ESR Framework

Pune produces an Environmental Status Report (ESR) every year, and it has done so since 1997. This is mandated in the state-level legislation (the BPMC Act) following the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act and the Twelfth Schedule.

The development, writing and production of the ESR is usually tendered out. The Pune ESR has been prepared over various years by Mashal, Change Re-engineering, PATPL, and in recent years by the PMC Air Quality Cell. Since the approach and detail in the different chapters is quite varied, it appears that there is no continuing information framework for the ESR as a whole or for the individual sections.

In order to make the ESR a more useful / usable document, some reorganization of the ESR has been suggested by the Pune Citizens Environment Forum (various meetings):

1. The purpose of the ESR has to be clear
1. It should reveal the health status of the population linked to the state
   of services and the environment
2. It should provide information support for investment and management
   decisions for the PMC
3. It should serve as an important input into the annual budgeting and
   planning exercises of the PMC
4. It should be a tool for citizens' use as well, serving both as an
   information/ education resources, as well as a way for tracking improvements
2. It should have some overview chapters for a comprehensive picture of the city, including key sectors
3. Certain data sets have to be presented disaggregated at ward-level so that actions needed to be taken by corporators are clear, and these can in turn be linked to ward level municipal budgets and plans
4. It is important to create the framework, even if data is not there. The purpose of this is to identify data gaps and put in place appropriate data collection systems
5. Descriptive material, detailed data tables, references etc are valuable information and the ESR is a good way of making such information publicly available and these may be included. However, the key actionable aspects may be presented as a separate section for facilitating monitoring and follow-up
6. Information, such as flights operating out of Pune and list of Malls, which has appeared in the ESR of some years may be removed from the report as it is not directly relevant. However, a lot of the development-related data could still be included, albeit in the form of appendices.
7. The ESR will need to draw upon data apart from the official data gathered and provided by PMC departments on municipal services and functions
8. Which data is gathered and reported by the PMC depts. needs to be looked into, as they may not necessarily be collecting some critical information – this depends on what goals (short and long term) are being set for improvements – for instance if reducing energy use is a goal, then data related to energy use in specific service provision will have to be tracked
9. In any case the Key Performance Indicators for PMC depts exercise initiated by Janwani should link with the ESR preparation work; the KPI work in Pune is also linked to the Benchmarking of Municipal Services initiated by JNNURM
10. This means that citizens, academic institutions, independent organizations, NGOs etc can also and should contribute information
11. A system to receive and categorize information needs to be created for this
12. Information collection/ compilation/ review etc can happen year round
13. The ESR should be available on the internet – creating wikis may be a useful way to do this

'''Which indicators?'''
Draft frameworks have been developed for biodiversity and water. These are available under the respective Work Themes in this blog

The CEROI set prepared by UNEP GRID Arendal may also give useful insights [http://www.ceroi.net/ City Environment Reports on the Internet]