“You cannot have an environmentally sustainable system in a country where there are disparities between the rich and the poor, where there is unequal development in the sense that development only benefits one set of people and does not benefit the other.”
| |
“Environmental justice is really justice in the widest sense of the word. It includes social justice, it includes a developmental justice if you can call it that, it includes human rights of people.”
- Kalpana Sharma, Deputy Editor, The Hindu newspaper, India |
These words by Kalpana Sharma, Deputy Editor of The Hindu newspaper, India, open Deep Divide, the recent documentary produced by TVE Asia Pacific and Panos South Asia looking at different aspects of environmental justice in South Asia.
Kalpana adds: “Environmental justice is really justice in the widest sense of the word. It includes social justice, it includes a developmental justice if you can call it that, it includes human rights of people.”
Placed in that context, the quest for environmental justice (see sidebar for definition) in
South Asia – which groups together Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – brings up a long list of instances where environmental injustice is rampant and deep rooted.
South Asia had a combined population of 1,326 million people in 2000. Of this, over 500 million lived in absolute poverty -- on less than US$ 1 per day – according to the Human Development in South Asia 2002 report. This means 2 out of every 5 poor people on the planet lives in South Asia.
As Kalpana Sharma, who has been investigating the causes and effects of poverty for many years, explains: “South Asia is very dis-united …but it's united by one factor: poverty. So given that, I think that the issue of environmental justice is almost identical. The scale of it may be different and the locations might be different and the forms in which it manifests itself may be slightly different. But I think at base, it is exactly the same – its development choices that are being made without record, without any regard to justice for the people who are the most vulnerable.”
What is Environmental Justice?
Environmental justice (EJ) is concerned with a broad range of issues such as soil erosion, water scarcity, pollution, and destruction of the natural environment. However, instead of looking at the environment on its own, EJ takes into account the importance of people and their livelihoods as well. Poor people are usually the first to be exposed and affected by environmental deterioration. They are the ones who will drink polluted water, eat contaminated food, live in unsafe or polluted places and turn to unhealthy jobs. Poor people also have less access to health facilities and other resources, which leaves them exposed to disease and even death. Their inability to sustain livelihoods due to environmental degradation is a form of injustice.
Panos South Asia has adopted the definition of environmental justice as “the right of people to a safe, healthy, productive, and sustainable environment, where ‘environment’ is considered in its totality to include the ecological, physical, social, cultural, political, aesthetic, and economic environments.” |
|
Unregulated development, poor governance and rampant corruption have destroyed South Asia’s environment and natural resources. What is left is being used by governments and industries -- but that benefits only a privileged few. Local communities are often not allowed to freely access and manage their natural resources. The region’s booming mega cities add huge pressure on the environment. Everyday, polluted rivers, air and land are killing thousands of South Asians. Those who survive are running out of options.
“Wherever we look, South Asia’s people are fast losing their right to a clean and healthy environment,” says the introductory analysis of Deep Divide, which was filmed in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka in early 2005.
Buy this film on video or DVD from TVE Asia Pacific e-shop.
The origins of Deep Divide go back to 2002. Panos South Asia, a regionally operating non-profit organization analyzing development issues, awarded media fellowships to selected journalists from five South Asian countries to explore specific cases of environmental injustice in their countries. They were to investigate issues as varied as land degradation, food and water insecurity, rising pollution, and mismanaged development.
| Their findings were initially published in the local media – in the newspapers or magazines they worked for. In 2004, Panos South Asia compiled the articles in a book titled Environment for All. It raised several key questions and concerns: |
| • |
Can poor people in South Asia, who depend for survival on their immediate environment - be it the biological, physical (natural and built), social, cultural, political, aesthetic and economic - expect a fair distribution of environmental assets and environmental accountability? |
| • |
Will their governments work their way through the current unfair systems and
empower them to manage their living environment, particularly their natural resources as there is a near-total reliance on biomass for survival? |
| • |
Or will the poor continue to unjustly bear the burden and costs of the all round environmental degradation? |
Deep Divide is based on three case studies investigated in this book. It takes us on a journey through India, Nepal and Sri Lanka where the journalists who wrote the original stories become our story guides and commentators on the disparities they uncovered. |
Meet our story tellers
 |
In Nepal, we trace the progress and fate of Bagmati - country’s holiest river. It is now so badly polluted that its water cannot be used for cooking or bathing, and few fish survive the toxic sludge it has become. While most of this pollution is generated by residents of the capital Kathmandu, it is the poor people living downstream who are most widely affected. Many farmers and residents are forced to risk using the polluted water for their living and livelihood. Click here for more. |
| |
|
| For three decades, Sri Lanka’s coastal areas were developed for tourist resorts and shrimp farms, clearing mangroves, damaging coral reefs and often ignoring governmental guidelines. The cost of this short-sighted development became apparent when the Asian Tsunami hit in December 2004, leaving a trail of destruction. Click here for more. |
 |
| |
|
 |
Water shortages have hit the once idyllic district of Darjeeling in India, forcing local people to go to extremes in search of drinking water. South Asia’s stark social and economic disparities are evident here, when the rich continue to enjoy disproportionately large quantities of water in spite of scarcity. While upscale hotels have abundant access to water, the ordinary people must struggle to receive even a small quantity of water. Click here for more. |
As he went on location filming these stories, Deep Divide director and cameraman Moji Riba did his own investigations. In some locations, he found that problems had remained the same – or become worse – since the original journalist-investigators had probed these situations.
Moji recalls: “I came across some of the same people who had been interviewed earlier – only that some were in an even more perilous state now. I also met many others who shared their views and frustrations with me, shedding new light on long-standing problems.”
He interviewed Kalpana Sharma in Mumbai, after filming all three stories. “By then, I was deeply immersed in these issues and was becoming agitated. Talking to Kalpana helped me put matters in a wider perspective. All these concerns of access to resources and their unfair distribution stem from the deep rooted social and economic disparities in South Asia.”
In other words, social justice needs to precede environmental justice. As South Asia stands deeply divided as a society, pursuing both these goals remains a formidable challenge.
Without resorting to rhetoric, Deep Divide seeks to find a way forward. It identifies some of the key factors that exploit the poor in South Asia: inadequate information, centralised decision making, disregard for local concerns, unfair resource allocation and misdirected subsidies. To make progress, each of these will need to be addressed on a long term basis.
[This feature was researched and partly written by Thanushka N. Yakupitiyage, of Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, who worked as an intern with TVE Asia Pacific in the Summer of 2005.]
Deep Divide: Story tellers
Three investigative journalists living and working in South Asia are our ‘guides’ as we explore South Asia’s Deep Divide:
 |
 |
 |
| Surendra Phuyal is Chief Reporter at The Kathmandu Post, an English daily in Nepal. He has been covering environmental and political issues for the last eight years. He is an Alfred Friendly Fellow. |
Dilrukshi Handunnetti is a political correspondent cum investigative journalist attached to The Sunday Leader, an English weekly in Sri Lanka. She has won awards for environmental journalism, and contributes to several regional publications. |
Neel Kamal Chettri is a freelance journalist who reports for local and national newspapers in India. He is a local resident in Kalimpong, in Darjeeling district, where he also works as a research consultant. |
 Moji Riba, director and cameraman of Deep Divide, is a film-maker based in Naharlagun, Arunachal Pradesh in north-eastern India. In the past decade, he has made over 15 documentaries that look at social, cultural and environmental issues from a people-centred perspective. He is also the founder and executive director of the Centre for Cultural Research & Documentation (CCRD) which focuses on audio-visual documentation of the folklore of the diverse tribes that inhabit the north-eastern states of India and how the indigenous people are adapting to the processes of rapid change.
|
|
Cart (
0 items)
