Delhi: Ahead of the World Environment Day (WED) celebration, which falls on June 5, the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) released the findings of the TERI Environmental Survey 2015 on Wednesday. The survey aims to gauge the perception, awareness, opinion and behavior of people towards environment in Indian cities.
This year’s survey covered seven river cities in the country, namely: River Yamuna (Delhi), River Mahanadi (Cuttack), River Brahmaputra (Dibrugarh), River Narmada (Jabalpur), River Tapti (Surat), River Ganga (Varanasi),and River Krishna (Vijayawada).
The survey was divided into three sub-sections - overall environment, health and environment and environment in river cities.
Launching the findings, Dr Leena Srivastava, Acting Director-General, TERI said in a press release “People's perceptions may or may not reflect reality; but they do reflect their confidence levels in governments, their engagement with common cause issues and their daily fears.“
Mr Shri Prakash, Distinguished Fellow, TERI said “The report clearly brings out the deep concern of people for saving environment irrespective of age, income level and educational standard. Also, the successive annual environmental surveys indicate a growing majority of the people who believe that the development and environment protection should be given equal emphasis and not pitted against each other”.
The launch of the survey was accompanied by a panel discussion on ‘Citizen’s Perception, Opinion, Behavior and Awareness about Rivers in Indian cities’.
Environment in river cities
The survey assessed the perception of the people about the overall quality of river water. It showed 46 percent of the respondents believed that the overall water quality of the river in their city was poor, followed by 35 percent and 18 percent who identified it as fair and good, respectively.
The odor in the surrounding areas of river was perceived to have worsened by 56 percent of the respondents. 24 percent said there was no change, and 17 percent said that it had become better. 86 percent of the respondents affirmed that it was not safe to drink river water without treatment.
93 percent of the respondents identified that city sewerage is a threat to the river, and 92 percent believed that the sewage water, before being discharged into the river should be treated properly. 78 percent of the respondents affirmed that there had been an increase in the amount of effluents dumped into the river in the last one year, though 64 percent of all the respondents agreed that the effluents were being dumped are according to government norms.
Overall environment
The survey revealed 60 percent of respondents perceived worsening of air quality and tree cover/green cover in their area of the city.
36 percent of the respondents in case of drinking water availability and 29 percent of the respondents each in case of drinking water quality and waste management perceived an improvement over the past five years. However, over 30 per cent of the respondents observed no changes in surface water and ground water (quality and availability).
Also, 72 percent of the respondents strongly agreed to the statement that climate change directly impacts humans, while 18 percent ‘somewhat agreed’.
While 34 percent of the respondents felt that no government policies existed for air pollution, 27 percent felt that these existed but were not well implemented, followed by 19 percent who were not aware about any such existing policies/legislations.
For water pollution, including wastewater treatment, 17 percent affirmed that policies or legislations existed and were well implemented. For water supply, 28 percent held the opinion that they were well implemented, while 24 percent felt that these policies existed but were not well implemented.
In case of climate change, 45 percent of the respondents opined there were no existing government policies/ legislations and 38 percent of the respondents were not aware if policies/legislations existed.
78 percent of the respondents were optimistic about the success of “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” in improving the quality of the rivers.
Health and Environment
According to the survey, 93 percent of the respondents opined that the quality of environment has an immediate impact on their health. 38 percent of the respondents identified water quality as an issue with the most visible impact on health; 32 percent identified waste and 30 percent of the respondents identified air quality.
89 percent respondents affirmed that the quality of river flowing through their city had an immediate impact on their health. 81 percent of the respondents noted the existence of a link between river water and water-borne diseases.
The survey showed 90 percent of the respondents identified Television as the most important source of information on environment-related issues and 32 percent identified this to be local/regional newspapers.
