Research and Advocacy
CSE’s efforts are specifically designed to create awareness about problems and propose sustainable solutions. Research at CSE often consists of in-depth learning about an environmental problem and then finding answers in accordance with CSE’s core values. This often involves learning from micro-experiences of the poor and the local -- and translating them into lessons for macro-policy.

CSE’s advocacy strategy involves building support from a broad-based constituency. The Centre networks extensively with grassroots organisations, industry leaders, experts, government agencies and mass media in India and abroad in lobbying for change.

Right To Clean Air campaign

CSE's Right To Clean Air campaign is among the organisation’s most visible and successful campaigns that seeks to improve the air quality of Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world. The main plank of the six-year-long campaign was to push the government to introduce an alternate fuel policy and mandate the use of clean fuels, such as compressed natural gas (CNG) for public transport.

In November 1996, CSE published Slow Murder: The Deadly Story of Vehicular Pollution in India, a comprehensive study that identified the causes of vehicular air pollution in India – ranging from poor engine technology and fuel quality to traffic planning and maintenance of vehicles. The book, released by Shri K R Narayanan, then vice-president of India, helped CSE win influential support from leading opinion-makers, the Supreme Court of India, the Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA), media and concerned citizens.

After constant campaigning, which included countering the powerful diesel lobby’s disinformation campaign, building an innovative "emissions load model", publishing numerous fuel technology assessment and fuel adulteration studies, the efforts of the Clean Air campaign were vindicated in a momentous 2002 Supreme Court ruling in April 2002 that put the CNG controversy at rest by mandating all public transport to run on CNG. CSE is therefore partly responsible for ushering in the world’s largest city bus fleet.

People's Water Management campaign

By adopting the slogan, ‘Make Water Everybody’s Business’, the People’s Water Management campaign promotes a new paradigm in water management – community-based rainwater harvesting. Eight years of research yielded the influential publication, Dying Wisdom: The Rise, Fall and Potential of Traditional Water Harvesting Systems, a book that catalysed senior political leaders, judges, editors and other decision-makers into thinking about rainwater harvesting. At the invitation of K R Narayanan, who was then the President of India, CSE set up a rainwater harvesting structure at the Rashtrapati Bhawan (President’s House) in 1998.

The campaign got a major boost after the timely publication in 2001 of a briefing paper, Drought? Try capturing the rain, written by CSE founder-director, the late Anil Agarwal. The paper highlighted the successful grassroots efforts of villagers in Gujarat, western Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh who, in the face of the worst drought ever recorded in over a 100 years, drought-proofed their communities by employing traditional rainwater harvesting structures. The result: everybody – from the Prime Minister to state Chief Ministers – have started rainwater harvesting programmes. Other influential publications of the campaign include: Making Water Everybody’s Business, and the Water Harvesting Manual, which are practical guides on rainwater harvesting for planners and policy-makers.

In its efforts to make rainwater harvesting a national movement, CSE has taken the campaign to rural areas by creating a network of communities called jal biradaris (water communities). The campaign also promotes water harvesting in urban areas by distributing publications, conducting lectures, organising paani yatras (eco-tours of harvesting structures in rural regions), demonstrations, exhibitions and training workshops. A Rain Centre has been established in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

In addition, the campaign networks with thousands of water harvesters through CatchWater, a bi-monthly newsletter. The campaign established the National Water Harvesters Network to help interact with water harvesters. A Rainwater Harvesting Advisory Service helps schools, residential colonies, households and industries start water harvesting.

Global Environmental Governance

CSE’s Global Environment Governance (GEG) unit was created to educate civil society groups and government bodies about the issues, politics and science behind global environmental negotiations.

During the 1980s, even as the developed countries started developing different mechanisms to deal with global environmental problems, such as conventions, aid, trade and debt -- all of which were deeply political in nature but masquerading as science -- the Southern nations had little or no domain knowledge about how to safeguard their own interests. In this context, CSE provided intellectual leadership by proposing strategies that would address ecology, economy, social justice and equity – the key principles of good governance.

CSE published the State of Global Environmental Negotiations (GEN) reports, which uncovered the issues and politics involved in these negotiations. The two GEN reports, Green Politics and Poles Apart published in 1999 and 2001 respectively, are today used as resource material by NGOs and have been included as course materials in several US universities.

Similarly, CSE also launched a campaign to establish an equitable framework for a system of global environmental governance for Climate Change negotiations. In 1997, India’s environment minister requested Anil Agarwal to accompany him to Kyoto to help him in his negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol. In 1991, CSE raised the issue of equity in managing climate change with its publication Global Warming in an Unequal World.

CSE has taken centre stage in several international environmental negotiations, including the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, at Prep Com II in New York City, at various Conference of Parties (CoP) meetings in forging Southern unity on issues of climate change negotiations and global warming issues. The GEG unit’s popular Equity Watch newsletter published on-site at such meetings, carries backgrounders, analysis, factsheets and opinion about climate change processes.

Industry and Environment

CSE has also started the Green Rating Project, a highly innovative project that increases transparency in the industrial sector by rating the environmental performance of Indian firms. In 2000, Asiaweek described the project as one of the best environmental projects in Asia.

 

Health and Environment

The Health and Environment programme explores the links between environment and health. It publishes the popular Health & Environment Newsletter that reaches thousands of health professionals worldwide.