India@75 | 4 green warriors, 4 great ideas to save our ecology

Pradeep Sangwan, founder of Healing Himalayas, practically lives in the high reaches of Himachal Pradesh, picking up trash left by tourists.

Flowing rivers, litter-and pollution-free mountains, conservation of forests and natural habitats, sustainable and smaller cities and focus on ruralisation instead of unmanageable, collapsing urban sprawls – this is how green warriors working on the ground visualise India of the future.

These are some of the people who work relentlessly but quietly on the ground, striving to save our ecology in order to let us breathe and live in a cleaner environment.

If one person is climbing the Himalayas to clean up plastic left by tourists, another is endeavouring to save the fragile forests and rich biodiversity of the Northeast and eastern Himalayas.

One is pulling out all the stops to revive a near-dead river and make it flowing again while yet another is crusading to make India’s capital a more liveable place.

Litter-free mountains

Pradeep Sangwan, founder of Healing Himalayas—a campaign to preserve the pristine beauty of the majestic mountain range—practically lives in the high reaches of Himachal Pradesh, picking up litter left by tourists. He also trains, educates and assists locals in waste management with his dedicated team of volunteers.

Starting a movement and creating an ecosystem where people pitch in and keep the momentum going to keep the mountains plastic-and garbage-free is Sangwan’s idea of clean and green India.

“I may not be able to see a plastic-free Himalayas in my lifetime, but I want to plant a seed of thought in other people so that they can contribute to make the Himalayas a better place,” says Sangwan.

(Image: Sylwia Bartyzel via Unsplash)

An avid trekker-mountaineer whose tryst with Himachal started with trekking expeditions since his college days, Sangwan devoted himself to full-time environmental activism with Healing Himaylayas in 2016. Sangwan says he and the Healing Himalayas team have cleared approximately 8 lakh kilos of non-biodegradable waste from the foothills of Himalayas so far.

“In 2013, I realised that I wanted to heal the Himalayas. It took time to convince my family. Everything took time. I learnt everything on the job,” he says, expressing a sense of satisfaction at his decision.

Sangwan explains how tourism is boosting the economies of the hill states and increasing the expenditure power of the people. But on the flip side, the crowding is showing its negative effect. More people are coming in and all popular tourist centres are bursting at their seams.

“The garbage generated is huge. You can see mounds of waste all over. Pollution is increasing. Potable water is becoming scarce. These cities don’t have the infrastructure to handle that kind of pressure,” he says, adding the carbon footprint is massive.

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Sangwan’s organisation helps locals set up material recovery facilities, or refuse collection points, where they segregate and store the waste, which is later sent to waste-energy plants and other recycling units.

Just planting trees here and there does not work. Eco restoration needs a plan—why we are restoring a site, its anticipated outcome, how it benefits wildlife, climate change mitigation, and reduction of human wildlife conflict.

“All this sounds good but very difficult and expensive. We need to travel long distances to take the waste to recycling facilities,” he says.

The fragile mountains are experiencing problems witnessed by big towns and cities and the time to act is now, he warns.

Sangwan feels all villages and the smallest of units should have waste management systems and only then can we do something to maintain the pristine nature of the mountains.

“If we can give a fraction of our time, which we spend on unnecessary debates and issues, to waste management, we can make a huge difference.”

Restoring biodiversity

Far away in the Northeast, what was launched as a neighbourhood nature club way back in 1989 by a group of environment enthusiasts, Assam-based Aaranyak is now a leading non-profit working for the conservation and restoration of the region’s rich biodiversity.

Helming this organisation is Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, who feels that conservation and protection of all existing and remaining forests, wetlands and other such natural habitats, especially in the northeast, can ensure India’s ecological stability and the overall well-being of humans.

Just planting trees here and there does not mean eco-restoration, he explains. Eco-restoration needs a plan—why we are restoring a site, its anticipated outcome, how it benefits wildlife, climate change mitigation, and reduction of human-wildlife conflict. All these contribute to our overall well-being.

Better planning to achieve sustainable development is needed for Northeast India as the region is ecologically fragile. “Many tribal and village people get their foods, livelihood from the forest and wetland habitats and saving them is of utmost importance,” Talukdar, the secretary general of the organisation, says.

Part of the Indo-Burma and Eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspots, the Northeast houses a host of vegetation types, endangered floral species, medicinal plants, a variety of insects, fishes, birds, mammalian species and animals, which makes its preservation a top priority for naturalists and environmentalists.

When Talukdar started the nature club with his friends 33 years ago, little did he realise that he would be guiding more than 400 young conservation workers from the Northeast one day.

These people move around at the grassroots level, train and educate people on sustainable livelihoods and community conservation, make them ecologically literate, interact with the authorities on climate change adaptation, work on flora and fauna conservation, deforestation and a myriad of environmental activities in the Northeast and other places.

“Creating a good pool of human resources is essential for long-term needs. Some from our young brigade have shone in the national and international arena because of their ability to address some of the applied research and conservation needs,” he says.

Water is another issue that warrants top and immediate attention, he feels, warning that potable water is likely to be a cause of future ecological conflict among people.

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“We need to conserve fresh water reservoirs and water catchment areas. I would encourage the government to plan way ahead on this front to avoid an ecological disaster,” Talukdar, who is a member of the Asian Rhino Specialist Group of the IUCN and a member of the National Board of Wildlife, cautions.

Part of the solution, he says, would involve tackling increasing concretisation of the city landscape, which hinders the natural percolation of water into the ground and prevents groundwater recharge.

Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, secretary general, Aaranyak.

Smaller liveable cities, focus on rural

Every city has a saturation point and once it crosses that level, it crumbles under its own pressure, and if that part is kept in mind in the planning stages, India in general, and our cities in particular, will become more liveable.

Our cities need space to breathe, not more buildings.

- Environmentalist  Diwan Singh

The focus of future India should be on smaller cities and not mega urban sprawls such as Delhi or Mumbai or Kolkata with an unending population, says Diwan Singh, a Delhi-based environmentalist.

“No city should be allowed to grow to this size. The best liveable cities should limit their population,” Singh says.

Every resource leaves a footprint on the planet and when a city expands, either horizontally or vertically, it puts immense stress on the earth, Singh says, taking the example of Delhi and its contiguous cities and towns.

Delhi-NCR, he explains, has become one continuous and congested urban sprawl spreading across 80-100 km, giving rise to a myriad of problems from air, water and noise pollution to traffic issues to putting pressure on civic infrastructure such as water, power and waste management.

Ideally, there should be at least an 80km buffer between any two cities but here we have overpopulated concrete jungles stretching for miles, he says.
“Is it possible to effectively manage such humongous cities? For example, look at the Yamuna, which can’t be cleaned as the city is too big.”

One of the founding members of Parivartan, an NGO led by Arvind Kejriwal before he launched the Aam Aadmi Party, Diwan Singh has fought a legal battle to save the south Delhi ridge from commercial exploitation and restore Delhi’s dying water bodies, including the Yamuna.

According to Singh, the huge investment on housing and concepts such as transit-oriented development is drawing more and more people towards the already overpopulated cities.

“Urbanisation is creating havoc and as such there should be a serious rethink instead of focusing on just one kind of particular way of living.”

Ruralisation in a true manner can be a sustainable alternative, he explains, saying there is a need to create better economic conditions in villages so that people do not migrate to cities. “That can save our cities from collapsing. Our cities need space to breathe, not more buildings.”

The huge amounts of money spent on infrastructure projects such as flyovers, big roads and housing in mega cities can be utilised to make life better in villages and small towns. And that is the idea of a better India, he says.

A nation of free-flowing rivers

Every river in India flowing freely, without any obstruction—that is former Indian forest service officer and conservationist Manoj Misra’s mission and dream.

Convenor of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, a consortium of NGOs and individuals fighting for the river, Misra also aspires for an India where every hill, big or small, is revegetated and not left barren.

Misra well knows that achieving this by itself is an uphill and Herculean task as it would require massive political, ecological, social and economic mobilisation.

But the effort to revegetate the mountains, he assures, would pay back everything with interest many times over in terms of massive livelihood generation as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation, secured soils and flowing rivers yet again.

Misra, who wants to see the Yamuna flowing free and healthy all across its length from the source in his lifetime, however, admits that nagging issues on the ground makes the battle to rejuvenate the river quite tough.

The Yamuna, which flows from Yamunotri in Uttarakhand and travels a length of 1,376 kilometres before merging with the Ganga in Allahabad, is heavily polluted in Delhi, almost resembling a stinking drain.

“Too many cooks are spoiling the broth. A large number of government agencies with a pie in the Yamuna make any sensible effort unworkable with one-upmanship and ego clashes,” he explains. Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi, and a host of agencies in all the three governments are stakeholders in the Yamuna.

A river should be free to flood to retain its healthy status as the process fulfils its fluvial functions, including wetting of floodplains, ground-water recharge, creating suitable conditions for fish and other aquatic life to survive, giving life to riparian vegetation and floodplain wetlands, etc., he explains.

Barrages and dams obstruct the natural flow of rivers and should be done away with, says Misra, who fought a long legal battle in the National Green Tribunal that had set an ambitious road map for a rejuvenated Yamuna.

“The NGT judgment of January 13, 2015 set a well-thought-out and feasible road map for the rejuvenation of the Yamuna. If only the executive would implement and deliver it,” he rues.