ETV Bharat / bharat

'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.

'India lacks a holistic approach in dealing with environment'

India lacks a holistic approach in dealing with environment: Climate Expert

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Published : Apr 19, 2019, 7:50 PM IST

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.

India lacks a holistic approach in dealing with environment: Climate Expert

"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.

Read: CPI(M) releases manifesto, promises reservation in private sector for SC/ST

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.

India lacks a holistic approach in dealing with environment: Climate Expert

"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.

Read: CPI(M) releases manifesto, promises reservation in private sector for SC/ST

A REVIEW OF MODI GOVT'S ENVIRONMENTAL WORK INCLUDING THE NAMAMI GANGE PROJECT
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As the five year tenure of the Narendra Modi led BJP government ended, the opposition parties during the 2019 election campaign rallies are taking a dig at a lot of ambitious projects which were announced by the Modi government but haven't quite lived up to the expectations. ETV Bharat spoke to renowned environmentalist and global lead of ActionAid internarional, Harjeet Singh on various environmental issues including the much vaunted Namami Gange project.
"During the tenure of Narendra Modi government, several schemes had been announced and some projects for solar have been implemented. There have been certain setups for adaptation funds but overall the situation is very bad and environment has gotten more eroded in the last few years" Singh said speaking on the work of NDA government.
The environment ministry in particular has been called out by a lot of environmentalists and critics for doing more gimmicks than work. An example of this could be the much hyped "e-crackers" that the Science and technology and Environment minister Harsh Vardhan announced before the last Diwali. But the reality was that they were not made available in market and subsequent to the Diwali, the Air Quality Index (AQI) in Delhi rose to around 750+. Singh believed " A lot of buzz is created with a lot of schemes but when we talk about the reality, we see that nothing much is done. As far as air quality index is concerned, we could have achieved much more. The government talks about these things a lot in the manifestos but nothing really happens".
The Namami Gange project was supposed to be the highlight work of the NDA government. In and recent interview to a TV channel though, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari agreed to the fact that only 30% of the work has been done in Namami Gange.
Giving his opinion on the much vaunted Namami Gange project, which was supposed to be one of the highlights of this Narendra Modi government, Singh added" It's a good challenge that the government has taken but my question is why only Ganga? There happen to be other rivers too. Even Ganga River for that matter has only been cleaned in patches in Varanasi, Prayagraj during the Kumbh and some other areas. But overall I feel that the plan has fallen short in implementation."
Another crucial ambition that this NDA government had was of making India a solar power. The government had envisaged certain eco-friendly targets which included generating of 175 gigawatts of renewable energy till the year 2022 and 100 gigawatts of it was supposed to be solar. The Ministry of Science and Technology even went to the extent of saying that by the year 2030, all cars in India would run on solar energy.
"The targets that we have set for the year 2022 for solar energy only 30 GW of it has been achieved and 70 GW still remains so we need to hurry up if we are to match the targets. As far as solar cars are concerned, even the government reduced its targets for the year 2030 from 100 % solar cars to 30% so they probably realised it was not practical" the Global Lead for ActionAid said.
On being fast as to which party's manifesto did he think was the best for environment, Singh said "It is good to see that at least both parties are mentioning about climate change in their manifestos now. The air quality index is really a matter of concern and Congress is calling it as 'National Health Emergency' which is good. The BJP on the other hand says it will reduce 35% it of air pollution till 2024 but that does not seem enough and more should be done".

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