The Centre was established in January in a small two-room office in South Delhi. Among the Centre's first activities was to start a news service aimed at increasing public awareness on science, technology, environment and development.

The Citizens' First Report on the State of India's Environment went a long way in reconciling the global debate on environment versus development. In 1972, at the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, leaders from developing countries had argued that they cannot undertake environmental conservation at the cost of economic development, and that in developing countries economic development must take priority.

Anil Agarwal
(1947-2002)

This report was the first major study from the civil society of a developing country which argued that developing countries must ensure that environmental conservation must go hand in hand with economic development because any economic development which destroys the environment will create more poverty and unemployment and, thus, cannot even be called economic development. This is because the poor depend on the survival for their daily survival - for them the Gross Nature Product is far more important than the Gross National Product. Environmentally destructive economic development will impoverish the poor even further and destroy their livelihood resource base. Therefore, the environmental concern in the developing world must go "beyond pretty trees and tigers" and must link it with people's lives and protests.

CSE organised a workshop on Alternative Approaches to Urban Development in December