It is easy to allow each disaster that happens in our country, across the world to pass through our consciousness and memory without understanding our own role in causing it. In here are resources to understand and learn more about what are the environmental concerns and issues that each of us must address to build safer cities that have more resilience to natural calamities. It is one thing to sit back and wait for the state to provide us with everything. But it is critical that each of us are informed and take our own responsibilities and initiatives seriously.
Remember that natural disasters affect not only us but all domestic animals and wildlife as well. It is in protecting our earth as if it were our own family, that we can in reality protect our own families!
Remember that natural disasters affect not only us but all domestic animals and wildlife as well. It is in protecting our earth as if it were our own family, that we can in reality protect our own families!
The word "Encroachment" is often only seen in its legal sense -- on whether the structure has legal sanction or not. Nature does not look at encroachments in this minimalist manner. A perfectly legal building with all the necessary papers can still be an encroachment if it is located in an environmentally sensitive area. The MRTS train line, running through the Buckingham Canal is an encroachment. The Madurai High Court premises located inside a water body is an encroachment. Below is a selection of encroachments in water bodies, or on watercourses. Many of the below places were badly affected during this years floods. - See more at: http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/making-disaster-satellite-images-show-how-chennais-new-urban-jungles-caused-flooding-36595#sthash.wTsXT2UQ.dpuf -
"While the increasing frequency can be attributed to climate change, our own urban planning is definitely to blame for the level of damages. Of nearly 650 water bodies that Chennai had some decades ago, just about 27 are left now. Area of large lakes have been encroached upon and so there is no water holding capacity", said Arjuna Srinidhi, programme manager, climate change, CSE. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Chennai-floods-echo-in-Paris-Raises-debate-over-past-emissions-from-rich-world/articleshow/50020046.cms
The worst affected were the southern suburbs that witnessed an unplanned real estate boom in the last decade with unapproved layouts springing up adjacent to wetlands and water bodies. Since the panchayats are unable to regulate unauthorised construction, residential development in low-level areas has mushroomed. Since the channels are also blocked, the inundation lasts longer.
Some time ago, there was talk of delineating river corridors and mapping of flood plain zones to enable the residents to know the flood risk factor of their localities but it did not materialise.
Added to this was the inadequacy of drains. Most parts of the old city were relatively safe from flooding this time. Of the Corporation’s area, the 172 sq.km of the old city have storm water drains while the remaining 254 sq.km have no storm water drains but only drains constructed by the local bodies that are not connected to the rivers.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/chennais-wettest-season-comes-in-hottest-year/article7956034.ece
Save our Sholas : Documentary film that showcases the importance of conserving forests in ensuring our water security - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7-qAhCRng
Director: Shekar Dattatri
"Synopsis: India’s Western Ghats are among the most important biodiversity hotspots in the world, and home to rare species found nowhere else on the planet. But they’ve been ravaged and systematically destroyed over the decades. While cash crops like tea and coffee have taken over vast stretches, other human impacts such as dams, roads, over-exploitation of forest products and fires have devastated fragile habitats, sometimes irretrievably. All that remains of once-extensive forests and grasslands are precious fragments scattered here and there. “SOS - Save Our Sholas” provides a glimpse into the amazing diversity of life in the “shoal” forests of the southern Western Ghats. It also illustrates some of the pressing problems that beset this habitat, and seeks to inspire viewers with examples of conservation successes that came about because of peoples’ actions. The film aspires to bring about a renewed interest and awareness in the conservation of the Western Ghats, which are the birthplace of most south Indian rivers, and a lifeline for hundreds of millions of people in peninsular India."
Activists also blame the huge deposits of sand and sediment that they claim blocked the flow of water from the Adyar river into the sea. “There are all kinds of encroachments on the Adyar,” said Nityanand Jayaraman, an environmental activist. “In September this year the state government laid a road on the Adyar river just for the Global Investors Meet. There is huge siltation of the river due to the dumping of sewage. This is blocking the flow of water into the sea,” he said. http://thewire.in/2015/12/09/how-official-negligence-turned-a-natural-crisis-into-a-human-made-catastrophe-16938/
Kannamma, whose house in the Ezhil Nagar slum is under waist-deep water, is back at work. She has been a permanent employee of the city corporation for the last eight years and is entitled to all the leaves that other government servants get. “Nobody has told me how many leaves I can take. I don’t understand these things because I am not educated. I have come to work because I don’t want my salary cut,” she says.
Here is another well known fact: all of Chennai’s and indeed all of Tamil Nadu’s sanitation workers are either Dalits or Adivasis. Most of them are from the Arundhadiyar Scheduled Caste.
“Everybody in Chennai has suffered equally because of the floods. But only my people will go through the extra suffering of cleaning Chennai’s rotting s**t. Why can’t the concerned citizens and celebrities who are distributing food and blankets also clean up the city? Why is the media only projecting them as heroes?” asks Ravichandran Bathran, a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study who is also from the Arundhadiyar community.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/flooded-chennai-s-dirty-secret-dalits-clean-rotting-mess/story-nyqoydzM32dnCoR9C1wZQI.html
