Building green : environmental architects and the struggle for sustainability in Mumbai

Abstract

How does an anthropologist focused on environmental and political change in Nepal come to study among environmental architects in Mumbai? One of my most constant, and constantly fascinating, groups of interlocutors in Kathmandu was an extraordinarily committed and effective set of workers for the non-governmental organization called Lumanti. Tireless in their advocacy, and fearless in the face of repeated official threats and obstacles, I was fascinated by the group’s tenacity and effectiveness. But I also noticed that part of its strength derived from connections to a robust network of housing advocacy groups across South Asia. Among the most prominent members of this group was the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers, or SPARC, and the network of organizations that made up Slum Dwellers International. SPARC’s central office was in Mumbai, and so, expecting to further my understanding of South Asia’s regional urban housing politics, I traveled there for the first time in 2008. A few weeks into that first stay in Mumbai, I received a call from the head of the Rachana Sansad Institute of Environmental Architecture. We had never met, and I was, until then, unaware that RSIEA existed. The institute head invited me to deliver a lecture to environmental architecture graduate students on the subject of urban ecology. My first response was a confused hesitation. What, I wondered, did architects have to learn from an environmental anthropologist? However, in part out of sheer curiosity about how this community of architects—a group with which I had not previously had research contact, and a field in which I had no formal training—would engage with a lecture on urban ecology delivered from the perspective of someone trained in environmental sciences and sociocultural anthropology, I accepted.