My City My Responsibility - Harvesting rainwater for the Dry days!

 Dear All, 

Collage of some of the photos

Being a part of the Climate Reality Project, I happened to connect with Shivam Singh, a young enthusiast working on tree plantation and the founder of a startup ExploreiT, working for youth empowerment and environmental activism. 

Currently he is also assisting Col. Shashikant Dalvi, a retired army officer, working tirelessly for incorporating rainwater harvesting in housing societies of Pune and the founder of Parjanya Rainwater Harvesting Consultancy. He is currently focused on making the rural areas around Pune water resilient, through his association with the Climate Reality Project. One such initiative lead to installation of rainwater harvesting systems in four villages namely Kurvandi, Thugaon, Bavadi, Karegaon on Pune Nashik road. 

I got an opportunity to visit these villages, and was accompanied by Dr Prassana Jogdeo, Co-founder of Lemnion Green Solutions, Radhika Dhingra, Director of  Badlaav Social Reform Foundation. and her colleague Munira. Mr. Anirudh Todkar, CEO, MAPS Industries Pune, a dynamic personality responsible for implementation of the RWH System also accompanied us. 

The first village we visited was Karegaon, where we met the Sarpanch Mrs. Suvarna Gevade. She was very happy to greet us. Radhika spoke to her about Sustainable Menstruation practices and she seemed very approachable. Since a lot of young women in the villages use sanitary napkins. The disposal of used sanitary napkins is creating a menace in cities, in spite of the waste management systems being in place. In villages, this is creating a bigger disaster, with a potential to contaminate water sources. Hence, Radhika briefed the Sarpanch on cloth pads as well as menstrual cup and its usage. 

Potatoes left to dry

Another thing observed was though the villagers have good access to LPG supply, every house had a traditional Chulha working on fuelwood. Here I briefly spoke about Samuchit's smokeless cookstoves. The Sarpanch was quite keen on this. The village women seemed open to change their day to day practices for betterment of their quality of life. 

I was fascinated to know that the villages were self sustaining from livelihood perspective due to the interventions by PepsiCo under the Contract Farming Agreement for growing potatoes. All the villagers were involved in this market driven agricultural practice. Though this looks like a win win situation, growing the same crop every year, in order to cater to the urban luxury market needs (and thereby neglecting local food security) may have several adverse consequences. It may cause soil quality degradation and environmental impacts due to lack of diversification in crops in the long run. Also in the face of climate change, the lack of local food security may increase vulnerability of the communities. As the monsoon pattern is totally being affected by climate change, agriculture across India is greatly affected. This may lead to larger fluctuations in food prices going ahead. Growing sufficient food for own consumption is therefore a better strategy for a farming community. 

Discussion on Sustainable Menstruation

However, the villagers seemed to be very happy for their improved standard of living, and seemed less bothered about the cost of INR 3,000,000/- every month from January to June/July to tanker in water for domestic use. Currently the local government is bearing the cost, but this is an unsustainable practice. Here the setup of Rooftop rainwater harvesting systems installed through the inputs of Col. Dalvi and Mr. Todkar play a crucial role. The rooftop rainwater harvesting systems were set such that they recharged the existing borewells, which would help recharge the aquifer and raise the groundwater level. It is expected that this will at least partially if not fully fulfill the water requirements of the villagers during the next summer season. 

I felt that corporates like PepsiCo come to such villages with attractive proposals without giving any consideration to the prevailing ecological and social conditions in the village. Such villages turn to be neither a village nor a city, but get stuck somewhere in between. 

Traditional fuelwood cookstoves

Col. Dalvi believes that rain water harvesting is just a beginning. We can slowly support these villages into becoming self sustaining, socially, ecologically and economically.  Since the villagers are open to new ideas and are ready to make the shift, I felt its worthwhile to undertake a few sessions on specific topics with the villagers. Another woman Sarpanch Mrs Manisha Totre also met her along with local ASHA workers and members of women's SHGs. They are also keen to host us for a session on Sustainable menstruation and smokeless cooking stoves soon.  

Discussion on smokeless cookstoves

Overall it was great visit, the weather was in our favour - it was pleasant and did not rain. Five of us had interesting discussions on overall environmental issues related to w

aste management and political outlook. 

I am thankful to Shivam for organizing this visit and Col. Dalvi for his enthusiasm in explaining to us the overall system and my fellow colleagues for interesting discussions. 

Pournima Agarkar.

www.samuchit.com

My City My Responsibility - Is Coronavirus an Alarm call!

Dear All, 

With all the hype and rapid spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the city made me realize that though the infection is similar to a flu it can get serious if proper sanitation and medication is not undertaken. So first things first - be alert, don't panic and get proper treatment ASAP if required!

However, I am curious if  the virus is such an evil or not! Since the virus has stepped in suddenly all the news in the country is zoomed in this issue. While all other blood boiling issues happening around the country like Delhi riots, JNU attacks, NRC and CAA, war like situation, all has taken a back seat. Everyone is sanitizing their lives, right from the corporate businesses, industrialists, governments, individuals, schools, colleges, organizations and especially media channels and newspaper agencies everyone is busy fighting this so called EVIL virus in some way or the other!

Its human nature to respond to anything that is in front of us rather than being prepared well in advance for an upcoming situation. That's also one of the reasons why our disaster management plans (DMP) and policies are reactive rather than proactive. The virus outbreak just makes it evident how we wait until a crisis hits us that badly from economic, social and physical aspect to undertake the required action.

I feel sad to say this, that unfortunately the impacts of climate change have not yet reached the mark where we faced catastrophic economic, social and physical losses that it urges all of us to come together and take the appropriate action on ground!!! We still don't realize how crucial  it is for us to gear up ourselves and fight the bigger evil of Climate Change which is probably going to wipe out humanity completely in no time! However, in a way this outbreak will help save some of the carbon emissions especially the ones caused due to the aviation industry which are almost double compared to transport via road and waterways. A lot of business/work related meetings, conferences/seminars or events are happening online which in turn will help reduce the emissions from flying, though temporary but still will have an impact! And who knows - may be people will see what is possible to achieve using the cyber space and by not traveling too much, some of these measures will stick around long term! 

But closer home - by the time we get over the virus, we are going to almost get into the monsoon season in India. The coming monsoons may be far more worse than last year. It is time we ask ourselves, are we really prepared for these situations, are we equipped to face the bigger challenges? What all we need to do well in advance to foolproof ourselves! What if we are faced with a catastrophic flood like situation devastating our lives, leaving us no where to go. What if our nearest coastal city and the economic hub like Mumbai gets submerged! Think over it. We need to have effective solutions for the long term impacts that will occur due to climate change!    

Monkey giving an alarm call when a predator is nearby

Lets take this outbreak as an Alarm call for all of us to look at the bigger crisis that we will be facing. Lets get alert and gear up ourselves not only to fight the short term crisis like Coronavirus but also the long term crisis of rapidly changing climate!!!

Any suggestions are welcome!

In order to create more awareness about climate change and its impacts we are conducting monthly workshops titled #ChallengingThanos - Countdown to Monsoon 2020. Check out our social media handles for the upcoming activities and help us build a resilient community!

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com

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My City My Responsibility - Development versus Environment

Sustainable Development

Dear All, 

Our city is witnessing varied developmental challenges that threaten the very environment of the city both socially as well as ecologically. Few of the development issues that we are facing today is the construction along the riverside and dumping debris and untreated sewage into the river. Allowing construction in the Green and no development zones, de-reserving plots from a bird sanctuary and opening it up for construction and illegally shifting the blue and red flood lines of our river to allow construction etc. This is indeed a threat to our natural resources i.e land, rivers and biodiversity. 

I am seriously worried about our development that doesn't account for our environment. I am not against any new development in our city. I mean that we are in an era of Sustainable Development, where Environment and Development should go hand in hand. For the same, a lot of thought has to be put from social, environment & climate change and economic perspective, while considering any development in the city. With Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that we have in front of us to be met by 2030. We as citizens need to understand what is sustainability and act as watch dogs to see that our government is indeed adhering to it. We as citizens have the right to ask our developers about their decisions time and again. 

However this is one side of the coin on the other hand its time that our bureaucrats understand sustainability and start incorporating it. They should take conscious efforts to study the area before undertaking any sorts of development in that area. A lot of brainstorming needs to happen in order to understand the socio-economic inequities, ecological and climatic conditions of that area. Meanwhile it is important to maintain transparency as well by publishing the information online for local and national level experts and scientists for scrutiny. With the smart technology that we have today its very handy to share information and make right use of the same. Its quite feasible to accelerate this process through the use of technology even though it is time consuming. Since today's development projects are not full proof, it activates the environmental enthusiasts opposing the same which results in delay of the project as well as enormous financial losses. Ultimately its the common man who has to bear the burden through price hikes or taxes. 

As citizens its in our hands to be the guardians of our city and accordingly envision our city. We have the right to ask our local authorities about our surrounding development. 

Pournima Agarkar.