Centre for Development Finance

Training for conducting State-wide survey on capturing Environmental Literacy in Sikkim

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:33:30 +0000

Training for conducting State-wide survey on capturing Environmental Literacy in Sikkim

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:32:07 +0000

Training for conducting State-wide survey on capturing Environmental Literacy in Sikkim

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:12:47 +0000

Project Manager – Transparent Chennai

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:55:40 +0000

USI: Urban Sustainability Index

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:50:52 +0000

Cities will be central to India’s economic future. The country’s urban population grew from 290 million in 2001 to 340 million in 2008, an increase of 17.24% over an eight year period, with this number projected to reach 590 million in 2030 (McKinsey Global Institute). Also, while in 1991, there were 23 million plus cities, this number had increased to 35 in 2001, with the emergence of two ‘mega cities’ – Delhi and Mumbai. This scale of urbanisation has put massive pressures on cities’ natural resources and in the provision of adequate basic infrastructure and services.

In order to sustain the economic productivity of cities and towns, India needs to manage its urbanization, not only in terms of addressing basic service delivery, but also paying equal attention to environmental and energy considerations. Currently, these considerations are either viewed as “add-ons” to overall strategies driven by service delivery concerns or as a subject for conventional environmental infrastructure programming as an important routine task for cities. Given the rising cost of energy, traffic congestion, urban sprawl and related mobility costs, the vulnerability of fresh water sources, and incidences of chronic air pollution, environmental and energy considerations should become part of the core city development planning process. There is an immediate need for a fundamental shift in India’s Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to focus on sustainable urban development.

Objectives:

The Urban Sustainability Index (USI), seeks to measure and assess the performance of Indian cities across a range of criteria. USI is as an equally weighted average of six categories – Air Quality, Built Environment, Sewage & Sanitation, Solid Waste, Roads and Water Quality & Supply. All the underlying indicators used for creating the index have normative benchmarks. Thus USI measures the sustainability performance of cities as percentage of the benchmark. This framework was pilot tested for four cities in two different states of India – Chennai and Kovai from Tamil Nadu, and Bengaluru and Mysore from Karnataka. While Bengaluru and Chennai are Tier I cities, Kovai and Mysore are Tier II cities.

Findings:

USI scores are the highest for Mysore, followed by Bengaluru. Kovai trails closely and Chennai brings up the rear. Mysore performs uniformly well across all categories. Tier I cities, perform well in certain categories such as ‘Roads’ and ‘Sewage’, while they lag behind in the provision of water services and in curbing pollution of fine particles (SPM and RSPM). One area of concern across the board is with regards to solid waste management (waste generation, primary waste collection & transport to transfer station, segregation and disposal in landfills).

Pollution in the air, not in TNPCB stats

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:56:57 +0000

Pollutants in Chennai air dangerously exceed WHO limits

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:52:29 +0000

Environmental Literacy in Sikkim

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:29:00 +0000

Awareness regarding capacity of environmental literacy initiatives to influence the knowledge-awareness channel and direct impact on reducing anthropogenic contributions to environmental damage in the future is increasing rapidly. The ongoing study aims to document the same by collecting base line information on the current level of environmental literacy of citizens of Sikkim. Environment consciousness would mainly comprise of Knowledge of citizens about state, national and global level environmental issues, attitude of citizens towards environmental regulations and environmental responsibilities and environmentally responsible behaviour. The study is proposed to be conducted in all four districts of Sikkim and is expected to be completed by June, 2012.

Environmental Literacy in Sikkim

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:13:12 +0000

IFMR-CDF in collaboration with Department of Forest Environment and Wildlife Management (DFEWM) Sikkim is working on a state-wide study for establishing baseline information on environmental awareness of the citizens in Sikkim. One of the goals under the Chief Minister’s Forestry and Environment Mission is to achieve “100 % environment conscious citizens in Sikkim by 2015”. To attain this mission the Government of Sikkim has come up with many innovative initiatives and programs addressed to raise environmental awareness amongst general citizens. To attain the above goal, it is first important to establish the concept of environmental consciousness. The study will contribute towards this objective by identifying a framework to describe and measure the concept of environmental consciousness. This would be done by identifying relevant parameters on environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. This is one of the first few studies in India at a regional scale where in efforts are being made to understand and document environmental literacy levels in a State. This could be used as a reference point for other initiatives under the National Green Corps (NGC) Program in the country that aims at building a stronger foundation of environmentally sound citizens. The project endeavours to equip the policy makers on useful insights that will enable them to have targeted programs for environmental awareness and literacy in the State.

Atlas of Household Energy Consumption and Expenditure in India

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:41:42 +0000

We at the Centre for Development Finance-IFMR are proud to introduce the Energy Atlas – the first interactive online resource, complete with explanatory report, which allows investors, entrepreneurs and policy makers to quickly access and explore household fuel consumption and expenditure data across India’s 28 states and the urban-rural divide. The Atlas fills an acknowledged gap by providing access to clean development data on household energy consumption and expenditure.

India’s impressive economic growth has spurred a story of urgent energy demand and need for greater energy inclusion. According to the International Energy Association, over 400 million people in India (36% of the total population) still live without reliable electricity. Over 725 million (70%) rely on biomass cooking fuels like cow dung, wood and farm waste. Against this backdrop, new renewable energy technologies, products, and services have surged to meet the growing energy demands of poor households at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). However, much remains unknown about rural BoP end users.

The Energy Atlas presents national and state-level household fuel consumption and expenditure data from the National Sample Survey 61st Round (2004-05) in an accessible manner. Beginning as an internal project to unlock insights into India’s clean energy market, this publicly available atlas is the result of over one year of statistics and design work by a team of dedicated researchers in our Rural Market Insight group. The Energy Atlas aims to provide a clear and objective presentation of household-level fuel consumption. We hope it becomes the go-to platform for users to interrogate and interpret the data so they may identify relevant patterns, trends, and insights that are most critical to their work.
Please take a few minutes to check out the website and let us know what you think. We appreciate any feedback from you to make this site better.

http://www.householdenergy.in

For more information about the data and methodology used in this project, please review the Energy Atlas publication