Welcome to the website of the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment (IIEE), New Delhi
Contact Point : Those interested in getting associated with the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment may contact us at A 15, Paryavaran Complex, South of Saket, New Delhi – 110030, through our Email : , Phone : 011-29535053 / 29533830, Fax : 011-29533514.
IIEE Philosophy and Origins
The Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment, New Delhi was established on the occasion of the World Environment Day on 5thJune 1980. The motivation for the establishment of this institution has been based on the issues of environmental education discussed in the deliberations at Founes in 1971 and later at Stockholm in 1972 followed by the workshop on Environmental Education at Belgred in 1975 and also on the resolutions and recommendations of the Intergovernmental Conference on Environment at Tbilisi in 1977 organised by UNEP and UNESCO. The Institute has been organising since its inception different programmes having social, educational, cultural, economic and positive content for the optimum development of a sustainable society. The Institute has provided training to more than fifty thousand persons in the areas of ecology, environment, pollution control, disaster management, sustainable development, ecological tourism and environmental education. Other programmes conducted by the institute include ecological education in more than 1000 schools of Delhi in collaboration with the Government of Delhi and Clean up Delhi Campaign in collaboration with different municipal bodies and more than 3600 environmental NGOs in India, publication of more than 150 books, occasional monographs and encyclopaedias. The 30 volume International Encyclopaedia of Ecology and Environment published by the institute has been procured by most of the universities and research organisations in India. The Institute has been pioneer in organising national and international congresses and conventions on environment. Between 1981 and 2014 more than 180 national and international congresses and conventions were organised including the famous 1992-2013. World Environment Congresses. The Institute has collaborated with many Indian and foreign universities for helping them to design the latest curriculum on environment at graduate and postgraduate levels. The Institute has implemented many programmes at the global level for making the world citizenry aware regarding the need to protect our mother earth. In this connection many workshops have been conducted by the institute in Sri Lanka, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Mongolia, Mauritius, USA, Tunisia, Russia, Poland, Uganda, Zambia, Ethiopia, England, Nepal and The Netherlands. The Institute has conducted more than 3500 researches and consultancy assignments on different environment related topics. The institute has developed its own campus at Paryavaran Complex, New Delhiin the neighbourhood of Indira Gandhi National Open University on Saket Maidangarhi Marg in South Delhi and is equipped with computer centre, library, conference halls, class rooms, guest houses, administrative block and related infrastructure. The idea behind establishing the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment (IIEE) in selected States of India is to reach the grassroot level with a view to implement the programme of "catch them young" by 2010 AD by reviving the planet ecologically through environmental policing of the global commons and setting up of a global environmental legislative wing, regeneration for eco-restoration of eco-fragile areas on the verge of irreversible decline, ecotone restoration of river systems as well as biodiversity for managing the third millennium and the twentyfirst century.
environmental governance in india
Catalytic Role of the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment
If human society is to endure not for just another century but for thousands and thousands of years, we need to learn a way of life that could be sustained by the Mother Earth. Human society must learn to control population size and develop more efficient technologies that produce as little harmful waste as possible. We must learn to rely on resources that are renewable. A society based on these ideas is called a sustainable society.
We should long for having a sustainable world so profoundly different from the way we live which cannot be imagined without a strenuous exercise of mind. Like human body the Mother Earth has its organs that adjust to changes - in climate, nutrient levels and other aspects of the environment to maintain its stability. Just as the human organism is made of trillions of cells and so is the world organism; each of us is a cell of Gaia (Greek word for Mother Earth).
Changing our ways will be a colossal task which may involve arduous work but as an optimist we should view the third millennium with a cleaner and greener mind and pledge to work on new pollution control technologies as the answer to our polluted waters and skies by better treating our Mother Earth by not to rival nature but to cooperate with it and live in harmony.
We must guide the human race living in a historic transitional period of burgeoning awareness of the conflict between human Activities and environmental constraints, preparing to venture into a new century and a new millennium and to finally help save the fragile and endangered planet with the natural resources already overtaxed and for developing a critical path to governance through modern ideas for reducing the toll exacted in supporting daily life and the ever growing problems on the earth exerting profound pressures on the environment.
As the human race prepares to venture into a new century, conversations and news reports are peppered with references to our fragile and endangered planet. The earth is five billion years old, and over the eons it has endured bombardment by meteors, abrupt shifts in its magnetic fields, dramatic realignment of its land masses, and the advance and retreat of massive ice mountains that reshaped its surface. Life, too, has proved resilient: In the more than three and a half billion years first forms of life emerged, biological species have come and gone, but life has persisted without interruption. In fact, no matter what we humans do, it is unlikely that we could suppress the powerful and chemical forces that drive the earth system.
Although we cannot completely disrupt the earth system, we do affect it significantly as we use energy and emit pollutants in our quest to provide food, shelter, and a host of other products for the world's growing population. We release chemicals that gnaw holes in the ozone shield that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation, and we burn fuels that emit heat - trapping gases that build up in the atmosphere. Our expanding numbers overtax the agricultural potential of the land.
Tropical forests that are home for millions of biological species are cleared for agriculture, grazing, and logging. Raw materials are drawn from the earth to stoke the engines of the growing world economy, and we treat the atmosphere, land, and waters as receptacles for the wastes generated as we consume energy and goods in our everyday lives. Scientific evidence and theory indicate that as a result of such Activities, the global environment is undergoing profound changes. In essence, we are conducting an uncontrolled experiment with the planet to the extent that we have come to a point of no return and we may face the disaster any time.
The world is finite, but it will have to provide food and energy to meet the needs of a doubled world population some time in the twentyfirst century. Its natural resources, already overtaxed in many areas, will have to sustain a world economy that may be five to ten times larger than the present one. This cannot be done if humans continue to pursue current patterns.
As people continue their endless quest for new materials, new energy forms, and new processes, the constraints imposed by depletion of natural resources and the pollution caused by human Activities have brought society to a crossroads. Abundance coexists with extreme need and our very existence may be in danger owing to mismanagement and over exploitation of the environment. In spite of all the technological and scientific triumphs of the twentieth century, there have never been so many poor, illiterate, or unemployed people in the world, and their numbers are growing. As they struggle to survive, they have little choice but to pursue Activities that may undermine the environment, the natural resource base on which they depend, and the conditions that sustain life itself.
Third World nations seem convinced that the poverty they endure is not a mere aberration of international economic relations that can be corrected by minor adjustments, but rather is the unspoken premise of the present economic order. Developing countries have had to produce more and sell more in order to earn money to repay debt and pay for imports. The amount of coffee, cotton, or copper they must produce to buy a technology or an equipment keep increasing. This has caused people to place extra stress on the environment, which has fuelled soil erosion, accelerated the cancerous process of desertification and deforestation, and began to threaten the genetic diversity that is the basis for tomorrow's biotechnology, agriculture, and food supply.
A global consensus for economic growth in the twentyfirst century must be consistent with sustainable development. It must take heed of ecological constraints. If coming five years are truly to be a period during which we respond to the serious problems confronting the world, issue of sustainable global development requires special and urgent attention.
In the totality of environment, the biological component goes through cyclical changes but the non-living component does not. And the all-important fact is that the living world sustains itself at the expense of the non-living. A portion of the non-living finds it way into the making of a living object but eventually whatever had thus moved from the non-living state of existence into the fabric of a living objects has got to go back to its original state. Otherwise, ecological imbalance sets in. In such a situation, the threat posed to the ecology of an area comes mainly from man, for while the non human segments of the living world do not play any planned role aimed at sustaining their numbers, man had grown too clever to be outmaneuvered by nature. On the other long. Now, he finds that the game did not pay off. He realises that while he had been clever, he had not been wise. Hence, this reappraisal. Thus is born the environmentalist school. It works towards generating a fresh awareness regarding the importance of maintaining environmental quality in man’s own interest.
Environmental protection is a national as well as international responsibility. We remember what Mahatma Gandhi said “The earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not for anybody’s greed”. Based on the motivation from the United Nations Conference on Human Environment held at Stockholm on 5 June 1972, a Committee was formed for with a time period of 10 years (1972 - 1981) for preparing the aims and objectives, course materials, case studies, occasional monographs with a view to establishing the Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment (IIEE) at New Delhi. Accordingly the IIEE was established on the occasion of the World Environment Day on 5 June 1980. The Silver Jubilee was celebrated on 5thJune 2005.
The Government of India keeps on setting up different statutory bodies including the Central Pollution Control Board, National Eco-Afforstation Board besides National Environment Authority (NEA) and six regional authorities with appellate jurisdiction to hear appeals against decisions made by the regional authorities.
Whether these decisions stem from a genuine concern for sound environmental governance and overcoming administrative failures is debatable. It has to be seen in the light of the complete bureaucratisation of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in the last two decades.
The MoEF was established as a Scientific Department in November 1980 following the recommendations of the N. D. Tiwari Committee Report. It was envisaged that the Ministry would formulate policies and laws, while an Environment Protection Authority, independent of the Government, would oversee implementation of policies and programmes and enforcement of the laws (on the lines of the powerful EPA in the US).
This did not happen. Instead, over the years, the original mandate of the MoEF was eroded by administrative cynicism and sidelining of scientific expertise available within the Government, even as the MoEF has sought to takeover more regulatory functions. Civil society perceives the bureaucracy as disinterested in public welfare and corrupt.
Weak governance, manifesting itself in poor service delivery, excessive regulations, poor enforcement of laws and uncoordinated and wasteful public expenditure, are among the key factors eroding national ecological and environmental security.
This is exemplified by the thousands of crores of rupees spent so far under the Ganga Action Plan and the National Wasteland Development Board without achieving their respective mandates of cleaning the Ganga and developing wasted lands. When the MoEF was established, the existing Department of Forests and Wildlife continued to be under the Ministry of Agriculture.
But the new Department of Environment was directly under the Prime Minister and was envisaged as a focal point for developing future programmes, policies and laws based on scientific and technical analysis to ensure environmentally-sound and sustainable development in all sectors in the country.
With this perspective, the Department was intended to guide and monitor the progress of complex inter-sectoral programme implementation both in the private and public sectors. Three eminent scientists served as Secretaries till May 1985. Thereafter, the Environment and Forests and Wildlife Departments were placed in one Ministry headed by a Secretary from the Indian Administrative Service. In 1987, the Department of Environment, which was recognised as a ‘scientific’ Department (such as the Departments of Ocean Development, Biotechnology, Space, Science and Technology, and Non-Conventional Energy), was taken out of the purview of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) for speedy recruitment of scientific personnel. After the initial phase of recruitment of scientists, however, no fresh recruitment was made. Gradually, as senior scientists retired, these posts were converted to non-scientific posts and taken over by the IAS and allied services such as Customs, the Railways, Post and Telegraphs, etc.
No attempt was made to create an independent cadre of scientific professionals. The influx of career administrators has contributed to the spread of the bureaucratic babu culture. A sense of urgency to integrate ecological and environmental concerns into the developmental process has completely evaporated, undermining effective coordination with other concerned Ministries on inter-sectoral issues. Effective environmental and ecological strategies have not been evolved in major sectors such as industry, transport, agriculture and aquaculture, energy, and forestry. ‘Environment ImpAct Assessment’, which is a multidisciplinary and multidimensional process, is being undertaken mechanically just to get the environmental clearance under the Environment Protection Act, instead of being an integrated and continuous process from the very start of a project. Conflicts have escalated in sectors such as water, land use, agriculture, animal husbandry, mining and forests, which are of deep concern to the people, and there has been little attempt to decentralise natural resources management through the institutions of self-government under the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts. Moreover, multiple systems of administration and functioning in an uncoordinated manner, have led to confusion in the implementation of programmes and the enforcement of laws, and also unhealthy rivalry between agencies.
For instance, two agencies concerned with afforestation function independently - the National Afforestation and Eco-development Board under the MoEF, and the National Wastelands Development Board under the Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment. Biodiversity conservation falls within the purview of different Departments and Ministries. The National Bio-Resource Board was constituted by the Department of Biotechnology and the National Medicinal Plant Board by the Department of Indian Systems of Medicines and Homeopathy (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare). And, under the new Biodiversity (Conservation) Act, the MoEF is to set up a National Biodiversity Board.
The Ministry of Water Resources is the nodal agency for managing the water sector. It discharges its mandate through the Central Water Commission (surface water), Central Ground Water Board (ground water) and the National Water Development Agency (inter-basin transfer of water).
But the MoEF handles water quality and related environmental aspects; the Ministry of Urban Affairs and Development coordinates projects in urban water supply and sanitation; the Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment looks after rural water supply and sanitation under the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission; and the Ministry of Power and Central Electric Authority handles water issues for power generation.