My City My Responsibility - Win over COVID-19 and more!

Dear All, 

In my last blog I did mention that COVID-19 the pandemic is in a way helping us realize that coming together for working towards a cause can actually help us WIN over other existential threats too as human beings! This also reminds me about THANOS - my favorite character and the super villain from the sci-fi movie AVENGERS. Favorite because somehow he felt the need to attain sustainability unlike the so called superheroes. He however chose a wrong path - to wipe out people the way COVID-19 affects. All the superheroes formed an alliance and came together to put an end to THANOS on seeing a threat of human extinction. I feel a similar situation has been happening around us, where we see how all national and international governments and local bodies, companies private and public, researchers, celebrities, education systems, transport systems, medical systems, supply chains etc and not to mention us, the Citizens are coming together towards tackling this super villain and trying to save humanity. It is indeed commendable, however the way we behave or take actions now at various levels of operation (individual, community and governance) has a solution to a bigger problem. 

Why I feel so is because a LOCKDOWN helped reduce China's pollution though temporary but at drastic levels just within two month's time. China has been reportedly been the biggest air polluter taking thousands of lives especially kids and older people. But the lockdown and slowed economic activity led the reduction of pollution and saved lives to almost 20 times than the pandemic as per this source http://www.g-feed.com/2020/03/covid-19-reduces-economic-activity.html 

Here, I don't mean pandemics are good, but we can learn something from such a situation. 

Global emissions scoreboard

From my area of work (as climate researcher), the point that I want to make here is if we are to achieve the goal of 1.5 deg C temperature rise instead of 4.2 deg C by the end of the century, it seems to be easily achievable. Imagine each country taking turns to even partially lockdown (not because of some pandemic but voluntarily) and slowing down economic activity, transport especially with personal cars and stop flying for conferences and events just for a period of say 3 months or so...may be more or less depends, need to research..., we can tackle the bigger challenge of climate change. Can we look at the lockdown situation as a way to reduce our carbon footprints and also ecological footprints? Italy's water canals have reported the come back of dolphins and swans due to no human activity over just a few weeks! We can definitely give our life supporting systems some breather to restore and meanwhile decide the further course of action.

In one of our river restoration studies that we conducted last year as an alternative to the riverfront development plan, we did suggest a temporary period of 'No Access' to the river in order to restore the river, of course we cannot ban the access completely but in a situation like a lockdown this can be easily accomplished temporarily. 

Now that our lives are at stake, we are mandated to take drastic actions, lets not wait till such a situation arises through climate change. Just read recently, we need to stop human DOING for some time and start BEING human. 

Last but not the least, I am sure all of us have enough information on where India and Pune stands with the number of people affected and all....however in order to limit ourselves to get into the stage III mode we better quarantine ourselves completely and help each other. But more urgent and important - we need TESTING facilities for ALL since that will be one of the key ways to manage this chaos. South Korea has shown the way in this. On the other hand, India is one of the countries conducting the LEAST number of tests per million citizens! This is totally unacceptable and needs to change! The government has started expanding the testing capacity since this week, but it is not moving fast enough. We the Citizens need to start demanding more urgency on this! 

Safe Sanitizing!!!

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com

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My City My responsibility - Experience at KVIFF EcoBazaar!

Dear All, 

Word Cloud - Peoples vision of Pune city

In the last week I attended the Kirloskar Vasundhara International Film Festival (KVIFF) organized by the Kirloskar Group. This is a week long festival held every year in the month of January in many cities of India. In Pune KVIFF was hosted from 3rd Jan to 7th Jan 2019. This festival involves film screenings and other allied activities like seminars, panel discussions, workshops on a specific environmental theme. Eco bazaar - an exhibition exclusively for ecofriendly products and innovations - is an important part of the festival. This year the theme of the festival was in line with the UN theme for World Environment Day 2018 i.e 'No to Plastic and Yes to Earth'. This is KVIFF's thirteenth year of creating an environmental protection movement that aims to enrich lives of the citizens of the city. I feel its a great platform for availing information on environmental issues through films and other allied activities.  

Karan Shelar at Ecobazaar

This year at the  Eco bazaar along with our products Deodorizer, Samuchit Steam cooker (upgraded model of Sarai cooker), Sampada gasifier stove, Charring kiln and Self watering pots, we introduced our family carbon footprint calculator, developed by Dr. Priyadarshini Karve and launched as a web app by Pune International Centre (PIC). We also conducted a live poll on Vision for Pune city from the visitors. While Prashant Borate, Supriya Borate and Karan Shelar were involved in presenting the Samuchit products. I was involved in interacting with the people for the carbon footprint calculation and the live poll along with Aditi and Akash from PIC who also joined us. Dr Priyadarshini Karve supported all of us!!! 

Supriya Borate at Ecobazaar

Prashant Borate at Ecobazaar

Dr Karve at Ecobazaar

Calculating carbon footprint

It was good to know that a lot of people were already aware about carbon footprint and why it is important, some people were even scared to know about their footprint since they had a suspicion that it would be high! Yet many people calculated their footprint using our calculator. Unsurprisingly everyone who had an impression that their footprint is less were shocked to know that per capita footprint was either 2.7 or 3 tCO2eq. The whole idea of calculating carbon footprint of urbanities is to understand that though at the country level India's carbon footprint stands well below the norm of 2 tCO2eq. At the city level it is around 3 tCO2eq and above. Our calculator is a tool to measure how much carbon emissions we generate due to our daily activities.

Click here for calculating your carbon footprint using our calculator. Once you get your results, please write to us at pournima@samuchit.com we can guide you on how to reduce your footprint!

Our live poll activity on Vision of Pune city, will be active till this Sunday (13th Jan), you can check out the instructions below for giving your responses. You can feed in multiple responses but each response has to be ONEWORD. The word cloud posted above is the result of the responses received till date, word cloud generated through your responses will help us in policy advocacy for our city and hence your response matters a lot as a citizen! 

Instructions to participate in the live poll

This was my experience at the KVIFF Ecobazaar. Were you there? Did you participate in some way or were you a spectator? kindly share your experiences as well! 

Pournima Agarkar. 

"the power of the people is much stronger than the people in power.”Wael Ghonim

www.samuchit.com

My City My Responsibility - Carbon Accounting Online Course

Dear All, 

Regarding action towards Climate change, India has committed to the Paris Agreement in December 2015, where India will have to measure, regulate and report it carbon emissions. In order to have an Climate friendly development, India has submitted its Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The NDCs are climate actions taken by the country considering its socio-economic and environmental conditions for reducing emissions and undertaking measures for adaptation and mitigation of climate change impacts. We understand that, in order to reduce emissions it is important to know how much we are emitting? For the same purpose, all the institutions or organizations may have to measure and perhaps report their emissions to their clients/donors/investors/government agencies, post 2020 when the Paris Agreement will be operational. In order to get the hang of accounting of our own carbon emissions, we at Samuchit have come up with an opportunity for all of you. 

Samuchit is organizing an online training program on Carbon Accounting. The online course will cover all the basics from understanding the science behind climate change, its economics and politics, mitigation and adaptation measures, to carbon footprinting for an individual, or an household or any activity, institution, process or any event considering the scope 1, 2 and scope 3 emissions. Anyone who is involved in working with sustainability or environmental issues like green entrepreneurs, architects, urban planners, researchers, academicians or freelance environment consultants can join this program. Since the course will be conducted in online mode it enables homemakers, work from home professionals as well as full time professionals anywhere in India to access the course. All you need is a laptop or a computer having Microsoft excel and reasonably good internet connection. The course will be divided into five modules, each module will last for a month so accordingly it will take about five months for you to complete the course. However assignment submission within the given time-frame is crucial for accessing the next module, depending on when you submit your assignments, the course may take longer. In that case, there may be additional charges. You will get a certificate at the end of this course. 

So, if you feel that you can contribute to solution to climate change and want to become a climate conscious individual or institution/organization this course is for you. It may not make you an instant expert, but will give you sufficient understanding of the basics to understand what the experts are talking about. 

Kindly send in your entries to me on or before 15th August, 2018 and I will send you the registration form for enrolling yourself in the course or if you have any queries write to me at 

pournima@samuchit.com

Basic online course on Carbon Accounting brochure

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com

My City My Responsibility - Eco-friendly lifestyle

Dear All,

In my last blog I wrote about the importance of carbon footprint in living a low carbon lifestyle. Earlier I have also written about water footprint and its importance. In today's blog I want to talk about ecological footprint and why it is important for living an eco-friendly lifestyle. Note that water and carbon footprint are the sub sets of ecological footprint. 

Ecological footprint is the measure of human demand on nature's productive resources (for example, cropland, grazing land or sea) and the quantity of waste generated. This demand is compared to the nature's capacity to absorb and generate new resources also known as biocapacity or the supply side. Ecological footprint and biocapacity are expressed in terms of global hectares (gha) per person. Note that keeping our consumption and waste generation rates well below the absorbing and renewing capacity of nature is crucial for attaining Sustainability. However, as per Global Footprint Network the world's average ecological footprint is 2.84 gha per person and the biocapacity is 1.73 gha per person which means that our consumption and waste generation rate exceeds the nature's capacity to renew and absorb and hence we are facing a global ecological deficit. Since we do not have another planet from where we can import resources, we are using resources from our natural capital. Our natural capital is the stock of natural resources that are as yet unexplored like some reserve forests, rivers etc. We are in a race of exploiting more and more natural resources. Because of this excessive exploitation we are about to face the Earth Overshoot day on the 1st of August this year. 

Graphical representation of ecological footprint, biocapacity and ecological deficit

I will be writing more on this and how we can live an eco-friendly lifestyle with these finite resources in my next blog. 

Pournima Agarkar.

www.samuchit.com  

My City My Responsibility - Climate Friendly Lifestyle Workshop!

Dear All, 

Group of teachers at the workshop

Till last week I was busy attending workshops on many aspects of Sustainability and stuff...but this time we arranged one :) Samuchit got an opportunity to conduct the monthly Climate Friendly Lifestyle Workshop in R. Jhunjhunwala college, Ghatkopar, Mumbai yesterday. It was a pleasure to undertake the workshop here for the enthusiastic teachers and active students of this college. Great thanks! to Dr. Anil Avhad for organizing this workshop so well. It was good to know that as a college the teachers here understand the need of this subject and since it is not part of the curriculum they are taking tremendous efforts to create awareness among the youngsters and make them responsible citizens of tomorrow. 

Dr.Priyadarshini Karve presenting Dr.Priyadarshini Karve presenting

Pournima Agarkar explaining the calculator

Just a brief background of our workshop flow, Dr. Priyadarshini Karve is the main speaker and she explains the science behind climate change, how real it is for us in India and why urbanites need to take the required action. She explains the importance of carbon footprint which is a measure of greenhouse gases that are generated as a result of our day to day activities that directly or indirectly contribute to climate change. Then I run through our carbon footprint calculator step by step so that all the participants get a hang of calculating their own footprint. Since there were around 45 participants in all, we decided to take sample information of a typical middle class family and calculated the footprint. Later we asked all participants to calculate their footprint using own information so that they get to know how much do they contribute to climate change.

Group of students

Its been our experience that after calculating the footprint, all the participants are kind of sad or worried. In this workshop some participants were literally scared of sharing their carbon footprint numbers with us. Since the desired limit is 2 tCo2eq and Indian urbanites tend to have a footprint of 3 to 4 tCo2eq in general or more, its sometimes shocking to know that we are to an extent the cause of the global problem. However, this calculator itself shows the pathway towards a low-carbon lifestyle leading us to the global solution. Generally when we say Think Global and Act Local, we don't really know what needs to be done as an individual locally or what we should change in our day to day lives in order to reduce the impacts of climate change. Our workshop gives you a guideline towards the required actions.  

So if you are curious to know your footprint and want to lead a low-carbon lifestyle tune in to Samuchit's facebook page or website next month or write to me to know about our next workshop! I will be happy to help you. 

Pournima Agarkar.

www.samuchit.com

MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: The World Environment Day 2016 - Done!

I have been busy with various projects going on simultaneously, and thus haven't had much time to muse... either for the blog or otherwise! But, the World Environment Day on 5 June has come and gone, and got me thinking on how can we move from 'event' mode to 'action' mode. What do I mean by that? Please read on!

Every year, I get invited to one or two environment-focused functions on World Environment Day. This time the 'Day' became a 'triplet of Days' as 5 June, the designated date came on a Sunday. So some events were held on 4 June, some on 6 June, and some people still preferred to stick to 5 June. I have myself been part of two functions at different industries. Some of our work got highlighted by a newspaper. I saw reports of many other events and activities from different parts of the world. Most newspapers ran special features or supplements, and many environment-focused efforts got highlighted. People posted emotional messages on various social media platforms. Now it is 8 June. The annual homage has been paid, the Environment Day has been 'celebrated', its time to move on, and continue with our daily lives! Hurrah!

Every year the World Environment Day focuses on a specific environmental issue as a main theme. This year the focus was supposed to be on stopping illegal trade of wild life, but all environmental issues are linked to each other. So the events, activities, messages, etc., do not have to stick to the theme per se. In fact, if we trace back the root cause of why there is any trade in wild life, illegal or otherwise, it all comes back to us, humans, the 'wildest' (in the 'out of control' sense of the word!) of all species. Our lifestyle is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT threat to the other species on the earth today! A human is either living a highly consumption based lifestyle, or is aspiring for it! We take these little pauses like the Environment Day to do some 'introspection' and the next day we are off again!

So, how about taking some ACTION in our daily lives - an action that goes beyond the symbolism of 'celebration' of 'events'? Here is one simple action that anyone and everyone can take. Of course there are then follow up actions that also can be taken, it is really a question of how far you wish to go! In a way, this is also an introspection on the way we live and our impact on nature, however, this is a more intellectual and rational introspection rather than an emotional one. It is based on culling out some hard facts from our lifestyle, and then giving a serious thought to how to change things. It is about CALCULATING OUR PERSONAL CARBON FOOTPRINT!

Pull out a calculator, and spend some 10-15 min to calculate your own carbon footprint. The images in this blog give you the 'recipe' for this (if you want a pdf file for the same, please write to samuchit@samuchit.com). It is not a very complex calculation, and obviously it is not highly accurate. But it will give you a ballpark figure for your own carbon footprint. Please remember though, that in the interest of simplicity, this calculator leaves a number of contributing factors out of the calculation, so what you are getting is an UNDERESTIMATE of your carbon footprint - your personal contribution to climate change.

What do you do with the number that you end up with after you finish the calculation? Remember that climate scientists are warning us that the world should not be allowed to get warmer beyond 1.5 deg C more than what the current average temperature of the earth is. The world leaders have agreed to keep the global warming to 'well below 2 deg C' (whatever that 'well below' means!). So, if we can keep this underestimate of our carbon footprint below 1.5 deg C, we would be doing our bit to help humanity deal with climate change and its impacts. The calculator will show you some of the ways and means of doing this, but I am sure we can all come up with more ideas.

Are you interested in a slightly more detailed calculation and analysis? Through Samuchit Enviro Tech we also offer an MS EXCEL based Personal Carbon Footprint Calculator for Urban Indians, which is a bit more detailed. But this one won't come cheap! It will cost you INR 100! Write to us at samuchit@samuchit.com, if you are interested!

I am hoping to be able to organise a Samuchit Lifestyle Workshop sometime in early July. In this 3-4 hr workshop we discuss the link between our daily lives and environment, and also do our own carbon footprinting. Connect with 'Samuchit Enviro Tech' on facebook, to know more details! 

Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful

    Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com 

MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: Let's become Carbon Auditors!

In my previous post at the start of the year I mentioned about a few new ventures of Samuchit Enviro Tech which will evolve over 2016. Today I am happy to unveil the details of the newest of these three ventures: A Basic Course on Carbon Audit.

Of course as the name suggests, if there is good response, we might launch an Advanced Course too in future!



The Basic Course will be spread over four Saturdays, 2 pm to about 5 pm. I am planning to start the course from Saturday, February 20. The course contents will be: 

Session 1: Climate Change - Science, Politics, Economics

Session 2: Carbon accounting for homes, events, one off activities.

Session 3: Carbon accounting for institutions and service industry

Session 4: Completion of assignments and wrap up.

There will be a short assignment given after each of the first three sessions. Completion of the assignments is the last session.

The fee for the course is INR 3500 (inclusive of Service Tax).

All the participants will get the Samuchit Carbon Footprint Calculator - Premium Version 4 (which is the latest recently updated version). Those who will complete the full course, will also get a certificate from us.

You may enroll for just the first two sessions - which is a more detailed version of the Samuchit Lifestyle Workshop. The fee for the truncated course will be INR 2500 (inclusive of Service Tax).

It is necessary for everyone to bring a laptop computer for each session.

Why should anyone enroll for such a course?

As per the latest global agreement on climate change, signed in Paris in December 2015, India too needs to start counting its carbon emissions. Over the next few years, new mechanisms will also emerge under a newly structured carbon market, both internationally and nationally. I envisage that a basic understanding of carbon accounting will become as useful as is a basic understanding of financial accounting principles, for professionals and entrepreneurs in various sectors. I see the need for this evolving and expanding over the next 5-10 years. The course has been designed to address this need.

Who will benefit the most from this course?

First and foremost, this course will benefit professionals and entrepreneurs who are in the 'green' businesses (renewable energy, waste management, upcycling and recycling, water conservation, water management, ecosystem restoration, organic foods, green products, green construction, sustainable architecture, sustainable designing, etc.). The course will help these people in understanding the direct and indirect impact of their activities on climate change. This in turn will enable them to more effectively 'market' their activities in the climate finance/investment sector. 

Professionals or consultants that are involved in CSR activities of conventional businesses will also benefit in their decision making as well as impact assessments of their projects/activities. Similarly office bearers in large corporations and organisations, responsible for sustainability reporting will also gain useful insights through this course.

Last but not the least, teachers, students and researchers of economics, environment, business studies, politics, international relations, environmental law, etc., will find the course complimentary to their own subjects of interest.

How to enroll?

Please write to us at samuchit@samuchit.com, giving a brief introduction of yourself BEFORE 10 February.

Enrollment will be on first come, first served basis, provided 100% fee is paid in advance before the course starts.

Please note that the maximum number of seats available is 10.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful
    Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com 

Calculate your carbon footprint today and know your own carbon emissions

Have you ever calculated your carbon footprint?

Carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of the 
activities of a particular individual, organisation, or community.

Want to know your own carbon emission? Samuchit Enviro Tech has developed a calculator in a simple excel format which help you calculate your own carbon footprint. All you have to do is answer a few question, and voila, it calculates for you!

Get in touch with us today to get the calculator and take a responsible step towards reducing your own carbon emission.



#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful

    Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com