Panaji's waste revolution model sets an example for other cities to follow
Goa’s capital Panaji, a zero-landfill city, segregates and recycles its waste, leaving nothing to be sent to landfills when other cities continue to struggle with their waste.
The key to Panaji’s success is its efficient recycling and sorting process that sorts and recycles solid waste into categories besides managing its wet waste separately. The waste categories include different kinds of paper, hard and soft plastics, cloth, electronic waste, tetra packs and non-recyclables. Even coconut shells and ceramics are segregated.
A Material Recovery Facility or Swachhta Kendra (cleanliness centre) was set up in the city 2014 where men and women – known as Safai Sathis, or cleanliness helpers, sort waste wearing aprons and gloves. The Corporation of the City of Panaji employs sanitation workers who collect segregated wet and dry waste from all houses in the city. Other workers gather garbage from public dustbins or litter from the streets. All this waste is collected at mini sorting stations or transported directly to the material recovery facility for segregation and recycling.
The city also has an efficient system of segregation of garbage at source and segregated wet and dry waste is collected from individual homes while large housing colonies are encouraged to establish waste sorting stations on their premises. Around 40 percent of the housing colonies in Panaji are currently a part of the project. An average of 14 tonnes of dry waste is collected daily from homes, commercial establishments and public bins. (The Scroll).
Nature based learning programmes improve environment and climate literacy in Chennai
Chennai is one of the most at-risk coastal cities in the country and the city ranks second on the climate vulnerability index in a district level vulnerability assessment conducted across India by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).
The city’s vulnerability is further at risk as the government of Tamil Nadu has allowed polluting industries to be set up about 20 km north of Chennai in the ecologically sensitive Ennore-Pulicat region. There is a growing residential development happening along the coast, water bodies within the city continue to be poorly managed, construction waste is dumped in wetlands.
Realising the importance of citizen involvement in conserving and protecting the environment and biodiversity in their city, nature-based educators in the city are now working to improve environment and climate literacy among the people through outdoor, place-based programmes. They are also taking steps to mainstream nature education in classrooms.
A bilingual guide (in Tamil and English) has been prepared for the coastal fauna of Chennai to encourage documentation of local knowledge and encourage involvement of local communities. The nature-based learning programmes are tailored according to different age groups. With children, the aim is to create a sense of excitement and wonder with their landscape, while with adults, it is to help them understand the need for that space and then advocate for it (Mongabay, India).
Organic farming empowers farm widows in Maharashtra
Widowed farm women in drought prone Marathwada and Vidarbha regions in Maharashtra have to undergo extreme hardships after the death of their husbands with no control on the land or property, making it difficult to make ends meet. Many of them have now resorted to organic farming since 2020-21 and started cultivating local varieties of pulses, soybean, cotton and millets and vegetables such as spinach, tomato and coriander.
The Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (Makaam) started this initiative for female farmers, mostly widows of farmers who had died by suicide, sugarcane cutters and marginal farmers from the drought-affected Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of Maharashtra.
Female farmers would not have food to consume at home and they had to depend on rations provided by social organisations during the pandemic. They agreed to participate in the initiative and did not entirely stop cultivating cash crops, but cultivated 15-25 crops--pulses, millets, vegetables, oilseeds and one main crop (soybean or cotton) for food security.
Many of the women faced initial resistance from their families when they decided to take up organic farming. To deal with this problem, Makaam asked the women to start experimenting on half an acre. The organisation trained women in methods of producing manure from farm and animal waste, and vermicompost. They also provided training to produce pesticides made using leaves of various trees, cow urine and cow dung. Once the half-acre experiment began to show signs of success, several women were able to go organic on a larger scale.
The naturally growing vegetables, together with organically grown food such as pulses and millets, has increased the physical strength and fitness of families, resulting in fewer hospital visits. Organic farming has also increased the credibility of female farmers (Indiaspend).
Kerala adopts tuber conservation for nutritional resilience to tackle climate change
The Kerala state government is encouraging conservation of tuber diversity with support from NRLM and Kudumbashree (a rural development agency) to ensure nutritional security among tribal groups in Thriunelly, Wayanad.
Wayanad district in Kerala has the largest population of eight recognised tribes and remains one of the poorest districts in the state with high levels of malnutrition among under five children. Changing land use practices and climate fluctuations have led to poor availability of land and water for cultivation of cereals and pulses. While tubers were a part of the tribal diets of the region for a long time, they soon began to be neglected due to changing food preferences and the supply of rice through the public distribution system. Communities also did not have an idea of how to grow tubers.
Now, lands are being leased and each parcel divided for paddy, banana, tubers and other vegetables and given to the tribal community to support themselves. Tribals are now being trained to grow these crops, prepare land for each tuber variety, and save seeds and protect them, under the initiative.
A recent survey conducted by Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in Wayanad has shown a marked improvement in the nutritional status of children in Thirunelly, showing that tubers can play a very important role in ensuring nutritional security among populations and help build resilience to climate change impacts (Village Square).
A seed festival in Odisha helps Kondh tribal farmers to revive their agricultural traditions
Farmers from the Kondh tribe in Odisha’s Nayagarh district from 40 villages in Dasapalla block participate in the Bihan mela meaning seed festival every year since 2019. Women collect seeds of the indigenous varieties and store them in earthen pots and decorate the pots, place them in a bamboo basket and carry it on their heads accompanied by men beating drums and other traditional instruments to the site where the mela is organised.
Farmers in the region are mostly marginal and highly depend on the monsoons for agriculture. However, they have been experiencing repeated crop failures due to erratic rainfall or pest attacks in recent years. This is because they have lost all native crops and varieties that are naturally resistant to pests and better suited to the region’s climate.
Even families on the hilltops who practised mixed cropping earlier have now shifted to monoculture cash crops like cashew. This has not only affected their food and nutritional security, but also degraded the soil and made the farmers more vulnerable to crop losses.
To deal with the situation, Nirman, a non profit working in the region, started this initiative to facilitate access to indigenous seeds among farmers by setting up a seed bank in Raisar village that encouraged collection and preservation of indigenous seeds from across Kondh villages and lending those out to farmers, which they had to return in double the quantity within the first year of cultivation.
The bank, which was set up with just 12 varieties of paddy, now has 62 varieties of paddy, four varieties of millets, five varieties of pulses and eight vegetables. The bank is open to all Kondh farmers and has benefitted 750 families in the region (Down To Earth).
This is a roundup of important news updates from April 16 - April 30, 2023. Read our policy matters this fortnight here.
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