Dr. Humaira Qadri
On a crowded planet with ever increasing consumerism and higher standards of life, human activity is putting increasing pressure on the environment resulting in irreversible consequences that are playing disaster with the planet and the life on it. In this scenario, every nation is dedicated towards the promotion of Environmental Science while the subject awaits its fate in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The subject of Environmental Sciences is not an amalgam of the subject matter from various subjects but is an application oriented course which connects all basic and applied sciences with the Environment, Technology and Development. A student from Environmental Science is actually a resource with broad inter-disciplinary perspective and finds place in areas such as Remote Sensing/GIS, Environmental Engineering, Public Health, Agricultural/Soil Sciences, Ecology/Forests, Atmospheric/Aquatic/Terrestrial Sciences, Industry, Natural Resource Restoration/Management, Environmental Impact Assessment, Pollution studies and Emerging Green Technologies.
Globally, every developed and developing nation has made it to the zenith of sustainable development, keeping environment and its conservation at the forefront. Starting from United Nations Conference on Human Environment (1972), the most-talked about Environmental Summits like Kyoto, Montreal, Rio-Earth, and Commissions like Vienna and Brundtland followed by the Conference of Parties (COP) have been signed by the world leaders who have held Environment as the top priority in their agenda for development. Taking a leaf from this, the 100 top ranked universities/institutions in the world including Harvard University, University of Oxford, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, Princeton University, University of California (Berkeley), Imperial College London, Yale University, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University have highly developed Schools and Departments of Environmental Science. In India, the top most universities and institutions like Centre for Ecological Sciences (Indian Institute of Science, Banglore), Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Banaras Hindu University, all the IITs and various other Central Universities are taking pride in running and continuously developing their schools of Environmental Science which have fetched them laurels globally and nationally ever since their inception. Realising the above mentioned facts, in the year 2001, the ruling Government took pride in introducing the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Kashmir followed by a P.G. Department at Sri Pratap College, Srinagar in 2003. A vision of taking this subject to elevated ranks and being taught at all levels of education had been put forth. Ever since then, the students from this subject have made a mark in all the relevant fields that they have been associated with, amidst the criticism that it has faced from certain people who have no solid reasons for doing so.
Following the directions of the Apex Court, Environmental Studies has been introduced as a modular course at the college level which entirely fulfils the directives of the court and guidelines of the University Grants Commission regarding imparting the education for environmental awareness. However, at the bureaucratic and political levels the subject of environmental science is often being confused with environmental studies, which has played havoc with the future of the subject.
It is pertinent to mention that in Jammu and Kashmir, majority of the research projects and funding from various global and national research and developmental (R & D) agencies is being sanctioned for environment related issues. But the irony is that, in a state like J&K which is endowed with a wealth of natural resources, Environmental Science as a subject does not get its due and there has been a failure to recognise the importance of such an indispensable, inter-disciplinary subject which in the present times is considered to be the backbone of the development of any region.
In spite of the treatment received by the subject, the state time and again has to rely on environmental experts and consultants for environmental clearance of major and minor developmental projects in the state. Every country which is on the path of development has a number of Environmental Consultancies which have even employed Environmental Science aspirants from the state who are serving as environmental experts. When the whole world is realising and advocating the importance of the subject by way of creating faculties, departments, institutions, schools, centres of excellence, funding projects, creating posts, at the same time the state of J & K has chosen to turn to a blind eye towards the promotion of this dynamic subject. There is a failure to understand the absence of Environmental Science as a core subject at college level when the country and the state have full-fledged Union and State Ministries of Environment.
The subject of Environmental science is a way of learning about how the world works. It is only by understanding how the world works that we can begin to tackle some of our pressing problems concerning the world in general and our environmentally fragile state in particular.
In a time when the historic climate pact enters into force and the whole world is painted green, anybody who understands the importance of this subject will be awfully surprised over the advocacy for still defending the existence of this subject when the expectations associated with its flourishing are too high.
(The author teaches at Sri Pratap College, Srinagar)
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