This World Environment Day, a vigilant band of young eco-conservationists of the metropolis reflect on the lessons learnt this past year and focus on the road ahead to strengthen the battle to protect the capital’s greens.
The past year has seen a rise in concrete structures developing, and creating awareness about how the greenery and eco-system has been pushed to the brink is a key priority on each green-warrior’s agenda.
Anupama Gupta, DU graduate and activist, says, “In the name of development there has been immense damage to the green cover of the city in the past year and ensuring that this isn’t an ‘irreparable loss’ is our primary concern.”
Young turks who have taken up environmental causes are concerned about the Yamuna and how it has been treated as the capital’s sewer for very long. Yes, some respite has come with the ban on hazardous polythene, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.
Hansa Makhijani, journalist, quips, “Good to see some efforts being made in the past year, like banning plastic bags. But these are baby steps, at the rate at which we are damaging the environment, we require leaps to make things better for our planet.”
This being the CWG year, the city expects to see a lot of changes happening. And Govind Singh, Ph.D student of Delhi University and founder of Delhi Greens, an NGO that works towards sustainable development, stresses that ensuring that the development is not just from the CWG point of view and the government’s vision isn’t myopic is important.
“We had hosted the Delhi Youth Summit on climate in 2008 and at that time a youngster believed that climate change was more of a Western concern. So, we began by creating awareness on ecological issues and as the media picked up climate change as a major concern, youngsters today realise how this impacts us and are acting towards it,” Govind says, adding, “This year our plan of action is to watch the green topography increase and see green politics develop.”
Youngsters don’t just limit green initiatives to planting saplings and protesting against deforestation. Ankita Gupta, President of GGSIPU-SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise), is part of the university’s community outreach project that combines social development with green initiatives. Their ‘Go Green’ project targeted women from the slums in Jahangirpuri and taught them to manufacture cloth bags that are an alternative to hazardous polythene and non-woven bags and trained them on quality, financial and ethical aspects of manufacturing.
Ankita informs, “Seventy students have worked on this project, which has been on for the last two years. We first worked at creating awareness among them with the help of street plays and then we trained women to manufacture environment-friendly cloth bags.” She hopes more such projects that address environmental concern and build social enterprises develop soon.