector.

Amit Bhatt is the Director of Integrated Urban Transport at WRI India. He is based in Delhi and provides vision and leadership to all transport initiatives across WRI in India and neighbouring countries.

Parthaa Bosu is the lead consultant on air pollution with Environment Defence Fund, based in the United States. He was previously with the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), working on in-use vehicle emissions, and has also served as the India Director and South Asia Liaison of the UN Partnership, Clean Air Asia.

Sumit Sharma is a Fellow and Associate Director of the Earth Science and Climate Change group of TERI. He has worked on a number of projects related to air quality management which involves air quality monitoring, emission inventorisation, air quality modeling (dispersion and receptor), and drafting air quality management plans.

This is the fourth seminar in the Clearing the Air Seminar Series, organised by the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment (ICEE) at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). This seminar was organised in collaboration with the Urbanisation team at CPR. The series aims to promote sustained and informed public understanding around the data, impacts, sources and policy challenges involved in clearing Delhi’s air. While it will focus on the context of Delhi, the series will also reflect on the fact that the problem extends far beyond Delhi. The seminar series will present the work of experts in a range of areas to help promote informed public discussion about what changes are needed, what is possible, and how to get it done. Clearing the air in terms of knowledge and public information, we hope, will make a small contribution toward actually clearing Delhi’s air.

The presentation given by Parthaa Bosu can be accessed here.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.

We are pleased to share a recently published four-part series in the Hindustan Times on India’s air pollution crisis. Written in collaboration with leading air pollution researchers, the series takes stock of what we know about India’s air pollution so far, and discusses problems we need to consider as we plan for the future.

Understanding the curse of air pollution

Navroz K Dubash and Santosh Harish

December 19, 2018

When, how much, and where we should worry about air pollution? In short, the answers are: most of the time, a lot, and all over India. Air pollution is a year-round problem, and not just restricted to winters. Annual average levels in many parts of India are multiple times the WHO and Indian safe levels – not just in cities or industrial areas, but across the region.

Public health in India a casualty of air pollution

Kalpana Balakrishnan and Shibani Ghosh

December 20, 2018

The evidence that we have about the health impacts of air pollution sends a clear message – there is a crisis unfolding in India. Commissioning additional studies on emissions and impacts will undoubtedly help guide future policy actions. But currently available information and knowledge on health effects and exposure attribution to sources is more than sufficient to move us into ‘mission’ mode.

Delhi has a complex air pollution problem

Navroz K Dubash and Sarath Guttikunda

December 21, 2018

There are at least four discrete sectors that each substantially contribute to Delhi’s pollution: industry; transport; biomass and waste burning; and dust. We must recognise we are dealing with a multi-headed problem, that progress on all sources is needed, that we may not see progress immediately but should stay the course, and that solutions need to be tailored to the specific characteristics of each pollution source.

Air pollution: India is waking up, but there’s a long way to go

Navroz K Dubash, Shibani Ghosh, and Santosh Harish

December 22, 2018

India is waking up to the costs of air pollution. But we have only taken initial, reactive measures toward addressing the challenge. We now need to move to systematic actions built on the foundations of political pressure, public engagement and strategic institutional action.

For more updates on the Clearing the Air series, follow the Initiative on Climate, Energy, and Environment on Twitter and Facebook, or visit the Clearing the Air? project page.

On 26 November 2019, the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment (ICEE) at the Centre for Policy Research, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), and Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) co-hosted a discussion on the linkages between climate change and development pathways.

The discussion, which engaged with the UN Environment Programme’s recently-released Emissions Gap Report 2019, was chaired by R R Rashmi (Distinguished Fellow and Programme Director, Earth Science and Climate Change, TERI). The panellists included Simon Maxwell (Development Economist, and Former Director, Overseas Development Institute), P. K Anand (Visiting Fellow, RIS), Sabyasachi Saha (Assistant Professor, RIS), and Navroz K. Dubash (Professor, CPR and Coordinator, ICEE).

Simon Maxwell’s presentation on the key takeaways from the UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2019 can be found here.

Navroz K. Dubash’s presentation on the implications of the report for India can be found here.

Part 1 of the complete video is given above. To watch the Q+A session following the event, click here.

About the Participants

Rajani Ranjan Rashmi is a Distinguished Fellow in The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). He is a senior member of Indian Administrative service and has been, for several years, India’s principal negotiator for climate change negotiations under the UN FCCC. He served the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Govt of India for almost 8 years before and after the Paris Agreement. He has thus been involved in the making of India’s policy on climate change. He retired last year as the Chief Secretary of Manipur. Besides his position in TERI, Mr Rashmi is also a member of the Technical Advisory Body of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and is associated with the Sub Committee of the Finance Ministry on Climate Finance.

Simon Maxwell is a development economist, with a career spanning fifty years. He worked for ten years overseas, in Kenya, India and Bolivia, for UNDP and the British aid programme, then for fifteen years at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. From 1997-2009, he was Director of the Overseas Development Institute, the UK’s leading independent think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues. He has recently been Executive Chair of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, Chair of the European Think Tanks Group, and a Specialist Adviser to the International Development Select Committee of the UK House of Commons. Simon is a past President of the Development Studies Association of the UK and Ireland. In 2007, he was awarded a CBE for services to international development. For further information, see www.simonmaxwell.eu.

P. K Anand is a full-time Visiting Fellow at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS). He was previously a Senior Consultant at NITI Aayog, working on the SDGs, Appraisal of the 12th Five-Year Plan etc. Before his retirement from the Indian Administrative Service, he served in the State Government of Rajasthan, and was Senior Adviser, Planning Commission of Government of India (GoI) heading Development Monitoring & Evaluation Organization, and handling work related to several Ministries. He holds M.Sc. in Physics and Economics (LSE), and a PhD in Economics.

Sabyasachi Saha is Assistant Professor at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi. He obtained his Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.A. in Economics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi at the Centre for International Trade and Development (CITD). As a Ph.D. scholar he received the WIPO Prize, DAAD funded junior fellowship for research in Germany, and Government of India Travel Award. Previously, he has worked with JNU and ICRIER as senior research staff. Recently, he contributed as a Member of T20 Japan Task Force on Trade, Investment, and Globalisation. His areas of expertise include innovation economics, technology, international trade, and industrial policy. In the context of the SDGs, he has extensively worked on STI; technology facilitation and transfer; industrial development; resource mobilisation and the role of the private sector.

Navroz K. Dubash is a Professor at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), and leads the CPR Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment. He works on climate change policy and governance, the political economy of energy and air pollution, and the regulatory state in the developing world. Widely published in these areas, Navroz serves on Government of India advisory committees on climate change, energy and air pollution, and on the editorial boards of several international journals. He is currently a Coordinating Lead Author for the national policies and institutions chapter in the upcoming 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2015, he was conferred the 12th T. N. Khoshoo Memorial Award for his work on climate change policy.

TALK BY DR DIPESH CHAKRABARTY
CLIMATE RESEARCH

Watch the recording (above) of a talk on 1 March, 2016, by prominent historian, Dr Dipesh Chakrabarty discussing the emergence of the “Anthropocene” (an epoch when human activities have a significant effect on nature), the implications for how we think about climate change, and the blurring of the boundaries between natural and social sciences.

Dr Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is currently working on two books, provisionally entitled The Climate of History (Chicago) and History and the Time of the Present (Duke).

In the seventh instalment of a monthly op-ed series in the Hindustan Times entitled ‘Clearing the Air,’ Professor Navroz K Dubash outlines five important messages from his recently-released edited book, ‘India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development.’

Headlines this week warned that much of Mumbai and its suburbs could be under water due to climate change-related sea-level rise by 2050. Across India, 36 million people — equivalent to the population of Telangana — currently live below the elevation of an annual average flood in 2050.

This is the latest in a string of dire predictions. An ICIMOD assessment of the Hindu Kush suggests a 90% decline in glaciers through this century could place 86 million people in river basins at risk of food and water insecurity, and affect 10 times that number indirectly. Not all studies are projections. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that warming already experienced between 1981 and 2009 has reduced wheat yields by 5%. Emergent “attribution” science finds that a number of extreme weather events — floods, droughts, and heatwaves — in South Asia are partially attributable to human-induced climate change.

While the exact contours of the future are hard to predict, there is little doubt that climate change carries huge, negative implications for India. While India has historically, and justifiably, focused on our immediate development concerns — eradicating poverty, providing jobs and livelihoods, enhancing access to energy services — it is increasingly clear that climate is salient to development. There is no longer a pathway to development innocent of climate change.

The Indian policy conversation has to shift decisively from whether to address climate change to how to do so, but as part of a larger development challenge. A new collection of essays, India in a Warming World (full disclosure: I edited the volume), brings together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore this question. At least five important messages emerge.

First, to recognise the interplay between climate and development, it is useful to take a sector-by-sector approach, and apply a “multiple-stressors” and “multiple-objectives” framework. Thus, for water, climate change is an additional stressor that can exacerbate existing stressors of urban development, industrial pollution, water-intensive cropping, and land-use change. And the objectives toward which we must manage and harness water are not just climate resilience, but also fair distribution, ecosystem flows, and economic efficiency, among others. This approach helps maintain the balance between development and climate, while accounting for the complexities of sectoral challenges.

Second, this approach can help identify clear areas where there are synergies, and where trade-offs exist, between development and climate objectives. An example of synergies include public transport, which promotes liveable cities and reduces air pollution. Greater efficiency in energy and water use also addresses multiple objectives with no trade-offs. Focusing on adaptation in vulnerable areas such as coastlines also bring large pay-offs. However, an example of a trade-off is the shift to commercial cooking energy such as gas, which brings enormous development gains, but may have climate downsides; in such a case, development imperatives have to be paramount. Fortunately, there are likely far more instances of synergy than trade-offs.

Third, climate change provides an opening, and even an imperative, to look beyond short term fire-fighting to longer term strategic visions of India’s development pathway. For example, the United Nations climate process requires India to produce a “mid-century strategy”. Given that we are locked into some warming, investing in climate adaptation is paramount. But we can also use this process to reflect on the viability of our current development path that has resulted in toxic air and unsustainable waters, quite aside from climate impacts. It also allows us to explore opportunities to remake our electricity sector, and take advantage of recent decline in renewable energy costs to build a competitive low-carbon economy. Climate change provides an opportunity to strategically reflect on both shortfalls and opportunities and set a course correction.

Fourth, these approaches require a high degree of analytical capacity, coordination ability, and strategic intent in climate governance. India will have to do better than thinly staffed climate “cells” in various ministries and departments. Emergent climate institutions need to engage more fully with researchers, develop coordination mechanisms across departmental silos, transcend the separation across national, state and local levels, and create bodies, perhaps akin to a National Security Advisory Board, to chart a strategic course. To understand climate and development in its complexity, make the right trade-offs, and be strategic, India requires improved governance and enhanced institutions.

Finally, climate diplomacy remains important, but with a dual function. Historically, India has focused on ensuring equity in climate outcomes. This remains important, especially as pressures for mitigation action grow with evidence of the scale of climate impacts. But equally, as a deeply vulnerable country, India has to push vigorously for more and more effective, global action on reducing emissions. India should strive to transform global climate politics in response to growing urgency, rather than being content being a relative leader in a class of laggards.

Navroz K Dubash is a Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, and the editor of ‘India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development.’ This is the seventh article in a monthly op-ed series in the Hindustan Times entitled ‘Clearing the Air.’ The original article, which was posted on November 2, 2019, can be found here.

Read more in the Clearing the Air series:

India needs environmental governance
Green industrial policy is a timely idea for India to explore
Our clean air plan is a missed chance
Can India grow now and clean up later? No, it can’t
How to avoid the middle income trap
Existentialism with Equity: The Climate Dilemma

Watch the full video (above) of the webinar on ‘Closing the Enforcement Gap: A Practice Guide for Environment Justice Paralegals’ moderated by Manju Menon from CPR.

The webinar is a guide to the lessons from four years of work done by paralegals in India to assist affected communities to seek legal and administrative remedies in over 150 cases of non-compliance, as well as learnings from colleagues working on these issues in Africa and Asia. The guide includes vivid case stories and pictures of paralegals in action. The full guide can be accessed here.

The webinar discusses the Practice Guide for Environmental Justice Paralegals and elaborates on how paralegals and communities can use the law to address environmental harms.

Click here to access the note on the methodology and here for the same note in Hindi.

Find the translation of the paralegal practice guide in Hindi, Gujarati, Odiya, Kannada, Indonesian Bahasa, and French.

The Mormugao Port is located at Vasco bay in the Mormugao taluka of Goa at the point where the Zuari river meets the Arabian Sea. This region is home to thousands of fisherfolk from the Karvi community who live along the beaches of Mormugao, Salcete and Tiswadi talukas. It is a natural harbour that provides safe haven for ships and fishing vessels during storms, like it did in 2017 when cyclone Okchi hit this coast. The lives and livelihood of these fisherfolk are intrinsically linked to the activities of Mormugao port as they have had to share their customary livelihood areas – the sea and the beaches – with the port. This has resulted in them competing for space for their daily activities like fish landing, boat parking, net mending, and even housing with the port and its infrastructure development on the landward side, and competing with larger shipping vessels for navigation space and access to certain parts of Vasco bay.

The Mormugao Port was commissioned by the Portuguese in 1885 and over many years developed 5 berths for import and export of oil, cashews, wine, iron ore, etc. Iron ore export gained importance after 1948. After liberation in 1961, the Mormugao Port was declared a Major Port by the Government of India in 1965. It was after this that major infrastructure developments began at the port and by 1994, the port had built its 11th Berth and soon after this coal handling began in earnest. Mormugao Port Trust (MPT) is now one of India’s oldest and largest ports with 11 berths of which 6 are leased out to third parties. The port handles cargo like coal, iron ore, woodchips, steel coils, gypsum, bauxite, ammonia, other dry bulk, petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL), and also services cruise ships.

In March 2017, it came to light that the MPT was in the process of seeking environment clearance (EC) for three proposals to expand and modernise its existing facilities. Residents of Vasco and the fishing villages around the site realised this when notices for public hearing under the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification of 2006 were issued in local newspapers. Of these, two proposals were for coal handling capacity enhancement and modernisation of existing Berth 5a 6a and Berths 8 & 9 and barge berths respectively. This was despite long standing resistance from the people of Vasco da Gama in Mormugao taluka and other citizens of Goa against coal handling and resultant pollution.

It was in this backdrop, that a community led groundtruthing study was initiated in April 2018 by Old Cross Fishing Canoe Owners Co-op Society Ltd, Baina Ramponkar, Fishing Canoe Owners Society, Destierro Fisherman Association – Vasco, Goenchea Raponkarancho Ekvott (GRE) and the Centre for Policy Research (CPR)-Namati Environmental Justice Program with support from concerned citizens of Vasco and the Federation of Rainbow Warriors. Impacts that community members were facing due to coal handling at MPT were identified through multiple discussions and the main issues that emerged were:

Increased coal dust in the homes and other areas near the port as a result of open coal handling at the berths, open transportation by trucks and wagons.
Respiratory issues like asthma attacks especially in children and the elderly.
Water pollution from spillage during transport of coal through waterways in barges and washing of barges. Runoff from the stockyard into Vasco bay was also cited, where the fisherfolk of Kharewado, Baina and Desteiro primarily go fishing on a daily basis.
Threat of eviction of fisherfolk living along the beaches abutting MPT in Kharewado, Baina and Desteiro areas for expansion of port activities and road connectivity.
This grountruthing study is also an attempt by the affected community members to understand the environmental impacts of these berths, link them to the regulatory requirements and push for the compliance of the same.

The findings of the study can be accessed here.

Janabhivyakti, the Centre for Policy Research-Namati Environmental Justice Program and Oxfam India have jointly conducted a groundtruthing study of environmental violations in the Bodai-Daldali bauxite mine located in the Kabirdham district of Chhattisgarh. A groundtruthing study is the process of comparing the facts as mentioned in official documents with the impacts being reported by affected communities.

The methodology included undertaking group discussions with the affected communities. During the group discussions, impacts which the communities were facing were discussed first. This was followed by brief discussions on the various laws and institutions which are available for dealing with impacts arising out of environmental violations.

Based on that, the major observations of this study were:

Prevalence of dust pollution due to transportation of uncovered trucks, blasting and drilling.
Poor status of land reclamation and afforestation of reclaimed land.
Non-compliance with health and safety of the workers engaged in mining operations.
Incomplete and inadequate process of Rehabilitation and Resettlement.
These were also confirmed by government reports and independent research studies. These reports and studies date back to the year 2007, and some of the impacts have been in existence since the beginning of the mining operations, and have been recorded in the aforementioned reports.

The full groundtruthing report can be accessed here.