Mumbai:
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) released the results of its environmental survey for the city of Mumbai on Tuesday. The survey has been carried out for six cities, which include, Mumbai, Bengaluru, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai with a sample size of 1010 who were distributed around different age groups, occupation, education and income levels.
The result of the survey was released by Dr. R K Pachauri in the presence of the Chief Secretary of Maharashtra, Mr. J K Banthia. A panel comprising of J K Banthia, Ajit Gulabchand, Chairman of the Hindustan Construction Company, Debi Goenka, Environmentalist and Narinder Nayar, Chairman of Bombay First discussed the results of the survey which through up some interesting statistics.
While releasing the report, Dr. Pachauri said. "We did not go into specific projects because as you can see from the results that were presented, we are really looking at people's attitudes and their perceptions."
According to the survey 35% of respondents in Mumbai saw no change in the number of animal and bird species and around 38% saw no change in the green cover. This figure is likely to please government officials who have been trying to convince environmentalists that the Flamingoes in places like Sewri Mudflats will not be affected by infrastructure projects like the Sewri-Nhava Sheva Transharbour Link. Similarly 88% stated they use public transport. But here is the catch. While 64% use it to save time, 41% use it to reduce cost.
Mr. Debi Goenka, Executive Trustee of the Conservation Action Trust (CAT) while attacking the attitude of developers, said, "Every builder in Bombay calls himself a developer. I would not call most developers builders. I would call them destroyers of the environment."
Hitting out at the confrontational attitude of environmentalists, Mr. Ajit Gulabchand said, "We need to create 300 million new jobs in the next 20 years. I am afraid is going to bring environmental issues to a standstill because finally getting jobs is going to be the most important thing."
Explaining how the government always has a difficult task of balancing development with environment, especially when it comes to construction, Chief Secretary J K Banthia said, "The ground realities are that in the two districts of Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri the ordinary persona simply cannot construct his house because you cannot take out any of the soil or material to build your house which you have been doing for 100's of years. So, how do you strike balances out there and it is a major challenge not only for the government but for the people also and for the industry also."
TERI says, it will hold more detailed surveys in the future to gauge the perception of people when it comes environment. However what everyone agreed on was the fact that it cannot be environment vs. development. Development has to take environmental concerns into consideration was the refrain of the day.