Okay, good afternoon. I want to welcome you back and This afternoon we have a treat for you Please welcome professor Shamma Sulekhar. He has been in our center for many years even before me and he serves on several national and international committees dealing with issues of environment and He's a friend and a mentor for me and it's always a pleasure to be around him and so as I mentioned a little earlier in the morning today that One one and a half hour session may be totally inadequate to kind of cover all the things that We'd like for him to share with us But you know one other time we will See if he can do a pre-recorded session with him and have that be available to you Okay, so please join me in welcoming professor Shamma Sulekhar. Thank you Namaste from Mumbai We are going to deal with the issues surrounding policy and law Especially in the field of environment environmental protection Our country has had the environmental regime from 1974 when the first act Prevention and control of water pollution act of 1974 was promulgated and Implemented in this country And ever since over the period of last 40 years We have had a implementation of the water act and subsequently many more acts were also Past and many more regulations were done subsequently and you have been implemented in this country we will go essentially to the some and substance of the law and regulation in this country and also touch upon what are the policies currently being implemented in this country and And what is the philosophical envelope within which we are operating when it comes to environmental policy or environmental law There could be many things that can be said about environmental policy and environmental law and I'm sure There are many institutions in this country where such type of courses are being taught In IIT Bombay at Center for Environmental Science and Engineering We have a program called as master's intake in environmental science and engineering We also have a MSc environmental science and several other programs in within IIT Mumbai where we have Programs that utilize the law and policy related coursework and We have a course dedicated to environmental policy and law Which is taken as an elective by several people who are pursuing master's or PhD and sometimes even the undergraduate students who are pursuing the Environmental minor and they are editing this particular course so Several things can be said about environmental policy and law but in the interest of time we have very limited time given for this Discussion and therefore I would like to sort of zero in on what kind of strategies for transitioning to the sustainable future Are used worldwide? What are the the leading thoughts in this direction and how in India are we trying to? Transition to sustainability and what is the role of science and technology in that Milu will be discussed. So here as you as you are aware that Water and energy can be taken as one of the Platforms and discuss about the environmental condition and The kind of problems that are faced by humanity all over the world And obviously India is one of the countries where water is a short supply No matter where you go no matter in what season Are you looking at that problem? so if you really want to list the top 10 problems for next 50 years Obviously you you start with energy water food environment poverty terrorism and war diseases education Obviously democracy and population and you can you can imagine that depending upon who you are and how you would like to sort of rank them These 10 issues will come in different sequence Since my focus has been the water I mean environment and Sustainability obviously energy water food and environment have come But do not forget that even the discussion will have to be focused on poverty or diseases or in general on democracy and population and all of them them have implications for environment and all of them have implications for the sustainability so this is going to be basically the the the kind of syllabus that we will be we will be touching upon and I am just saying water and energy here same thing almost similar thing can be said about Air pollution almost similar thing can be said about noise pollution and different kinds of pollution that we can imagine but if you really see you are looking at here a View aerial view of a wastewater treatment plant of a municipality. I Should not be hiding this that this is not an Indian photograph obviously because there are not too many facilities for towns and cities in this country which are treating wastewater to a very high degree and you Will will agree with me that This is one of the major reasons why Our our water courses rivers and lakes and groundwater and even the ocean is getting contaminated I am just trying to show you the different views of a wastewater treatment plant when we teach wastewater treatment plant the the Engineering of it we start with a line diagram and this why you are looking at here is a activated slush plant Which is typically used which used to be typically used for sieveges treatment of sieveges and where there is a there is a Third tank aeration tank followed by a clarifier and we are looking at the view diagram of that There is a separate body of knowledge which addresses how to how to choose technologies for treatment of wastewater or how to Optimize the performance of them That is not the topic for us on hand But I just wanted to tell you that the moment you talk about treating wastewater How can we forget that we are also simultaneously consuming energy? if you really start with and this is a this is a Energy distribution in various components of wastewater and water system left-hand side the deeper Elements are with with respect to wastewater and on right-hand side the lighter elements of it is for drinking water So the basic point that I am trying to show sort of present to you here is that the story of wastewater and story of drinking water Are two sides of the same coin and it is very important to appreciate this because you simply cannot imagine that somebody can Cannot look at the issues of wastewater treatment and then hope that the rivers and the lakes and the ground water will be cleaner And so that very minimum treatment will be adequate for creating a drinking water out of such a resource so story of water wastewater both are two sides of the same coin and If you really see the energy distribution Here it is expressed as per meter cube of water You can see that the transport Of sewage use using the the pipes pipes conduits and and and tunnels Is typically let us say point one six incident point one six kilowatt hour per meter cube whereas the wastewater treatment cost up to ten units of Energy so if you really if you really count the distribution The the the transportation in the in the in the sewage network will will will will will cost 50 times lower amount of energy and Similar thing is also when you want to dispose it to the point of reception again compared to treatment 50 times lower energy will be required for that even treatment of drinking water from when when harvested from City, I mean from the river or from the lake would have much lower Consumption of energy compared to water treatment. So what I am trying to tell you is that we will have to be very very intelligently looking at what are the elements of The water cycle so to speak which cost far more energy for us compared to the the elements Which are for pumping or which are for drinking water treatment. So the wastewater treatment probably stands number one And so many other components are typically 40 50 times lower than the wastewater Obviously climate in geography lack of water systems and infrastructure or inadequate sanitation are some of the important elements If you really want to go for cause a cause Analysis for contamination of water and as you know that the the animal kingdom the birds kingdom and human beings both need Drinkable water and if you really do not have a clean water supply Which is which is which is confirming to the drinking water standards either stipulated by world health organization and incidently those are the standards which are also adopted by India and In certain cases there could be even more stringent standards in certain areas for certain reasons. So those Waters if they are not conforming to the standards stipulated by the local government then it can become a reason for epidemic diseases and Damage to human beings as well as ecosystem So the water crisis Exists essentially in the world not because every time water is not available But most of the times water is available in small quantities, but more importantly the quality of water is not of the adequate Standards 2.6 billion people nearly 40 percent of the world's population Lacks access to sanitation systems that separate sewage from drinking water and Inadequate sanitation and no access to clean water have been highly correlated with the diseases It was true in Mumbai when when pipe water supply came 30 percent of the beds in the hospital Started the remaining empty because pipe water supply was supplied and it is true in a in a in an industrialized world It is true in rural area It is true in in in third world country. It is true in in the the the developed world Clean drinking water is one of the most important Supplies that necessities that we the country who desires to keep to the population World Health Organization estimates that 80 percent of all sicknesses in the world can be attributed to unsafe drinking water and Sanitation and you can imagine that we should be very sensitive that more than half of this country does not get safe drinking water and City of Mumbai also does not have adequate sanitation for more than 50 percent of the population in city Just imagine there are two and a half crore people in city of Mumbai depending on how you count Which we call as Bern Mumbai the greater Bombay you have You have two and a half crore people 1.25 crore people simply do not have proper sanitation and adequate drinking water When they should be getting somewhere of the order of 90 liters per capita per day meaning per person per day They are somehow getting 10 20 30 liters per capita per day in city of Mumbai. So, it's a very big challenge It's a very big problem the leading cause of death in children under five years age Can be related to unclean water. There are about 5000 children dates every day All over the world because of the gastrointestinal diseases, which essentially start because of unclean water water laced with pathogen and water which otherwise will be Rated as not drinkable water is essentially consumed by people without action as many as 135 million people could die from water related diseases by 2020 is the is the prognosis of World Health Organization So what can I tell you drinking water is one of the most important challenges faced by our country and it is there is no There is no I don't have to give any more statistics. You just look around your community And you know the kind of picture which I am showing of the people in suburbs of Mumbai Exactly same pictures you will find in your area also. So this is a very big challenge. So How do we solve the problem of Water and energy put together because as I had shown you the Swedish data that the To treat right kind of water to transport right kind of water takes money to treat sewage and then Dispose it into the legal places also takes money And that money mostly is because of the operating cost is because of the energy consumption Even if one is rich enough to waste money And and and not care about it Many places in our country. We simply don't have energy. So friends It is not just allocating right kind of funds It is also a much larger debate of how do you really look at the resource consumption of of of of a given geopolitical region and in this particular context if you look at the story of water waste water Energy and water both are going hand in hand Therefore the experts all over the world are saying that if at all we want to solve the problem We will have to solve both the crisis together and this is what a small thing that I am going to just present to you in coming four slides what an energy are the two most fundamental ingredients of modern civilization and one doesn't have to say more about it and You The peak water or blue gold Is is generally the generally the terminology people are using when it comes to water consumption or water as a resource to be given to a community Water is needed to generate energy. Everybody knows and energy is needed to deliver water, which I already told you so both resources are limited limiting the the The other and both may be running short and and as we go more industrialized as we are giving More and more resources to people to consume Obviously the water footprint and energy footprint of those resources also is going to be larger So the crisis is going more hewire not under control until we do something very intelligently based on the the public policy based on the awareness based on the right kind of Legislation and regulation and obviously based on the careful use of those resources. So there are many elements of the the crisis management 3 to 4 percent of electricity is consumed in the US only for conveying and treatment of wastewater and you really you really are looking at a very huge consumption and The 30 to 40 percent of total energy consumed in a given municipality is related to the drinking water and wastewater utilities run by the municipality and You know that although you municipality even large municipalities Which are which are which are which are collecting hundreds of crores of rupees in through the taxes from people and it is a large industry and large economic Activity is operated in a given city Even those cities in this country today have a difficulty in paying for the wastewater treatment and drinking water treatment So is there a way out that is the question that we are basically posing to ourselves So water restrictions are hampering solutions for generating more energy Obviously much of the water will have to be brought down to from a great potential where it can become a hydroelectric electric source or where it can become a cooling water in the process of generating power That water probably is not available there This is one end and which is dynamically Related as we say there is the nexus between the energy problems particularly rising prices and These two elements are the non-availability of energy and then the the the escalating prices of energy Generation and and conducting to where the users exist. So it's a it's a very complicated problem So many people have said it. Let me say it myself once again that the next world war will be over water. I agree with the view that is that is Publicized by the World Bank So now the question is what should be our mission So many things can be said a lot of philosophy can be given One can ask a simple question. Is it appropriate? So propriety can be questioned whether you really should be Utilizing so much of energy and things like that So either I can give a polemical talk and try to tell you that you should not be doing I should not be doing we should not be doing what we are doing with respect to water or with respect to environment in general Fortunately in this country We can start our discussion and the Locust Andy is embedded in the Constitution of our country itself and as you know that our country has one of the finest constitutions of the world in Constitution literature and Article 48a which happens to be an amendment to our Constitution, which is a directive principle. I would just want you to sort of concentrate on the the the two provisions of constitution that I am going to Present to you and this is a very important First ball that we need to kick if we really want to jump into deep waters of environmental policymaking and lawmaking the the whole aspiration of a Democratic country especially like India, which you know that is housing nearly 16th of the world's population you know that the law regime the Constitution the policy and the philosophy of people who are consumers and the people who are regulating the nation Have to be concurrent. Otherwise there can be a great mismatch and the and the and the issue Can go out of hand Fortunately, there was an amendment to India's Constitution about 30 40 years ago where the article 48a was inserted Which is called a directive principle. What is the directive principle in the parlance of? Constitution knowledge The Constitution is essentially a bunch of a bundle of a conglomeration of certain cardinal principles that we uphold And we hope that our democracy will be guided by those set of principles. That is essentially the Constitution which Dr. Babasahab Ambedkar wrote it for us and there was a lot of excellent effort by the experts assisting the Commission which was which was which was constituted for writing Constitution Now India's Constitution can be amended from time to time and therefore this directive principle was embedded Which essentially is a direction given by the honorable Constitution to the state. What is the state? Anybody who who is participating in the government governing and and and development and consumption of natural resources national resources Exchequer of government taxpayers money those all are deemed as state I can say without much discussion that probably all the the the the viewers of my presentation Are constituting this larger set of state knowingly and unknowingly I am definitely a part of the state because I am a servant of central government and everything that I do I draw from The public exchange and and and because people pay taxes. I am able to teach. I am able to get my salary And I am able to pay my students and I am able to conduct my research. Obviously, I am a state So what should state do let us understand the state shall endeavor Now this is a language fine as satin and each word is extremely important that that you should like to you would like To pay attention to the state shall endeavor to protect and improve my friends two important terms have come It is an endeavor. It is not an event. It is not one time one act. It is not some Courtesy week it is a continuous effort endeavor to protect and improve two things You should not be happy just by doing something as as one act that my concentrations are below The pollution control levels are assigned to me. Therefore, I am doing enough That kind of stand the government cannot say that everybody is below the the limits prescribed by the Legislative expectation of this country. So that is not adequate The state will have to make efforts to protect and improve the environment this improvement I think is very important thing to to to to imbibe in our mind That the that that and and why do you want to do that to safeguard the forest and wildlife? And this is verbatim that I am giving you of the directive principle Incorporated in our constitution. So what is government supposed to do that? Government or the people who believe that they are state quote-unquote Will have to protect and improve the environment to and with their activities should be aimed at safeguarding the forest and wildlife that is what is the the the directive principle but it is not enough that only state or government or The the local self-government like municipality or Jilla Prasad will worry about Municipal corporation will worry about or a department of environment of the given government will worry about Protection of environment and then everybody else can only be at the receiving and no so the another another Inclusion in in in in our constitution has been the clause on fundamental duty Maybe this is a point to sort of breathe deeply and understand why a time came that fundamental duty clause had to be Incorporated in the constitution from some of you probably know it or may not know it that the original constitution written by Dr. Babasav Ambedkar had the fundamental rights clause only embedded in the constitution why because Dr. Ambedkar believed and the constitution commission believed that the flip side of the coin of the Fundamental rights happen to be fundamental duties that in order to let other person enjoy his or her Fundamental right whatever the second person next person person in front of that person will have to do becomes the the duty of that person and and and which is which is a very good expectation from your colleague From your fellow citizen that you expect him or her to be equally responsible and equally civilized that is what is going to be the the the the Fundamental Right But the the fundamental duty clause had to be incorporated in constitution For for by by the legislative assembly discussion because somehow we did not Prove to be as responsible as somebody else would have wanted us to be and We saw that environment is one element which is continuously neglected Ecosystem is one part of the system which is continuously getting degraded and it is creating a sort of sort of inequality And in unequal consumption which is anti Democracy in this country so as a result the the legislative assembly finally accepted that we will have to Incorporate a fundamental duty clause which is the only duty clause incorporated in our constitution because our environmental and ecological performance has been disaster and and therefore, you know after after 35 years of Independence our country finally decided that we must incorporate Environmental-related fundamental duty and then it states that the fundamental duty of every citizen is to protect and improve The natural environment including forest lakes rivers and by life and to have compassion for all living creatures I guess good I get goosebumps when I when I am saying this to you More than knowledge. We are saying our spirit has to be in right place And we are saying that it is fundamental duty of every citizen in this country again doing the two things for protection and Improvement so my friends it is not expected that you stick to the law, but you also improve the performance Improve the environment through your performance and now it dilated for the benefit of common person common citizenry of our country that the natural environment so we are I am not I am I am bringing your attention to the fact that I am not the constitution is not referring to the The gulab or to Tulsi powder that you have in your balcony or a beautiful lawn You may have outside the the the the building of your residential place or workplace But it is talking about a natural environment and also giving you the examples including Forest lakes rivers and by life why because these are the subsystems of ecosystem that from where you are actually deriving the resources and deriving all the right things for which are required for living meaningfully in this country and therefore these these these systems will have to be improved not only protected But improved and that becomes the mission for the the the common person as well as for the government and and what is expected finally To have compassion for all living creatures So this is it which is which is also termed in the literature the ecological compassion So just like we would say that have the love for your neighbor have the love for fellow Citizen have the love for family members how they live for everybody but more importantly here compassion for all Living creatures is a part of your fundamental duty. So if anybody anybody wants to wants to do something good for environment I know if they must humbly remember that they are simply fulfilling the fundamental duty as a citizen of this country so in order to and and and this amendments came in fact after some of the some of the laws were enacted in this country so what is the sequence First comes some kind of regulation local regulation which you can say local law means the party law you can say that So which is basically What is good for a small region or even a city for example Bombay nuisance act smoke nuisance act Is the mother of the the air pollution and also mother of the environmental legislation in this country So basically somebody said you can't take kuda kachara and simply gel out and create a fire and that kind of thing No, that is not acceptable and Mumbai government was was essentially stopping that kind of activity using the the help of this particular regulation but then subsequently we have had the the water prevention and control of pollution act of 1974 and everywhere in the bracket we have put prevention and control of pollution So you may like to read as prevention and control of water pollution act of 1974 that kind of reading you can make of that title And a short name would be water act So we will just use the water act as a name But I cannot resist the the desire to to show it to you that even the name of the legislation Is asking you to prevent and control pollution. So prevention is equally important as much as control This there is a very important management lesson embedded in the law Why I am I am I am just a simple thing why I am I am highlighting Because when we want to make meaningful discussion on environmental law or environmental policy You cannot simply do that in the void of Ignorance related to ecosystem ignorance related to The various other components of knowledge which we today as called as environmental science or ecological science or Science of living beings. So all that biology zoology all the common sense civic sense All these elements which we have learned in our all schooling Probably in a way are Necessary ingredient of environmental policy making and law making and that is the simple thing that I am trying to mention to you And then you know based on the laws the law statement itself will say That what kind of regulations will have to be developed and and and and passed and then What agencies will be formulated for example, the water act of 1974 created the environmental protection Further path for environmental protection in this country And then the central pollution control board and state pollution control board and minister of environmental forest at the Central government level and similarly department of environment and department of forest Sometimes together sometimes different every state has a freedom, but different different States went the way they liked and and necessarily there is a administration on protection of forest administration on protection of environment and then Concurrent to that you we have the state government laws and the central government laws The for example water act is a central act, but there are there are places where even local Registration is made for example, if you are in Near near Taj Mahal and you would like to protect this national monument The local government has full authority to create a more stringent air act I did not tell you about layer air act So when when when the water waste water was discussed or or regulated with the help of water act of 1974 Obviously a time came when somebody had to also address the problem of air pollution therefore in 1981 the prevention and control of air pollution act of 1981 was was formulated past and there have been hundreds of amendments and modifications and inclusions Additional things put into both these acts which basically water act and air act are the two basic things I was telling you about Taj Mahal now under air act More stringent regulation can be developed for local authorities so that the Taj Mahal can be protected So not that entire country will go for such a stringent regime, but a particular local administration will go for the stringent regime So this is the way the the the the local Government the the the local community as well as the national government and national community will have the power to to to act centrally as well as locally So we have created a very flexible very useful easy to administer envelope we have created in the name of the legislation and regulation Now the legislation itself says that you can develop further more targeted Regulations so to speak which will talk about the more Details and laundry list of what to do what not to do what kind of punishment and who will regulate it how frequently it will be regulated All sorts of all common says question that you can ask are are a part of the part of the regulation So what is the law law is the mother principle that which is going to guide your actions And then it says that now you go ahead and different level different agencies either together or individually will be are are empowered and the mechanism is also specified how to go about and and and implement those Create those regulations and implement them and what agencies will do that and what kind of what kind of taxes and what kind of Income they will have so that they will be able to to to conduct their day to day operations So all those details are in in in in in act and then with the on the basis of that act The the government governance body creates the the structure and creates the the further regulations And what is the pyramid? What is the hierarchy? Which essentially is managing this the union of india obviously central government and state government And they are not two different arms the way it will be seen in the because they are a part of a larger whole That there is a vertical and there is a hierarchy of even horizontal nature That all the states of india will have their own departments of forest and environmental protection And similarly in union government also we have a minister of environment forest and climate change so a central ministry is there in in in in in government and Which has a cabinet minister And which which will which will also sometimes have a state minister depending on the the the requirement And you will have A full ministry working In central government which which which is going to look at environment in in general and then also The ecosystem and and and protection of forest and the moment you say environment and forest Automatically animals water air Everything that you can imagine is incorporated and there are certain central government laws and those central government laws encourage The central government to make further regulations and also allow the local governments to make even more strong and even allow a municipality And a even village administration to go stronger and sort of create more suitable stringent laws further so You obviously have the parliament the minister of environment forest and climate change And you also have the state administration and then below that you have several committees working Now in addition to this and obviously the grievances will have to go to court Now earlier people were going to the local court then they were going to The the the district court or there were sessions court or then they were going they were going to high court And then ultimately if if something is not acceptable in high court They were also allowed depending on the case to go to supreme court Now in addition to that now in order in order to not let the environmental matter get mixed with the the other Court cases and then get delayed and environment is one thing where all the elements are living elements So you can imagine that you know justice delayed would be justice denied Therefore there are there is a fast track mechanism now where the sometimes the expert opinion is extremely required So a committee of expert and legislative I mean and and the and the judicial experts sit together and they form the bench which is called as national green Time in tribunal In marathi we call it and similar names are there in all languages And there are five benches at the moment in the country the principal bench being situated in in in Mumbai I mean in in Delhi sorry in Delhi and with respect to Mumbai The nearest bench for western Maharashtra is in in Pune So what I'm trying to tell you is that there are various benches which are looking at the the the fast track disposal of environment related cases which essentially address the the environment forest and the related legislation essentially And the the the the the court system basically goes by the laws and regulations formulated in this country So please try to understand it is not the job of courts to create laws Court can however throw light through the judgment in a very detailed and in a very thoughtful commentary and the reflection that what may be the limitation of a given provision in a legal or regulatory framework Or or how the certain thing may not jive with the policy on on bold However, you do not have The the the the power with the court to create a law That responsibility is if the related representatives both at the central level as well as the Lok Sabha Rajya Sabha At the central level and also the legislative assembly at a state level So Essentially what what have I told you I have told you that there are there is a There is there there are constitutional provisions in this country Which are directly related to the preservation of natural environment I have also told you that in concurrence with that we have a entire administration at state as well as Central central as well as state level to look at the environmental issues We also have a similarly a very well developed and well established legal system Which gives the justice to people through their supreme court high court and hierarchy and the local level courts hierarchy of the judicial system But also the the green tribunals have been established all over the country so that they are Looking at the environmental cases In a in a in a fast track and in a more concentrated manner where the the the the The combination of subject expert and the legal experts are sitting together and giving the judgments As I have told you that Water and air are not the only two things which are regulated in this country over the period people started finding the need for looking at more Larger picture a bigger picture which in the language of environmental legislation called as umbrella legislation for protection of environment and That act is called as the environment protection act Precisely that is what is the name of the act that it is meant for in general about protection of environment Now when we had air act when we had water act Why are we now talking about environment act because people realize that whatever that goes through chimney of a factory Probably will become the air pollution related act related activity Or then probably they modified subsequently and say that not only what goes out of chimney, but also what comes out of The the the tail tailpipe of a vehicle also should be regulated under air act So that was that became a part of the air act administration, but There were non point source pollution forest fires the The fire in the garbage dump yards or so many other episodic and chronic pollution that we are facing in field of air pollution similar exactly similar discussion can be made with respect to the protection of water and wastewater systems where The wastewater dumped In river will contaminate water resource and bad water resource will will will contaminate human bodies animal bodies And then then there will be disease. So therefore water act was there And whatever that comes out of a tail of a pipe, which is coming out of a factory or coming from a municipal survey treatment plant Was regulated through that but then there is several other non point source pollution such as farm runoff such as such as surface runoff from City or they simply there is there is a lack of city sanitation, which is contaminating surface water and down water in the immediate vicinity. So, how do you really address that so therefore an umbrella is umbrella legislation was created in the name of the Environment Protection Act EPA of 1986 And under that particular act the the the empowering is done for the legislative system the regulatory system to essentially formulate further rules for for protection of a given small subsystem of that larger environmental system. So, essentially there was a there was a new beginning of looking at environmental protection of this country and what was that beginning and that beginning was essentially thinking about what else need to be regulated and how it should be regulated so that environment complete environment will be. So, in other words we not only were looking at environment as a patchwork of a tailpipe of of vehicle here and a sewage carrying pipe or gutter there we were not looking at environment in such a fragmented fashion but then we start took upon ourselves to look at environment as a system as a as a larger whole and then what best should be done with the this environmental system for for for protection was there. But in the meantime parallely many many other elements also were brought under regulation and you have you have for example biomedical ways or you have used batteries how to derive lead and not contaminate the groundwater and and air pollution while while while separating lead from used batteries or how to protect ozone depleting substances I mean environment from ozone depleting substances or how do we protect ourselves from noise or how do we address the issue of municipal solid waste this many many dozens of thing and over 50 new regulations were articulated with the help of a very detailed process in this country where the experts talk to each other first and create a base draft and then the people in walk of life NGOs the civil society in general stakeholders industry the legal experts everybody comes together and then they take a view of on on on that particular draft and then in several times it goes back and forth and then it took takes nearly one year or sometimes even two years to formulate a more thorough regulation on a particular matrix a particular issue and then it goes to go goes to the the the more core experts and more core empowered committee set up by the ministry of environment forest and climate change and then finally it goes to legal law ministry for the the legal wording and that is how the draft is put out and then the draft gets 365 days within 365 days it has to be notified as a as a law and then it is put out again for the all stakeholders and the smaller large groups individuals or groups institution government non-government every even a private citizen in his or her capacity can can look at the draft and communicate his or her opinion to the ministry and then again a committee is empowered committee setup which looks at the details and then finally a a regulation is formulated why I am telling you all this because this is how a a a rule is there so I am not going to entertain somebody tells me oh this is impractical regulation we this is very expensive to do this in our country such a thing does not happen if it is expensive it is already pointed out of a front and accordingly the discussion takes place and we also look at not only India but rest of the world and then we are trying to sort of bring a parity between what is doable what is fair and what is world doing in the name of state of art so we are having parity between all these elements and finally a regulation is finalized. So this is a very very involved process is there of formulating the regulations under various acts but as today as it stands most of the environmental regulation is derived on the basis of power wasted in various agencies under environmental protection act and obviously under the water act and air act but most importantly the environmental protection act and we are seeing now that whatever that we were trying to regulate in water sector water wastewater sector or in air sector far more too many other matrices need to be equally regulated for the integrated protection of environment so instead of taking a piecemeal approach now the regime from 1986 in this country because of the promulgation of the environment protection act of 1986 now we have an integrated protection of environment happening and whatever that is required for that is continuously developed and put out and the pollution control boards in this country essentially are responsible for implementing it there are certain sectors in which even the power is given to local self-government municipality, municipal corporation, jail operation even they have responsibility and that is how the whole governance of environment takes place. But this did not take place for nothing which typically is referred to as a paradigm shift. What is paradigm shift? That paradigm is basically a framework by which you assess a particular change or look at a particular system in a particular from a particular spectacle from a particular viewpoint. I will just present to you the old paradigm versus new paradigm two columns on this particular slide where what was the old paradigm that the countries became rich or poor based on the raw material that they have access to. So therefore, to get a copper or bauxite or cotton or coal many countries the colonial powers in the 100 year old history 150 years old history of this of this planet they have gone helter-skelter from all over the world to grab more raw materials. Why? Because their fast moving looms fast producing looms needed so much of cotton needed a long fiber cotton high quality cotton and that was not that much was not possible to produce within their own farms and their own geographical limitations. They were always worried about what are the today's costs. So generally all the discussion that we hear is that such and such company did well in this particular quarter or this particular financial year. All the discussion about today's cost and then you have the main machine and materials put together in the name of the business and the commercial entities where came in picture and this main machine material interaction produced the product and which was sold in market either locally or internationally and that is how the company started getting profit. So this is the old paradigm of how to manufacture and how to have the economic growth but the new paradigm essentially is talking about not raw material but technology. Today the country which has the best technology for processing minerals to get a particular ore to get high quality steel can go ahead and charge 10, 20 percent more money for even as fundamental as infrastructure related steel like resource. They can charge far more money because they know everybody knows that their steel is better because they are having advanced technology for making the steel. So technology is the determining factor today not the raw material. Now some of the if you just look at the world scenario some of the countries which are making best steel for example Japan. Most lot of raw material lot of the minerals related to steel production is transported from Goa to Japan and many steel mills are operating like that because Japan has highest technology for particular type of steel which they may not have raw material but it is still cost effective for them to import raw material but use their high technology and be successful in the business. So we have shifted the paradigm from raw material to technology. Same thing is about the today's cost to future cost. What are we trying to talk here that if a corporation gets entangled into a breakage of a oil tanker and therefore causing let us say case in example would be the Exxon Valdez in Alaska and in 1988 there was a tanker which ran the accident with a rock and the entire contents of the tanker came out in Alaska and huge oil spill took place. Now the Exxon Corporation who owned this particular tanker and whose oil was being transported that came in such a difficult situation that it was impossible for them to pay for the future cost of the environmental disaster. So corporations have learned ever since that today's costs are important but future costs are even more important because the people who invest in our enterprise will pull out their investment. The people who buy gasoline farmers they will not fill their tanks of their vehicles on our petrol stations and so on and so forth. Same thing was experienced by Union Carbide which was making many, many products but also in oil refining people stopped utilizing their products. So today's cost have now the focus is shifted from today's cost now to future cost and then obviously the first real worry for any enterprise is how the society surrounding that particular factory, that particular business is taking up the products. A corporation which is making baby diapers will worry more about how mothers are seeing their green responsibility, their environmental responsibility while utilizing diapers for their children. If mothers are not happy corporation cannot make business. The immediate surrounding community of a given factory if the tribal people, if the village people are not happy about the factory that factory probably will be asked to relocate just go out of community and it will create, it will face tremendous problem while interacting with the local self-government because society, because the community is not happy about that particular activity. So society plus main machine and materials is the new paradigm that you cannot forget the immediately surrounding society and the aspirations, environmental aspirations of your clients, the people who use your product that has to be put in kept in mind before you regulate, before you conduct your day-to-day business of production and selling the product. Why such a basic paradigm shifting has taken place over the end of 20th century? The basic reason is that the emergence of a new science or a new consciousness which is called as the systems analysis. And it is very complex on one hand. It is quite mathematical oriented, computer oriented, data crunching oriented on one hand. On the other hand it is a very simple common sense concept that you view entire environment, entire earth as a system and then accordingly you monitor and doctor your actions. That is what essentially embedded in the systems analysis. What is the system? Let us define, define is a very strong word, maybe let us describe what is environmental system? Generally the term that we use as a system in English language is essentially true for environmental system. But something far more critical that we need to highlight and remember and take away from this lecture that I am trying to narrate to you that environmental system is that entity which is part of a larger system and it is made up of sub-sub system which further are made up of sub-sub-sub systems. Friends I am not in the business of mincing my words here. I am not just saying add one more sub and one more sub and then go down and down and down. But yeah precisely that is the nature of environmental system. That is something which is a larger entity of which what you are describing is a part then you are really looking at environment system, environment as a system. This is an approach, this is a viewpoint, this is the philosophy with which you are looking at the environmental activity or environmental environmental action.  So, there is immediately a vertical and horizontal hierarchy when it comes to environment and then when you are trying to analyze the environmental system, the systems analyses will give you certain lessons which are extremely germane to your long-term and short-term actions when it comes to consuming resource or approaching a society within which you are operating your activity systems are interconnected not by definition. I am not saying only superficially that because I am telling you that it is made up of subsystem which each is further made up of subsystem no not in that sense that they are truly interconnected all with mass energy and social ethos wise. So, it is a far bigger and for deeper understanding of system that people are trying to have when it comes to resource consumption and understanding environmental system that systems are delicately balanced. So, what are we trying to say here that small tinkering here and there can probably create a lot of change somewhere metaphorically speaking people say are you telling me that a butterfly moves its wings sitting on some tower in a city will bring a typhoon in the city? No not really but more probably because many small seemingly small arguably small changes probably will be responsible for changing the delicate balance of the system and then yeah probably in the larger analysis one would metaphorically say that a wing flapping butterfly can be responsible for a particular typhoon. So, in that sense you have to understand the micro reality connection with the macro reality that is what basically is the point here and the third thing is that systems have direct and delayed responses that something can happen because of your action immediately that you will see in a real time and sometimes it will take delayed response and many years it will take before the things can be set right. For example scientists have proved that if you stop all the acidifying inputs by coal burning while producing the coal power coal based thermal power electric power the real time required for seeing any change in the background the rain water quality will be anywhere between 40 to 365 years. So, if you stop everything today all emissions today then the reason may get the cleaner water in 65 years 60 years. So, what do you have? You have systems having direct response and sometimes delayed response. Now question is how do you socially and politically achieve the change in the system or change in your politics and in your actions so that even the delayed responses are meaningfully addressed I guess that is really the basic question that all environmental policy and law related institutions are faced with it is not a simple and straightforward analysis. What do we really do here we are basically we are basically looking at the system response and we are going to decide our individual actions as well as our collective actions in the right direction where the direction probably will be determined by understanding the systems more deeply. So, what can we do? The need of the hour probably in a in a simpler discussion let us say related to water wastewater develop wastewater reuse and recycle systems after adequate treatment because if you do not treat and if you do not reuse water you will be putting too much of pressure on water resource and contaminating it. So, your ability to treat or not treat your desire to treat or not treat wastewater that is generated by you will ultimately decide the fate of the water resource around you. Wastewater is not a problem but a resource we will have to be understood and treat the waste according to the beneficial uses such as send a particular type of water to agriculture certain higher quality of water probably is required for industry and then you know domestic flushing in domestic applications such as flushing of toilet or gardening will need even simpler quality of water and simpler quality kind of treatment. But at the same time if that water flows in a wrong place where recharging takes place into groundwater if you are not very careful and if you do not understand the geology especially hydrogeology of the region then obviously you will contaminate the groundwater by recharging a contaminated sewage containing pathogen containing water. And you know that lot of discussion nowadays is taking place is that can we afford to leave our riverbeds completely dry and can there be or should there be a base flow in a river and how do we determine how much that should be and what kind of water can we should be put into river that base flow maintain is maintained looking at too much of abstraction of water from a given river you will agree with me that therefore the reuse and recycling of water and treating water to a higher degree probably is going to be in long term in short term it looks expensive but in long term it is going to be quite beneficial. And if you really want to do it with the today's wisdom probably we will not be able to afford such a treatment therefore we will have to identify develop test different type of treatment technologies which are less energy intensive and also are capable of generating alternate energy through biogas and thing like that by digesting sluages and thing like that and be more creative and though more innovative in terms of managing our wastewater. How can we do it obviously that is equally important as what should we do and therefore the basic discussion is about the sustainability of wastewater treatment. So quickly we are talking about the environmental regulation systems this that and suddenly now we are talking about nitigrities of wastewater treatment how come that is where the that is what is the nature of environmental governance and looking at the law policy discussion because you cannot do this discussion in the vacuum of where you do not know about the technology you do not understand the price of the resource and you do not integrate the social feelings with it. Sustainable wastewater treatment is possible whenever you are doing nutrient recovery. So you are you transition from treatment based industry to a resource recovery based industry and which is which will basically give you economic and environmental sustainability. So even what we call as industry or what we call as exploitation of the opportunity for industry will have to be modified and which basically will should be return the nutrients back to the nature and that kind of activity will have to be promoted. So energy production and efficiency and achieving self-sufficiency in wastewater treatment as well as energy is going to be extremely important in coming decades for us and establish sustainable system that integrate that promote integrated management of wastewater, tomwater, drinking water and source water is required. You cannot simply say that it is cheaper for me to put untreated sewage in river. So I am doing good for my municipality you cannot take such a stand because it is against the integrated improvement of the water system. So these kinds of things will have to be discussed. You also have wastewater treatment facilities which treat human and animal ways should be viewed as a renewable source and have the renewable resource recovery from them. So that clean water is obtained on one hand and then you also generate nutrients and require energy from them and this has been the new focus all over the world. The US EPA is advocating it very actively all over the world today and I must tell you very pleasantly that in India lot of such good examples especially on the industry side exist where the integration of water wastewater and energy story is achieved. Sustainable wastewater treatment is possible only when you look at energy demand and energy production. Today you do not have that kind of equation set up in normal treatment facilities but we will have to probably look at the net plant energy equal to energy demand minus energy production and that is what essentially people are talking about making the carbon positive enterprise that every activity that you do you try to save you try to use that kind of technology you try to manage it in such a way that finally the carbon footprint goes down as much we can and that is how they are trying to make it positive carbon positive. Now from this point onwards we need to get into the kind of very important discussion people are making about the zero liquid discharge and the water wastewater scenario of the country like India. You have inadequate water supply and poor water quality all over our country increasing demand for water for domestic agriculture as well as industrial purposes is making situation from bad to worse and available water resources continuously getting deteriorated because you are not able to keep the pace with the treatment versus pollution. We are discharging partially treated or untreated sewages in the water courses. Agriculture and urban runoff is further deteriorating water quality in rivers and lakes. You have increasing water demand because of industry as well as urbanization and the excessive water withdrawal prevents dilution of pollution which otherwise in 30, 40 years ago was taking place in a river or a lake. Today even that natural allowance is not available for dilution. So if you really see the metropolitan cities or the class 1 or class 2 cities depending on the various populations of population limits everywhere you see that the red column is the wastewater generated and the green column is wastewater treated. So no matter whether it is a metropolitan city, a large city or a smaller city or town you have far more wastewater generated than water treated. Now there are two angles to this. Please understand that we cannot say that therefore somebody is not working or somebody is not understanding the problem. See in free India a lot of efforts are made by the government to supply treated water to communities. Now the moment you supply treated water to community you will have equally very high consumption of I mean production of sewage by the community. So if you look at 1979 data versus 1995 data versus 2009 data you will very clearly see that the red column that is wastewater generated is very high because very high quantity of drinking water is supplied today in 2009 compared to 1979 data. So in the period of 30 years huge quantity of drinking water is supplied by government to the community. But what is the flip side of the coin that obviously when you do that you could not keep pace with the treatment of wastewater. Therefore the yellow columns are shorter. Even yellow columns is taller when you compare 30 year data 1979 to 2009. But mind you that the shortfall between the red and yellow is increasing as time is progressing. It means that we are vehemently following the routine of providing drinking water to people but we are not somehow able to manage the creation of wastewater treatment facilities in the same pace. So it is very important that this is the challenge for our generation now to look at. Government has made some effort in creating drinking water facilities for people but now we wish that it also could have created the wastewater treatment facilities and we do not have to blame others but now we have to become smarter and generate better management practices and more sustainable technologies so that this shortfall can be breached. So we have to see a positive thing. So what are the imminent challenges of management of water wastewater resources in this country? Pollution due to disposal of untreated or partially treated sieveges and selages into natural water courses. One of the bigger challenges which is a large thing which came out from the two slides that I have shown based on the government's data published data. And by the way government is very honestly putting this data and very courageously in my opinion putting this data for consumption of people. Now it is up to us how we creatively use this to create a right kind of environment to push innovation to push right kind of things in our community that these all data are drawn from Center for Pollution Control Board's website. Anybody can go and see that you must do that tremendous amount of data sometimes the data are not as good as you wish that they were and it is not convenient for the government to show such a data but this is a sign of good democracy that we are making effort to display such kind of data for consumption of people. So that instead of playing a blame game we try to do some innovation game, some intelligent engineering game, some honest management game we play. There is the second imminent challenge is pollution caused by disposal of industrial wastewater into sieveges and water courses. How do you handle that is going to be a problem. This is my personal opinion please do not see this as a some gospel truth in this. This is my personal opinion that today the way we are managing the wastewater story in this country or drinking water water resource story in this country is basically an upside down pyramid and you know everybody knows that nobody who is around upside down pyramid can be very happy because this is not a stable situation. One usually encountered solutions to treat the sieveges and wastewater to regulatory standards in today's scenario and then dispose them off into receiving bodies and which we call as a legal activity and then we say that we will put 30 milligram COD or 100 milligram COD or what have you 100 ppm SPM we will put into the water body like river or lake and there are legal bodies which are approved by the pollution control administration and then you put into that and when you do that you are if the standard is 30 you are 29 you feel happy that I am below standard but remember the fundamental duty clause of the constitution as well as the directive principle that you cannot be happy until not only you protect but you improve the environment and this is not really jiving with this approach is not jiving. So the in my opinion and many people share my view that the other less favored solution but must be followed solution is to treat the sieveges and wastewater to a much higher standard so that the less so that the the less water will have to be disposed of but more water probably get comes into reuse recycle regime and do not think that government does not know or regulatory agencies are not agreeing with this in fact they are very much agreeing with this therefore they are doing their normal function that they are making the wastewater treatment regulation more stringent on one hand at the same time they are supporting the recycle reuse oriented technology several financial breaks and encouragement is being given by one local government to be able to achieve that and the distributed long distance satellite cities and suburbs actually are going for more recycle reuse oriented and government is very conscientious about increasing their efforts in this direction. So this is a a kind of new understanding you can say in last 10 15 years people are talking about this kind of thing so reclamation of wastewater for recycle and reuse is a new horizon in last 10 years in this country and several several people are the new and assured water source and reduces pollution and natural water reservoirs these are the two basic benefits that people would like to sort of so to speak enjoy or have. So what are the three mantras reuse recycle and reduce these are the three things that people are talking about doing nowadays with respect to water wastewater the how what exactly will you get if you do that well one of the basic advantages would be that I will be able to give you 24 by 7 water supply how about that so today we are not able to do that because we simply do not have enough water we are not sure when it will come or when it will not come but we can really achieve that by giving 24 by 7 water supply. So there will be a smaller pipelines there will be pressured there will be no cross contamination so there are a thousand benefits that you can get if you are smarter in terms of managing the so what I am trying to say that something to make a rule is one thing but really make enabling implementation of that for more smart technology for more innovative approach for more honest and bold implementation and management I think are the things together. So the legislation regulation enterprise cannot become successful if you are not really not really doing that and the reducing cost of wastewater treatment has to be constant effort because India is a very large country and too much of money is required to achieve that just to give you a small it may sound like a digression to you but within 30 seconds I assure you that you will realize how large we are compared to any other country that you know of obviously barring China so but even the India situation if you see how many villages do we have okay I will tell you later how many cities do we have like Mumbai type cities hello how you count 2022 25 up tops 30 in even if you count what is going to happen in coming 10 years there are 30 mega cities or metropolis like Mumbai are there in the country but a story is not over nearly 5% population is staying in that that remaining 95 I am going to tell you where it is so only 5% population at the moment is there now there are other places which are larger but not as large as Mumbai those places are nearly 500 and those are those are really very large cities no doubt but even there is a second tier which is smaller of the order of 50,000 population 1 lakh population that range there are 7000 of those those are called urban centers in legal language but forget about legal language what is urban center where 75% people are associated with the non-agriculture activity so there are 7000 such centers in our country so what did I tell you 25 30 large large cities 500 large cities and 7000 slightly smaller than those by the way many many famous and very big cities of the world are of the order of those 7000 so you should not think that the 7000 is very very small but still I have only counted 40% of India 60% remaining these are the India lives in her villages this is not what Gandhi said but even today planners are saying that which was true when that time 85% people was living in villages so Gandhi said India lives in her villages but that statement statistically is true even today after 65 70 years of independence that India still lives in her villages continues to live in her villages 60% of the people are staying in our villages how many villages not 7000 500000 half a million 5 lakh 5 lakh people villages are there in this country which are having population of the order of sometimes it is just 100 people 500 people to 5 to 5000 people typically this is the range so we have application of technology to be made not only in Mumbai but also those 500000 villages in our country so therefore reducing cost of wastewater treatment is going to be another strategy that you will have to adopt if you really want to make the regulation and and and and sustainability of water resources in this country and by the way exactly same discussion analogous points similar type of statistics and same conclusions you will arrive at if you want to upgrade the quality of air in this country and if you want to really make this city more available and if you really want to have the desirable extent of forest cover and if you really want to have the desirable extent of biodiversity protection in this country come what may we will have to probably do exactly same thing therefore I am just running one discussion on water wastewater but analogous results analogous issues are there even other other subsystems of and I am aware that you have had probably half a dozen of lectures touching upon the air pollution and analogous issues and therefore I am sort of giving more emphasis on water here but you can recall in those lectures also you talked about the the scale of pollution local regional and global and same exactly issues are there with respect to water also so what are the what are the immediate actions that we need to do that ill afforded expensive things we should not do we have to probably do a more sustainable wastewater treatment and which is which is which is which does not need very heavy machinery which is capital intensive which is not capital intensive and which is not energy intensive and which rely upon smaller chemical inputs and thing like that so that is the kind of thing that we will have to do and well this is my opinion I am telling you what is appropriate and there are extremely good people in the world and even in India who are now searching and articulating what is called as appropriate the predominant line of thinking is that low cost with minimum possible mechanization simple in operation sustainable for incremental improvement and recycle and reuse oriented technologies generally are appreciated no matter what definitely water wastewater that is what people are trying to do and in that situation decentralized solution for treatment of water is considered as important and then you are trying to develop several actions so far we have been talking about how exactly a law will be formed and taking a case study of water how we can we can probably implement those laws laws in a meaningful manner so that a change will take place on ground. Now going towards the end I am going to briefly tell you about strategies for transitioning to sustainable future and how are we really doing that we probably will have to look at the four strategies again friends this is my opinion and there are people who are thinking from different perspectives and my perspective is environmental ecology and from that perspective I am telling you how do we transition to sustainable future and what could be the best strategies to follow and you will quickly see that the discussion that I made about environmental legislation and policy is in that context actually that precisely that is what we wanted to achieve frugal engineering and sustainable consumption science and technology with innovation preventive environmental management and incremental development so you have the frugality is not a miser behaviour it is very responsible act where you try to make your consumption footprint small that is what is frugality and that is what we need to probably do when it comes to the consumption of resources and that is where I am saying frugal engineering and sustainable consumption is going to be one of the major strategies in this country. Then whatever that we manufacture and whatever we do further with the products is going to be science and technology with innovation which is going to be a very important element that the business as usual and somebody else is doing particular thing in particular way is not going to be adequate approach for us in India we have too much of pressure on our resources and therefore we have to use science and technology which is a new bone of 20th and 21st century we will have to use it in conjunction with innovation and then we will have to implement it religiously successfully in all walks of life and what can I tell you no matter what you do the moment you bring development you will always have the ecological and environmental footprint of it that there will be pollution so how do you really minimize the pollution by first preventing environmental by preventing the pollution and instituting preventive environmental management strategies and that we will have to do in a very conscious manner and then lastly that we will have to help the local self-government to promote development for all inclusive growth will have to be achieved through incremental development so instead of creating the islands of excellence only at one place we will have to think the seven thousand small towns of the city of this country or half a million villages of this country we will have to think and then bring incremental development at all levels in the hierarchy and then sort of so to speak raise the bar up continuously and this is not going to be an event it is going to be a process and these strategies are going to be extremely important to think about I would like to basically tell you how the policy cycle or how the environmental cycle can be brought to sort of close or tie the two loose ends of that and that is basically instituting the preventive strategies in while managing the environment which is basically continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy to reduce risk to humans and environment so while development will probably show a limited footprint we will have to make efforts to minimize that footprint as we go along and that effort is extremely important and then how are we really doing that and this is a very important thing for you to internalize that there are tools for preventive environmental management and I am very happy to tell you in our country these are nothing but the regulations for the environmental monitoring for example every industry every municipality has to perform environmental audit by every 30th of September they are submitting environment audit you have environmental impact assessment legislation in this country where even public hearing is a part of integral part of the environmental impact assessment activity you have life cycle assessment is another tool that people are using for policy planning and resource management related most of the municipalities most of the large projects have to go present a life cycle assessment based analysis of developmental activity and nowadays even the policy statements are written used with the help of and regulation is written with the help of life cycle assessment as a basis for analysis and the lastly is inventoryization and environment management systems you must have heard about ISO 9000, ISO 14000, ISO 30000 series all these environment management systems there are municipalities which are going for ISO certification several industries do that and international trade sometimes favors the ISO certification and the responsible environmental actions. So, the whatever that we used to call earlier as the good management wisdom is now codified in the form of environmental this thing. So, here you are simply looking at the cover of national environment policy document published by 2006 published by government of India minister of environment forest at responsibility of producing it and it is there available on their website and I am going to send you the reading assignment for further study in which you probably will be you will see this document already put out. Now, you have a national environmental policy of 2006. So, what I am trying to tell you is that we should not think that somebody else will do things for us that it is us who will formulate a policy for country by instituting right kind of action and we can actually test that doctor in that philosophy by instituting local action and I am placing in front of you a draft report for eco campus plan for IIT Bombay. So, we are making efforts to make IIT Bombay campus green. So, on one hand 30 seconds ago I showed you the national environment policy document of 2006 and I will leave you with that document that you can download yourself or I am going to provide you as a reading assignment. You can see that and even this document I am going to send you to show that how a macro picture is connected to a micro picture. So, friends quickly what is policy a bigger picture your bundle of philosophy your commitment what you consider is right and what is regulation that how a local person will actually possess the reality and modify. So, in between you have a law so your policy law and regulation these are the three steps stops on a long journey as a part of a continuum and we have made a small effort to present to you how these there are crisscrossing issues and how a society has to look at it in a philosophical manner that was a small effort that we did and some of the high points of our country's laws and regulations and policy I have tried to place in front of you. Thank you so much.


Okay, we have the Visible Wikimedia Lab, Fostering Multilingual and Decolonizing Structure Data, Narratives on Wikimedia Commons by Who's Knowledge. Okay, let us welcome them and kindly use the hashtag that we have for today's event, Wikimedia Summit, and share sharing is caring. So let us share our hashtags and our photos and whatever inputs or insights that you have on the summit that we're having today on our social media. Thank you very much. The floor is yours. Thank you. Hello. Thank you very much for your attention in this. We will do a talk, but also we will put our hands on on Visible Wikimedia Women for some minutes also so be prepared, have your laptops and cell phones at hand because we will do some a little exercise. So next slide. Can we manage the slides? Oh, yes, with this. Women intake. Yeah. Women intake. Good morning, everybody. My name is sunshine Fiona comes on. I am the Visible Wikimedia Women Campaign coordinator. I'm an African feminist from Kampala, Uganda. And I can use this. My name is Mariana Fosatti from Uruguay. I work at Who's Knowledge as the decolonizing Wikimedia Program coordinator, and also with my colleague, Sunshine, organizing Visible Wikimedia Women every year. And next slide. Okay, perfect. Is the red one? Ah, I got it. I got it. Okay, so we'll tell you a little bit about Visible Wikimedia Women. I didn't describe what I'm wearing.  I am wearing a bright orange dress by a Kenyan designer called African Uva. And our work at Visible Wikimedia Women is about bringing images of black, brown, trans, indigenous women from mostly global majority countries, the global south, to Wikimedia Commons. We have been doing this work for the last six years since 2018. And we have together brought more than 8,000 images uploaded to Wikicommons and we are still counting. And we have done this work. It's very collaborative work with feminist organization, collectives and movements, and different editors and groups, and we have been able to do this with also different community organizers, and we'll be continuing this campaign hopefully for many years to come. Yeah. Next slide, please. So today, we will speak not only about the images itself, but about data and information you can find on Wikimedia Commons each time you see or you upload or you reuse an image. And one very critical piece nowadays in Wikimedia Commons is structured data on Commons. I am sure that some of you have heard about this, but maybe not everyone or not everyone have had the opportunity to explore structured data on Commons. So let me just do a little introduction. With structured data on Commons, what we can do is to link or to match images and the content and the very meaning of each image to Wikidata items. So for instance, if you and you can see some examples there, a like bubble or a book or a computer or a feminist strike even can be matched with its queue element on Wikidata. And in that way, we are giving signals to machines to and we are in certain way, saying what's the meaning of the image and what elements are in the image. And so many different kind of things can be leveled this way. I can, as you can see from, you know, books, computers or historical events like the feminist strike of 8 March 2018, for instance, that already have a queue item on Wikidata. And by doing this, we are making images machine readable, but also humans, people can retrieve images in a more nuanced and effective and satisfactory way, hopefully, but we also want to point some problematic and critical aspects of this feature that we have seen in visible through the thousands of images brought to Commons through this campaign. We can start experimenting and making some observations about how the plurality of women and womanhood is represented on images and also on data. So we can start, we are trying to understand issues around visual and that data gender gap, accessibility because through today data on Commons bring accessibility features to Commons, multilinguality because every item on Wikidata, it is potentially multilingual. And also, we have starting observing the biases that are present in automated tags on structured data because the structured data on Commons offers an experimental tool since several years now to get automated suggestions for tagging images. But our question is this one. Does the data tell the stories behind the images? Does the data tell the stories? We know the context of that is part of the image, the narratives, the different narratives because not all the nouns, not all the concepts are the same or have the same level of images are very, it can have very different meanings depending of who is interpreting the images, what's the interpretation of the images. The semantic of the images can write a lot and also the narratives. So let's share some stories about images. Yes, let's do that. So, when I mentioned earlier that we are work visible with women is about bringing images of women, we should, I should also have mentioned that we are not very attached to the idea of womanhood. And that also our idea of visible women is also to encompass non binary people. And this is an image of George Kizzi who is a non binary Ugandan artist, makeup artist who uses fashion and art to be able to push the boundaries of what it means to be someone who is in fashion, what it means to be someone who can use makeup and really pushing the boundaries around gender and around, around binaries through, through clothes and through makeup. And when we look at this image, when we look at that, that this image particularly does not have any structure data that is attached to it. And the idea of bringing this, the stories like this is we want to be able to create the kind of data that we want to show the plurality of our human experiences, especially as people who standard of humanity or standard of who is a person who is a human being does not fit within, within colonizer within our hegemony structures of what it means to be human. So that is part of our decolonizing project to be able to expand our the understanding of data and also the understanding of imagery in terms of what is represented and what tells our stories. So this is another image on the visible wiki women 2023 season, I think, and once more we will have this image is a union is from Brazil, but for instance, in the file name, we don't have the real name, we don't have, we don't know if if she is willing to share or not the name, the real name. So in the structured data section, there is no wiki data item. There is the captions are not really multilingual, there are not many information. So sometimes photos are just taking in big events and shows uploading in mass in in batch, and especially when these photos are about women, women from from the global society and the context can be so important that the image is itself. We don't know, for instance, if she is a candidate, if she's a union leader, and all that things make women visible too. And this one is another one from visible wiki women 2020, I think, she is Sarah Maldoror, an Afro Caribbean filmmaker, she passed away in 2020, because COVID. And this is a photo that actually is illustrating her biography on Wikipedia. And this one is very good described in terms of a structured data, because probably because once she died, many, not that much information, but more information was available online. So you can find also wiki data item about her, which is not the reality for the previous one and for many others. So, but one interesting thing about this image was you can see that she's a woman with a microphone at hand, right? So, and there are some structured data items related with this picture, including Sarah Maldoror wiki data item, including a microphone, including a wingless, including elements that are like this dissection of the person in different parts. And we wonder, is this meaningful? This kind of very detailed description is all right. It creates or it represents the story that makes justice to this woman and her very important career as an independent filmmaker. And one curiosity about this is that if you visit, there is a link in every wiki media comments page called information page. It's not very visible. It's like a behind the scenes page for every image. And in that information page, you can find more metadata and you can find almost at the bottom a section with the suggested tags from the automated system for suggested tags. That tool is provided for a partnership between wiki media foundation and Google for images recognition. And you can find different potential categories or tags actually for describing this woman. And one of these is art musician, art music artist, spoken person. So we wonder how this image recognition system can create or suggest tags that really misrepresent what you can see in the image. It's true, it's a woman with a microphone, but she's not a musician for instance. Every woman with a microphone looks like a singer or like a music artist, or specifically black women look like music artists. How many men look like this for the machine, the automated image recognition.  And let me share this quote from Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen from excavating AI, the politics of images in machine learning training sets. It's an excellent article. The whole endeavor of collecting images, categorizing them and labeling them is itself a form of politics, filled with questions about who gets to decide what images mean and what kind of social and political work those representations perform. So our invitation is to have this question in mind, this critical question in mind, every time you see an image, you tag an image, or you decide to not to not tag it in a space in certain ways.   And we invite you to scan our QR code, which will take you to the visible wiki women category on wiki media commons, and to find any images there under that you can be able to add structured data to right now. So, whatever image you feel like is lacking in structured data or you want to be able to add structured data to it. This is an invitation to do that. Yes, that's the QR code open. Okay, great. Take like five minutes to find an image and look not only the image but the structured data in what language is the structured data is a wiki data item about the woman there. What other suggestions you can you find the the automatic suggestions or not what those suggestions say things like that. Do your analysis and then we can start the Q&A and we want to hear your observations and your stories about these images. You can speak between you. One another. This is a workshop path so you can be noisy. Speak to each other, speak to your partners, show to each other what do you see in structured data. If you need, we can also try to show you in on screen also. Are we able to open it? I don't know but maybe we can try. I think we can. So let's go. Like in 25. Oh, okay. Do you want to express it? Ask it to the link. That's what we're trying to get them to do. Yes. To open the link. Thank you so much.  Oh, yeah wiki women. Wiki women and allies. Thank you. Thank you allies for being here. Thank you for your support. And while we're waiting, while we're doing this exercise, I want to give a big cheer out for what's happening Saturday. Wiki women lunch historic. So this is where the QR code would lead you. So our ask is that you go select any of the images in the category of visible wiki women. And just like check the structured data below that image. And our invitation is to, you know, make observations if images don't have data. Also for you to be able to add any structure data that you that you feel could be useful in interpreting that image as well. So really that is the goal of this particular two minutes that's left of this exercise. So there's multiple images. Could you scroll down? I don't know if scroll down but English is not my first language. So just look at some of the amazing images that we have uploaded and yeah, check the structured data. Also no pressure. I think our five minutes are up. Does anyone have some things to say or just like share an observation share feedback about your experience.  I would appreciate that very much. Thank you. Anything anybody. So I'm Lucy. I'm from England. I'm a dark haired white woman. And so I've been adding some data to a page for Anna Monterosa. The level. Yeah. Who is a very famous Uruguayan woman and I'm very embarrassed by my extremely English accent. But what's interesting is I've been doing it on my mobile phone. So it was really easy to like add a description. There was no description of this image that had been uploaded as part of the program. And that was really easy to do. But when it came to adding categories on my mobile phone, that was much, much trickier. And I just think it struck me that there's this disparity in how the tools that we usually use, you know, on our computers and laptops work and have different functionality on a mobile phone. So that's another, I guess, kind of something to think about when we're designing these these programs, perhaps with people who don't have access to laptops. Thank you so much. I had a really interesting conversation with Mariana, which was looking predominantly at the African woman, a woman in Ghana holding a bag. Where there's almost an invisibilization of people in the images and Mariana was so gracious to explain to me that sometimes there's an active preference to not be named.  No name, data, no context of the picture. And I thought that was really powerful as something that we could disrupt, which is inviting people to share in their agency on the internet. Thank you so much. We'll take one more. Anybody. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. I still have things to say, but we appreciate the applause. So we thought that we could end by just talking a little bit more about the campaign. And Masana gave me just the language right now about this being not just political work, but also work of not just feeling gaps but also correcting rhetoric or apparent injustices or invisibilizations. And so our campaign this year, so every year we have a theme is on body plurality. So all those other hashtags are body plurality in different languages, Portuguese and and Spanish and also look as we also would like to continue practicing also multi-linguality within our work. And we are celebrating the full uniqueness of our plural body sizes, shapes and identities online. And one of the very important things that we did when we're thinking about this theme was reading feminist theory around what it means to be a person with a body, but also to be a person with a body in a world both virtual and physical that says beauty is one standard and beauty is one thing and being visible means one thing. So we read stories about black athletes, for example, like Casta Semenya and what World Athletics Authority have done in terms of violating the sacredness of bodies that do not conform to a particular standard. And we read stories of Indian athletes and we were able to be to contextualize what body plurality would look like. And also our invitation for visible women this year is to find images that are of different body shapes, colors, you know, I like color, if you can't tell. And our campaign goal this year which started in April is to bring 2,500 images to Wiki Commons and other visible Wiki women 2023 category. And that work is not just about, you know, quantity of images is also politicizing why images do not exist. And we do that with care and consent and ensuring that we get the names like we ask the people, for example, whose images that we take. How would you like to be identified? What are your pronouns? From what part of the world are you from? Which place do you call home? So that that information, because we would like to see how much structured data travels in terms of informing image interpretation by machines. And the part about, you know, care, practice consent, I have, we have an interesting story. So I was part of the changing faces changing spaces conference, which is pan African LGBTI queer movements organization. I mean organizations, organizers, movements and collectives. And we're very excited to be part of that. One of the things that we do is photo booths to go there and take images of all these amazing African queer organizers and get their information, how they want to be identified, the kind of work that they do so that it is part of their descriptions. And when I came when I went back home to Uganda, the week after, well, Uganda has been leading this anti LGBTI movement for from behind for a long time. That's that the week that the president of Uganda sent it to the anti homosexuality law.  Because this is what it means when your image is out there and would you still like those descriptions and identifications to be up because we want to be able to also understand that it's, it's important to be visible. And sometimes visibility is resistance, but also anonymity is a form of survival for many people in different contexts, and to also think like start thinking what does it mean to, you know, ask for speedy deletion and take images for example at events in people in countries with difficult contexts where you don't have to show the person's face. We've worked with wiki editorias to do illustrations instead, because all of that like art is also a part of visibilizing women. And now the time has read. So in case you're curious about how to get involved in the visible wiki women campaign, cover attend events, please get consent. We have a photo booth at wiki mania find us that our photo booth right outside and also will be on the fourth floor at the main hall later. So we have tools to support people to install photo booths which we think are feminist corners in big conferences, because big conferences can be overwhelming. So if you're looking for a corner to recharge and, and a feminist photo booth is a great space to be share your existing photos. So if you take pictures here, and you have those consents, please share those. Under the free license illustrate. If those, if you know illustrators, illustrators, if you work with graphics and you're able to illustrate different women, different non binary peoples realities and upload and then promote. So of course we are going to ask for promotion. This is free. But, but, but spread that word. Visible wiki women, women of colors, but the plurality is a theme for the year. And in September, in celebration of all the amazing work of women in sports, we thought to do this during World Cup, but we were too ambitious. We'll be unpacking body plurality in sports. So we are having a visible wiki women photo and at the contest will have flyers throughout wiki mania. And you're welcome to join us to also watch the FIFA women's World Cup final this Saturday. So yeah, so come to our photo booth. We are round. Um, guess you can tell I'm wearing very bright orange. You can't miss me today. And, um, Marianne and I and everybody at whose knowledge is really glad we're able to be part of the wiki women's summit. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for bringing sunshine into the room.