Building an economy that provides for both social development and environment conservation involves expanding green production and markets and reducing dependency on carbon and energy intensive economic activities. This can be done through change in conventional processes of consumption and production. These changes can be initiated at a country level through policy reforms. Each country however, has to employ different means specific to its own economic, social, environmental and political scenario. Developing countries in particular find it difficult to maintain a balance in achieving economic goals and at the same time maintain a reasonable rate at which their natural reserves are utilised. Also due to lack of advanced technologies and financial resources, their priority remains poverty eradication and economic development. Developing countries therefore need innovative delivery models to build a green economy. Innovation in products or delivery systems specific to local conditions can contribute to building a green economy in a developing country like India. Innovation could be introduced in any of the five basic building blocks of a green economy, as identified by WRI (World Resources Institute).

WRI identifies five basic building blocks of a green economy¹. These include, national, economic and social policies that promote and incentivise green ideas and ensure the rights of poor men and women over local resources and building their capacities to sustainably use these.

To create a pull for green ideas and products, there needs to exist a market for these. Therefore the third essential block of a green economy is having business models that ensure poor people’s access to markets and supply chains for green products and services.

Apart from action at the local level, technological and financial support from higher income or developed countries to carry out these activities will ensure best knowledge and technology transfer.

In the end the transformed or green economy will require new metrics that go beyond the prevailing narrow focus on income poverty and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to a broader way of tracking economic, social and environmental progress.

To understand the dynamics of a green economy a case in point is the Centre for World Solidarity’s (CWS) initiative on sustainable irrigation practices in Andhra Pradesh². CWS with its partners introduced water budgeting tools to enable eco literacy on water and enabled the community to recognise problems that were beyond individual and household level. The Centre recognised the people’s knowledge that was developed in a particular region of Andhra Pradesh based on the Gonchi Irrigation System. The Gonchi System was a technical system that enabled farmers irrigate their paddy lands of 200–300 acres. This however went along with a system of social regulation that enabled equitable access for all farmers and livestock in a water-starved region. With many local partners making connections between agriculture, water use and energy efficiency; the initiative has now expanded to over 200 villages. Green innovation here is not about a new product to be sold in the market, rather it is about creating conversations on knowledge and democracy that enable the economy to become green.

The activities carried out under the initiative include building individual and institutional capacities through establishing Participatory Hydrological Monitoring (PHM) in Gram Panchayats (Village Councils) with water level indicators, rain gauges and aquifer mapping. Gram Panchayats were also motivated to utilise NREGA funds to enable tank de-silting and farm pond development. Apart from this, CWS also identified drinking water issues and conducted technical assessment of these. It also conducts periodical water testing and promotes safe drinking water through existing technology, rainwater harvesting through roof water harvesting and surface runoff water harvesting to the dried/low yield bore wells for recharging drinking water.

Ayesha Bhatnagar
abhatnagar@devalt.org