What do you think has enabled you to continue to make strides offensively? I mean, just try to make adjustments and try to get better. I mean, that's all I'm trying to do and try to have the team. You had talked the other day and you just wanted to get your timing back. Get the plate safe to say the timing's back. You're comfortable. It's comfortable, but it still needs to stay on. More approaches start driving the ball more to the opposite way, too. And then it'll be completely there. But so far right now, it's been it's getting better, getting way better. Why do you think this team has struggled at times to play consistent baseball over the past couple of weeks? Why do I think it struggled? I mean, I can't give you the reason why. But I mean, we're not doing what we're supposed to do. We're on a scoring religion, scoring runs. I think that's the main thing that scoring runs is how you win the game. So I think everybody should come through, even me. You can come through in those situations. You're going to have to manage the heel the rest of the way. Is it about what you expected it now that you're back? My heel? I mean, it's still there. But I mean, I don't really think about it during the game. I mean, we're not playing everything. Just cover everything and just play the game. Every team wants to peek heading to the playoffs. Is it concerning to be 8-10 year-last-18 as your mid-September? Does it concern us? I mean, yeah, because we're supposed to win. You know, that's how we always want to play the win. That's what's going on and so we want to do for us. And we're not playing that way right now, but I mean, we'll pick it up soon.


So, we are going to continue from where from what we did yesterday. So, just to ensure that we continue to keep in mind the issues that I raised yesterday. I will just go through this very quickly. One of the things that I covered yesterday was about pedagogy that environment studies is not just about teaching content, it is also about teaching certain kinds of approaches and perspectives and how to teach is as important as what we teach that is the method is as important as the content. And one of the things that we like to say here is that the objective of most of the modules here is to also provide certain frameworks for understanding environmental issues for discussing and learning about these things. So, it is not just to do with gaining knowledge, but it is also about skills to teach students. So, when we are telling students about environmental issues, when we are talking to students about environmental issues, it is not simply about giving them certain kinds of knowledge, creating certain awareness, creating an understanding, it is also about providing a larger framework to connect the subjects, topics and themes from the different disciplines that we discussed yesterday. Secondly, I also mentioned that we wish to train students to be reflexive and to critique. So, in the assignment that Professor Seti gave you, he gave a few definitions of what critique means. So, I would not go into that in more detail. But I also mentioned to you yesterday about the sociological idea of reflexivity, where we assess the kind of risks that emanate from environmental problems and how we assess the different kinds of responses that are possible to those risks to reduce the incidence of risks and to cope at that to various kinds of risks and uncertainty. So, that reflexivity, ability to be reflexive to think about a problem, to understand the different ways in which we can respond and to choose the most optimal response is something that we want to train students to do. Thirdly, especially towards the end of the class, I also mentioned that sustainable development approach is not one specific unique unitary approach. There is a diversity of approaches which we need to appreciate. And in the post sustainable development perspective, in fact we say that this diversity of approaches is what actually constitutes sustainable development. But if you do not have a diversity that itself is unsustainable in the long run, which means then the question of choice is very important. So, in much of the recent literature including in some of the work of very important environmental activists and I mentioned Wangari Mathai's work in Kenya and Africa, the question of sustainable development is linked in very important ways to issues of freedom and democracy, which means that choice at the individual level, the autonomy to decide what the kind of needs and aspirations one wants to fulfill, what kind of development you want at your level, at the level of an individual household, village, community and so on, that is equally important. So, the critique of post sustainable development precisely comes from this that it has become another model developed by certain interests and foisted on the rest of the world. So, if we truly want sustainable development that is development of a kind that people believe in and that is lasting, then it has to incorporate the choices of people both in terms of what kind of development they want and what kind of resources are used up in achieving that development. Finally, to go back to the first point, we are not just interested in resolving problems though that is very important. We are saying that you can be more effective in addressing environmental problems if we can develop methods and mechanisms of framing the problem appropriately. Solution versus prevention is something that we talked about earlier for example. So, how to frame issues in terms of concepts from the social sciences like access, freedom, equity, justice, values, all of these that I discussed yesterday, they help us to frame the problems in very in ways in which they can make a difference to people not just in very abstract or narrow technical ways. So, yesterday I mentioned that in much of the literature particularly the Indian debates in environmental studies from a social science perspective, these are the concepts that you find appearing quite often. Conflicts and struggles over resources, access to resources, equitable access, issue of justice with reference to resources, what kind of institutions and governance mechanisms were best to promote sustainable environment friendly development. If these are the concepts that are very important for us and this will be covered by me and by Professor Narayanan, Professor Ranjan Panda and so on, how do we teach and what exactly do we teach? That is what we are going to I am going to mention in the next few slides. Again, I would like to reiterate that what you are going to see may appear to be contained, but it is also framing that is we are going to talk about concepts, we are going to talk about theories, but these offer certain perspectives of understanding environmental issues. So, you cannot talk about the method of teaching without talking about concepts and theories and empirical case studies. So, what I am trying to say is both go together it is very difficult to separate them out, but as teachers yourselves it is very important to understand this distinction and how they are both linked because sometimes while using the material that I am giving you while using the material in textbooks, we may just use them as content, but we are also using the material as framing devices to understand issues in particular ways because we believe that understanding issues with environmental problems with reference to justice or equity or access helps us to design better solutions to the problems. So, each of the issues that I mentioned here, I have divided this presentation into different sections. The last two is something we are going to take up in the last two lectures not the first lecture tomorrow, the fourth and fifth lecture that I am going to take. The first four, especially 2, 3 and 4 is something we are going to take up. Now, I have divided this presentation into sections based on these concepts. Justice and values we were supposed to take up yesterday, since we did not have time and I wanted some discussion as well, I will take it up now. So, question of value and justice are very difficult question because as I mentioned yesterday, these are also very subjective issues and there are also plenty of attempts to impose a monetary value on environmental resources. So, there is economic valuing of resources so that you can monetize the environment, but there are also other kinds of non-monetary monetary values to the environment and to natural resources. The very fact that we use the term natural resource indicates that we impose a value on it. Why do we call it a resource? A tree is a tree, a tree can be a symbol, a tree can be sacred, a tree can be a god, tiger can be a god. They are objects of worship, they are objects of beauty, of recreation, of amusement all of those kinds of things. We derive various kinds of values, but when we focus exclusively on the economic value, then nature becomes a resource for us. That is the instrumental or utilitarian view that I mentioned yesterday as opposed to the intrinsic view of nature. When we try to value nature or ecosystems, we can think of different kinds of values. So, the reason I am pointing these out is that very often both policy, public policy governing natural resources as well as public policy to prevent environmental degradation, to prevent pollution usually tend to adopt an economic stick or monetary approach to valuing resources. One of the reasons why conflicts occur between different groups of people over how resources should be managed is because of this. It is because people have multiple perspectives on how resources should be valued, what is the value of resources to people. Therefore, it is very important that we sensitize students to different ways in which human beings value the environment. So, there is of course the economic value which is the most important things for us, but nature also provides life support services. It has value as something that gives us life support. You cannot breathe without the services that nature provides us, we live. So, issues related to living, pollution, water purification, cleaning up, regeneration, carbon sequestration, salinity control, disease disease control, all of these are services that nature provides even as we have developed technologies to address these kinds of issues. So, nature provides very important life support systems, services. Number 3, nature also provides life fulfilling services. So, I have mentioned to you that in lot many societies, natural objects are also religious objects or sacred objects. They are objects of beauty for us, they provide an aesthetic value. They are, they can be objects of recreation. You enjoy being with nature, enjoying the services of nature, enjoying a view of nature and so on. And fourthly, the environment has a future use. It has a future value. So, conservation today helps us to preserve certain resources. So, we say for example, that preserving biodiversity helps us to conserve certain resources which may have use in the future. So, what we are trying to say here is that valuing, so we are not just talking about value, we are talking about valuing as a technique. So, I think that is what we ought to tell our students. There is a process of valuing, there are different procedures for valuing and any particular procedure of valuing relates to how we organize information about the environment and how we can make then on the basis of that organization use may make informed choices beyond just the instrumental use of resources. So, in many parts of India where there have been protests against dams for example, there have been communities who have also raised non-monetary issues. Apart from the displacement issue, they have also said there are ancient temples here which get submerged. There are pilgrimage routes which get submerged. There are certain sacred trees which act as totems for certain kinds of tribes or indigenous groups which are very important for them. So, understanding the different kinds of values makes us sensitive to why people take particular positions on resources and on that basis want to act upon resources to maintain them, to use them, to not use them, to just leave them alone in very different ways. Let me go little bit deeper into this. We were talking about valuing the environment and different components of the environment very broadly. Suppose we wish to value biodiversity. So, how do we teach this to students? First would be to say for example, that again valuing biodiversity would be look at it in terms of different kinds of values that one can derive from it. There can be a market value. So, the knowledge of biodiversity and the natural objects that exist out there, we can monetize and derive an economic value from them in the marketplace. But there can be non-market values also. So, what currently scholars are saying is that it is not always possible to value biodiversity purely in market terms because there are a lot of other values which sometimes we do not even realize. So, the new classical economics believes and Professor Narayanan will talk about this later, believes that all commodities are fungible. What it means is that today if hilsa fish disappears, you can have some other kind of fish which you can eat. What environmental sciences tells us is that from a valuing biodiversity perspective, if hilsa fish disappears, it indicates not just one particular species of fish that has disappeared, it has caused some kind of transformation to the entire ecosystem itself. There are likely to be other species which also will get affected which will disappear and so on. So, economically assessing that is going to be very difficult. So, there are market values. There are there is a lot of other damage to the environment that occurs when biodiversity is affected anywhere in the world in any kind of resource. Of course, biodiversity also may have many other kinds of human cultural values. So, one of India's most famous environmentalists whom I mentioned yesterday, Vandana Shiva, the organization she runs is called Navadanya, the nine different grains that are ritually very important for most people in India. So, valuing diversity could be for many other purposes also. And finally, the value of biodiversity is related to the maintenance of ecosystems, the maintenance of the health of ecosystems, whether in water bodies, in forests, in desert, all kinds of ecosystems. Here, we are trying to say that we ought to as human beings valued biodiversity because not doing so would mean that we are not fulfilling our duties and obligations to future generations. So, there is also future value to preserving current biodiversity. And this comes from the knowledge that the loss of biodiversity unlike the loss of many other kinds of commodities or objects is irreversible or it is not substitutable. So, if one species of fish goes, if one species of plant or frog or insect disappears, it cannot simply be brought back. So, there is an irreversible damage to the ecosystem to the system of biodiversity itself. Therefore, biodiversity is regarded as something unique compared to many other goods and services like this bottle of water, like this mouse, like a pen and the shirt that I am wearing and all of these kinds of things. So, you can even see there is a larger understanding of value and conveying this and for me it is very difficult to convey it in 5 minutes for you can probably do a better job because you will have more time in the classroom. But conveying this is very important so that they do not get caught in this short term narrow solutions to addressing biodiversity issues. Let me take up the concept of justice. So, this is incidentally this is one of the important themes in the UGC syllabus in module 5 but it is also related to many other things in earlier units as well. So, the concept of sustainable development itself is rooted in the idea of intergenerational equity or intergenerational justice. That is we cannot meet our needs while jeopardizing the needs of future generations. One has an obligation to make sure that they can also lead a good life. But in addition to intergenerational justice we are also talking about intergenerational justice issues also. So, what are the kind of ways in which the issues of environmental justice has been framed because in the UGC syllabus term justice is left in a very vague way. Whereas, we are talking about a specific way in which this concept is articulated in the literature which is referred to as environmental justice. One of course is something that must have been used this term must have been used in the last couple of days. You all must be familiar this is the NIMBY framework NIMBY principle. I assume you all know what NIMBY means. So, NIMBY is not in my backyard. So, currently in India almost every city is going through this crisis and conflict around landfills and dumping grounds because the city people want their garbage somewhere not close to them and of course they want to locate it in a village or somewhere else very far from where they can see it or smell it and those people of course are not keeping quiet now. So, if you do not want garbage in their backyard. So, there was a time when this could be done, but people now with increasing voice freedom representation democracy nobody is willing to keep quiet. So, there are lot of protests by villagers against location of dumping grounds and landfills close to where they live. They have serious health consequences. So, around the world you see that one important way in which this environmental injustice has occurred is through this NIMBY principle because people do not want bad environments close to where they live they wanted somewhere else. Now, this is also seen in many other kinds of examples also when the Bandra Verli ceiling was being built some one of the Mumbai's landmarks there was a walkers group you know people who used to go walking in the morning in Bandra. They said please do not keep it here because we walk from this along this road every day it will disturb our walking schedule you can keep it there it only affects the fisherman. So, not in my backyard, but in the fisherman's backyard is ok that that is what it means. So, these are examples of injustice where we want to protect our own interests, but would like to pass on some of these adverse consequences of our projects to somebody else. This has been referred to and this is an important concept which is still not come into mainstream environmental studies at the undergraduate level, but internationally it is an important concept. So, one of India's leading environmental sociologists Amitabh Bhaviskar uses this term called bourgeois environmentalism. So, bourgeois is a term that very broadly refers to people with if I can in social sciences it refers to the capitalist class, but here we can just broadly refer to those the rich middle class and the rich. So, they have a particular idea of environmentalism which is focused less on the consequences of environmental solutions for people and is more focused on immediate gains for a group of people. So, this arose in the context of Delhi where some years ago there was a judgment of the high code which shifted a lot of small scale industries out of Delhi into the outskirts or very very far away from Delhi in because these industries were seen as polluting and people had a right to free breathe good quality air, but then what was not considered was the large number of people working in these factories who lose employment because they were being shifted and they could not afford to move somewhere else because it could be very expensive and many other kinds of there and the housing the school children would suffer and all of those kinds of things. So, you have a good intention of improving the air quality, but you have a way of doing this which does not consider the needs of many sections of the population. So, similar things can be seen in most cities in India and many parts of the world. Similar kinds of justice and injustice issues also emerge with reference to climate change in the next slide I will point you to some resources regarding this. So, for example, what is the obligation of countries which tend to contribute more to global warming or which emit more which have higher level of emissions. So, the fact that some countries can emit more, but the consequences are felt by somebody else. So, Maldives is a country which is below the sea level it is the first country that is going to submerge if the sea level rises even by a few centimeters. So, consequences of one's actions are felt by somebody else that is one does not in return think of fulfilling one's obligations in terms of mitigating climate change, mitigating global warming and so on. There are some attempts by governments and other kinds of government institutions to ensure that when these kinds of environmental injustice occurs one could compensate people, one could resettle and rehabilitate people. But what is seen and this is what comes out from the research on environmental justice is that much of this compensation adopts a very short term perspective on justice. So, compensation for land for example, not compensation for livelihoods. So, there is a very interesting judgment of the national green tribunal recently which gave 90 crores of rupees to the fishing communities in Hawaii, Mumbai because it was seen that many government agencies including the port trust and the new airport and the SITCO had encroached and degraded the fishing grounds of the fishing communities. So, this is a kind of a landmark judgment which looks at the long term that not just give compensation for a piece of land on which people used to live, but also compensate for their livelihoods and take care of sustainability in the long run. In fact, the national green tribunal also said you have to regrow the mangroves which were destroyed as part of all those different kinds of projects. So, I think since R and R is one of the topics in the UGCC syllabus I am going to take it up in more detail later, but here there is a very clear linkage between resettlement and rehabilitation and environmental justice issues. So, it is not simply a question of compensating people by resettling them somewhere else there are larger environmental issues which have to be tackled when projects destroy environments or encroach upon and various kinds of ecosystems. So, essentially what is being said here is that environmental justice is somewhat different from ordinary conceptions of justice or injustice because here we are saying there are existing inequalities in society. These inequalities could be on the basis of income or race. So, the concept first emerged in America where a lot of these landfills and dumping grounds were located in neighborhoods of African Americans who were poor and who could not protest against it. Cast or gender or tribe or class in Kerala and around Mumbai for example, villages with a predominantly tribal population have been protesting against the location of dumping grounds in their areas. So, we are saying there are people who already suffer from some kind of inequalities, they do not have a voice, they do not have a power and you are exacerbating that inequality by imposing certain adverse consequences of environmental degradation on them that is the question of environmental justice. Can I take a because I see quite a lot of question marks there maybe I can just take one or two questions and see what kind of questions they have they are relevant to this. Maybe we can go to the Salt Lake Kolkata. So, you are from Hissar Om Institute, yeah. I see that, hi, there is a question that one of you wants to ask please go ahead and ask it. Sir, my question is that I want to know more in details about the what is the NIMBA principle which becomes terminology in your lecture, sir. Thank you. Yes, yes, I will just respond to you. Thank you for the question. Okay. Hello. So, is this NIRMA? Hello.  Sir, I have one question for you. We are talking about social justice and Mumbai is a so much, I mean, Mumbai is a urban city. Say it pollutes its seashore and water resources and it goes to the another city. How it is justifiable? In other content say one river flowing from one country, it pollutes the river and then it goes to the another country. Yes, yes, yes. So, how to make out of this? Is there any rule? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Okay. So, in the interest of time, let me answer these two questions. If anyone else has more questions, you can always send it to us through Moodle and we, depending on time, we will come back and take more questions. So, the NIMBY principle stands for not in my backyard. Shall I write it here? Okay. NIMBY stands for not in my backyard. That is, we know, we are aware that there are certain adverse consequences to the environment of our actions. This could be effluents, this could be sewage, sewage, this could be solid waste, all kinds of waste. So, we do not want it in close to where we live because we are afraid this will have health consequences, this has aesthetic consequences, this will reduce the value of my property and so on. And therefore, we export it somewhere else. So, that happens with many countries as well. They export their, for example, a lot of countries which generate nuclear power, export their radioactive waste to other countries. Similarly, other countries export their solid waste. A lot of things are exported to other countries because they do not have enough place. Large cities, whether it is Mumbai or Trivandrum or Chennai or Kolkata, they try to locate their dumping grounds far away from the city or in near slums. So, basically what we are saying is the concept of environmental justice happens when we do not want to suffer the consequences of a bad environment, but we impose it on other people who are voiceless or powerless to protest against it. That is the idea of NIMBY. The other issue of social justice is also very interesting one because increasingly we are seeing this that of course, climate change is the best example that the consequences of our action in terms of pollution or emissions in one part of the world has consequences for the entire world. But it is also seen in many other cases. So, if there is chemical leaching of the soil in bio factory in one place, soil of course, leaches through the soil to many other parts, neighboring plots, farms and so on. Likewise with river water, so if there is pollution in one part of the river, it spreads and can affect neighboring villages, states, districts, countries and so on. And this also applies not only to pollution, but to the way in which we harness and use resources. For example, the way in which the dams are managed in Nepal or mismanaged cause floods in Bihar. So, this is also an issue of justice and I am going to take it up a little later when we come to rural urban connections, but also later when we talk about the common property resources in my last lecture. I just want to mention here that there is a very excellent interesting book on this theme. Only problem is it is 800 pages. It is by an American geographer called David Harvey. The book is titled Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. So, it is a big 7 to 800 page book. Those who have the time and the patience can sit and go through it. It is by an American geographer called David Harvey, probably one of the most famous geographers of our time currently. So, let us get back to my presentation. There is also one of the issues that I want to mention here is an ethical issue, which Professor Ranjan Panda will take up later. But just a couple of days ago, there was a senior IS officer who was talking to me about another senior IS officer above him, who said apparently in one of the meetings that there are certain kinds of development projects that are important for the country. This is going to destroy the environment if in the process the poor people are going to be affected. It is worth it. So, there are certain groups of people who are asked to sacrifice. That is also an issue of justice. So, who should sacrifice for whom, when, why, for what purpose? So, Arundhati Roy, the writer for example, has written an article on this call for the greater common good. So, should be and in India we see that this proportion of people who are asked to sacrifice is actually very large. So, it is estimated for example, that the number of people who have been displaced due to large dams in India is about 4 million, which is a population of many countries in the world. So, the issue of ethics and justice becomes a very large question for us, because it is not only a question of one individual here or a few people here or few thousand having to sacrifice. When large sections of the people are affected because of what we do to the environment, it becomes an issue of environmental justice. And therefore, we need to think of technological options which minimizes such kind of problems. And therefore, if you, if some of you look at the website of the Narmada Bacha Vandolan, for example, there are many people who have written about this, saying that we can address the problems of drinking water, irrigation, flood control and so on through a different set of water control technologies without having the same set of consequences. That is the reason I am talking about the question of choice. It is not that we have one technology which is always good for us for achieving development. There are, there is a multiplicity of options which option promotes equity and justice is something we have to assess and then assess, evaluate and then adopt. I will just end this concept of environmental justice with this definition given by the environmental protection agency of the United States. So, this relates to the last point here about how environmental justice issues relate to existing inequalities, the perpetuation and exacerbation of existing inequalities. So, when there is inequality on the basis of national origin, education, race, ethnicity and so on and if you have certain kinds of development projects and you have certain kinds of environmental laws, regulation policies, everyone has to be treated fairly. What fate treatment means is that no single group or a group of people should bear a disproportionate burden of the negative consequences of health and environmental impacts. So, the concept of environmental justice can be very vague and abstract for students. Explaining it in this way will help students understand it better that we are talking about a very specific kind of disproportionate burden. Some people benefit from the way in which we deal with environment and natural resources. Some people do not benefit or they are displaced, they are affected in terms of their health and so on. That is what we refer to as environmental justice issues. So, on this idea of environmental justice with reference to climate change, these are three videos that you can use. Two of them involve interviews with Mr. Praful Bidwai who happens to be an alumnus of IIT Bombay. He is a journalist, a former editor of Times of India. He has written some very important books and articles on climate change. So, he talks about justice and equality issues within India and between developing countries and the developed world, the United States and India for example. So, yesterday one of you was asking this question about the United States contributing more to climate change and not fulfilling its obligation. So, those issues are addressed and discussed in detail in these websites. So, and also why in many countries for example, somebody like George Bush or the current Australian Prime Minister, these are right wing parties. So, right wing in the sense they believe that market alone will solve problems, market economy. And these political parties also either do not believe that climate change is happening or refuse to take action. That is also a question of justice because these are countries extremely rich countries which contribute a lot to global emissions but which refuse to fulfill its obligations in terms of helping other countries to tackle the problem of climate change and to adapt to develop solutions technologically to address climate change issues. I am going to move on now to focus on the issue of population growth because the way in which we address population issues is related to the issue of justice which I mentioned earlier on the issue of equity which I am going to take up next. In the UGC syllabus and in many of the textbooks not all of them, in many of the textbooks written as per the UGC syllabus, the issue of population growth is dealt with in a way in which we abandoned some 40 years ago. So, the problem is seen in terms of population growth and density. So, there is a stereotypical view that poor countries will always be poor because they have high population and that countries with large population pollute the world more. Now, this is a view that has been abandoned by scholars and researchers for 40 years and somehow unfortunately probably because there was no good demographer and social scientist in the committee that old view tends to prevail in the textbooks. So, since our since professor Barusha the head of the committee specifically mentioned that there is a gap between the ideal and the real and he wants us as teachers to bridge that gap. I am going to go beyond what is said in the syllabus and look at this population growth problem in a different way in a more critical way. The first thing is when we say that population growth contributes to environmental degradation we ignore the fact that the impact of human beings on the environment is related to their level of consumption and their lifestyles. How much should we consume? So, Ramchandra Guha whose name you find there and who whom I mentioned yesterday who is an environmental sociologist and historian he has written this book called How much should a person consume? That book is derived from another book written about 50 years ago by a famous American economist called Galbraith who wrote a book called How much should a country consume? And before that he wrote this book called Affluent Society which I mentioned there. So, what people like Ramchandra Guha and Galbraith John Kenneth Galbraith are saying is that population size by itself is not related to environmental degradation, to resource exploitation. It is related to our appetite which is the reason why Professor Nithil Nikhil gave you a module on food issues earlier. So, appetite for food but also appetite for a whole range of other goods and services which we consume. So, the article by Ramchandra Guha which I have uploaded on How much should a person consume which was elaborated into a book I have already uploaded on Moodle. In that he mentions there are two sentences of his which I reproduce here that American population may be one third of or a quarter of that of India. But an American discharges 20 times contributes to global emissions 20 times that of an Indian. And a Japanese and average Japanese contributes 9 times that of an Indian. And the birth of a child in America has an impact on the global environment equal to the birth of 70 Indonesian or Indian children. And he also cites I did not have enough space here a Bangladeshi scientist. He went and did some research in America and he found that the amount of food consumed by a pet in America dog or a cat is equal to the amount of food consumed by a dozen children in Bangladesh. So, it is not wise on our part to only talk of the population size and its impact because it depends on the level of consumption. A country may have a smaller population but may consume more. A country may have a higher population and may consume less. It also depends on technological choices. So, in America for example, fuel consumption is very high because they have invested very little in public transport. So, everybody has a private automobile whereas in European countries there is much more investment by the governments on public transport. So, the consumption overall consumption per capita consumption of energy is much less on transportation. So, technological choice and lifestyle these influence the impact of human beings on environment much more than just the size of the environment. So, the real population problem is the problem of consumption, high consumption of energy and food and resources are not just the size of the population. Therefore, while teaching one should avoid using terms like overpopulation because population is always related to the amount of resources you can access. Now, this is very important it is not just the amount of resources you have in your region, in your country it is the amount of resources you can access. So, Japan can produce very high quality steel products even though they do not produce any iron ore because they can import iron ore from India or countries can import all other kinds of resources including water. Singapore imports a lot of its water because it is a small country it does not have enough reservoirs, countries import oil. So, there is no such thing as overpopulation because it is a grossly erroneous term. In fact, in some context having a very large population may be advantageous. So, why is it that many western countries are coming to India to set up business because they believe that labour is cheap and they can get their work done here which also means that more than the size of the population it is the quality of the population that is important. So, if you have a population which is highly educated and skilled then they are able to meet their own needs by creating income for themselves and ability to purchase goods. Whereas, if people if there is a high population and people are not sufficiently skilled or educated then they fail to obtain enough resources to sustain themselves. So, those kinds of alarmist arguments that population growth is going to take over the world destroy the planet one should avoid and in any case we are seeing that in most countries role population growth is in fact declining including in India. So, that is why we say that it is development that is the best contraceptive because as development happens including increase in education literacy democracy jobs for women ability to take decisions empowerment then automatically population size begins to decrease. There is a very close relation between high economic growth and low fertility rate low economic growth and high fertility rate. So, in the UGC syllabus they mentioned things like sterilization population control these are very dangerous things because they can be misused by authoritarian people on certain kinds of communities. So, let us not go into that instead focus on the relationship between particular kinds of development and how they can lead to reduction of the population size and therefore, it can have a positive impact on the environment. Similarly, the problem of urbanization as well because urbanization on the one hand is seen as desirable everybody wants to live in a city nobody wants to live in a village anymore because cities have certain amenities facilities education you can have access to justice courts are there all kinds of benefits you can get if you have the resources to acquire those benefits. So, people living in slums may not see urbanization as desirable, but many other people do. So, here also we see that while urbanization may be seen as positive development we in general cities consume more resources than villages. Even though the family size may be larger in villages they actually consume less per capita than people living in cities who care to consume more of all kinds of resources including energy water food and so on. But what we can make a correlation with with reference to urbanization is that density matters if a city has very high density then they tend to consume more. We also find that certain cities attract more migrants therefore, the city becomes very dense it has an impact on the environment of that city. That does not mean that urbanization is necessarily bad. So, one has to understand the larger context why is it that migration is taking place why are people moving from villages to cities. Is it because of caste based operation? Is it because of starvation deaths? Is it because of farmer suicides? Is it because of drought conditions unemployment in the villages? So, all of these things need to be gone into before we make an assessment of whether urbanization is good or bad and what kind of an impact it has on the environment. Many of the studies show that urbanization is very strongly related to air water soil and noise pollution. So, noise pollution is usually left out of many of our teaching and syllabus. We only focus on air water and soil, but increasingly noise pollution is becoming important and medical studies are showing that noise pollution also has impact on our health. So, that is something that is also to be taken into consideration. You can include it in your teaching depending on whether there is interest among students. We also know like I mentioned with reference to justice issues earlier that cities contribute more to global warming than most rural areas in many different ways.  So, what you can do is that while teaching the impact of urbanization on the environment you can remember these kinds of pedagogy called teaching points. With the students one can ask students to use example, you as teachers can use examples from your own region city or village. You can give assignments to students to assess what exactly is the impact of urbanization on the environment or biodiversity in their own regions. That makes it much more easier for them to understand instead of giving abstract statistics or just citing from textbooks and literature from other parts of the world. So, whether it is a small town or a big city they do have impacts on the environment. So, trying to give them assessments trying to get them to get gain knowledge about their own cities or villages and regions and present it in the classroom will enhance their awareness of the impact of urbanization on the environment. One of the things that we need to keep in mind is that the problems of urbanization and related environmental issues are different from big cities and metros and smaller towns. And sometimes big cities can learn a lot of things from smaller towns. There are some very interesting experiments going on in this town called Latur in Maharashtra with reference to solid waste management. Sometimes big cities can learn from smaller towns and small cities towns can learn from big cities as well. So, there are similar problems that can be different problems. In general, there is what is called as a metropolitan bias in the research. You find a lot of research taking place on Mumbai on Kolkata and Delhi and very few studies on smaller towns like Vandara or even other medium sized cities like Nagpur and so on. So, that itself constitutes some kind of a bias and inequality because we tend to give knowledge to students only derived from the experiences of big cities. So, it is very important that you search out and provide information to students of both small towns and big cities. Now, in terms of positive solutions, in cities, some people argue that sustainable urbanization is an oxymoron which means that they too cannot go together. You can be sustainable or you can have cities, you cannot have both. Cities by definition are unsustainable according to these kinds of researchers. That sometimes may be true. So, some people say Mumbai is beyond hope, you cannot make it sustainable. But one never knows with a lot of technological change, better understanding of environment and so on. One may be able to make even cities like Mumbai sustainable. But what is important for us is to see how at a national or regional level, we can make urbanization sustainable. We may not be able to make Mumbai sustainable. But we may be able to come up with a sustainable urbanization model at the level of a state or a region. And here one of the models which was educated quite a lot by our previous president Abdul Kalam is called as the Pura model. So, Pura stands for provision of urban amenities in rural areas. So, this is talking about urbanizing villages, not in the sense of industrialization, pollution and so on. But providing the facilities which we have in urban areas in terms of energy, water, sanitation, all those kinds of services, so that it fulfills another objective in terms of people not moving away to cities from their villages, including provision of amenities like education for example. So, cities become unsustainable because they draw, they are a magnet for populations as they provide a lot of facilities and amenities. If we can provide these in the villages and since the village economy contributes, uses less energy, contributes less to global warming, by providing these amenities we can have a sustainable urbanization model at the global level. So, introducing these kinds of approaches provide an alternative understanding of the urban development model for countries like India. We now come to the last concept which for today that is the question of equity. Now, I hope all of you are aware of the difference between equity and equality. So, equality is to attain the sameness between different individuals. Everybody is the same, everybody is equal, everybody gets the same benefits from the government, same rights and so on. But equity is about provisioning, provision of equal opportunities. We may not want to be equal, is it not? I may not want, everybody may not want to live in a very large bungalow, everybody may not want to have own 10 cars, a jet plane and 200 servants and so on. People have different needs and aspirations. So, equity is to say that if people want to achieve something, they should have the opportunity to do so. So, it is equal rights rather than equal outcomes, everybody need not be the same. So, here how is the problem of equity related to the issue of environment? That is what we are going to discuss because that has been one of the central issues by social science researchers in India and that is why we have been saying from the beginning that in India the issue of environment is not only of prevention of pollution or of conservation of resources. The main problem is one of resolving conflicts between different groups and regions over environmental resources. That is because there is no equitable access to resources between different regions groups and so on. So, some of you who have been following this bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh between Telangana and Andhra would know that river water sharing was also one of the issues there because it was seen that rivers which flow through Telangana are not actually benefiting Telangana, it is benefiting another part of the state and similar issues are raised in different parts of the country if not the world. With that very brief distinction between equity and equality, let me go on to address this issue. So, what I am trying to do here is that in the UGC syllabus in the textbooks, the issue of equity is mentioned without giving us a framework to understand how equity relates to environment in the Indian context. So, the best way to do that is to use the material given by Ramchandra Guha and Gadgil in the book titled Ecology and Equity which is here. So, in that they are talking about how the use and abuse of natural resources depends on which category human beings belong to in the Indian context. So, they like we talk of rich and poor, haves and have nots, upper caste, lower caste and so on. They are talking about three groups of people in terms of their relationship to natural resources.  So, the first category is omnivore. So, in class 5, we have all learnt what is the difference between omnivore, carnivore and herbivore.  Here by omnivores, they talk about a specific section of the population which is industrialists, rich farmers and middle classes, mostly living in cities of course, with the exception of rich farmers. These are people who have a lot of money. They also have stable income, stable jobs and employment and they have the ability to influence government policy. So, they are able to access natural resources, minerals, water, forest, plants, agriculture much more than other groups of people. The second category is the ecosystem people who mostly live in rural areas, who directly depend on natural resources for their living. This is small farmers, landless labour, pastoralists.  So, what Gohan and Gadgil are saying is that in when omnivores control more and more resources, they force the ecosystem people out of their livelihoods. So, for example, if coastal areas are taken over for location of ports or nuclear plants or SCZ, special economic zones, what happens to the people who are living there and who have fisheries or other livelihoods? They become ecological refugees and come and start living in the slums in cities or in villages, one may set up mining projects. We may destroy forests to mine minerals. We may set up power plants, factories and so on. So, the agricultural population which is displaced from there, they become ecological refugees. They are displaced, evicted, resettled, migrants into the cities. So, thus you have three categories of people who all have unequal access to resources and unequal dependence on natural resources. Based on this, they develop what is called as the omnivore ecosystem people binary. So, this shows the kind of inequality that exists between the two groups. So, the omnivores can get resources from anywhere. So, for example, you have very large fishing companies with very large ships, modern technologies. They can do a lot of fishing in the Arabian Sea. If the fish stock gets exhausted in the Arabian Sea, they can go to the Pacific Ocean, they can go to the Indian Ocean, they can go anywhere. Whereas, the ecosystem people, the small scale fishers in Mumbai or Gujarat, they have small boats, they cannot go into the deep sea, they cannot go to the Pacific Ocean. So, their livelihoods are destroyed because of overfishing by the omnivores. So, who have a global reach and the purpose of the omnivores in extracting resources is to generate a surplus is to make profits. Whereas, the ecosystem people want just enough to feed themselves. Similarly, you have other aspects, in terms of modern or scientific, traditional, authentic, which class they belong to, what is their relationship to nature. So, for example, we say that last year India had a drought. This year also a drought is predicted. But the middle class and the rich are not going to be so much affected, because if there is a drought and there is a crop failure, they will import food from other parts of the world. They will be able to feed themselves. But the small and marginal farmers and the peasants, if drought occurs and the crop fails, they have no way to go, except to become migrant labor. And that is also a very risky kind of solution available to them, because they have a very close relationship with the resource base. If the resource base collapses because of drought or a natural disaster or climate change, their livelihood also collapses. This is the inequality that is created between the omnivores and the ecosystem people, finally resulting in the creation of a third group called as the ecological refugees. Based on this understanding of inequality with reference to natural resource use and access, one can then begin to teach the students about the different kinds of inequalities. So, again in the UGC syllabus, certain kinds of vague topics are given about inequality with reference to use and access to resources. We are trying to break down that idea of inequality into different kinds of inequality, which is what we are going to talk about. So, if we remain at a very vague level, the students do not quite appreciate how inequality can affect people when the environment degrades, when there is pollution, when there is climate change. By breaking it down into different kinds of inequalities, students begin to sensitize and empathize with how people can suffer because of environmental problems. The first is the disparity between different countries, disparity between northern, which is called as the global north, which is mostly Europe and North America, which are the rich countries in the world. And the global south, which is mostly Asia, Africa, South America. So, again Ramchandra Gohar to cite him, he uses this word full stomach versus empty belly environmentalism. So, he says in America, people talk about conservation of nature for aesthetic reasons, for reasons of beauty, because of belief in preserving nature and so on, not because nature is important to us as food, as a source of livelihood and so on. Whereas, in countries like India, people are dependent on nature for their everyday sustenance. Of course, this kind of full stomach versus empty belly environmentalism happens within a country also. So, within a country, there can be certain groups of environmentalists who want to protect the environment. So, I was giving you this example yesterday of how in the Poway lake, there is a fishing association, anglers club, who only do recreational fishing, they catch fish and throw it back. So, they are opposed to people, the poor doing fishing in the Poway lake next to IIT for livelihood, who catch fish and sell it every day in the marketplace, because they believe they are destroying the lake. So, this is an example of the full stomach versus empty belly kind of environmentalism, where certain kinds of people are interested in the environment only as an object of recreation, amusement, pleasure, beauty and they do not understand the needs of people who are dependent for their livelihoods and food on the environment. So, this translates into an emphasis on conservation. So, in the Indian context, I want to stress here, I want to emphasize here that when it comes to environmental problems, we should not focus only on conservation, even though it may be very important. How to use resources optimally so that everybody's need is meant is what we need to focus on. How to enable access to basic needs, because 300 million people are below the poverty line in India, they do not eat 3 meals a day, they may not have a shelter, they may not have clothes, they may not have energy, they may not have water, some of them have to work 5 kilometers, 10 kilometers to get a pot of drinking water. So, meeting their needs means that on the one hand, some, there will be some impact on the environment creating schemes to meet their basic needs. On the other hand, we can think of solutions which does not over explore their resources. So, here one can do different kinds of exercises. One can, for example, look at newspaper reports from different countries and see how environmental issues are covered. One can cover newspaper reports in English newspapers versus newspapers in regional Indian languages and see what kind of a view they have of environmental problems and see if there are differences in how people relate to environment. Or one can make students do interviews with the rich and the poor, the rural and the urban and so on and see what idea of conservation, what is their view of environmental problems and see how we can then understand the issue of inequality and perspectives on environmental problems. Just as you have an inequality between countries developed and developing countries, we also find that there is inequality between rural and urban areas in countries like India. If cities are able to meet their environmental needs, where do cities get their resources from? This is a very important thing because this is something that will immediately grab the attention of students because we are taught to identify environmental problems with reference to either the poor or the tribals or in terms of pollution and so on. What is our role in environmental degradation? What is our role in the fact that some people are not able to get access to resources? That is something that students have to learn to understand. So, you see a city like Mumbai gets its water supply from many small rivers and lakes reservoirs around Mumbai. But what has happened is that in the process the people living in the villages near these rivers and lakes have been officially banned from accessing those rivers. So, that is a kind of inequality that is created that because Mumbai needs water supply, you prevent somebody else from accessing resources. Likewise, there are some lakes, some large water bodies outside of Mumbai which have been handed over to the Tatas and Reliance for generation of hydroelectric power. So, to maintain the water level, local farmers who were using that water for irrigation have been banned from using water for irrigation. So, this is also an issue of equity as well as environmental injustice. Similarly, there are forests around Mumbai and we know again from high school biology and geography that forests or green cover is required to enable precipitation, rainfall to occur. So, what has happened is the forest close to the catchment areas of these rivers and lakes around Mumbai, they have access to these forests have been banned for a lot of local communities who have been accessing them for thousands of years. So, again you see the need to ensure that rainfall happens in that catchment area creates a policy which you know creates also a restriction on access to forests as a source of livelihood for the people living there. So, this create urban rural inequalities and this also relates to the difference between omnivores and ecosystem people because Mumbai consists primarily of a lot of omnivores who are able to influence government policy that they can exclude people from accessing water and forests and all of this kind. But this can also be an opportunity for us to think of cities in a different way. Do cities have to access resources only from villages? In terms of environmental management how can we redefine sustainable cities? So, in many cities today they have rainwater harvesting as a compulsory kind of measure it is not implemented that is another story. But if you can have proper rainwater harvesting in cities then you can depend less on water from other areas in Australia they are trying it out you know they because they find that large dams have a lot of environmental consequences. So, they have actually demolished certain dams given the flow back to the river which means that cities will not be able to get the same amount of water from the dams they were getting earlier. But they are doing water harvesting improving the efficiency of water use recycling water and so on to mean the same needs. So, you can use technology to meet the same needs without necessarily exploiting some other communities and regions for the same resource. Likewise Cuba is a very good example in the contemporary world. So, Cuba is the first country where cities have become completely self sufficient for fruits and vegetables they produce all their needs in the cities themselves using organic methods. So, there are these different kinds of things that one can try out, but since cities do not offer the same kind of ecosystem services like many other ecosystems do like a river does like a mangrove does like a forest does cities have to learn to give back to society and to the environment. Okay, otherwise this kind of inequality between the rural and the urban can continue to exist. Here also one can make the students do some kind of exercises. So, for example, in the city or the municipal corporation that your college is located try to find out where the city gets its resources from it could be water it could be electricity and how the hinterland the villages surrounding your region is affected because of the need to meet the needs of your population in your city those kinds of exercises can be done. Likewise with reference to environmental justice cities have a need to provide solid waste management services. How is it affecting villages outside of your city those kinds of exercises you can make them do another kind of inequality some we look at gender equity okay. So, again this is an important component of the UGC syllabus. We know that in most societies in the world there is inequality between men and women. This inequality how is it related to environmental issues. We know from the study of a lot of environmental movements especially the Chipko movement that women have played a very important role in environmental movement because women are the first ones affected they are the worst affected by environmental degradation pollution deforestation and so on. We also know that men and women have different needs and perspectives. So, yesterday I gave you a link to a short interview with Sundar Lal Bahuguna the leader of the Chipko movement. In that he mentions about how men and women in Uttarakhand had different perspectives during the Chipko movement. So, the men for example wanted to cut down some of the trees to make half finished cricket bats and send them to factories because they will get some employment. Whereas the women said if you cut down the trees there is no fodder for the cattle and what will happen to us as families because we cattle is an important source of livelihood for us through milk and to meat and selling them in the marketplace and so on. So, men and women had different perspectives about how to address the environmental problem in that particular case in many different cases also. Likewise the impact of environmental pollution is also seen to be different on men and women. There are many studies in Mumbai for example where it shows that indoor air pollution affects women more than women because men are out most of the day, women are inside the house most of the day doing household duties and indoor air pollution is affecting the health of women more than men. Likewise, we also see that if water bodies are affected they are polluted in villages women have to go and fetch water from water bodies. If a water body close to their house is polluted they have to travel long distance because men do not do this job of traveling and getting water. So, the impact of environmental pollution and degradation is different from men and women. So, based on these kinds of assessments and studies environmentalist like Vandana Shiva talk about this concept called ecofeminism which she wrote this famous book with Maria Meese. What we are saying is that not only is the impact of environment different on men and women, women and men also have different perspectives on natural resources. So, they are saying women by nature have a better ethic of caring because they have to care for their children, care for the elderly, care for sick people in their house, they have to clean, look after other people. So, this ethic of caring for others comes naturally to women and therefore when it comes to nature also women are better at protecting nature whereas men if they are in control of nature they tend to exploit it more and destroy it more. I am simplifying the argument, but in general this is the perspective given by ecofeminism that there is women tend to have an ethics of caring they have a sense of responsibility to nature whereas if men are in control of nature that is much less. So, in gender in terms of a gender difference one sees that both in terms of regenerating the environment or protecting the environment and the effect of environmental degradation on men and women there is a difference in perspective. So, addressing incorporating the gender inequality issue with reference to environmental problems is very important so that we can then come up with more effective solutions. So, if you ignore women for example, then you are likely to come up with designs for environmental problems which are not addressing the needs of one half of the population. So, if for example, you have an agricultural strategy which is dependent heavily on ignoring the needs of women. So, in the green revolution what happened was women lost a lot of jobs because the kind of operations women were involved in like weeding were taken over by machines or if you are thinking of a water solution providing drinking water it has to address the needs of women not just of men. Likewise women go into the forest to fetch firewood. So, if you are thinking of a solution in terms of energy for cooking how can you reduce the drudgery for women who have to spend a lot of time fetching firewood. So, those are the kind of things that we are talking about. So, if deforestation takes place it is not enough to give compensation only in terms of providing an alternate income or livelihood what about forest as a source of fodder for animals what about forest as a source of fuel wood forest as a source of roofing material or fencing for the housing. All of these things have to be incorporated into our designs into our policies into our resettlement compensation strategies. A more general way of understanding equitable use of resources should be then in terms of who should use resources how much for what purpose should resources be priced and there is also an ethical issue that certain kinds of resources are absolutely necessary for people like water food how do you make them accessible because we know one of the economic instruments of enhancing the efficiency of resources used to price resources. So, in Bombay we get the municipal corporation supplies water to us at 4 rupees for 1000 liters whereas an ordinary mineral water bottle costs about 10 15 rupees. If it is only 4 rupees for 1000 liters I do not mind wasting water I do not care about considering water, but for some people in the country 4 rupees is also very high amount they cannot afford to pay even 4 rupees. So, how do you ensure that we can use we can value resources optimally so that the needs of the poor are addressed there is equitable access to resources at the same time rich people are prevented from wasting resources that is also an equity issue. So, these are the kind of things from a policy perspective that we can tell students. Let me take a couple of more questions. The topics or themes that I have covered today if you have any related questions comments clarifications please let us have them. Take now India salt lake Kolkata. Actually today we want to share a few things with you because unit today is the world environment day. So, on that day we have observed the day with some activity and that I want to share with you. So, first thing what we did we switched off all the ACs for 15 minutes and because but we could not do for the entire day because today's temperature at Kolkata is 38 degree centigrade and humidity is around 90 percent. We could not do for the entire day we did only for 15 minutes and one more thing we did yesterday we everybody took a decision that tomorrow will reach by 9 but we will take the convince only by traffic transport no one will take the private car. So, everybody came by private vehicle private transport and reached at 9 o'clock in the morning okay public transport sorry and today also even in the tea time we had a tea in a art pen slave container. Okay thank you thank you for those sharing those. Sir one more thing we prepare two posters and see the posters. Okay can you zoom in? Can you ask your camera to zoom in? Please zoom in okay. Faculty who prepared they she wants to say something with you sir. Okay. Yeah but please be very brief because we want to take some more comments. Hello sir I am Dr. Ishita Sharnal from Take Now India salt lake college. And we have prepared this we have prepared this posters which contains different stamps and matchbox levels and postcards in the letters that have the messages related to our environment how we can protect our environment like some of these I would like to mention like blow more please save rain water conserved soil conserved water conserved energy use renewable energy like this and many of us don't know that these could be a very good medium to spread awareness within the common people and we are taking a mission to spread this message. Okay yeah thank you very much congratulations on that initiative I would like all the teachers from all the 160 colleges to give a round of applause. Okay can we go to another college please this is Banaryaman hello good to see you all so yeah so do you have also want to share what you did on environment day or you have some questions for me we want to share something about our college activity regarding environment reservation our college was completely eco-friendly institution and the whole waste water is converted into this cycle and the whole of our institution become greenish and it is something special in the Sathya Mangalam area. Okay and our solar panel is constructed in all the upstairs of building and maximum it is utilized in the daytime and we also concept bio gas from our food waste in the hostel area so we are conserving our natural we are using natural gas for our food preparation the hostel. Okay and one more thing sir as we are we are also conveying some statement to create awareness to our students to towards the environment. Okay can you read it out we have eco-friendly care and geo-club and we have lion's club so many clubs are there to preserve environment and make awareness to the students. Okay that's excellent thank you for sharing this with us one last college we can go to this is Bhuneshwar okay my greetings to on world environment day today sir yes hello thank you thank you my first question is that today we are observing the world environmental day how social forestry is helpful for maintenance of rural environment and enhance of rural consumption. Thank you yeah we are running out of time so I will quickly respond to this question and then we'll stop we have only one minute okay sir you know this concept of social forestry has been a very contentious and quad controversial issue for the last 20-30 years because some people believe social forestry is actually anti-social forestry because the way in which it has been handled by the government and the forest department is that it is not really meeting the needs of the people who depend on forest so the forest department decides which trees to plan which may not actually be fruit bearing plants for example or fruit bearing trees that is why then they went for joint forest management and now you have the forest rights act so while social forestry in concept is a very good idea it will work best if local people are given much more freedom to decide in what way social forestry should be practiced both in terms of selection of species and in terms of the maintenance of forest the maintenance of the ecosystem the biodiversity and in terms of also ensuring security for the forest for protecting the wild animals and so on. So if there is genuine participation of the people then social forestry can actually work very well in meeting both the environmental needs as well as the social needs of the population okay so let me stop here thank you very much.