In 1982, in order to address the urgent need to create environmental consciousness, CSE produced its first Citizens’ Report on the State of India’s Environment (SOE). SOE-1 helped resolve a long-standing debate on what comes first in a poor country: development or environment? SOE-1 argued that the poor survive more on the ‘Gross Natural Product’ and that there was urgent need to balance environment and development. SOE-1 soon became the leading voice of the country’s environment movement.

Many more State of India’s Environment  Reports have been published since then. The Second Citizens’ Report was perhaps the first that showed how environmental degradation has a disproportionate impact on women. Since then, this idea has come to be widely accepted. SOE-2 caught the attention of the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who invited CSE in 1986 to address the nation’s Council of Ministers and the Parliament on the importance of sustainable development.

Published in 1991, Floods, Floodplains and Environmental Myths: Third Citizens’ Report on the State of India’s Environment (SOE-3), broke new ground by arguing that the severe floods in the Gangetic plain and the Brahmaputra river valley — more flood-prone than any other region of the world—can be controlled by better management of the floodplains, not the rivers’ uplands, as conventional belief dictated.

CSE published Dying Wisdom: The Rise, Fall and Potential of Traditional Water Harvesting Systems, the Fourth Citizen’s Report (SOE-4) in 1997 after completing an eight-year exercise that documented India’s millennia-old traditions in water management and rainwater harvesting. This seminal publication on water management started off a nationwide interest in community and household-based water harvesting initiatives. It argued that the management of water should be made everybody’s business. Several Indian states, including Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, and even the central government has since launched major rainwater harvesting initiatives to combat drought and widespread land degradation.

Incorporating nationwide research effort, Citizens’ Fifth Report on the State of India’s Environment (SOE-5), was published in 1998. SOE-5 consists of two parts. The first part includes a comprehensive dossier on environmental issues, events, policies and practices. The second provides statistical analyses on different aspects of India’s environment. This popular Report has already been reprinted twice.

CSE’s SOE Reports have been the combined product of networking, constituency-building and intellectual leadership, because of which they have received national and international acclaim and have been translated into several Indian languages.