Agarwal’s biggest achievement has been to spread the environmental message in India and abroad. Also notable was his invaluable role in arguing for equity in global environmental management in the process leading up to the Rio Earth Summit and beyond. He worked to put environment on the political and civil society agenda from a Southern perspective. Most importantly, through his writings and advocacy he played a vital role in providing the answers for an environmentally sound development strategy for countries such as India. He worked ceaselessly to build capacity and to engage civil society in global governance.

Agarwal’s most important contribution was to create awareness across the world about the importance of the environment in poor, developing countries. Through his writings he argued that there is a deep relationship between the poor and their habitat; in other words, that there is deep relationship between poverty and environment -- that the survival of the poor depends more on the Gross Nature Product than on the common economic indicator Gross National Product. He argued that the poor are so heavily dependent on their environment that any development process destructive of the environment will inevitably go against the very objectives of development by destroying livelihoods and creating unemployment. In situations where people’s survival is environment-dependent, environmental destruction and social injustice will become two sides of the same coin.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, many people argued that development must take priority over environmental concerns and that environment was an elitist concern -- meant only for the rich. In 1982, the first citizens’ report on the State of India’s Environment, which Agarwal conceptualised and edited, provided the social rationale for developing countries to take environmental concerns into account. It helped India’s civil society, already working in rural areas, to rediscover the importance of environmental and natural resource issues. This spurred NGO environmental action in various ways. Most importantly, it resolved the environment vs. development debate globally and finally evolved into the concept of ‘sustainable development’ in the Brundtland Commission report.

Agarwal’s efforts and research continued to gain strength in India and abroad, especially his stress on community-based participatory democracy as a vital component to natural resource management. His ideas have helped shape opinion and policy across the developed and developing worlds. As a Commissioner of the World Commission on Water, Agarwal advocated community rights, moreover, his phrase, "making water everybody’s business", was adopted as the Commission’s theme.

The State of India’s Environment report was pioneering because it provided an overview of the level of degradation and its impact on the people of India. The concept of a citizens’ report was widely appreciated. This report not only shocked Indians out of lethargy and catalysed nationwide interest; it also had a global impact. Several institutions, including Worldwatch Institute and the World Resources Report, followed with their State of the World Report and the World Resources Report, respectively. NGOs in countries including Bangladesh, Nigeria, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Nigeria, have since prepared similar national reports. NGOs in several Indian states, including Orissa and Goa have put together state-level reports. Similarly, the Karnataka government promoted a government-sponsored state-level report. And NGOs in the Indian cities of Hyderabad and Ratlam produced city-level reports.

In 1985, Agarwal edited the widely acclaimed Second Citizens’ Report on the State of India’s Environment, which for the first time in the developing world, detailed how environmental destruction affects rural women. In 1986, deeply impressed by this report, the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi invited Agarwal to address the nation’s Council of Minister and the Parliament on the importance of sustainable development for a developing country such as India.

Agarwal’s achievement also has been to advocate that we need to account for equity in debating global environmental management issues. In 1991 Agarwal co-authored a book called Global Warming in an Unequal World that sparked a worldwide debate. The book also had a considerable impact on the G-77 position in the negotiations leading up to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Perhaps for the first time was the concept of equity brought forward in the context of global warming. Agarwal continuously advocated that the global ecological framework should be built on principles of democracy, justice and equality among all world citizens -- the key principles of good governance. His position has influenced the negotiations leading up to and within the Rio Conference in 1992.

In the early 1990s Agarwal worked with Tanzania’s former President, Julius Nyerere at the South Centre based in Geneva and with former Indian Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao to help developing countries establish a proactive agenda for the Rio Earth Summit. Agarwal proposed a global anti-poverty programme based on ecological regeneration in the world’s drylands built around a survival guarantee programme. Since Rio he continued to advocate the need for the South’s participation in creating the rules for global governance. In 1999 co-authored the book, Green Politics, Global Environmental Negotiations, which for the first time provided a Southern analysis of various environmental treaties and negotiations.

Possibly Agarwal’s most important contribution was establishing Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an influential and highly vocal environmental NGO based in Delhi. In an article on environmental NGOs in various parts of the world, New Scientist said of CSE: "India has one of the world’s most energetic NGOs in the Centre for Science and Environment which reports on the state of the country’s environment." Again, in New Scientist, Fred Pearce, a leading science journalist, commended CSE for its: " passion combined with forensic rigour. Nothing touches the work of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. Its "citizens reports" on the Indian environment in the 1980s remain a model for every fumbling researcher. Its "state of environment" series piles on the details and contains an anger that has largely deserted groups in Europe and North America." Over the years, CSE has generated enormous respect in India and abroad.

Until his untimely death in January 2, 2002, in the face of India’s double environmental threat – of ‘ecological poverty’ and extensive land degradation, together with increased toxification and industrial pollution -- Agarwal advocated solutions to deal with both the problems. In the last decade, Agarwal worked hard to research, write and pressurise government and policy-making bodies to embrace environmental concerns. He led campaigns on air and water pollution, on community based water management strategies and on threats posed to public health by the changing environment. He also led a highly innovative project to bring about transparency in the industrial sector by rating the environmental performance of Indian firms. Brief descriptions of his campaigns and impact is given below:

The need for rainwater harvesting and community-based water management:
Spearheading this extremely successful campaign both nationally and internationally, Agarwal argued through that the last 100 years or so has witnessed two major paradigm shifts in water management. First, individuals and communities have steadily handed the state their traditional water management roles when about 150 years ago no government anywhere in the world provided water. Second, that simple technology of using rainwater has declined and instead rivers and groundwater have been harnessed using dams and tubewells to steadily become the key source of water.

In 1997, Agarwal co-edited and published the citizens’ fourth report on the State of India’s Environment entitled Dying Wisdom, which focused on India’s long-standing traditions of water management and technologies. The report argued that water management in India was built on harvesting rainwater -- which makes eminent sense in a monsoon-type climate -- and on community participation. The report underscored the need for Indians to learn from available traditions and develop new approaches for sustainable water management. The report was released in over 10 Indian cities and was extremely well received by media and civil society. In October 1998, CSE organised a National Conference on Water Harvesting that 250 people attended, to emphasize the relevance of water harvesting. The conference, inaugurated by the former President of India and CSE’s patron, Shri K R Narayanan, was widely covered in media. Describing Agarwal as a "pioneering crusader", the President said that he would be delighted to use water harvesting technology in Rashtrapati Bhawan (the President’s estate). In August 1998, CSE organised an international workshop on water harvesting at the Stockholm Water Symposium, which was rated as among the best workshops of the symposium. A member of the World Water Commission, Agarwal’s report stressed the need for community-based water management.

In 2000, when large parts of India were in the grip of severe drought, Agarwal convinced many policy makers, politicians and individuals that what was happening in the country was not a ‘natural disaster’ as it was widely being called. The drought was truly a ‘man-made’ or rather a ‘government-made’ disaster. Agarwal suggested community-based rainwater harvesting – the paradigm of the past – is as relevant today as it ever was before. He bolstered this argument with a survey of several villages that experienced no drinking water and irrigation crisis because they had implemented rainwater harvesting schemes. Neighbouring villages, however, were desperate for water and planning to migrate when the real summer hit them.

In March 2000, Agarwal invited the President of India K R Narayanan to travel to a drought prone area to present an award a village community’s outstanding work on rainwater harvesting that brought rivers back to life. This visit of the President brought enormous political change as it showed the possible solutions to both policy makers and politicians. Writing about his visit, Agarwal said, "travelling in a helicopter to the Arvari watershed with the President we could see nothing but barren fields all the way from Delhi to Alwar. This area is suffering from a second consecutive drought-year. But suddenly we came across green and brown fields and realised that we had reached the oasis of the Arvari watershed where several villages have over the last 5-10 years built hundreds of rainwater harvesting structures. Nobody needed to emphasize the importance of rainwater harvesting any more. The president saw a more or less dead Arvari river, unable to withstand the burden of two years’ drought, but wells were still full of water and, therefore, fields were rich and productive and villgers reasonably happy." This message has had enormous policy impact.

The fourth report on India’s millenia-old traditions in water management has started off a nationwide interest in community and household-based water management.

Until his death, Agarwal was leading a campaign against the growing threat of pollution in the country.

• A year later, CSE released its findings on growth in vehicular pollution load versus economic growth and the media publicity pushed the Ministry of Environment and Forests to release its White Paper on Pollution Control in Delhi and the Supreme Court instructed the government to set up a powerful Environment Pollution Control Authority to monitor the action taken by the Delhi and Central governments under their action plans and report regularly to the Supreme Court. CSE’s chairperson has been asked to become a member of this authority, which also recommends policy measures to the Supreme Court which go beyond the action plans the two governments. As a result, CSE’s research on measures needed to prevent and control air pollution get fed into the Authority’s deliberations.

• CSE has been actively advocating a ban on the current trend to bring in private diesel cars because of the low price of diesel (kept deliberately so by the government to promote irrigation pumping and public transport). Delhi is suffering heaving from particulate pollution and diesel vehicles will only add to particulate pollution. This campaign has meant considerable research on the health effects of diesel and the effects on improvement in diesel fuel quality and in diesel engines. CSE even sought the help of a Swedish consultant to help understand the cost of transformation from current engine technology in India to more emissions-friendly technology. CSE also took out two powerful public ads the problem of air pollution in Delhi.

• These developments have literally kept CSE’s campaign team on air pollution on its toes and it is now trying to spread its campaign to other cities of India, some of which face even more serious air pollution problems than Delhi but are not being addressed because the civil society in those cities remains weak on the technical dimensions of the subject. This is a challenge for CSE as to how it can help to improve the technical capacities of the civil society to deal with the growing pollution problems.

Poverty and Environment

• CSE’s chairperson and  director have tried to work on this issue, amongst other things. In 1989, CSE had published Towards Green Villages, a study which presented a macro-strategy for natural resource management built on the micro-successes in this field.

• But in 1998, this work got revived again.

• In 1997, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh had invited CSE’s chairperson and director to release Dying Wisdom in Jhabua district. CSE was deeply impressed by the turnaround in the land-water-forest situation in the district through a pioneering, people-oriented watershed management programme. In 1998, CSE’s chairperson wrote several articles on the outstanding work undertaken by the Madhya Pradesh government as the urban-oriented media had totally forgotten to cover this exemplary development. Simultaneously, for a study commissioned by the UN, CSE worked with experts from the Institute of Economic Growth to survey the ecological, economic and demographic changes that have taken place in India’s two pioneering villages where rural communities have undertaken natural resource management.

• After the surprising electoral victory of the incumbent Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in November 1998, which CSE’s research showed had been influenced to some extent by the ruling party’s work in participatory watershed and education programmes, CSE approached Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party in india, who had released Dying Wisdom in New Delhi in 1997, to encourage the chief minister of Rajasthan, where her party had also won in November 1998, to undertake a similar programme. Mrs Gandhi very graciously agreed and spoke about the issue to the Rajasthan chief minister and thereafter CSE’s chairperson, Anil Agarwal, addressed a meeting of senior politicians and officials of Rajasthan on the subject. The chief minister, Ashok Gehlot, promised to take a personal interest on this matter.

• CSE has since prepared a paper which shows that dramatic economic transformation can be achieved at the grassroots by poor people themselves if efforts are made to address their ‘ecological poverty’. CSE’s study develops this argument using four case studies -- three NGO case studies, that of Sukhomajri and Ralegan Siddhi villages and the work of Tarun Bharat Sangh in Alwar, and one government case study, that of the Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Development Mission of the Madhya Padesh government.

• CSE’s chairperson, Anil Agarwal, was invited to Brussels to present this paper at a joint EU-UNDP meeting and was subsequently invited to present these findings to a luncheon meeting of environment ministers attending the Commission on Sustainable Development in New York in April 1999. The Chinese minister took a keen interest in CSE’s presentation and requested the UNDP to take up similar experiments in his country. The meeting was held to seek the views of the ministers present on a proposed EU-UNDP ministerial-level meeting on poverty and environment in September 1999 to focus on a forgotten aspect of the Rio Agenda which also covers an important part of the Copenhagen agenda.

• CSE intends to develop a structured programme in this field now.

• At a lecture delivered in Oslo at a meeting organised by NORAD in December 1999, CSE’s chairperson, Anil Agarwal, identified two key environment issues of concern to the South which the global civil society would have to confront in the 21st century, namely, the ecological poverty of the poor living in the world’s degraded lands and the growing air and water pollution that the South will face with its economic growth. Both issues can get neglected unless the global civil society takes them up in a concerted way.