Straight out of college, an economics grad, I joined Sanctuary Asia’s Kids for Tigers ‘edutainment’ programme in Bombay. I was overjoyed. And starry-eyed. I now had the opportunity to reach out to hundreds of children across the city to talk about the need to safeguard our forests. This was not only for the tiger of course, which is the flagship species of our jungles in India, but the source of over 300 pure rivers, and therefore our water security.
As we often said in Sanctuary, “Jungle Nadi Ki Maa Hai” - the forest is the mother of the river. Forests are also the lungs of the planet, filtering out all the carbon we carelessly spew into the atmosphere. And a source of food and medicine. Surely, investing our time and resources for our very own survival made good economic sense, right? Wrong!
I often got a rude shock with heads of schools cutting my calls. What was I thinking talking about protecting tigers and forests and rivers when people were going hungry and living in poverty? How can we give up our very source of oxygen and destroy the source of our drinking (and irrigation) water, and then expect to come out of poverty or hunger, I thought? It made no sense to me. The grown-ups often disappointed me, but the kids never failed to see through this. Sanctuary continues to pass on the baton to scores of the ‘bacha party’ to form an army of green warriors to safeguard their own future.
02 June 2015
Shivani as a brinjal during an anti-GM protest
My immensely enriching experience with the magazine, introduced me to new worlds. To government after government doling out the family wealth of minerals, rivers, forests, coastlines to corporations for a pocket full of mumbles such as promises of jobs and CSR paintings in green and blue! But I was also introduced to a wealth of new species. To alternatives. To solutions. And to people and organisations, who in the face of all the hardship scoop out solutions, and tirelessly challenge governments and corporations to ensure we don’t get a raw deal. Greenpeace is one such organisation.
After 7 long years of being here, I am hard-pressed to find another organisation working on environmental issues, at a global scale that does not think even once before challenging government or corporate alike for holding people and the planet at ransom.
Over the last few years, I decided to focus my energies on food. After all we are an agrarian country. Ariculture is rich in its biodiversity, which means it’s also an infinite source of nutrition. This diversity will ensure food, nutritional and livelihood security and serve as an insurance against climate change. You may not get the need to safeguard habitats for elephants and whales. But you can’t argue food safety and security. And somehow, people talk about wanting organic (read safe) food. And yet, there is mounting news on pesticides laden food in India.
I love my food. Sometimes seven times a day, beverages included. So after countless deliberations when we decided to focus on pesticides, which find their way into our foods, I was encouraged to work on the issue to find solutions for something that really mattered to me. The issue directly concerns consumers because it can potentially have health implications on future generations even! But when we decided to check tea for pesticides, it killed one tiny happy person inside me.
Chai or tea is the most consumed drink across the length and the breadth of the country. And India is one of the largest exporters of tea. India is at the cross-roads of development. Just imagine where we could be on the tea map of the world if we actually cleaned up tea. What if India led the world on solutions instead of following others?! And if we could do it with tea, a monoculture, we can possibly do this with every crop!
Of course, we had to check with labs! India has a list of NABL accredited labs. To my surprise, I find quite a long list. So I write to each one on the list of about 50 odd laboratories in India, telling them I wanted to check for dry tea leaves and tea powder. You know the stuff that leaves a beautiful sunset in your cuppa if you have ‘black’ tea? We wanted to check for anything possibly in there. What’s been approved, what’s actually been used (including the illegals), to what extent. Were they using the best practice in terms of methodology? You know like using a good pair of binoculars to get a good, clear view of a bird. A good camera takes a good picture...
In the meantime, we also send other samples to the Indian labs. Rice. Chilli powder. Atta. Ketchup. Just everyday food things that need to be cleaned up only to find a small range of pesticides. Hmm... Interesting, so all the stories about fruits and veggies containing pesticides were bogus?
02 June 2015
Shivani in an oceans campaign
After over six weeks of writing, calling, emailing, following up, we find that either the labs are not equipped enough or don’t use the up-to-date methods, or look for a very narrow range of pesticides. That doesn’t of course mean they aren’t there, but it’s just that the labs wouldn’t come their products to look for all the pesticides. So we finally wrote to this one lab, which is a DAkKS certified lab, and they looked for a whole range of pesticides. 350 to be precise using state-of-art technology, up to date methodology... But there was one condition, we don’t reveal their name. Reason? They could possibly have clients in the tea industry as well.
Of course, I hoped against hope that they too would not be able to find anything in the Indian tea. But, alas! Barring three samples, which were completely clean, the remaining 46 had a range of pesticides. A number of them over 10 pesticides in each sample. Sometimes, I think it’s an occupational hazard to know all this information. Just getting the right diagnosis of a problem is the key to determine the best solution right?
And you know what we also figured? People right from small farmers, to at least mid-sized farms, were managing to cultivate tea without pesticides! We were quick to share these studies with the tea industry and the Tea Board. We were even quicker in ensuring that experts working on these alternatives come and talk to small tea growers who were a majority of the farmers to assure them how this was real, and possible and with little investment! Even the industry has recognised the possibility of an alternative. Not just reducing a pesticide or two, or taking baby steps, but working on an entire system to help build resilience.
When we stop using pesticides like other agro-chemicals, we can ensure that nothing leaches into our lakes, rivers and oceans. Our water will be safer. As will our food. And so will other precious life on this beautiful planet.
We need to make long strides, and rather quickly if we want to leave a safe future for our children. And our children’s children...
That’s our hope!
Shivani Shah is a campaigner with Greenpeace India
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