My City My Responsibility - Action oriented approach for Sustainable Behavior

Dear All, 

Awareness to Action Model - Gurudas Nulkar

When we started working on our project on Citizens Charter and Action Agenda for Sustainable Pune, we met a lot of citizen groups who were keen to adopt sustainable lifestyles, but due to lack of access to appropriate services or lack of knowledge about sustainable practices or limited motivation....many could not undertake actions towards sustainable behaviors. Given the fact that if we decide, we can achieve anything, we wanted to explore what are the problems/barriers that people are facing in order to undertake Sustainable Behaviors. 

When we met Gurudas Nulkar an expert in Environmental Sustainability from Ecological Society, he explained us the concept of Awareness to Action. In our December event on Sustainably SMART Pune 2030  he very well articulated the overall concept. 

Yesterday Gurudas Nulkar undertook a brainstorming session on creating a model for any issue where people are aware about the issues to an extent, yet there is no effective action towards resolving the same. So, along with a few members of Jeevitnadi we brainstormed on using the concept for enabling sustainable behaviors or Pro Environment Behaviors (PEB). Gurudas Nulkar stressed that policy alone may not be always helpful in creating change in the society, but a collective action driven by the citizens can definitely lead to change in the society. 

According to Gurudas Nulkar, behavioral change is linked to the following aspects - Awareness, Attitude, Barriers and Benefits along with Enablers. Let us see all these aspects in brief. 

Awareness, in this world of Google, awareness about any topic like climate change or pollution is not an issue, however the issue lies in knowing that am I the cause of the problem and I am the one who can help resolve the same. Awareness about sustainable actions is missing. Many a times, we all know climate change is happening, there's a lot of pollution etc etc...but we are not aware about individual or community actions to mitigate the same. Based on the awareness levels, socio economic strata of the society, age and gender etc, we can design an awareness strategy for the target groups.  

Attitude is an important aspect for any behavioral change, some of us have a very negative or indifferent attitude towards a lot of issues in our city. For e.g. public transport is looked down due to lack of proper buses, frequency, time of travel, etc...in spite of knowing that public transport is pro environment or climate friendly, we end up taking our own vehicle for daily commute. Our indifferent attitude is in a way hindering us from undertaking the sustainable behaviors. Our attitudes many a times are also influenced by certain good practices, or some habits that are pro environment. Can we as individuals give thought to our attitudes, can we be more responsible, fair or take the initiative in the above case an initiative of using the public transport and advocating for the same for all good by creating pressure groups will certainly help in getting a better transport facility.  

Mapping and analyzing the Barriers that may be in the form of cultural, social, economical, political or personal and the Benefits in the form of financial, non-financial, social, status related, moral, or selfless is very important to understand. There is need to reduce these barriers by changing our attitudes and raising or creating barriers for unsustainable practices. For instance if water supply is reduced to only two hours a day, we tend to use water cautiously, whereas if its available for 24 hrs we don't really bother about our usage. 

Similarly raising the benefits may be in the form of a financial gain or as a source of income generation is very effective and should be advocated. Newspaper recycling is a classic example of a  win-win situation. Important to note that any benefits accrued from any unsustainable practices should be demotivated. In order to achieve these various Enablers like the central, state or local bodies or community watch dogs, social groups or religious values can play a crucial role. 

Its easier to write about it or talk about it, but in practical its a difficult task but not impossible for sure. We need like minded people who would like to participate in creating such action oriented strategies that can help result into more and more pro environment or sustainable behaviors and lead us to sustainable cities and communities. 

Pournima Agarkar. 

www. samuchit.com

PS. Members who attended the session, please feel free to give your inputs. 

My City My Responsibility - Plastic a boon or a curse!

Dear All, 

The plastic ban effective from 23rd June has triggered pro-environment emotions among many people to support the ban and are exploring alternatives that can replace all the plastic. While on the other hand there are many people who just think that the ban is unfair since it targets cheap plastic carry bags and not the packaging industry which is the bigger culprit. However, the plastic ban can be a first step towards sustainable waste management only if the government provides proper channel for the management of plastic wastes instead of penalizing people for using plastic.  

This is not the first time plastic is banned, the first ban on plastic carry bags came in the year 2006 where the use of plastic carry bags having less than 50 microns in thickness was banned through the Maharashtra Plastic Carry Bags (Manufacture and Usage) Rules, 2006 but it did not serve its purpose due to lack of strict enforcement, no clarification on intention as to why only 50 microns etc. thus lack of effective awareness creation by the government led to the failure of the plastic ban in 2006. Now, there is a lot of awareness about plastic wastes menace but the way the 2018 ban is implemented is still questionable.  

Reused plastic can
(Courtesy: Smita Mehetre)

It is important to note that despite the environmental and health hazards caused due to plastic wastes, plastic wasn't invented with that intention. I would like to narrate one such example from an article written by Dr. Priyadarshini Karve on Plastic (Source: E-Shaishanik Sundarbh 111 Apr-May 2018). Back in the 18th century, the discovery of plastic replaced ivory that was largely used in the making of billiard balls, this ivory would be fetched by slaughtering elephants for their tusk's, it rampantly depleted the elephant population. In 1869, John W. Hyatt, invented the first plastic by treating cellulose which formed a good substitute for ivory and was rewarded $10,000. This discovery actually saved lives of elephants from extinction and plastic became a boon for people as it was cheap, easily moldable into any shape or size and durable. I am sure everyone will agree with me on the benefits of plastic, then why are we facing so many problems with plastic wastes???

I feel its our one time use and throw attitude because when we throw it away it goes no where but comes back to us. As I have already mentioned in my earlier blogs that until our attitude towards consumption does not change, we are always going to fall in this vicious cycle. However with our generation which is full of innovation and is conscious we can replace plastic with anything better just by changing our behavior, or by finding a better way of dealing with plastics or by inventing some new material. Its in our hands to make plastic a boon or a curse! 

Pournima Agarkar.

www.samuchit.com

My City My Responsibility - Our attitude matters!!!

Dear All,

While learning Sustainability and working with different people on executing Sustainability, I came across something that is very basic to humans, its our own behaviour, attitude or way of looking at resources. People's behaviour and their approach towards resources is one of the reasons that led to consumerism and hence unsustainable production.

I realized this, while conducting an activity for undergraduate students on using resources sustainably. The students were divided into two groups of three each. Each group was given a set of 12 coins and each one from the group was instructed to pick up as many coins as they wish from the set. The rule was to pick at least one coin from the set in order to survive in the game. They were not supposed to communicate with each other while playing the game. Once all the students were done with picking the coins, whatever coins remained in their set, exactly same number of coins were provided to the group for playing the next round. We played four such rounds. 

Note that, here the coins represent a renewable resource available to us. At the end of the game, the group that had at least 6 coins remaining in their set was using their resources sustainably.

One of the two groups ended up exhausting all the coins by the third round, so that effectively none of them survived in the fourth round. The other group managed to have a few coins left over at the end of round 4.

We asked the students what did they feel while playing the game. Their answers reflected on the various human behaviours we see in society. While the rule was to have only one coin for survival, only one student had figured out that having leftover coins at the end of each round was necessary for survival, and that the best strategy was to pick up only one or two coins in each turn. One of the students in a group having left with no coins at the end of the game simply mentioned that she was thinking only for herself and didn't want her colleagues to have any coins at all. 

It is noteworthy that in the instructions we had never mentioned what would be the 'win' state. Most of the students worked towards amassing as many coins in their own hands as possible. Some tried to figure out a strategy that would maximise own benefit while leaving a balance on the table in order to get additional coins for the next round, but other members of the group did not quite catch on to the strategy, as no communication was allowed among the group members.

I feel that in every situation having an attitude of considering our fellow beings is crucial, because if all the coins in a set would be over the entire group would be out of the game. Having a greedy attitude will lead us nowhere, inspite of having resources that are renewable. And now that we are going towards the use of renewable sources of energy, its important to use them wisely as well.  

Pournima Agarkar.

My City My Responsibility: Walk the talk

                                            

Dear All, 

This is my first blog entry. I am going to post under this heading every Tuesday and share with you about how we can do our bit to make our city a livable place. 

Being born and brought up in the city I am an authentic Puneite but not a typical Puneri I mean ''Sadashiv pethi''. Pune being a multi cultural city it invites diverse cultures, food, music, rituals, clothing, way of life etc. I believe that transforming has been the way of life for us as we are constantly changing. 

I am a naturalist by passion and love to observe nature and the way it keeps on changing and accommodating us and our wastes. My passion got transformed into my profession when I chose the path to be an Environmentalist. I believe that as much as human beings are the stakeholders of the city, other forms also significantly contribute to our city. The trees, birds, insects, the animals, the buildings, the roads, the modes of transport and not to forget the Climate which is rapidly changing at the rate with which we cannot even cope up. 

Change is evident and I feel that in order to make the change a better one for all of us, we need to look at the changes from a Sustainability lens. So what’s a Sustainability lens??? Let me put it simply, it’s our attitude and Punekars have lots of it...Just kidding! Our attitude i.e the way we look at our surrounding neighborhood, society, locality and last but not the least our City it matters a lot. An attitude that has concern, care and solution oriented, constitutes a Sustainability lens. 

While reflecting on the same lines I realized that even a small act can be a Sustainable one. For instance, walking instead of using a bike to go to a nearby grocery store (not more that 500 m) can help reduce considerable carbon emissions if all of us strive for it. It has to be an concerted effort through a conscious decision and an attitude to understand why this change is required. So if it motivates you to do your bit for your city, stay tuned...

Pournima Agarkar.