What are environment professionals doing in India?

[Rajat Bansal]

This is a very clear question to all the members here.

As Environment professionals, are we clear, what are our responsibilities, duties, vision / mission, and what are we really doing in achieving that.

According to my exposure & experience, in our country, an Environment Professional does following different roles:

1. Gets hired by consultancy services firms, and try to helps out member industries to comply with their legal issues.

2. Gets hired by an industry directly, and works for environmental legal compliance.

3. Gets into educational institutions & imparts the already structured course syllabus to his pupils.

4. If lucky, reaches pollution control boards and gets into the system.. what all of us knows.

5. Set up his own business, NGO or networking platforms to sensitize & sell environmental services to industry clients.

I think most of us are convinced that these are what environment professionals are for: am I wrong? Even I am also playing one of these roles in my career.

But there has always been a question, in my heart, why are we always screaming "Save Environment" and do nothing to actually save it. From this I mean, as the world is growing, in terms of population & industrialisation, we cant have an environment or resource banks as they were decades back. We cant have a climate pattern that used to be there when we were kids. I request all to mature enough and accept that the changes are bound to happen, and lets not waste our energy in reversing the system. Rather we should focus on developing counter technologies for combatting environmental issues. (I have developed a punchline as a footer in my mails "Dont just Plant Trees; Find a Replacement to It").

In India, I understand, a person throughout his life has to fight for his basic needs (Food, Shelter & Home) and so does environment professional. Therefore we all see it as a MONEY MAKING PROFESSION, rather than a social service profession.

I dont know, how far I am able to express my thoughts, but I request all members here to start thinking differently and taking this as a service profession. Please dont talk to reverse the planet, learn to accept the change.

 

Regards

RAjat 

[premilla dixit nag]

Dear Rajat,

We can do our best to mimic nature's processes (man-made science and technology) -- indeed, so we have. For a long and winding history through all human cultures. And here is where we stand today -- drowning in our own unmanageable waste.

Our waste is born not of our science, it is born of our sociology -- our "economics", "culture" , "history" -- what we see as wealth, how we produce and distribute (share) it.

The corporate capitalist system that has spread worldwide through empire building (recall the East India Company's 1600 AD) has a history of "seeing" and treating the human & natural world as "resource colonies" (recall the story of India); take what they want and waste the rest.  This global corporate footprint is one of genocide, ecocide, and the creation of "first world" and "third world". Their war for resources pushed the frontiers of science and technology (check out the history of Chemistry, Pharmaceuticals, industrial agriculture, weapons, to site a few key stories), "markets" and modern " growth economics". Its not a pretty story. Its path of destruction -- ideologically named "progress" -- wound its way into the 20th century with new concepts to "create mass demand" for their mass produced products , and so was born "advertising" "planned obsolescence" "growth economics" and the "consumer"( advertising --a game of seduction to whip up human greed for 'things', first aimed at 'housewives' now aimed at children;  "planned obsolescence" -- products not built for durability, built to be replaced, so people must buy again and again keeping markets going and production chains producing called " "economic growth" or "progress"; "consumer" -- the mindless 'buyer' who cares nothing about where, how, who produced the product, under what conditions). 

But even as this rape has been underway, a vast community of human intelligence has kept human hope alive -- through examining and working to improve and wise-up our species relationship to each other and to the world upon which our lives depend. I have studied the rape and the wisdom traditions (by no means exhaustively) enough to know where I stand, with whom I stand, for what causes I stand, and how to be a part of the wisdom path.

In answer to your question, do I use modern technologies --yes I do, but as intelligently as circumstances allow -- never air-conditioning, I grew up without it just fine in India, and the "status" symbol of it was unimpressive, even ridiculous. I use public transportation as a matter of practice because it makes sense, although I could be driving a sports car if I chose.  I have never been a "consumer", my buying habits consciously refuse to support "growth economics".  Every product we buy carries a vast story of resource use.  I want to know the environmental impact, the impact on human labor and communities, the fair value of the trade, so far as is possible for all I use to live a productive, giving, creative conscious life,  not a mindless, greedy, "status" driven life.

You ask me to be "brave", you council me to "learn to accept change", you tell me "my flowery english" will not plumb the solutions, and you have gathered from what I wrote initially that I am "revolting against my own species".

That my species is on-line, teetering on the edge of the extinction event it has brought underway for millions of species on this beautiful planet is the feedback from environmentalists worldwide -- its not something I made up, it is in the environmental literature.That I am living in a way that will give my species a chance to reorganize itself for survival through this challenging passage is fact-on-the-ground of my deep love of my species.  I have no patience for the many narrow-minded, un-empathetic expressions of human culture, I know we are doomed if we cling to our most backward ways. So I am indeed working very actively, and bravely, in the face of many odds, for "change"

[Rajat Bansal]

Dear Premilla,

I respect your love for nature!! If you apprehend my punch line :"Don't Just Plant Trees, find a replacement to it"; means apart from planting trees try to find out a replacement in terms of effective artificial photosynthesis that can solve many of the problems like global warming, energy crisis and all related.

You seem to be revolting against your own race i.e. humans. How can you develop such detest from your own being. Humans are there to be.. and what has been for billions of years cant be continued as such, changes are bound to happen. Have courage to accept rather than educating to reverse, that is next to impossible now. My plea is dont waste your energy in only expecting to reverse the system, learn to accept change and find alternate solutions as well.

Your flowery english is not enough to do that, tell me are you not using energy, using laptops, fridge, car, AC, etc.

Be BRAVE now!!

[premilla dixit nag]

Dear Rajat,

"Don't just plant trees, find a replacement to it?" The "environment" outside our individual skins and inside our skins, is atomic. chemical, and biological, in a continuum of exchange. We are born, breathe, consume, die. Trees predate humans on earth by billions of years. So does the habitable earth atmosphere in its subtle balance of chemistry, in 4.5 billion years of process. Replace trees, the lungs of the system? Can we even begin to grasp, let alone recreate the beauty and work-life of one tree, let alone the variety in an ecosystem of ecosystems to be able to "replace" them?  Human society, with its philosophy, psychology, culture and history of uneven sharing and distribution of resources within its communities, is raping the environment upon which its very life depends, to maintain its internal species mal-function!  bend your mind to change this! The human problem is not one of science and technology, it is one of sociology -- we have to innovate our way out of a stultified sociology of doing to others what we would not have others do to us! Our ecological impact is the impact of a species that rapes and pillages its own kind first!  Like it or not, we will either live as a species in this earth-life system or go extinct as a species that failed to understand its place in the scheme of things enough to reorganize itself internally for dynamic intelligence.

[jasbinder singh shergill]

i agree with you bluejaye32 .. and some lawyers are also filing cases against state pollution control boards to save them .. 

[bluejaye32]

In order to survive, most consultancies take the shorter route out, thereby helping their clients to gain licenses to pollute rather than prevent. 

[jasbinder singh shergill]

enforcement of laws make environmental professional go in right direction ..

[Darshana Patel]

I am agree with some extent to Mr. Rajat. The work we are doing is fine but the output is not always ugly. There are many examples of good work around us in which some of our members might be involved. but yes, that is also true that these efforts are not enough. there is a lot more to do with different and innovative mindset.

[kamla ravikumar]

When you work as a volunteer it comes from the heart...but when you work for the environment as a job it becomes a routine.Fautly laws and outdated systems take the charm away from your enthusiasm to do something for the environment.Decision makers in the ministries are not really concerned.

[Satya Prakash Mehra]

Dear Rajat,

Greetings from Rajasthan.

In response of your submission, I would like to state - ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THEN WORDS. You are cordially invited in Rajasthan, to see what our team of young enthusiasts (from grass root workers without formal degrees to researchers with formal degrees upto Doctorate) are doing........

Do contact on 9414165690/ 9829144163

[Rakesh Shah]

Majority of environmental professionals are into MANAGING environmental issues for  clients/superiors/industries. A sad state of affairs indeed.