Air Pollution Delhi

Non riusciamo a respirare: Storia di una fuga dall'inquinamento

Abbiamo perso il diritto di respirare aria pulita. Dobbiamo cambiare tutte le fasi del ciclo prendi-produci-consuma per essere in grado di costruire città prospere e fiorenti.
India, Southern Asia

Story by Piyush Dhawan. Translated by Stefania Ledda
Published on May 9, 2021.

This story is also available in GB fr kr



Listen to this story:


Fai un respiro profondo e trattienilo per i prossimi sette mesi perché da settembre tutti noi abitanti di Nuova Delhi rivivremo l’incubo che abbiamo vissuto negli ultimi cinque anni.

Naso che cola, occhi che prudono, gola irritata e polmoni che opprimono: l’aria è così soffocante e tossica che facciamo grande fatica semplicemente a respirare!

I governi faranno da scaricabarile l’uno con l’altro come ogni anno. Saranno pubblicati rapporti contenenti dati allarmanti su come noi cittadini moriremo prematuramente dieci anni prima. Vedremo le pubblicità dei purificatori d’aria. Pensate, le sole due cose di cui gli essere umani hanno bisogno per sopravvivere - aria e acqua - adesso sono vendute in contenitori.

Sono nato in questa città e mi uccide vederla morire! Lentamente, ogni giorno. Ultimamente abbiamo visto moltissimi concittadini brillanti e altamente qualificati lasciare Nuova Delhi  alla ricerca di una migliore qualità dell’aria.

Ci chiamano i migranti dell’inquinamento! Non abbiamo scelta, se non quella di lasciare la nostra città.

Dieci delle quindici città più inquinate al mondo si trovano in India, così come le dieci in più rapida crescita. 

L’economista che è in me pensa che questa sia una cosa eccezionale - saremo la centrale elettrica del pianeta - ma la mia parte ambientalista rimane scettica.

Pur trovandosi solamente sull’1% di tutta la massa continentale globale, le città sono casa per di danno una casa a più della metà della popolazione mondiale, e producono l’85% del PIL globale. Hanno grande fame energetica per poter riuscire a provvedere alla popolazione e a generare un PIL così alto. Esse consumano il 75% delle risorse naturali, producono il 50% dei rifiuti mondiali e il 70% delle emissioni di gas serra.

Sono stato ispirato da un TED Talk di Dame Ellen MacArthur che, dopo aver vissuto da sola sul suo yacht per più di due mesi, fu tormentata da questa domanda: come può il nostro pianeta continuare a funzionare continuando a mantenere lo stesso modello economico utilizzato negli ultimi due secoli? La MacArthur si è chiesta: e se oltre a proteggere l’ambiente, lo migliorassimo in maniera proattiva? Dopo aver ascoltato il suo discorso, ho riflettuto per settimane: cosa succederebbe se le nostre risorse si esaurissero? Ed ecco un’illuminazione! Iniziai a vedere le città come tesori segreti pieni di risorse! Dagli edifici agli scarti elettronici, siamo circondati da valore.

Immagino città autosufficienti capaci di soddisfare le proprie esigenze materiali, riducendo il consumo delle risorse naturali e la produzione di scarti. Vedo città piene di spazi verdi, che forniscono riparo alle persone e ad altre specie. Vedo città socialmente inclusive che lavorano grazie alla forza di milioni di migranti che vi arrivano.

Credo fermamente che l’attuale sistema non funzioni più né per le imprese né per le persone o l’ambiente. Per decenni l’India è stata in competizione con la Cina in una gara per la crescita economica! La difficoltà di tale sfida sta nel fatto che ci sono più perdenti che vincitori. Abbiamo perso il diritto di respirare aria fresca e bere acqua pulita. Abbiamo perso la nostra biodiversità locale. La disparità tra ricchi e poveri è ai suoi più alti livelli. In questo momento critico dobbiamo decidere se continuare ciecamente a credere alla favola della crescita o abbracciare una visione che sia equa e inclusiva!

Il 70% degli edifici che si pensava di costruire in India entro il 2030 sono ancora da costruire. Immaginate invece di riuscire a trasformare il modo in cui gestiamo e utilizziamo l’enorme quantità di risorse di cui abbiamo bisogno per soddisfare i bisogni dei cittadini del futuro. Possiamo integrare il cambiamento climatico e le migrazioni e affrontare le cause della povertà e dell’insicurezza alimentare. Migrare dovrebbe essere una scelta. Inoltre, potremmo creare un’economia fiorente di cui tutti possano godere nei limiti del nostro pianeta. Abbiamo il diritto di respirare aria pulita. Quindi, costruiamo città che riconoscano questo diritto fondamentale dell’essere umano.


How does this story make you feel?

Follow-up

Do you have any questions after reading this story? Do you want to follow-up on what you've just read? Get in touch with our team to learn more! Send an email to
[email protected].

Talk about this Story

Please enable cookies to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Share your story

Every story we share is another perspective on a complex topic like migration, gender and sexuality or liberation. We believe that these personal stories are important to better understand what's going on in our globalised society - and to better understand each other. That's because we are convinced that the more we understand about each other, the easier it will be for us to really talk to one another, to get closer - and to maybe find solutions for the issues that affect us all. 

Do you want to share your story? Then have a look here for more info.

Share Your Story

Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter

Stay up to date with new stories on Correspondents of the World by subscribing to our monthly newsletter:

* indicates required

Follow us on Social Media

Piyush Dhawan

Piyush Dhawan

Piyush Dhawan is the Cofounder of the Circular Collective, an open-source knowledge platform that facilitates, activates and enables discussions on Circular Economy in India. He has previously worked with the German Technical Cooperation as National Advisor on Business and Biodiversity and at UNDP India as Resource Mobilization and Partnership Lead for SDGs for a decade. He is a TEDx speaker, German Chancellor Fellow and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. He has represented India at many international conferences including the European Forum Alpbach (Austria), Global Environment Academy (Oxford), DAAD in Mongolia, Germany and Thailand and G20 Summit (Korea).

Other Stories in Italiano




Show all

Get involved

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

Share Your Story

Community Worldwide

Correspondents of the World is not just this website, but also a great community of people from all over the world. While face-to-face meetings are difficult at the moment, our Facebook Community Group is THE place to be to meet other people invested in Correspondents of the World. We are currently running a series of online-tea talks to get to know each other better.

Join Our Community

EXPLORE TOPIC Environment

Global Issues Through Local Eyes

We are Correspondents of the World, an online platform where people from all over the world share their personal stories in relation to global development. We try to collect stories from people of all ages and genders, people with different social and religious backgrounds and people with all kinds of political opinions in order to get a fuller picture of what is going on behind the big news.

Our Correspondents

At Correspondents of the World we invite everyone to share their own story. This means we don't have professional writers or skilled interviewers. We believe that this approach offers a whole new perspective on topics we normally only read about in the news - if at all. If you would like to share your story, you can find more info here.

Share Your Story

Our Editors

We acknowledge that the stories we collect will necessarily be biased. But so is news. Believing in the power of the narrative, our growing team of awesome editors helps correspondents to make sure that their story is strictly about their personal experience - and let that speak for itself.

Become an Editor

Vision

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

View Our Full Vision & Mission Statement

Topics

We believe in quality over quantity. To give ourselves a focus, we started out to collect personal stories that relate to our correspondents' experiences with six different global topics. However, these topics were selected to increase the likelihood that the stories of different correspondents will cover the same issues and therefore illuminate these issues from different perspectives - and not to exclude any stories. If you have a personal story relating to a global issue that's not covered by our topics, please still reach out to us! We definitely have some blind spots and are happy to revise our focus and introduce new topics at any point in time. 

Environment

Discussions about the environment often center on grim, impersonal figures. Among the numbers and warnings, it is easy to forget that all of these statistics actually also affect us - in very different ways. We believe that in order to understand the immensity of environmental topics and global climate change, we need the personal stories of our correspondents.

Gender and Sexuality

Gender is the assumption of a "normal". Unmet expectations of what is normal are a world-wide cause for violence. We hope that the stories of our correspondents will help us to better understand the effects of global developments related to gender and sexuality, and to reveal outdated concepts that have been reinforced for centuries.

Migration

Our correspondents write about migration because it is a deeply personal topic that is often dehumanized. People quickly become foreigners, refugees - a "they". But: we have always been migrating, and we always will. For millions of different reasons. By sharing personal stories about migration, we hope to re-humanize this global topic.

Liberation

We want to support the demand for justice by spotlighting the personal stories of people who seek liberation in all its different forms. Our correspondents share their individual experiences in creating equality. We hope that for some this will be an encouragement to continue their own struggle against inequality and oppression - and for some an encouragement to get involved.

Education

Education is the newest addition to our themes. We believe that education, not only formal but also informal, is one of the core aspects of just and equal society as well as social change. Our correspondents share their experiences and confrontations about educational inequalities, accessibility issues and influence of societal norms and structures. 

Corona Virus

2020 is a year different from others before - not least because of the Corona pandemic. The worldwide spread of a highly contagious virus is something that affects all of us in very different ways. To get a better picture of how the pandemic's plethora of explicit and implicit consequences influences our everyday life, we share lockdown stories from correspondents all over the world.

Growing Fast

Although we started just over a year ago, Correspondents of the World has a quickly growing community of correspondents - and a dedicated team of editors, translators and country managers.

94

Correspondents

113

Stories

57

Countries

433

Translations

Contact

Correspondents of the World is as much a community as an online platform. Please feel free to contact us for whatever reason!

Message Us

Message on WhatsApp

Call Us

Joost: +31 6 30273938