Sunita Narain, is a leading environmentalist from the country since 1980s and currently serving as the director general for the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi. She was also recently ranked among the world’s 100 most influential people by the TIME magazine. In an interview with me, Narain speaks her heart out on several alarming issues. Excerpts from the interview:
By-Manish
Kumar
Your
recent book titled ‘Why I should be tolerant’ has now hit the market. How an
environmentalist turned into an author?
Sunita: This book is has in making since I
joined CSE in early 1980s and started travelling to villages. The book is a
learner's efforts to understand environment in India, and environmentalism of
poor. Being the editor of Down To Earth (a magazine on environment), I
regularly share my experiences/observations with readers. This book is an
outcome of all these being put in one place with a central message: we need to
be tolerant to be sensitive to environmental issues, affecting villages to
global developments like negotiations on climate change. Recently the debate
over environment has become very polarised; those who talk about environment
has been termed as anti-development. On the other hand the rich countries in
the world have already put off any discussions on compromising their emissions
resulting from their life style to save the earth. They want the developing
countries like India to also commit when they are the historic culprits. My
book has come at this time just to make this public.
You and CSE have often exposed major and rampant
malpractices in food safety. Do you think after raising the issues
like presence of pesticides in cold drinks, carcinogenic elements in breads
among others brought tangible changes in terms of policy
modification?
Sunita: Yes, certainly. There
are quite a few policy level developments. For example, antibiotics are getting
much more attention than earlier. We have standards for honey already, and
other animal products are now the focus of food authority. Junk food
availability at schools is to be regulated. Energy drinks are now
called caffeinated drinks. Stringent limits are set for Trans fats. Pesticide
management has received greater attention. We have standards for its residues
in packaged water and soft drinks. Even in the latest case of bread, the food
authority declared to ban potassium bromate.
Do you think after the formation of FSSAI, food regulation in
the country has become more stringent and regulated?
Sunita: Our laws that regulate food have
improved to a certain extent. Focus has shifted from adulteration to
contamination. However, we are still far from global best practices in terms
ensuring safe food. What is unfortunate is the inadequate implementation of
those laws. We have limited infrastructure and resources to support it.
According to state-wise data, unlike other states Orissa food
safety department fined only one defaulter against 112 detected cases of
adulteration/misbranding in 2015. Do you think such lax attitude can give free
hands to defaulters
Sunita: In general, provisions in law for
heavy fines and stringent punitive measures are an important aspect of
enforcement. It should act as a deterrent.
Bhubaneswar has bagged the 1st rank in the list
of first 20 smart cities in India? How capable you think the city is to become
smarter?
Sunita:
I think being getting that rank,
Bhubaneswar city has also the huge responsibility to define what is a ‘smart
city’. Let's be clear, there is no agreed definition of a smart city. Very
loosely it is seen as a settlement where technology is used to bring about
efficiency in resource use and improvement in the level of services. All this
is needed.
Bhubaneswar
doesn't seem to be different from other Indian cities in their enormous
challenges of urbanisation. But before we can bring in smart technology, we
need to know what to do with it. How do we build new cities and repair groaning
urban settlements to provide clean water to all, to manage the growing
mountains of garbage, to treat sewage before we destroy our rivers and to do
something as basic as breathing without inhaling toxins? It can be done. Take
water, sewage, mobility or air pollution. The current model of resource
management, developed in rich Western cities, is costly. It cannot be afforded
by all. Even these cities cannot rebuild the paraphernalia for providing
services to their people. This system was built years ago, when the city had
funds and grew gradually with recurring, high investment. Even if we were to
build greenfield cities, we cannot wish for such investment. We need a new
approach to humane urban growth.
The
first principle in this is to accept that we have to renew what already exists.
Take water, for example. Our cities have been built to optimise on the
available resources. They were smart in building lakes and ponds to harvest
every drop of rain. This ensured that the city recharged its water table and
did not face floods every time it rained. We need to revive that system,
Bhubaneswar has similar experiences with its urban water bodies. It may not be
adequate to meet the growing needs of the city, but will cut costs by reducing the
length of the pipeline and bring down distribution losses. Once we do this, we
should add the smartest technology for measuring supply and for reducing
demand. I can't judge whether Bhubaneswar is ready to hold this tag; but I can
say for sure that the city has the opportunity to reinvent urbanisation and can
emerge as an example.
What are the major environmental problems Orissa in
large and Bhubaneswar in general are facing which could prove as a hurdle to
a sustainable city/state?
Sunita: Orissa in general has all the
environmental problems that haunt the whole country. The state faces regular
disasters which anyway wouldn't have been around. But only if we could learn
from our earlier experiences.
Orissa is also known for mining. Some experts of mining claim
that more mining could led to more dividend to states and
Centre. Do you think this could really help the states or actually it
could do more harm than good?
Sunita:
The hyped phase of targeting mining for
prosperity is over; the state I am told is probing huge scandals over illegal
mining and communities like in Niyamgiri have shown us that we can't take
unilateral development decision. I don't have access to exact data to show
whether mining has helped the state but my assessment is that the state in a
wrong way pursued the agenda of mining that backfired. The state has lost the
confidence of the local communities who inhabit the mining areas.
Many states still grapple with paucity of energy despite some
solutions like renewable sources of energy being now available. Do you think
many states have failed to tap the power of renewable energy sources?
Sunita: You are correct in saying that
India has a lot of untapped potential for renewable energy, but it would not be
fair to say that the country is not developing these sources. Currently, India
has an installed capacity of around 43 giga-watts(GW), out of which wind is
around 27 GW and solar power around 7 GW. States like Tamil Nadu and
Maharashtra contribute the maximum to wind power development and Gujarat and
Rajasthan lead the solar power capacity.
As
far as wind power development is concerned, it started to happen in late 90s
and 2000s. This is reason for significant development in this sector. But the
turbines installed at that time were shorter in height and lower in capacity,
so the areas which had great wind potential, the turbines installed were of
smaller capacity. Today with advancement of technology, we have single turbine
with upto 3 mega-watts of capacity and have the opportunity to tap potential
much better.
Solar
development started in India with the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission
(JNNSM) in 2010. So the development of 7 GW in a small period in itself is an
achievement. But given the ambitious targets and huge amount of solar capacity
in the pipeline, our capacity in solar is going to increase manifolds in the
coming years.
Is there any barrier in India in terms of geography/ cost factor
when it comes to adopting to renewable sources of energy? Why the
renewable sources of energy still not been utilised properly in the country in
bigger ways.
Sunita: Cost of renewable energy has always
been the major impediment for its development in the past. But the things are
changing. Solar capital cost has reduced around 70 per cent in the last 6 years
mainly due to cheap Chinese solar panels flooding the market and economies of
scale achieved by increasing installation. The cost of generation has also
fallen below Rs 5 per unit for solar projects, but it still has to prove its
sustainability.
Wind technology on
the other hand is a fairly developed and matured technology. Innovations in the
field have lead to increase in the estimates in potential.
I
think the premise itself that the renewable energy development is not happening
in the country is not true. India has announced ambitious targets of 175 GW of
renewable energy to be achieved by 2022. 100 GW of solar and 60 GW of wind
power might look like a farfetched dream but the government has been supporting
the sector in myriad of ways. Uday Scheme for financial restructuring of
discoms, the draft electricity act, the draft renewable energy act, investments
in green energy corridors are some of many initiatives by the government.
Droughts often play havoc in the lives of farmers and many end
their lives due to agranian issue. Do you think drought i.e an environmental
condition ruins their lives or this is due to faulty policies?
Sunita: Our magazine Down To Earth has many
times reported drought and other disasters in the state. My assessment is that
drought is not caused by deficit monsoon but a deficit planning to
drought-proof the state has made the situation a crisis. With over 1300 mm
annual rainfall, why a state should suffer from water scarcity. It means
the state has put in place the mechanism to harvest water. Orissa has a rich
heritage of water harvesting; Kalahandi region used to be irrigated decades ago
solely by traditional structures. But now you look at, the region has chronic
drought with all the traditional structures being ignored.
Also,
deforestation causes water to run away faster; the traditional water harvesting
structures would have helped in capturing this.
