Research Focus: Western Regional Centre, Mumbai

mumbai research focus

 

Since its inception in 2007, TERI-WRC has been committed to technology implementation, disseminating research outcomes, promoting applied research, creating environmental awareness, developing local research capacity, and providing policy alternatives for various issues pertinent in the region in the following areas.

Nutrition Security

With malnourishment related deaths being a serious issue plaguing the country and the world, the need of the hour is to create sustainable solutions that combat social and cultural drawbacks impeding nutritional security, while creating ways to make nutritious food available to all sections of the society.

Nutrition security, one of our core research areas, aims to achieve this by designing and implementing a replicable model that includes use of easily available local resources incorporating traditional knowledge. It promotes practices that eradicate malnourishment including micro-nutrient deficiency in rural and urban areas. The participatory approach that involves communities ensures that the interventions suggested build the capacities of the beneficiaries so as to make them the drivers of ensuring nutritional security of themselves and their family.

A common misconception with respect to nutrition security is that it is a problem rampant only in poor rural households. However, urban malnutrition due to improper and inadequate intake of essential nutrients is an equally dire situation with the number of adolescents and youth being affected with lifestyle disorders such as diabetes and obesity, constantly on the rise. Our hands-on projects help in mobilizing rural and urban communities to become active stakeholders, and not just mere beneficiaries.

Environmental Studies and Resource Management

Environmental degradation can be avoided to a great extent through proper documentation of information pertaining to local natural resources which need to be conserved while undertaking developmental projects. This can significantly reduce the impact. Against this backdrop, the centre works on advocating recommendations for effective monitoring, integration of new technologies, responsible environmental resource management based on analysis of secondary data for environmental and resource related parameters to various state agencies such as Urban Local Bodies, government bodies, planning authorities, industrial units and others.

Navi Mumbai Eco-City Project

TERI under the Guidance of Urban Development Department, GoM, and in collaboration with NMMC has taken up an initiative to develop Navi Mumbai as an Eco-City. The long-term programme launched in 2012, aspires to develop Navi Mumbai on the fundamentals of sustainable development and low carbon emission strategies. The programme focuses on issues pertaining to three major sectors - residential, industrial and government.

Wetland Management Programme

Wetlands are important any environment conservation approach as they act as a habitat to numerous species of aquatic flora and fauna. In urban and semi-urban areas, the dumping of waste and reclamation of wetlands for new construction and development has led to the degradation of this important ecosystem. The lack of common awareness about the role of this ecosystem about the services they provide has not helped their conservation either.

Keeping their deteriorating state in mind, TERI launched Wetland Management Programme (WeMaP) in 2007 with research, policy intervention and awareness as its three main pillars. In its endeavor to ensure that the ecological, economic and aesthetic value of wetlands are acknowledged, TERI has been observing World Wetlands Day for the last nine consecutive years under the title 'Jaltarang' (crosslink to Jaltarang: Commemoration of World Wetlands Day - http://www.teriin.org/ResUpdate/jaltarang.php). It has brought government officials, environmentalists, educational institutions, industrialists, and all other stakeholders on a common platform.