My City My Responsibility - Launch of Sustainably SMART Pune 2030 report

Dear All, 

Collage of some of the pics from the event

Firstly I thank all the people who made it to our event, held on the 20th December, 2018 at the Kalmadi High School, Shakuntala Jagannath Shetty Auditorium on behalf of Samuchit Enviro Tech, INECC and LAYA. We really missed the presence of Ajita Tiwari, Nafisa Goga D'Souza and Dominic D'Souza from INECC and LAYA during the event. I am sure there were many others who wanted to grace our event but couldn't make it, however for all of you I would like to narrate the event😃

Pune International Centre (PIC) with their initiative on Climate Collective Pune (CCP) were our collaborators and helped us in organizing the entire event. We are grateful to Prof. Amitav Mallik and Aditi Kale for being available to us throughout the event planning and implementation phase.  

Prof. Amitav Mallik, trustee of PIC and core member of CCP opened the session. CCP is a network of experts from varied backgrounds like Urban planning, Groundwater, Renewable Energy, Green Building, Environment Education and experts working with the Area Sabhas and Mohalla committes etc. The goal of this network is to make Pune a Carbon Neutral city by 2030. It is noteworthy that this vision is very much in line with our vision of making Pune a Sustainably SMART city by 2030 and he expressed his belief in achieving the goal collectively for the common good.

Word Cloud showing citizens vision of Pune city. 

All our events are people oriented, hence engaging people has always been our main activity. Myron Mendes our communications expert helped us involve our audience in the event through an activity. We used mentimeter, an online interactive software that helps to execute live opinion polls. Through this app, we asked people to type a word describing their vision for Pune city. The audience had to open the menti.com website on their smartphones, and enter the code flashing on the screen to allow them to participate in the poll. We gave the audience a time of 5 minutes to enter as many responses as they could, and while people were voting, a word cloud based on their responses was being generated on the screen. In just five minutes we could receive more than 500 responses, and the word cloud clearly reflected the vision of Pune by the Puneites. Word cloud is an interesting form of graphic, the more people enter a word, it gets bigger. Our word cloud reflected that we as Puneites want our city to be Sustainable, Clean and Green! 

On the Dais from left to right Dr Priyadarshini K, Myron M, Gurudas N,
Amitav M  and Pournima A

After this activity, we released our report on Sustainably SMART Pune 2030 by the hands of Dr Gurudas Nulkar our guest speaker and others on the dias. 

Radar chart showing current status & our vision for 2030

Dr Priyadarshini Karve, the Project incharge of this study and a straightforward speaker presented summary of the report. She explained how the 3 year study kickstarted when she saw problems with the SMART city mission (SCM). SCM has a flawed financial and management structure with technology as its end goal. Its design makes it incompetent to meet the Global goals i.e. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) esp. SDG 11 which deals with making cities and communities sustainable. Through the SMART city mission, the city is being reshaped for the future without taking into consideration the basic issues that we are facing locally and globally. Hence the study proposes an approach that is Sustainably SMART where minimizing the socio-economic inequity, local environmental impacts and climate change impacts. These three boundaries encompass problems faced by urban spaces locally and globally. Here, technology does play a role but only as a tool. Our approach is very well in line with the Global goals as well esp. SDG 11. The role of citizens is crucial in making a city Sustainably SMART and is thus the objective of the study as well. 

Chart from Dr Gurudas presentation

Dr Gurudas Nulkar an expert in Environmental Sustainability and a great speaker, then addressed the audience as to why and how can citizens act in order to make the city sustainable. He gave a brief background on ecological footprint and an approach for making cities livable. The most interesting part of his talk was about the transition from awareness to behavioral change. This transition is very crucial but often very difficult to attain. There are many barriers that are stronger than the benefits. Each one of us is enough aware of the problems, however in order to defeat them firstly, we need to identify these barriers, we should then talk about them, discuss them and find solutions to reduce the barriers in the path of behavioural change and increase or create barriers in the path of 'business as usual'. This two pronged strategy will help make that behavioural shift decisively, and we can create a sustainable society. 

Taking note of this speech, Myron Mendes had another activity for our audience, where they had to give individual pledges on what they will do to make Pune sustainably SMART on 'handprints' - hand shaped papers - and take a selfie at our selfie corner. He concluded the event by a vote of thanks to all. 

Collage of selfies at the event

Selfie collage by the Green Soldiers-a waste management group

We are going to organize another event for citizens' involvement in sustainably SMART Pune 2030 around the end of January 2019. Stay tuned if you want to be part of it!

Note: Our report is accessible to all, email me at pournima@samuchit.com for the softcopy of the report. The report is available in English as well as Marathi!


Pournima Agarkar.

  www.samuchit.com