Fighting for nature- With climate change our most pressing worry, and little action on policy front, it is left to citizens to take charge

Fighting for nature: With climate change our most pressing worry, and little action on policy front, it is left to citizens to take charge

Walking the talkin the Himalayas

Vaishali Dar

Thus was born Healing Himalayas in 2016. Starting with Manali, on a small trek called Sethan, where Sangwan was accompanied by his volunteer friends from Delhi, the foundation is currently working in five districts—Shimla, Kullu and Manali, Kinnaur, Lahaul and Spiti and Chamba. Consequently, the Haryana-based climate warrior and his team are now collecting roughly 4 tonne of non-biodegradable waste and 2 tonne of wet waste on a daily basis.Initially, it was just clean-up campaigns, but since 2020, the team has started building material recovery facilities (MRFs) across Himachal Pradesh. “We have five such facilities at different locations now (Rakcham Pooh in Kinnaur, Tabo in Spiti, Narkanda in Shimla, Mansari in Kullu and near Atal Tunnel in Khoksar). Just like every panchayat has a temple, primary healthcare centre and a school, a material recovery facility should also be a part of every village, depending on the size of population and influx of tourism,” says Sangwan, who wanted to enter the defence forces as a student but destiny had other plans for him.

During summers, Sangwan organises clean-up drives every weekend and the drives vary from two to 30 days. “Most people around the village come for a weekend clean-up alongside door-to-door awareness campaigns to get the waste segregated at two locations—Manali (Kullu) and Reckong Peo (Kinnaur), where the foundation has achieved 70% segregation,” he adds.But the journey to reach this far in his mission has not been easy. From getting volunteers, engaging local communities on the ground to management and sustaining the whole process of developing a circular economy in the most difficult topography of the world, Sangwan has managed and built his core team of eight, who work part-time with him, along the way.

“It is physically draining but refreshing at the same time. When I pick up waste, it’s not just litter, it’s the negativity, intolerable attitude of the people who litter. So, in the process, I consume a lot of negativity, it’s always a challenge to keep a positive, healthy mind,” he says, adding that the clean-up drive is a Herculean task and will take a lifetime to heal the mindset of litterbugs.Since July 2022, Sangwan has trekked more than 10,000 km and collected roughly 3,090 tonne of non-biodegradable waste.“I think one must travel with a purpose. My aim is to set up at least 10 MRFs in 2024 and 2025 and collectively aggregate about 40 tonne of segregated solid dry waste per day. Once I do that, I would like to set up recycling units within Kullu district and make useful products to avoid logistical expenses and footprints. It’s not rocket science but demands consistency, discipline and dedication,” says Sangwan.

Capturing the issues of Kashmir’s Wular Lake

Shubhangi Shah

While much of the reportage on Kashmir is centred around conflict and insurgency, filmmaker Jalal Ud Din Baba is drawing awareness to the issues surrounding its water bodies, especially the Wular Lake, one documentary at a time.

“I hail from Adipora, a village on the banks of the mighty Wular Lake. It’s like its waters run with my blood,” says Baba, commenting on the second-largest freshwater lake of Asia. “People from my village as well as the neighbouring ones draw their livelihood from Wular, hence, caring for it comes naturally to me,” he adds.

Baba’s first film—Hum Aur Humare Jheel(2001)—was based on the lake. His most acclaimedSaving the Saviour, which won him the Special Environment Award by the United Nations in 2017 and a mention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in hisMann ki Baatprogramme, was centred on the same.Leher Leher Zindagiis another of Baba’s acclaimed films, but this one is centred around river Jhelum, which feeds Wular.

Here, too, the Kashmir conflict was instrumental, as everything else, including ecological urgency, took a backseat. “In fact, lawlessness gave way to grabbing and encroaching upon the water bodies and forests. Wular Lake took the biggest hit, as the renegades (Ikhwanis), in the 1990s, started grabbing the large swaths of lake lands, grasslands, islands, wetlands, embankments, willow plantations, in its peripheries across its width and breadth,” the filmmaker says.

“Conflict, deadlocks, land grabbing, unabated encroachments, official treachery and brute corruption have blinded us beyond belief. However, the pressing reality is, we need these lifesaving water bodies more than anything else,” he adds.

Baba sees what he calls “green” filmmaking as a powerful tool, and calls himself a “guerrilla filmmaker”, that is, “I do not look for a team and estimate budgets, I just conceive an idea and go out on field to research and shoot, come back and compile my films on my own without any external help.”

A one-man army, Baba’s efforts have borne fruit. “A great thing happened in my career when PM Modi talked about Saving the Saviour in his Mann ki Baat on September 24, 2017. It was an acknowledgment that paved the way for me to go ahead with my plans. My film was taken seriously and that resulted in something too huge to imagine. It was followed by financial assistance worth Rs 1,600 crore for Wular Lake conservation and ecotourism,” he shares.

Despite having made several documentaries on the environment, Baba calls making an effective film on nature “a very serious and painstaking process. Even after putting pieces together, draining all your resources, there are hardly any takers, even public consumption is very poor, most of the times you need to screen your films on your own, official funding is absolutely nonexistent, even if some private entity shows any interest to fund your project and you put up a fantastic documentary film, then there’s hardly any space for theatrical release across the country. Documentary film culture is yet to flourish in the country,” he explains.

Yet, Baba is steering on with three films, which are currently in the pipeline. “Although shooting documentary films can take years and I’ve been on the job for the past three years, hopefully they shall be ready by the next year-end,” he adds.

Sowing the seeds for a greener Sundarbans

Shubhangi Shah

Growing up in the Sundarbans area of West Bengal, Umashankar Mandal, 44, had seen the interplay between man and nature up close; both the good and the bad kind. However, it was the 2009 Cyclone Aila and the devastation it caused in the region that turned this geography teacher of a school in Murshidabad into the ‘Mangrove Man’, a moniker he earned thanks to the extensive mangrove planting that he undertook.

“As Cyclone Aila wreaked havoc, I understood one thing that the lives of the people living in the region are really endangered due to the depletion of mangroves. Adding to that, the number of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal is increasing every year due to global warming. To deal with the problem, what was required was to increase the forest spread. That’s why I, as a geography teacher and climate warrior, tried hard to establish this idea myself and with the help of others,” Mandal says.

In July 2009, in a little over a month since Aila, he embarked on the plantation drive. Inspired by Mandal, others swiftly joined— his fellow villagers, environmentalists, and most-importantly, women. “I have named them, the Mangrove Army. They do everything from mangrove planting to protection. They are working like soldiers for the mangroves,” he says.

The effort has borne fruits, as in a decade, he has planted “at least 650,000 mangrove seeds and saplings,” as per the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Speaking on the impact, he explains, “The mangrove plantations have proved to be crucial in protecting the river embankments. They have also led to an abundance of fish, crabs, phytoplankton, and even birds. Due to the high density of trees in our area, there is also a high level of carbon sequestration, which is extremely crucial for our collective future. There are also a large number of flowers, which is beneficial for honey production.

Along with the advantages that Mandal enumerated, there has been one more benefit, for which he was honoured by the WWF with its 2021 Dr Rimington Award, which is given to an individual who has made a highly commendable contribution to the conservation of wild tigers. It turns out that the rise in mangrove cover has had a positive impact on the tigers as it led to the reduction in the man-animal conflict. “The mangroves planted by Umashankar will help safeguard future generations from climate change and provide a safe habitat for the tigers which call the Sundarbans home,” the WWF says on its website.

One can also comprehend the impact created from the fact that following the 2020 Cyclone Amphan, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had ordered the local administration to plant five crore mangrove saplings. She gave a similar directive following the 2021 Cyclone Yaas as well.

While Mandal steered on, the going wasn’t easy, especially the financial aspect. However, some private organisations did come forward. Most important have been the “people who were encouraged by my work and came forward. In one word, the initiative is crowd-funded,” he says.

Mandal still doesn’t have funds to pay his Mangrove Army, but he pays in kind. “They are given daily essentials, such as ration, clothes, health and learning materials, medical aid, etc, so that they can sustain themselves financially,” he adds.

Changing the future course of a Vadodara rivulet

Vaishali Dar

Local action for global impact. The line is synonymous with what Sneha Shahi has been doing—reviving polluted rivers. In 2019, the 26-year-old environmentalist led a campaign—along with a team of 10 students from her alma mater, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda—to clean a portion of the 7-km-long Bhukhi stream of the Vishwamitri river in Vadodara that was so choked with plastic waste that people mistook it for a gutter.

“One of the primary obstacles is lack of awareness about water conservation for smaller freshwater systems which often get overlooked as nallahs or gutters. It was tough to convince local people to change their long-standing habits of dumping waste directly into the stream. Additionally, finding the necessary resources and funding to execute our initiatives on a larger scale was a significant hurdle,” says Shahi, who is pursuing her doctorate in conservation science at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bengaluru.

Shahi is also affiliated with the ‘Plastic Tide Turner Campaign’ of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), New Delhi, besides working to increase action and awareness on SDG 6 (water and sanitation) through a network of partners and grassroots leaders across India. As a conservationist, she has worked with the Centre for Environment Education, New Delhi, on water policies and climate change. “We conducted research on anthropogenic stress on Bhukhi due to improper urban planning, bank encroachment and release of large quantities of untreated sewage,” she explains. After undergoing rigorous checks and research on the area, she started working on the stream again in 2022 with the support of 300 more volunteers from across the science faculty and environmental science department of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

“We managed to gather around 700 kg of plastic, and segregated 300 kg for recycling. A major chunk of waste was sent to a sanitary landfill site, some of it was moulded into thermocol with acetone, which was further made into wall hangings, while the remaining organic waste was converted into vermicompost,” she adds. The end result was an increase in the sighting of mugger crocodiles, native to freshwater habitats, and flap shell turtles in the patch. “We continued to visit the area to keep tabs, and the crocodiles are indeed back,” says Shahi.

Whether it is cleaning a rivulet or educating the villagers through awareness campaigns, workshops, and community engagement activities with the help of volunteers, students, professionals and homemakers, Shahi believes in creating and living a sustainable future that can start from home. “Living a plastic-free life isn’t easy, but if we work towards small changes, it certainly makes a big impact, and slowly turns into a habit. Local problems need local solutions. People should take charge of places where they live; only then can it bring a change and become a movement at a larger scale. Unplanned developments in cities have resulted in rivers and rivulets turning into sewers. We need to conserve water bodies and this cannot be done in a day,” she adds.

For Shahi, the journey of conservation of urban rivers continues in 2024 as work has started on restoring Thamirabharani, the only perennial river in Tamil Nadu. The 120-km-long river supports agriculture and biodiversity in the area, and is known for its historic, cultural, and religious significance.

But then, funding is a challenge. “Climate activists like us are dependent on government proposals and CSR grants from various environmental organisations which are generally availed of by senior organisations or individuals already having higher degrees. By the time the funds in a large organisation trickle down to the students and staff running things on ground, they are minimal,” she says.

‘Chipko’ revisited

How a National Award-winning filmmaker is raising hervoice against the felling of over 2,000 trees as part of ahighway expansion project in remote northeast India

Kunal Doley

On October 23 last year, National Award-winning filmmaker Rima Das—otherwise known for making movies that explore reality and life amid nature—took to X (formerly Twitter) with an “urgent plea”. “I want to discuss about something special. The National Highway (NH) 17 in Assam is beautiful, lined up with massive, old trees (some of which have been there for over 100 years) on both sides. They are our climate heroes, everyone knows about it, especially at a time when global warming is such a big issue. However, I’ve noticed that in the past few days, these trees are being assigned numbers. I think they will be cut down to make way for a four-lane (highway expansion) project. I’m deeply disturbed,” she says in the YouTube video posted on her X timeline.

A few days later, Das posted another video on X. This time, however, it shows several children standing around an old tree, singing and clapping to drum beats. In a scene reminiscent of the 1970s’ Chipko movement in Uttarakhand that had villagers, particularly women, wrapping their arms around trees so that they could not be felled, the kids in Das’ video are also seen hugging the tree.

“The trees being cut are at Boko, Chhaygaon and Rampur areas in Assam,” says Das, whose 2017 filmVillage Rockstarswon several awards and became India’s official entry for the 90th Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Chosen out of 28 other entries in India, it was also the first Assamese film to be submitted for Oscars. The film won the National Award in the ‘Best Film’ and ‘Best Editor’ categories, besides a ‘Best Child Artist’ award for Bhanita Das and ‘Best Location Sound Recordist’ for Mallika Das.

Das soon found support from several people, including actor and fellow Assamese native Adil Hussain. “Please do find ways to save most of the Trees of not all of them while constructing the roads. Or any such projects. Save the Rivers, Streams, Forest Covers, while conceiving developmental projects. Always (sic),” he wrote on X.

Eventually, the concerns raised by them drew the attention of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which took suo motu cognizance of the “felling of trees”. According to reports, the case has now been listed for a hearing on January 10. Das, however, thinks that the NGT move might be too late to save the trees. “We have knocked on every door, yet I wish we could have spared the trees. Witnessing trees being cut daily is disheartening. Hoping for a miracle before the loss is irreversible,” says Das, whose sequel toVillage Rockstarsis now ready for release. Her other projects—one of the four short films as part ofMy MelbourneandMalati, My Love—are also under various stages of development and/or post-production.

Since her childhood days, Das has always had a close bonding with nature. “We have to realise that this world is not just for people. These trees are our traditional treasures. We worship them. It’s painful to see them being cut,” adds Das.