Most Chennaiites look to the government to protect the environment rather than to NGOs or anybody else, and turn to newspapers for information related to environment. This was part of the findings of the TERI Environmental Survey 2013 carried out in the cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai to gauge people’s perception, behaviour, awareness and opinions on environmental issues.
Though a majority of respondents in other cities too wanted the government to take the lead in environmental protection, in Chennai it was at a phenomenal 74 per cent as against the one per cent in favour of NGOs and another one per cent in favour of academic and research institutions. Of the rest, 14 per cent placed the onus on consumers and 10 per cent on businesses.
On the question of information 50 per cent said newspapers were their first choice, followed by television channels. The next popular choice for information for 51 per cent of the respondents was informal conversation.
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, took up the task of assessing people’s attitude and perceptions with a view to feeding the findings into policy and implementation measures for the move towards sustainable metros. The themes selected were overall environment, air quality, water quality, forest/green cover, climate change, waste and waste management.
In Chennai, 47 per cent of respondents felt that surface water quality and availability had deteriorated over the past five years (since 2007), though 47 per cent felt that drinking water quality and availability had improved in comparison to the period before 2007.
When respondents who said they did not use public transport were asked for reasons, 25 per cent said that services were not frequent enough while another 25 per cent said they were not convenient. Only 19 per cent found public transport unsafe, 18 per cent expensive and six per cent time consuming.
Of the 57 per cent of Chennai respondents who said they used public transport more than three times a week, 34 per cent did it to save time and 32 per cent to reduce their contribution to vehicular pollution.Questioned on climate change 41 per cent said that climate change was indeed a reality against 38 per cent who felt it was not an issue. Eleven per cent said ‘maybe’ and 10 per cent ‘can’t say’. On the issue of waste management though many agreed that segregating garbage into ‘biodegradable’ and ‘non-biodegradable’ categories at the source was the best way forward, 49 per cent was ‘not at all willing’ to do it themselves. Only six per cent was ‘very willing’ while 27 per cent was just ‘willing’ and 18 per cent ‘not very willing’.
One reason cited by people was that they saw waste management as the job of the civic body. Similarly 42 per cent said that consumers should not be made to pay the actual cost of water, with only 22 per cent feeling that the consumers should bear the actual cost.
