Climate change cannot be seen as an isolated phenomenon. It needs to be seen in association with sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. This is a cyclic reaction and cannot be avoided. In this article, Dr Soumen Maity, Vice President, Development Alternatives Group highlights that India needs a massive effort on developing its infrastructure and assets, creating more industries, and the need for energy for all these. He asks, at what cost it will be done and who will bear the cost?
Nature-based Solutions and Blue-Green Infrastructure have been identified as a potential game-changing strategy for the green recovery and green growth of cities. In this article, Ms Zeenat Niazi expounds that it is imperative while designing such solutions, systems and structures for receiving and responding to feedback of ecological and social (including economic, institutional, and technological) shifts at local, regional and global levels should be created.
In this edition of our Empower newsletter, read about how we are working towards building sustainable and resilient communities. It discusses our response to the soaring needs of India’s growing population. The response includes Promoting Environment Well-being through optimising the productive potential of the local natural resource base, Stimulating Economic Development by fostering the linkages towards employment that invigorate the local economy, and Enabling Social Well-being by facilitating access to basic needs and health facilities, and promoting a culture of shared benefit in the community.
In this digital era, access to technologies has become a crucial factor to avail livelihood options. Thus, digital equality becomes a prerequisite to ensure many other kinds of equalities. This edition of the newsletter highlights some of the challenges along the way, some innovative solutions, especially from finance, and the lessons learnt so far.
Even as the economy strives to recover from the aftermath of the pandemic with a high incidence of unemployment, climate action remains an imperative too. Smaller enterprises can offer a beautiful solution, providing livelihood opportunities to more while also caring for the planet. However, among the actions needed to make them click, access to finance should be accorded priority.
For sustainable growth in the days of climate change, conservation of nature is bound to be a critical factor in any process – be it of manufacturing, creating economic opportunities, or even promoting eco-tourism. In this edition of the newsletter, our writers explore various alternatives to the traditional models of nature conservation.
Plastics have become embedded in our lives like a few other materials have, thanks to the many benefits they offer. But there is also a price to pay. Reducing plastic waste is among the key challenges that humankind faces today. An industry and research collaboration between India and Australia has been at work to find a way out. This edition of the newsletter, which is written in collaboration with Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia, brings to you a series of articles about that collaboration and the progress made on the possible solutions.
Every year, a large number of youth transit into the working age, and search for opportunities to earn their livelihood. While employment creation has its own challenges, converting some of the job seekers into job creators can solve the problem. This edition touches upon the themes of the ‘Sam-Udyam’ initiative, the need to involve the community in job creation, and creating decent livelihoods through rural entrepreneurship, apart from revisiting finances for micro-enterprises.
India is not only among the largest economies in the world, it is also among the fastest growing ones. The future growth is bound to involve explosive growth in building construction, which can put pressure on natural resources. This edition of the newsletter is devoted to LC3, the cement-manufacturing technology that is our best possible alternative to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.
Women hold up half the sky. In this edition, let us consider how unleashing their enterprising energies ticks off so many boxes on the charts: not only empowerment and inclusive livelihood, but also the overall betterment of society and economy.
There is always a great deal of discussion with respect to emissions of each country at every climate conference. In this article, Dr. Soumen Maity, Team Leader-Technology, Development Alternatives Group emphasises that resource efficiency is an important tool for achieving challenging emission targets. He throws light on some of the Blue-Sky Innovations that the Development Alternatives Group has been promoting for the last few years. These revolutionary innovations improve the economy’s efficiency by enabling it to produce more with the same or fewer resources
Hospital bills are rising, as gastro-intestinal epidemics, skin allergies, cancers, and chronic impacts on kidneys, bones and teeth become rampant pointing to pollution from water sources. Water bills are rising as bore wells need to be sunk deeper and deeper and often water pipes run dry because treatment....
The importance of water, a life-growing resource, cannot be over emphasised. India has a low water management score. This is not only making a deep impact on the country’s economic advancement but is also leading to acute shortages of water for agriculture and potable water....
Among the many cries of ‘build back better’, one wonders who the face of this post-pandemic future in India is. As we design a post-pandemic economic recovery, are we considering the undeniable ‘duality’ of an economic system – disproportionately ignoring the needs of many while responding, almost exclusively, to the aspirations of a few?...
It is now very clear that we are certain to go into a 1.5-degree-plus world within this decade with likelihood to have a 2-degree-plus world by 2100, and that too only if we act now, because beyond that, human civilisation as we know it would have irretrievably changed.
The world now requires action including the immediate capping of global emissions despite the need to enhance energy and material consumption in the global south....
As per the United Nations definition, South-South Cooperation (SCC) is a broad framework of collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains. Involving two or more developing countries, it can take place on a bilateral, regional, intraregional or interregional basis. Developing countries share knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through concerted efforts. When South-South Cooperation is supported by traditional donor countries or bilateral and multilateral organisations, it takes the form of Triangular Cooperation.