The pandemic offers four big environmental lessons in an urbanising world. First, biodiversity conservation gains urgency due to zoonotic disease risks. Next, local disease outbreak can break out globally. Third, poor migrants are disproportionate bearers of risk burdens. Last, the pandemic’s risks are an unparalleled environmental reset opportunity. But more specific and related conservation and sustainability patterns and indicators emerged. From Baltimore to Barcelona to Bengaluru. Pollution and carbon emission decreased. Economic inactivity forced an urban de-population. Nature reportedly healed. Opportunistic environmental policy dilution occurred. Positive and negative, these offer learning opportunities for Karnataka and Bengaluru.
The human cost
When India locked down from March 24 till May 31, livelihoods were upended as millions of people ‘reverse’ migrated to their villages, including women whose participation in migrant labour had doubled between 2001 and 2011.
Suspended and sparse transport saw migrants undertake a ‘walking marathon’ of shaming distances from Delhi to Bihar, Bengaluru to Andhra Pradesh. Over three lakh migrants left Bengaluru on special Shramik trains. This out of six lakhs in Karnataka who registered on the Seva Sindhu portal. Reports now claim that these trains spread the virus to rural India.
Climate change and natural calamities like drought due to salinity in West Bengal’s Sundarbans, or flooding in Bihar’s Kosi river had forced people to migrate to Bengaluru and other south Indian cities to earn a livelihood. As the pandemic took hold, migrants returned to climate-stressed natives.
Welfare schemes like free foodgrains and cash transfers have mitigated suffering. But migrants remain a precarious class vulnerable to climate and disease risks. Even as India must enhance and diversify rural resource bases, Karnataka must rethink Bengaluru’s endless expansion. While it does, it must legislate meaningful welfare schemes ensuring the dignity of migrant labour.
Pollution, conservation
The lockdowns were an energy moratorium. The suspension of surface transport, production, and commercial activities, reduced global carbon emissions. In May, climate scientists measured emissions against 2019 levels and detected reduction. India had a four-decade emission drop.
In the long run, this unprecedented carbon crash is a ‘blip’. But the lockdown offered emission and pollution mitigation prospects. Bengaluru’s air quality index was ‘good’ or ‘satisfactory’ compared to the same period in 2019. Around June’s Environment Day, scientists noted air quality gains and ‘mother nature’s recovery’. Lockdowns, they felt, could be an emergency measure in future to mitigate severe pollution episodes like Delhi winters. Encouragingly, air quality actually improved in a ‘severe’ episode in an ‘unlocked’ Bengaluru.
The three Deepavali days experienced 30.34% decrease in Air Quality Index compared to 2019. Awareness about air pollution and COVID-19 severity and a High Court order on green cracker use were responsible. A longer learning is in order. Will a ‘corona-less’ 2021 Deepavali see higher cracker use? Or will a past ‘cracker-less’ experience become a trend? But an obvious and reinforced learning is that public transport needs State investment and citizen patronisation.
Confirming to global urban patterns, a locked-down Bengaluru saw more avian activity. Reduced air and noise pollution, and human movement meant more bird presence. People observed finches, starlings, sunbirds, parakeets, and bee-eaters. Enhanced human perception in a quieter time also helped sense chirpy activity.
Sustainability scientists pointed to quality of life possibilities afforded by this brief respite. And alternative lifestyles it helps imagine. Nature ‘heals’, ‘reclaims’, ‘detox’, and ‘cleanse’ are some ways that the media headlined this environmental moment. The lockdown triggered nostalgia for older Bengaluru and stimulated sustainability prospects for the future.
The lockdowns have propped work from home as a sustainability practice for the future. Big tech and the government are toying with this arrangement as the norm. But. as with any environmental solution, the benefits and burdens are disproportionate. During the lockdown, distress calls to government and NGO helplines for domestic, child and elder abuse increased. Domestic violence is morally and legally unsustainable. The lockdowns, and curtailed house, senate and parliamentary activity were a political opportunity worldwide to dilute environmental safeguards.
Even as Bengaluru assessed its sustainability prospects, the city’s environmentalists expressed concern over the draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification, 2020. New conditions that dilute development and industrial regulations posed pollution and deforestation prospects for Karnataka’s cities and its Western Ghatian mountains.
The lockdowns are a lesson for urban-centric policy. An urbanising India under climate change is a high-risk trajectory. A smart city means being inclusive, and open to interdisciplinary science and sincere activism.
(Siddhartha Krishnan is a sociologist and historian of conservation and sustainability. He is faculty at ATREE, Bengaluru.)
