Getting the Goods

India’s national sustainability strategy

Rajat Chaudhuri

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India’s National Strategy on Sustainable Development is still under development, but the country’s long list of regulations and legislations make use of several policies from the sustainable production and consumption toolkit to achieve conservation and development-based targets and goals. However, these policies are not used or implemented in an integrated manner.

For instance, certain municipalities (local governments) use taxes to conserve water and prevent waste. The national government encourages energy-efficient technologies and non-conventional energy technologies using tax concessions, 100% depreciation allowance, and investment technologies. Regulations pertaining to reuse/recycling, green accounting programmes, and environment impact assessments do exist, but they are fragmented and implementation is poor. India has developed an indigenous ecolabelling programme, the Ecomark, but it has not been successful.

Advertising reform has been ongoing, due to pressure from civil society, but the focus is not on sustainability per se, but on the broader issue of misleading advertisements and advertising of harmful products.

In addition, the National Policy on Education provides for the inclusion of environment as an integral part of the curriculum at all stages of education.

These policies are not part of an integrated strategy on SPAC. Instead the responsibility has been spread around many government bodies and is being enforced through fragmented laws and regulations that separately address the various components of the issue separately. Thus, policies, programmes, and legislation address water, air, and noise pollution; environmental regulation; eco labelling; hazardous substance management; sustainable agriculture; freshwater management; waste management; sustainable tourism; energy; and transportation—but the they are disconnected, competing with each other for scarce implementation resources.

Sustainability efforts in Calcutta

Southern Initiatives (based in Calcutta, India) is a research- and advocacy-oriented civil society group that deals with these and other issues at the grassroots and policy levels. Some recent projects include:

Mega-tourism sustainability review in Sunderbans region

The Sunderbans coastal mangrove forest region is a 9,630 square kilometer area of shared by two South Asian Countries, India and Bangladesh, of which roughly 40% falls within Indian borders. This initiative focuses on the traditional rights of the fisherfolk of the area. In cooperation with DISHA (Society for Direct Initiative for Social and Health Action) and other organizations, Southern Initiatives organized an advocacy meeting calling for:

• Restoration of traditional fish-drying rights of fisherfolk in the Jambudwip island in the Bay of Bengal; and
• Greater transparency in environmental impact assessment studies for a mega-tourism project being implemented by the Sahara group—one of the biggest business groups of the country.

Kolkata Environmental Improvement Project

This five-year project of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and other agencies aims to improve the environment of Calcutta, reduce poverty through affordable access to basic urban services, facilitate community empowerment through a participatory process, etc. The project is to include a stakeholder consultation process, sewerage and drainage improvement, solid waste management, slum and canal improvement, implementation assistance, and capacity building. Southern Initiatives is providing field-level support services and awareness building inputs to TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) in this project.

Trade and globalization awareness building

Both individually and in collaboration with its partner organization CRAIC (Consumer Research Action and Information Centre), Southern Initiatives is involved in eastern India in awareness building activities on trade and globalization issues.

Films on sustainable development success stories

Southern Initiatives, in collaboration with women documentary filmmakers, is in the process of developing a package of sustainable development success stores for wider dissemination and awareness.

South Asian environmental media pool

Southern Initiatives has also developed a project to create a pool of environmental expertise within the South Asian media, which will report dispassionately on issues, and analyze and argue with authority. The long-term objective is to initiate the first steps in the development of a culture of environmental reporting in the media in South Asia that will help create an environmentally conscious population.

—By Rajat Chaudhuri, Secretary, Southern Initiatives

For more information, contact:

Rajat Chaudhuri, Secretary
Sunandan Roychowdhury, Asst Secretary
FE 364 Salt Lake City, Flat 4/2
Kolkata 700 091
India
Tel: +91-33-23347709
Fax: +91-33-28590079
Email: gandhara@vsnl.net