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 

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.