Dear Gobar Times Readers,

The environment creating refugees? Yes we know about all that — those floods, earthquakes and cyclones. Well that’s only half the story about "uncontrollable nature". The other half is about "controllable man". What happens when an industry draws enormous amounts of groundwater forcing a drought and "water refugees" in the process? What of dams and mining projects which impact on lands and communities that live on them, creating "development refugees". And what if greenhouse gases continue increasing unabated and consequent sea-level rise wipes out small islands and coasts to create millions of "global warming refugees"? All these are environmental refugees created less by the environment and more by people. While rich cityfolk have huge ecological footprints, its the poor and marginalised who end up being refugees.

Maybe if we learnt to prevent potential environmental refugees from becoming so, we could truly save the environment.

– Pandit Gobar Ganesh
E-mail: panditji@cseindia.org