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Commonwealth NGOs
related to forestry | | |
 Centre for Science and Environment
41 Tughlakabad Institutional Area
New Delhi 110062
India
Email: sales@cseindia.org
Website: www.cseindia.org
Type: Research NGO
Scope: national
Interest in Forestry: peripheral
Description
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a public interest research and advocacy organisation
based in New Delhi. CSE researches into, lobbies for and communicates the urgency of
development that is both sustainable and equitable. The scenario today demands using knowledge to bring
about change. In other words, working India’s democracy. This is what we aim to do.
The challenge, we see, is two-pronged. On the one hand, millions live within a biomass based subsistence
economy, at the margins of survival. The environment is their only natural asset. But a
degraded environment means stress on land, water and forest resources for survival. It means increasing
destitution and poverty. Here, opportunity to bring about change is enormous. But it will need
a commitment to reform – structural reform- in the way we do business with local communities.
On the other hand, rapid industrialization is throwing up new problems: growing toxification and a costly
disease burden. The answers will be in reinventing the growth model of the Western world for
ourselves, so that we can leapfrog technology choices and find new ways of building wealth that will
not cost us the earth. This is the challenge of the balance.
Our aim is to raise these concerns, participate in seeking answers and – more importantly – in pushing
for answers and transforming these into policy and so practice. We do this through our research
and by communicating our understanding through our publications. We call this knowledge-based activism.
We hope we will make a difference.
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