How Kumbh Mela & global mega events can be decarbonised

In January 2025, a staggering crowd of over 450 million people is expected to converge on the sacred city of Prayagraj for the monumental Maha Kumbh Mela, an event that occurs once every 12 years. This vibrant festival is a profound celebration of devotion, drawing pilgrims and spiritual seekers from across the country and around the world.

At the heart of the mela is the ritual of bathing in the holy Ganga River, believed to wash away sins and provide spiritual purification. Prayagraj, where the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers meet, or the sangam, symbolises purity in the Hindu tradition; pilgrims and tourists come with the promise of attaining moksha or liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

Besides its cultural and religious significance, the Kumbh has gained local popularity as a torchbearer for sustainable infrastructure and building. The mela, or the fair, is constructed as a temporary district on a part of Prayagraj's riverbed. This sand bank is exposed upon the river receding after the monsoon, which gets submerged back into the river later in the year. Thus, the district built for the Maha Kumbh, has to be dismantled in time, before the bank gets submerged.

After the last Maha Kumbh mela in Prayagraj (then Allahabad) in 2013, this concept of the ‘dismantlable city’ gained much popularity, at least locally. The 2013 mela saw the primary construction materials — bamboo poles, ropes, metal, fibres and plastics — eventually being reabsorbed in nearby villages, small towns and other parts of the country to create a cyclical system of consumption that minimised waste and promoted re-use.

Since 2013, environmental sustainability has gained even more importance. This year, eco-friendly initiatives at the Kumbh include a complete ban on single-use plastic, solar-powered hybrid street lights, more efficient waste disposal systems and the promotion of waste segregation at source.

The Uttar Pradesh government has also introduced eco-friendly taxis and auto rickshaws that can be booked online. It is also promoting the use of environment-friendly, home-grown alternatives like dona (leaf bowls), pattal (leaf plates), kulhars (clay or earthen cups) and jute and cloth bags.

Visitors are being encouraged to sell used plastic through a plastic buyback programme. A large team has been put together to keep the district clean, with a nodal officer ensuring cleanliness and a plastic-free environment.

Decarbonising mega events

Unfortunately, the Kumbh has primarily skipped the lens of Western academics studying sustainability and decarbonisation, especially when hosting mega-events. One prominent example of such a mega-event is the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

In June 2024, the MIT Sloan Management Review published an article that reviewed some ways the Paris Olympics fast-tracked decarbonisation. Here, they highlighted some lessons one could learn to make sustainability the centre of planning.

The first and perhaps most important lesson they shared is to follow a methodical path to measure the carbon impact of significant events. For this, they emphasised the need to conduct a carbon assessment before, and not after, the event. Once a carbon goal has been created, the objective then becomes how to make sure that all the moving components of the mega-event do not, in sum, generate more than this threshold.

Unsurprisingly, whenever an event calls for the housing, feeding and transportation of a large number of tourists, construction and infrastructure will form the bulk of the event’s carbon emissions. Thus, the path to decarbonisation at such events rests heavily on the kind of construction materials used and their afterlife.

In fact, the MIT article highlighted that 84 per cent of the carbon footprint in the Olympic Games was found to have been generated by materials used to make the temporary infrastructure for the Olympic City and the sports events. As a result of the conscious effort to reduce emissions, what was seen in Paris 2024, was a large emphasis on the second life of materials and an overall reduction in the percentage of virgin materials used.

The team prioritised service tenders where providers retained ownership of the materials they used for construction and where the providers themselves were responsible for creating a second market for their goods. This is familiar, and is something that we have seen happening at the Kumbh.

Apart from building and furnishing, the most significant component of carbon emissions was found to be in food and catering. To minimise these emissions, the Paris team emphasised local sourcing and plant-based diets. They also promoted active waste management which included donating and repurposing unsold food and converting food waste into animal feed, compost and energy.

Waste management, many-a-times skips the focus and attention of event organisers. Yet, it is one of the most efficient ways of reducing our footprint and rather than requiring large investments, can be achieved even through behavioural changes and nudges towards eco-friendly choices. 

The Kumbh Mela can be seen as painting an example of what a sustainable culinary culture could be. It offers a purely vegetarian menu. Leftover food, considered prashad, cannot be wasted and is repurposed into animal fodder. Here it becomes crucial to acknowledge the role of the Indian people and their shared practices in making these sustainable choices.

Most attendees travel to the Kumbh via the Indian Railways, primarily as it is easy on the pocket. The Indian Railways, one of the world’s largest rail networks, carries more than 20 million passengers daily. Rail travel has been identified as one of the most sustainable modes of travelling, compared to by flight or by roads. In this way, perhaps unintentionally, we as a country have fostered and continue to promote an environmental consciousness.

The path forward 

What can we learn from the MIT article? First, measuring and having dedicated teams to quantify environmental emissions is key to meeting emission targets and communicating sustainability initiatives in terms and metrics internationally recognised. A preliminary study should be sanctioned to establish a clear ceiling for carbon emissions at future Kumbh melas. 

Let us consider only a few pilot sub-districts in the mela for conducting and setting emission targets in the initial years. Once a few best practices in measuring the carbon footprint are identified and institutionalised, committing to a mela-wide emission ceiling would become much more manageable. For this, we may benefit from having the environment ministry as a co-organiser for the future, overseeing not only the effective implementation of the sustainability aspects of the mela but also its measurement. 

Second, the government should focus on the signalling effect of many of the behavioural changes associated with the Kumbh and use the event as an opportunity to spread the adoption of practices such as recycling, second-hand markets, and waste management. It could also use the event as a test-ground for new technology and initiatives. One such technology could be waste to energy conversion. 

Third, it may be time to engage international stakeholders in the Kumbh. A small COP meeting could be proposed at the next Ardh Kumbh. This would elevate the event's profile and foster partnerships between governments, NGOs, and private sector entities dedicated to sustainability. This also highlights the importance of involving both the private and civil sectors as partners. 

There is much to learn from the practices followed at the Kumbh for academia, consumer-facing corporations and sustainability advocates. The mela’s contribution to the global understanding of managing large-scale gatherings with minimal environmental impact is significant.

Ultimately, many of the Kumbh Melas sustainable practices are a testament to India's age-old wisdom. These practices effectively merge tradition with eco-friendly modernity, a critical necessity today.

Tanya Chatterjee is a research assistant at Chintan Research Foundation. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.