ENVIRONMENTAL

JUSTICE
Presented by:

Abhishek S 18BCE1311
Sharath Akash P 18BEC1014
R. K. Arjun 18BEC1120
Ishwara Prabhu S 18BEC1122
S V Jayanth 18BEC1137
B Visweshwaran 18BEC1152
A Deepak Kumar 18BEC1277
Prathulyan N 18BLC1023
 What is Environmental Justice?
● Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people
regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development,
implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

● It focuses on the "fair" distribution of environmental benefits and burdens.

● It is also an interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes theories of

the environment and justice, environmental laws and their implementations,
environmental policy and planning and governance for development and
sustainability, and political ecology.

● Environmental justice affirms the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural,

and environmental self-determination of all peoples.
 Why Environmental Justice is an Issue
● The gap between law and practice is especially wide.

● Part of the difficulty is that citizens cannot take part in decision making
processes that impact the environment.

● India ranks 3rd in the world’s most polluted countries and New Delhi is the
most polluted capital city in the world.

● Is Climate change a bigger threat than Covid 19 ??

● Not all people are affected equally. Every social issue has a major impact on
the poor.

● Some important environmental justice concepts include Environmental

discrimination, Environmental racism, climate justice etc.
 CASE STUDY 1

Indore declared India’s first ‘Water Plus’

certified city
 India’s cleanest city, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, has achieved another feat of
being declared as the country’s first ‘water plus’ certified city, under the
Swachh Survekshan 2021.
 Swachh Survekshan is an annual survey of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation
in cities and towns across India launched as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission
What is the ‘Water+’ city certificate?
A Water Plus city certificate is provided to a city that maintains cleanliness inrivers
and drains under its administration. According to protocol and the toolkit provided
by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs, a city can be declared as Water
Plus only after all wastewater released from households, commercial
establishments, and the like is treated to a satisfactory level before releasing the
treated wastewater to the environment.
The parameters on which Indore achieved the ‘water plus’ status:

● Indore carried out a survey and halted 7,000 outfalls of greywater that went in rivers, drains.

● Moreover, 30 per cent of the city’s sewage water was recycled and reused. This recycled

water was used by people in their gardens and some construction sites.

● Seven sewerage treatment plants were constructed in the city and about 110 million litres

per day (MLD) treated water from them is being used.

• Pratibha Pal(Civic Chief of Indore Municipal Corporation) said,“According to the
guidelines of Water Plus Protocol, 147 special types of urinals were constructed in the
city. Besides, the work of cleaning ponds, wells and all water bodies has also been
done,"
• Indore district collector Manish Singh also informed about the work done to achieve
this tag.He was quoted by news agency PTI as saying: "According to the guidelines of
Water Plus Protocol of Swachh Survekshan, 1,746 public and 5,624 domestic sewer
outfalls in 25 small and big nullahs were tapped by the Indore Municipal Corporation
(IMC) which also freed the city's Kanh and Saraswati rivers from sewer lines.“
• In order to go to the micro level in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the Ministry has
included Water Plus with cleanliness. Its main objective is to clean the water bodies,
rivers and ponds in the cities, so that only clean and rainwater flows in the rivers and
streams and sewerage water can be reused.
• 84 cities of the country had applied in the selection process of Water Plus, out
of which only 33 cities were found suitable for ground verification. Under the
Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), the cities of the country are tested on the
basis of various cleanliness parameters. It has categories of ODF+, ODF++
and Water+.
• The Water Plus certificate is awarded to cities that have met all the ODF
Double Plus standards. Also, the residual sewage from residential and
commercial establishments is released into the environment only after
treatment. Reuse of treated wastewater should also be ensured.
• Open defecation is the human practice of defecating outside ("in the
open") rather than into a toilet. People may choose fields, bushes, forests,
ditches, streets, canals or other open space for defecation. They do so
either because they do not have a toilet readily accessible or due to
traditional cultural practices.

• 'Open defecation free' (ODF) is a term used to describe communities that

have shifted to using toilets instead of open defecation. This can happen,
for example, after community-led total sanitation programs have been
implemented.

• ODF+ focuses on toilets with water, maintenance and hygiene, ODF++

focuses on toilets with sludge and septage management.
Situation before obtaining Water plus city certification

• Water availability is a problem not just for Indore or Madhya Pradesh, but for most parts
of the country
• In Indore, the most privileged access water through pipes in their homes. The slightly less
fortunate have pipes in their lanes or a bore well near their dwelling. They are followed by
those who are provided water by the local administration via tankers

• Their access to the alternate source of government supply in urban India – municipal
water tankers – is also sporadic and unreliable because they remain on the fringes, as a
non-notified slum which faces frequent threats of eviction

• Family have to rely on largesse, primarily, of small industries in the area who provide
water from their bore wells – sometimes free of charge, and at times at a charge of
between Rs 100 and Rs 200. Often, particularly in the summer when the borewells tend to
dry up, they refuse to provide water.
• Now after obtaining this water plus city certificate even the poor are getting the
opportunity to access clean water.
 CASE STUDY 2

PURI TAP WATER DRINKING FACILITY

 PURI TAP WATER CASE STUDY:
● Naveen Patnaik’s Mission Drink from Tap, under the Sujal scheme, aims to provide quality
drinking water to urban areas in Odisha. For the rural areas, there is Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s Swajal scheme. The mission in the temple town will also reduce plastic
waste considerably.
● Puri has become the first city in the country to implement a project of this kind. It has
enabled the people of Puri to collect quality drinking water directly from the tap.
Henceforth, people need not have to store or filter drinking water,” Chief Minister Naveen
Patnaik said while inaugurating the ‘Drink from Tap project’.
● The water we provide in Puri is doubly safe as there is no fear of contamination from the
reservoir to the households through pipelines or in the storage tanks on the roofs of the
houses.
● “In Puri, you open the taps anytime and you will get safe drinking water straight away. There
is no need to store the water, which, in other places, comes intermittently in fixed hours.
There is no need for extra filtering that we usually do,” he said.

Reduction of plastic waste

● As Patnaik says “tourists need not have to carry water bottles everywhere. This initiative will
minimise plastic waste in the city every day”.
● Mission Drink from Tap aims at providing water supply 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, each
day of the year. The mission is also aimed at addressing the protection of water sources,
water treatment, and the prevention of recontamination in the transmission and distribution
system that is continuously full and under positive pressure throughout pipelines and
networks.
 The three highlights

● The first is to provide 24X7 quality tap water to every household in urban
Odisha, so that water from household taps can be directly used for drinking,
without filtration or boiling, thus reducing the health risks caused by
contamination from the intermittent supply.

● To ensure this, water testing laboratories have been established for regular
quality monitoring and surveillance on PPP mode to ensure third-party
monitoring. There are centralised monitoring and tracking of preventive
maintenance and complaint redressals. Consumers can log in their complaints in
three languages – Odia, English and Hindi by dialling 155359.

● The second is to eliminate household investments on overhead water tank/

underground reservoirs, motor pumps and RO-based water filters. The
household connection is to be treated as public work and installed/maintained
by plumbers who are trained, certified and empanelled (including returning
migrant workers).
● The challenge here is in convincing consumers that they should do away with the
system of their present storage in the form of containers/drums or overhead tanks
or sumps that pump water to the overhead tank. All these have contamination
risks. Instead, the consumers should have faith and confidence in the reliability
of the tap water that is assured all the time. They need to change their mindsets.
● The third is to have 100 per cent metering of household water connections to
reduce non-revenue water (NRW).
● In fact, this third aspect is not publicised the way the first two are. The basic
point here is that the 24X7 water supply is not free. All water connections under
Mission Drink From Tap will be 100 percent metered.

Rs 250-crore revenue target

● When this scheme under Sujala expands to other cities of the state, to at least 12
lakh urban dwellers, the Odisha government is targeting a revenue collection of
Rs 250 crore per annum (approximately).
 CASE STUDY 3

Air Pollution and Human Health in

Kolkata, India: A Case Study
AIR POLLUTION

• What is air pollution?

• What are the effects of it?
• India’s Plight
• Mitigation Techniques
 AIR POLLUTION AND HUMAN HEALTH: A CASE STUDY

• Analysis of Air quality

• Pollutants such as RPM,SPM,NO2 and SO2 were classified into categories based on annual
average concentration.
• Causes were identified: Vehicular emissions, Industrial emission and dust particles.
• Health assessment was done via survey in dispensaries
• Conclusion
MITIGATION OF AIR POLLUTION IN MAJOR CITIES
1) Phasing out/scrapping of commercial vehicles that are more than 15 years
old.
2) Provision of cycling and walkways throughout the two cities.
3) Plantation of new leafy saplings in the available space in different parts of
the cities to mitigate the level of air pollution.
4) Sprinkling of water daily at important traffic junctions.
5) Introduction of battery-operated vehicles as a replacement for fossil fuel
powered vehicles.
 INFERENCE
• What goes beyond the stated benefits of the project is the fact that the reduction in
plastic bottles can reduce burden on natural resources. The impact of bottled water
on natural resources is 3,500 times higher than for tap water, a recent study found.

• The trust in the tap has to be ingrained in the minds of the people. For that to
happen, the system needs to be proactive in a real sense.
• So,by not only congratulating the state,the others states should also take steps like
this so that everyone could drink a safe water from the tap and can get benefitted
from this.There is a lot of diseases spreading in rural areas due to improper water
and many are getting affected by contaminated drinking water.

• This idea can outbreak majority of other issues too including money and diseases
like jaundice and many other infections caused due to improper drinking
water.Every state should implement this in order to so that every person in the
country can drink safe water.
 GOING FORWARD

• Multiple studies have shown the negative effects of hazardous waste siting on the health and well-
being of surrounding communities, but little was done to rectify the situation. The next frontiers of
environmental justice are taking “precautionary, preventative, and cumulative” approaches that
address the underlying compounding effects of multiple environmental shocks and persistent social
stressors on the same communities.
• By taking a cumulative, neighborhood-centric approach, researchers can better demonstrate the
severity of exposure communities experience. This approach will be critical for emerging
environmental hazards—like climate change’s effects or pandemic recovery—for which
environmental justice activists are pivoting to be proactive.
• Partnering with existing community organizations to incorporate contextual factors can ensure
something called “ground truthing,” or taking state-provided data, fostering citizen scientists, and
going door-to-door to affirm its accuracy.
• But researchers also need to be clearer about policies’ unintended effects. When policy helps
decrease pollution in neighborhoods, it can also make that neighborhood more desirable and drive
up housing costs. As a result, the original community may be hurt from interventions intending to
help.
• Ultimately, researchers need to “shake off the equality mindset and begin to think
equitably to account for where people already are and correct for past patterns of
disparity,” . Researchers can start designing better research by working across
disciplines, taking a cumulative approach, and partnering with those already in the
community.

• The environmental justice movement started with community advocates and

researchers working in parallel, and its next steps, given the recent presidential
executive order to expand and pursue federal environmental justice actions and
related Congressional legislation, necessitates they continue to work together.

• In his most recent book, Climate Change From the Streets, there is a quote that the
most effective environmental solutions will come from the communities suffering
the most – and that policymakers should listen to them.