My City My Responsibility - Sustainable initiatives in and around Pune Part II

Dear All,

Poster  of the event at Kopargaon

Under the Yuvadrishti initiative of our partner NGO Laya, we published the Handbook on Carbon Neutral Campus in Pune in June 2019, as our collaborative initiative under Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC). Post this event, I was expecting that Pune being the education hub with all the education institutes will be taking up this challenge in order to go low carbon. But before any Pune based colleges, I received a call from Sanjivani Group of Institutes, Kopargaon for understanding the concept on Carbon neutral campuses since they intended to go low carbon as a campus. I was amazed that an institute situated in a rural setup has asked us to come all the way from Pune, Dr Karve too agreed and we were all set to go to Kopargaon.

Dr Priyadarshini Karve

With the flood situatuion happening in and around Maharashtra, we had to postpone our plans, nevertheless the management was keen on undertaking the session. Kapil Pawar the coordinator of the event was very helpful and efficient in all the planning. Finally we could undertake a session on Carbon Neutral Campus in the institute on the 6th August 2019 and it was a great learning experience for them as well as for us.

The day was structured to start with an introductory session on Climate Change for all the students, faculty members and the guests, followed by a more technical session to dive into the methodology of making campuses carbon neutral specifically for the faculty members. There were around 50 plus students and 20 faculty members. The introductory session was undertaken by Dr Priyadarshini Karve, where she spoke about climate change basics and its impacts and how India as a country is a victim as well as a contributor to the crisis! The best part was a lot of students were curious and interested to know more about climate change. After the session, a few students requested to stay for the next session as well.

The response was indeed good, the next session was supposed to be limited to faculty only but we had around 30 students as well. This session dealt with understanding the basics of carbon accounting and how to use the Carbon Neutral Campus Handbook. Then I conducted a Mentimeter poll to get an idea as to how many people would like to get into the accounting process and make their campus carbon neutral and I am glad we received an honest response. See the image below for the responses.

Mentimeter responses

We concluded the session well in time and could take a quick tour of the campus as well. We met the managing trustee Shri. Amit Kolhe,  a visionary who realized that its the educational institutions that should act as a role model for the students and the community in order to create a better society. In spite of his busy schedule, he found time to interact with us, and also sit in on the session for a while.  Under his able leadership, the Institutes have undertaken several initiatives that lead them to sustainability and low carbon.

The campus has an installation of a roof top solar system of 500 kwp that not only supplies solar energy to the entire campus but the surplus is supplied to the grid as well. I wondered how many academic institutions in the SMART city Pune have shown this level of commitment to renewable energy! 

Kopargaon being an arid zone, the institute is ensuring that all the available water and wastewater is used efficiently. For the same they are reusing and recycling the water through innovative ways on the campus itself. We were informed that while constructing the buildings and making the internal roads, extra care was taken to cause the least harm to the existing trees. All the internal roads are nicely shaded by large trees, mostly indigenous species. There has been sustained plantations being carried out by successive batches of students to create this oasis of green in an otherwise dry location. However we saw monoculture plantation of neem trees, so we suggested to plant a variety of species instead of single species which was well accepted by them. Every single appropriate step taken towards sustainability has a long term effective impact. 

Glimpses of the event

Special thanks to Kapil Pawar and Principal Dr Mirikar for making all the arrangements for us. Also glad to meet Ganesh Jorvekar for giving us the quick tour and explaining the various initiatives happening in the campus, like the Sustainability cell under which all such activities are undertaken. 

As I mentioned earlier I have been experiencing a sustainability immersive phase and I am amazed to learn about such initiatives happening around me.

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com

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MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: Education & Climate Change

Education always needs to be forward thinking. A person studying in an undergraduate degree course today needs to acquire the skills that he/she will require to function 8-10-15 years from now. Educational system therefore has to anticipate and mold itself to the future. 

Is the education system of today doing enough to equip the youth to face the biggest challenge that they will encounter when they step out into the real world? 

This is the challenge of climate change. Climate change has now become a Climate Crisis. What we do with our energy and material resources in the next decade will decide the fate of humanity post-2050. But even if we manage to avoid the crisis, there are certain climate change impacts that are now unavoidable. We need to train young people not only to MITIGATE greenhouse gas emissions which will address the emerging crisis, but also to ADAPT to the changes that past greenhouse gas emissions are already causing. 

We believe that a Carbon Neutral Campus (CNC) initiative is a good way for educational campuses to equip today's youth to deal with tomorrow's climate crisis, while the campus itself becomes a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem. 

If an educational campus decides to go carbon neutral, and track its own net carbon emissions, it is creating a culture of 'living with climate change'. Young people who will experience the culture over the 3-5 years that they will be spending on the campus, will take the habits and learnings with them in their personal and professional lives. 

In 2018 Samuchit Enviro Tech tested out the CNC idea in Pune under the umbrella of a youth-focused climate change themed programme 'Yuva Drishti', in collaboration with our partner organisation Laya. Our focus was on undergraduate education campuses in Pune. Today three colleges have completed the first critical step of measuring their carbon emissions and planning for a low carbon campus. We have learned from the experience, and also came up with a step-by-step 'do it yourself' guide that will allow any educational campus to complete its carbon accounting and plan to go low or zero carbon over a specific time period. 

The start of this blog clearly explains why we are focusing on youth and specifically educational campuses. There is another reason which made us focus on educational campuses in Pune. Samuchit Enviro Tech is part of the Climate Collective Pune, and we are committed to doing our bit towards the goal of CCP - Making Pune city Carbon Neutral by 2030. Pune is 'Oxford of the East'! The city is teeming with a wide variety of educational and institutional campuses. Therefore, we feel that if all the educational campuses in Pune move towards carbon neutrality over the next 5-7 years, Pune as a city can achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2030! We can do it! 

Please join us on Saturday 15 June evening (please see poster above) to celebrate the visionary educational organisations that worked with us and have set out on the journey towards carbon neutrality. We will also be releasing our 'do it yourself' Handbook for Carbon Neutral Campus on this occasion. The event will be co-hosted by Samuchit Enviro Tech, Laya, Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change, Climate Collective Pune, and Department of Environmental Architecture, Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College of Architecture, Pune. 

I am looking forward to seeing all of you there! 

Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful

   

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

My City My Responsibility - Carbon Neutral Campus Workshop!

Dear All, 

In my last blog I mentioned about our initiative on guiding educational institutes to go low carbon by undertaking a workshop on carbon neutral campus. 

Last Sunday, we could successfully conduct this workshop where like-minded, conscious and enthusiastic faculty and students from nine different colleges of Pune actively participated in the workshop. We had a great blend of 70 participants from different streams ranging from engineering, architecture to sciences. I would like to share few highlights of our workshop. 

I would like to mention that we could conduct our workshop at Indradhanushya centre for Citizenship and Environment Education auditorium which is a zero carbon emission facility since all the energy used here is generated through solar energy.

Though the workshop was just a full day event, it is expected that the process has to be followed by the college for an entire semester. Here Samuchit Enviro Tech along with Laya Resource centre, Indian Network of Ethics and Climate Change (INECC) and Pune International centre (PIC) will be mentoring and facilitating all the participants for quantifying their greenhouse gas emissions in a systematic manner in order to calculate their footprint and design a strategy for mitigating it for going towards carbon neutrality. 

Prof. Amitav Mallik from Pune International Centre (PIC) conducted the first session where he gave us an insight on whole lot of data showing how climate change is real and the need to go low carbon starting with Pune city by taking educational institutes as the first sector for change. 

Prof.Amitav Mallik and Dr. Karve 

Dr. Priyadarshini Karve  introduced everyone with the basics of carbon footprint, greenhouse gases, process of carbon accounting, probable actions in terms of behavioral change and technological changes and tentative schedule for going ahead with the entire process. The idea is to get feedback from the colleges on the first and second steps of the carbon accounting process i.e. defining the boundary and identifying the scope 1, 2 and scope 3 emission sources. Once we have this basic information we are planning to conduct another workshop in the month of October for going ahead. 

Through our next session, where one representative from each college gave a five minute talk on different  initiatives they have been taking in their colleges. It was seen that every college had either undergone a green audit or was undertaking some ecofriendly initiatives under the National Assessment and accreditation Council (NAAC) mechanism. However, none of the colleges had measured their carbon emissions and accordingly tracked how their initiatives were helping reduce the impact! Thus, this workshop will prove beneficial to the colleges from both the accreditation and environment perspective in a sustainable manner. Going low carbon is the new green someone just mentioned!

Myron Mendes addressing the group

The second half session was the most energizing session, since it was conducted by our enthusiastic member Myron Mendes, where he probed everyone to introspect, reflect and anticipate the challenges in going low carbon in a college campus and how social media can be used as an effective tool for creating awareness among the college community and others. Here, we observed that most of the challenges faced by the institutions were either related to management or finances. However, if the higher management is convinced and there is sufficient level of awareness among the lower management staff, faculty and students, implementing measures can be easy. Finances are mostly required for making technological modifications which can happen as per the availability of funds.

Group Discussions

The last session known as Cantastoria was conducted by the students themselves under the leadership of Myron Mendes. Here each college had to sing their story through a series of posters on climate change awareness and actions for mitigation. It was the most creative and innovative session of the day. Videos of the same will be available on our Youtube channel soon! 

I am sure everyone enjoyed the session and it has definitely made a lasting impact on their young minds!

Group picture

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com