About the Department

Human interference with the nature has not only damaged the ecosystems and environment but has also affected the scope for livelihood security of current and future generations. Several attempts have been made by the scientific community to understand the root cause of Global Environmental Change (GEC) and suggested various research pathways for the coming decades. Several research innovations have been made especially during the last two decades in addressing environmental issues, protection of ecosystems and human impacts through multi – disciplinary approaches. Civil Society Organizations and other end users of the field based activities have largely resulted in the recovery of degraded ecosystems and restoration of environment. Assigning property rights to open access environmental goods using protected areas and co-management approaches have been successfully practiced in different parts of the world. Some strong attempts have also been made to bridge the gap between the scientific findings and implementation in the field to achieve tangible results in enhancing environmental quality.

Human induced impacts especially rapid urbanization and the growth of world population are some of the contributing factors for global environmental change. On the other hand, rapid industrialization is throwing up new problems: growing toxification and a costly disease burden In addition, the world has been facing a complexity of episodic disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis etc., along with climate-induced disasters like cyclones, floods and droughts. Most recently, on the 11^th of March 2011, an undersea earthquake of magnitude 9 on Richter Scale, triggered a giant tsunami of about 23m height, which travelled a distance of about 5 km inland and devastated about nine prefectures along the Northeast coast of Japan. The severity of this natural disaster and its impact on environment, economy and community is yet to be studied and fully understood.

At a time when the world is grappling with climate related disasters and climate change issues, assessing the vulnerability and resilience, the recent disaster in Japan has diverted the attention of scientific community to this new challenge. Also the decision-makers and planners are trying towards new policy formulations based on the recommendations of the research findings that are brought out by the Centers of Excellence in the country.

The University of Madras has established a full – fledged Centre for Environmental Sciences (CES) in 2007, with multi-disciplinary facets for carrying out the Research and Development (R&D) and human resources development programmes in the areas of environmental studies in order to effectively tackle the challenges in the field of short term local and long term global environmental change. For the past four years this centre is functioning from the Department of Applied Geology.

Moving forward, the established CES at University of Madras has been conducting academic programmes, practical, high-quality research that can resolve outstanding environmental issues in the country. Further, academic programs and activities of the Centre for Environmental Sciences at University of Madras are designed addressing to the needs and challenges of major industrial sectors, governmental sectors like MHRD, MOEF & CC, CSIR, DST, DBT, MoES, State Planning Commissions and international agencies like WB, UNDP/ UNEP, and various funding institutions.

Objective

• To maximize the scope of Environmental Science Education (ESE) with state-of-the-art thinking, developments, innovations and perspectives in the areas of Environment and Sustainable Development.
• To impart knowledge on emerging areas of environment, global environmental changes and issues, climate change and biodiversity conservation, pollution and health disorders,   urban water management etc.
• To establish a tripartite relationship between industry, academia and government agencies to nurture and support growth of environmental science and technology, and allied areas.
• To generate knowledgeable manpower for sustainable management of earth’s environment and its resources.
• To generate employable post-graduates and researchers/scientists in inter-disciplinary areas of environmental sciences and allied areas for gainful employment/jobs in Universities, Colleges, Industries, Ministries, Judiciary, Research Organizations, Multinational Companies, Administration and NGO's etc., both in India and abroad.
• To design and develop need based programmes like environmental awareness and management, green energy technology, rain water harvestment, cleanliness awareness programmes, sanitation awareness programmes etc., for professionals, public administrators, private sector executives, NGO professionals, students and general public.

Mission

The mission of the CES is to generate knowledgeable manpower and to carry out high quality inter-disciplinary research leading to development of new eco-friendly and sustainable technologies to provide solutions for various environment related challenges, thereby transferring the knowledge to industries, stake holders and to formulate the strategies by the policy makers

Vision

• The vision of the CES is to generate man power with scientific expertise and technical skills in environmental sciences through innovative and transformative inter-disciplinary futurerisitc research.
• Services to humanity through expansion and dissemination of knowledge enable them to take participation in protecting our earth’s environment

Strategies

• To assist various organizations and individuals, CES will have dedicated scientists and facilities for (a) Environment Impact Assessment and (b) Environment Management.
• Centre aspires to establish ENVIRONMENTAL SPECIMEN BANK with the help of international agencies. This data bank will help in collecting and dissemination of the environment related data.
• Sea water fluctuation and its impact on ground water quality will also be studied using the available long term data.
• The Centre will give more importance to manpower empowerment through training, networking and capacity building.
• The CES will also take up research on emerging areas like global warming, climate change and its impacts on human health and biodiversity, and how to minimize the impacts.