SOE survey: Pollution, India's biggest bother | Blog

LIVING IN DANGER: Thirty-four per cent respondents think air pollution is the biggest environment problem.

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New Delhi: The CNN-IBN Outlook State of the Environment Poll asked citizens of six cities across India how they felt for the environment and environment-related issues. Do modern, urban Indians care and are they willing to be more environmentally responsible?

When CNN-IBN conducted the survey, we assumed civic issues like water and garbage would be uppermost on people's minds.

But this is the big finding – 34 per cent think air pollution is the biggest environment problem that most people face, followed by green cover, water pollution, noise pollution and finally garbage disposal.

India's exploding traffic - leading to bigger traffic jams, parking woes, road rage and a bevy of health problems - is understandably the biggest setback today.

In fact all those polled in Delhi also voted air pollution was their number one woe.

“Pollution is getting to us and we need to find a solution,” says Center for Science and Environment, Sunita Narain.

If people were given a choice what is the one environmental issue they would want government to address, a whopping 86 per cent of the people want the government to plant trees, followed by reducing air pollution, providing clean drinking water, cleaning up rivers, collecting and segregating garbage and finally improving public transport.

“Why cant bureaucrats and politicians car-pool,” asks environment activist Leo Saldhana

But are things set to improve? The survey shows, people aren't very hopeful. Seventy-seven per cent of respondents said air pollution would increase in the next five years.

Seventy per cent said noise pollution would rise and 65 per cent feared water would get more polluted.

The silver lining is that some states are getting their act together in order to improve the state of their environment be it garbage collection in Bangalore or rain water harvesting in Chennai.

Watch the findings of the State of the Environment survey tonight at 2000 hrs (IST) on CNN-IBN