1. Business India published from Mumbai listed The State of India’s Environment: The Second Citizens’ Report (1984-85) as one of the 15 books that were "arguably the most influential books of the post-Independence period" in India. The publication said: "In the late 1970s and 1980s, most public policy and opinion-making institutions in the country looked upon environmental concerns as whimsical, or downright anti-national. That attitude was successfully challenged and altered by this book published by the Centre for Science and Environment. It vividly lays down the case that environmental degradation and depletion has its worst impact on the country’s poor, since they were critically and directly dependent on natural resources for their livelihood. This superbly collated and organised information had an awesome impact then, and it is powerful even today. It is perhaps the finest documentation of a human problem by any NGO anywhere in the world."

2. Fred Pearce reviewing two books of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Scientist published from London said in May 1997, "Reading reports from green groups describing real or imagined environmental perils can be a grind. But for passion combined with forensic rigour nothing touches the work of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, inspired by its founder and director Anil Agarwal. Once a science correspondent on the New Delhi Indian Express, Agarwal has spent almost twenty years fusing scientific and environmental research with campaigning to create a Centre unique not simply in India but anywhere in the world. Its "citizens’ reports" on the Indian environment in the 1980s remain a model for every fumbling researcher. Its current "state of the environment" series piles on the details and contains an anger that has largely deserted groups in Europe and North America."

3. In a note on the Environmentalist of the Year 1994 nominated by a jury set up by Les Realities de l’Ecologie, a leading French environment magazine, which included Edward Goldsmith (editor of The Ecologist), Roger Cans (Le Monde), Valery Lamamee (L’Environment Magazine), Patrick Legrand (France Nature Magazine) and Dominique Voynet (leader of Les Verts--the French Green Party -- and currently the environment minister of France), the magazine said, "The director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment has been nominated by our panel as ‘the environmentalist of the year’. He is the man we had introduced to you last February as "the spokesman of the hundreds of millions of forgotten and the deprived people of the South". He received 13 votes of the "personalities" of the North. Dominique Voynet, leader of the French Green Movement "Les Verts", explains the reasons for her choice: "two years after Rio, at a time when the GATT agreement has dealt a severe blow to the planet, it is necessary that the environmentalist of the year should be the messenger with a vision anchored in sustainability and solidarity for the future generations. Who can represent the essential synthesis between environment and development better than Anil Agarwal." We would not like to upset anyone unnecessarily, but we cannot help recall that Anil Agarwal in his publication, described the green parties of the North as "self-centered". Beyond this, as Alain Le Sann wrote last February, the ideas of the environmentalist of the year are provocative "in our convictions, for they force us to finally consider the South as a demanding partner"."