Essays written from thirty years of environmental and sustainability consulting: governance, regulation, institutional failure, and the everyday gap between what a policy promises and what actually gets built, funded or enforced. Many of these pieces are openly sceptical of the industry they come from, questioning fashionable language, weak accountability, and the distance between sustainability as spoken about and sustainability as practised.
World leaders are meeting this week in Paris (COP21) to discuss and agree on collective actions to be taken to combat Climate Change. I don’t know whether the 10oC weather in Paris is going to be conducive to the discussions on the 2oC plus issue, especially to the warm and warming country like India The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) published a report showing that global…
Read the full post →Mayor of Mumbai called me urgently on a Sunday morning. His interview was scheduled in the evening with Times Now. This interview was to be a big breaking news. In the interview, Mayor was to make a major announcement regarding actioning sustainability for the city of Mumbai. The proposed action was a secret and no one knew Mayors mind. Before giving the interview however, Mayor…
Read the full post →Most Pollution Control Boards in India are now insisting that industries meet the directive on Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD). So is the judiciary. The idea of ZLD is to not let polluting liquids be discharged into the environment. ZLD is directed to industries in locations where there is no receiving water body for evacuating the effluents or the receiving water bodies are already…
Read the full post →(sourced from http://lessbydesign.org/2014/03/07/the-disposable-toothbrush-is-there-a-better-way/) As Diwali (India’s festival of lights) is approaching, most corporate houses are busy today planning about the gifts. Every year as a regular practice, these gifts are given to the staff, clients, and investors & of course to the government officers who matter. All look towards receiving the corporate gifts that typically include leather pouches, box of sweets, a thermos or a…
Read the full post →Last week, India’s Union Environment Minister Mr. Prakash Javdekar got a gift from President Obama’s office on his birthday. The gift was an advanced mobile phone with several “green” features. All in the MOEFCC were excited and everybody wanted to possess such a mobile phone. Some suggested that Government of India should enforce and make this mobile phone compulsory to all Indian citizens. Some said…
Read the full post →I was on a tour out of India for couple of weeks. When I returned, I was passing over the dump site of Deonar Dharavi in Mumbai. This site is on the way when you travel from Airport to Chembur where my Professor friend lives. The dump site is supposedly one of the largest in Asia –something not to feel proud about. Its also more…
Read the full post →The breaking news in all newspapers and TV channels was about India’s adoption to the Buy Nothing Day (BND). There were intense debates and opinions on the pros and cons of BND. Few protested - especially from the industry and retail business, and several celebrations were held in the streets mainly by the environmental activists. BND is a great idea – they said. Whats Buy…
Read the full post →“Most believe that the Prime Minister supported ban on Beef due to religious reasons. Pity that none understood his real motive” My Professor friend said this, lit his cigar and took a deep puff. We were sitting in his verandah enjoying the drizzle of the rain. I said “Indeed, the reasons were religious. We have been worshiping cows for centuries in India and the cattle…
Read the full post →Last week I was in the chamber of Member Secretary of one of the progressive State Pollution Control Boards in India. A discussion was ongoing to set effluent standard for COD for a pulp and paper mill upstream the water intake of a major city. The discussions centred around modelling of COD from the point of effluent discharge to the point of water intake and…
Read the full post →(Cover image sourced from http://mart21.ru/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/5saf.jpg) It’s clear that the world needs development banks both to scale up the level of investment and to give developing countries better representation in the world of development finance. Yet these new banks need to play another role: championing sustainability as they usher in more development. Will this really happen? The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was proposed by China…
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