NHRC Chairman Justice Arun Mishra says environmental degradation impacting human

With 63 Indian cities there in the list of 100 most-polluted cities, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Chairperson Justice Arun Mishra on Tuesday wondered how the ground situation was not changing despite the enabling laws and rules.

India today expressed serious concern over climate and environment degradation impacting human rights, said Justice Mishra in a meeting of the Commission's first Core Advisory Group on Environment, Climate Change and Human Rights in New Delhi.

He said it is not understood how despite the enabling laws and rules, the ground situation is not changing much for the good due to ineffective implementation of regulatory measures to check various environmental pollution, which may be impacting climate change and thus the lives of the people.

The NHRC Chairperson also asserted that the time has come to supervise the supervisory bodies like various Pollution Control Boards.

Justice Mishra said that the efforts and funds pumped in to clean the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, without yielding the desired results, are the two most visible and glaring examples of our collective failure to keep our environment clean and pollution-free.

Further, he questioned how are we going to achieve the sustainable development goals without fixing the problems related to the environmental hazards, agricultural practices, industrial and domestic waste management, among others.

Speaking about the human activities that are affecting even mountains, he said that human beings have not spared even Mount Everest from pollution, which also requires to be cleaned now.

He said that mindless mining is going on so much so that even Antarctica has also not been spared and the development without following norms is "not sensible".

Expressing concerns over this situation, Mishra said, "As part of the global fraternity, we all as individuals have to take up the responsibility to protect and save the planet Earth from environmental degradation to ensure that it doesn't lead to massive climate change impacting lives and ecological imbalances."

The NHRC Chairperson also said that "Time has come to act or perish".

( With inputs from ANI )