READING reports from green groups describing real or imagined environmental
perils can be a grind. But for passion combined with forensic rigour nothing
touches the work of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and the Environment,
inspired by its founder and director Anil Agarwal.
Once a science correspondent on the New Delhi Express, Agarwal has
spent almost twenty years fusing scientific and environmental research with
campaigning to create a centre unique not simply in India but anywhere in the
world. Its 鈥渃itizens鈥� reports鈥� on the Indian environment in the 1980s remain a
model for every fumbling researcher. Its current 鈥渟tate of the environment鈥�
series piles on the details and contains an anger that has largely deserted
groups in Europe and North America.
Slow Murder (CSE, e-mail: cse@sdall.emet.in) is a powerful
investigation of vehicle pollution in Indian cities. From oil refinery to
vehicle exhaust pipe, and from traffic planner鈥檚 drawing board to smog monitor鈥檚
laboratory, no one anywhere in the world has anatomised this global pandemic of
noxious fumes and cancerous particles so well. Agarwal鈥檚 team concludes that,
while ministers force the citizens of Delhi to queue in choking lines to have
their exhaust emissions checked, the real problem is back at the oil refinery.
India 鈥渃alculatedly imports poor quality crude oil鈥�, says Agarwal, then cracks
every last bit of bitumen gunk at the bottom of the barrel to produce as much
vehicle fuel as possible, regardless of the resulting emissions.
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The book鈥檚 companion, Homicide by Pesticides, explores the rising
tide of pesticides in India, home of the chemically saturated 鈥済reen revolution鈥�
in farm production. And this report contains a cruelly personal touch. In one
chapter, Agarwal writes about his own recent affliction with a rare cancer that
affects the eyes and brain. It鈥檚 not necessarily caused by pesticides but he
attests that it is, in all probability, 鈥渓ike most other cancers, deeply related
to environmental pollution鈥�.
After such works, mere environmental economics seems anaemic. But
Nature鈥檚 Services edited by Gretchen Daily ($24.95, ISBN 1 55963 476
6) comes from another good environmental imprint: Island Press. It asks how
dependent our economies are on the unacknowledged services provided by natural
ecosystems. Are we, without realising it, uprooting the very life-support
systems of our civilisation?
This question is never quite answered. But along the way we learn, for
instance, that economists have valued the pest control systems provide by
nature, primarily pest-eating predators, at up to a trillion dollars a
year鈥攁 lot of money to have missed off the balance sheet.
From such analyses nations can begin to draw up Green Plans (Bison
Books, 拢10.95\$12, ISBN 0 8032 7596 X), the title of Huey Johnson鈥檚
short essay on how some developed countries can include nature鈥檚 services in
national strategies for economic development. Like many others, Johnson is in
awe of the Dutch green plan, which puts to shame those few paragraphs set aside
for the environment in British election manifestoes. And he reviews similar, if
less ambitious, plans in New Zealand and Canada.
All three tinker with easy problems without addressing the bigger, harder
issues. None of Johnson鈥檚 three plans, for instance, will meet the international
target for stabilising emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Agarwal,
I can鈥檛 help feeling, would have been a bit tougher on this. And he would never
have written Johnson鈥檚 first sentence on Canada: 鈥淚f any nation in the world
could ignore its environmental problems and survive, it would probably be
颁补苍补诲补.鈥�
Nor, I suspect, would Frank Ackerman, whose book asks Why Do We
Recycle? (Island Press, $14.95/$16.95, ISBN 1 55963 505 3).
It鈥檚 not mainly for economic reasons, he says. Nobody saves money by loading up
the bottle bank. And there is nothing very sustainable about Europeans trucking
waste paper across the continent during a paper glut.
Ultimately, and very simply, he concludes that 鈥渞ecycling is one of the most
accessible, tangible symbols of a commitment to do the right thing鈥�, to be
frugal. 鈥淩ecycling is a religion鈥攊n a society that produces goods far more
readily than satisfying beliefs.鈥� The economics may not always add up. But 鈥渢he
practice of recycling pushes us in the right direction . . . towards the
creation of a less materialistic, more socially and environmentally, engaged way
of living. In the long run there is nowhere else to go.鈥�