'India lacks a holistic approach in dealing with environment'

Environmentalist Harjeeth Singh remarked that conservation schemes in the country have taken a back seat, in the present development policy of the government and claimed that a holistic approach is needed with the 'nature' at the centre of development.

New Delhi: Environmentalist and ActionAid International's Global Climate Lead - Harjeeth Singh on Friday, criticised the conservation schemes of the present government and stated that a holistic approach was required when dealing with environment-related issues.

Speaking to ETV Bharat, Harjeeth Singh said that a lot of buzz had been created around such conservation schemes, but the ground reality was completely different.

"Union Environment Ministry launched schemes for clean air, including the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) alongside real-time monitoring systems (set in place). However, the improvement in the quality of air is not seen. We could have reduced the pollution to a great extent in the last five years" he added.

Speaking about the river conservation projects, undertaken by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, Singh said that long stretches of Ganga still remained vastly polluted.

"The 'Namami Gange' project is the flagship programme of the NDA government. Only small patches of the river have been cleaned, in the past few years, and industries were closed down during the Kumbh Mela to keep such patches clean. Except for few areas in Varanasi, Prayagraj and other select regions, the river is vastly polluted. The scheme is good but falls short of implementation," he said.

Recently, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari agreed to the fact that only 30 per cent of the work had been done in 'Namami Gange' project.

Speaking about the schemes initiated for promoting the use of Solar energy, Singh gave credits and hailed the government for its approach.

"The government has established an environment to facilitate the use of Solar. Setting a target of 100 GW production is good. Only 30GW energy has been produced until now. But, the momentum is there and the policy framework is positive," he said.

Singh further said that we lacked a holistic approach that was sustainable and took environment to the centre of the development policy.

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