Case Studies and people’s Movement

Through legislation and regulation are the foundations of most environmental protection policies , the global nature of resource and pollution make international legislations and conventions essential. Public interest litigations and people’s Movement have also played very important role in environmental protection. In this section we will take up a few cases of PIL and people’s movement in India against environmental degradation.

• Save

Taj Trapezium Zone

Prob­lem of Pol­lu­tion has now become so severe that it is not only affect­ing human health and live­stock but it is also dam­ag­ing build­ings and mon­u­ments. Over the past four decades , the fate of the indi­a’s most emblem­at­ic mon­u­ment, the taj Mahal , has repeat­ed­ly come into the spot­light because of the ill effect of the pol­lu­tion caused by the iron foundries , Mathu­ra refin­ery , glass fac­to­ries of Firoz­abad ans brick kiln in the Taj Trapez­i­um zone (TTZ).

This is the area around Taj spread­ing over 10,400 sq.km. On repeat­ed occa­sions, Sul­phur diox­ide emis­sions from indus­tries in this area reached lev­els tens times above the pre­scribed stan­dard lev­el. Com­bined with oxy­gen and mois­ture , sul­phur diox­ide con­verts ro high­ly cor­ro­sive acid, sul­phuric acid.

Blam­ing Pol­lu­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry neg­li­gence of Raj’s decay , Mahesh Chan­dra Mehta , a promi­nent envi­ron­men­tal lawyer , filled a case before the supreme court of India in 1984. Mehta plead­ed with the court to order the var­i­ous indus­tries to take anti pol­lu­tion mea­sures or to close. He also stressed that pol­lu­tion was affect­ing the health of the work­ers and peo­ple liv­ing in Agra because of Mehta’s efforts in 1996, the supreme court final­ly ruled that the indus­tries in the area were active­ly con­tribut­ing to air pol­lu­tion and ordered major indus­tries units to install pol­lu­tion con­trol devices. “Not even one per cent chance can be tak­en when human life apart- The preser­va­tion of a pres­ti­gious mon­u­ment like the Taj is involved,” stat­ed the court order. 

The court ordered 292 coal based indus­tries to switch to nat­ur­al gas or else to relo­cate out­side the pro­tect­ed zone by April 30, 1997. Because of the oppo­si­tion from indus­tries and work­ers court order was not enforced com­plete­ly. The supreme court struck again in 1997 order­ing the clo­sure of 5 iron foundries and 107 oth­er fac­to­ries in Agra that had not cleaned up their act. The supreme court lat­er also banned cars and park­ing with­in 500 meters of the Taj’s bound­ary walls . Expert agree that some of these mea­sures have helped to improve air around the Taj.

Chipko Movement

From the last 19th cen­tu­ry the himalayan forests, have been sub­ject­ed to rapid exploita­tion. This large scale destruc­tion hs led to severe eco­log­i­cal problems. 

• Save

Rapid soil ero­sion, grow­ing fre­quen­cy of floods, reduc­tion in the avail­abil­i­ty of fire­wood and fod­der, land slides and dis­ap­pear­ance of water table, caused con­cern among peo­ple. In upper Alak­nan­da val­ley. Peo­ple also resent­ed the con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al forests into mono­cul­ture plantations.

To check envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion in this region, vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tion like the Gan­gotri Gram Swara­jya sangh(GGSS) in uttarkashi and Dasholi Gram Swara­jya Man­dal (DGSM) in Gopesh­war start­ed Chip­ko Move­ment in the 1970s. Envi­ron­men­tal­ist like Chan­di prasann bhatt and Sun­der­lal Bhau­gu­na led the Chip­ko Move­ment in Garhw­al Himalayas.

Chip­ko means to hug the tree. Vol­un­teers in their attempt to stop com­mer­cial felling threat­ened to hug the trees if trees if the saw came near them. Their activ­i­ties pop­u­lar­ized the move­ment through folk songs, street plays and wide­spread cam­paign. Its slo­gan was ” What do the for­est bear ?Soil, water and pure air, Soil, water and pure air are the basis of life “.

As a result of this strug­gle , the Gov­ern­ment replaced the Con­trac­tor sys­tem and formed Uttar pradesh For­est Depart­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (UDFDC) and the for­est relat­ed activ­i­ties were encour­aged through local coop­er­a­tives. In 1981, as a resource to Sun­der­lal Bahugu­na’s indef­i­nite fast , the Gov­er­ment con­sti­tut­ed an eight mem­ber expert com­mit­tee to pre­pare a com­pre­hen­sive report on the himalayan for­est pol­i­cy. The Gov­ern­ment lat­er put a fif­teen year mora­to­ri­um on Com­mer­i­cal tree fellings in Uttarak­hand Himalayas.

Silent Valley Movement

This move­ment is regard­ed as one of the most impor­tant eco­log­i­cal Move­ment in India. Silent Val­ley is the nar­row Val­ley of the Kun­ti Riv­er in the state of Ker­ala in the South­west of India at High­er elevation.

Its 8950 hectares of rain­for­est is a rich with valu­able plants and ani­mals. In 1973 the State Gov­ern­ment of Ker­ala decid­ed to build a dam across the gorge in order to gen­er­ate hydroelectricity.

It would have drowned valu­able for­est and threat­ened the loss of wildlife. even the gov­ern­men­t’s eco­log­i­cal task expressed its dis­sat­is­fac­tion over the loss of for­est and wildlife.

By 1979, stu­dents , Vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tion like Ker­ala Sas­tra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), Sci­ence forums, teach­ers , pro­gres­sive cit­i­zens and jour­nal­ists began to work against the project. In 1979, Save Silent Val­ley Com­mit­tee emerged . 

Prime Min­is­ter Mrs. Indi­ra Gand­hi, to set up a high lev­el tech­ni­cal Com­mit­ted Chaired by Prof. M.G.K. Menon and accept­ed its rec­om­men­da­tion that the project should not be pro­ceed­ed with and that the val­ley should be pre­served as a pre­cious bios­phere reserve.