A BIG CONGRATS TO MYSS: RAM & PADMINI ARE WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT

A school that children call “theirs”

Padmini and Ram Mani tell SOMA BASU how socially and economically disadvantaged children discover the magic of education in their vibrant school free of cost

Photo: G. Moorthy 

COMPASSIONATE Padmini with her wards and staff members and with husband Ram Mani.

When I walked into the little red brick building called “My School Satya Surabhi (MYSS)”, it looked like a summer camp, set among lush green trees and buzzing with activity. The school was awash with cheer and laughter. Smiling children in bright red uniforms played energetically, practised yoga, sang songs and attended their classes. Vivid art and posters hung along the walls. In the midst of the cacophony of a school, there was a silent discipline and order too.

A shy but confident class VII boy welcomed me to his school and village, and presented me a sapling explaining its special features. “He is an electrician's son,” someone whispered.

Padmini Mani, greying and elegant, emerged with folded hands. Her entrance ushered in a flutter of activities and loving ebullience. The smaller ones hugged her and clung to her and a few dragged her to a cardboard train to sing with them.

When her friend Mark Antrobus fixed up the interview, he had said I would not find a scrap of litter in the school campus. “Neither will you find another school of this kind in the region which has opened its doors only to the children of the toiling and ignored from surrounding villages.”

Unassuming

I knew I was here in Attuvampatti Village, seven km outside Kodailkanal, to interview Padmini and her husband Ram much against their wishes. They wanted only the school to be featured, not them, so that others would be inspired to start similar schools elsewhere.

“We have a wonderful atmosphere here. We take pride in our school and its environment. All children are encouraged to keep the school grounds clean and litter free,” says Padmini, having steered the school through a period of growth in the last decade.

Sitting on two acres of greenery and cooled by the breezes of Palani Hills, MYSS maintains a low profile. There are 102 students enrolled at present, from nursery to Class VIII. The school started 12 years ago in a temporary shed with 20 children of farm workers, petty vendors, daily wagers and migrant labourers. Today, it has come to be the envy of even schools for the well-to-do.

When Ram, a management professional, first came to Kodaikanal in 1993, he fell in love with the verdure. Padmini, then heading the Department of Foreign Languages in The British School at Delhi, came to the town as vice principal of Kodaikanal Christian College. Six years later, the couple's vision for “equality and education, and the right of every child to call a place ‘my school” took shape.

“During a casual conversation, a milkman told us the village needed a school,” says Padmini. “This appeal coupled with the influence of my parents, who taught us service without reward, propelled us into action.”

Starting the school, she admits, was easier than running it.

They put out pamphlets highlighting the school's core values and got 40 applications, but in the first year they could take in only 20 children given the space and availability of teachers. Now, the school's links with the local community stretch beyond Attuvampatti to neighbouring Pallangi and Vilpatti.

The couple asserts their school is “not a commercial venture”. They consider it a secular non-profit educational institution. They charge only one time admission fee of Rs.25, and work to provide quality education, books, class materials, uniforms, noon meals, and extra-curricular activities absolutely free of cost.

A dynamo of energy and ideas, Padmini puts enthusiasm into her students and teachers: “I keep communicating with them and run a continual training programme that ratchets them up.”

Ram is heartened with the many successes of students who integrated into other mainstream schools after class VIII. “When children spend years here playing, learning and relating, they have had a great childhood,” he says. “Examinations become secondary. Our kids are self-assured with a positive outlook.”

Padmini adds that most of the students are doing well either academically or in sports and other fields. “The values we teach them here, they carry through their lives and are equipped to face challenges. Our teachers together ensure that the children gain maximum academic and social benefits from their time at the school, where they develop long-lasting friendships.”

While the students are challenged academically through a range of projects and classwork, sports is also a big part of school life. Chess, yoga and athletics champions have already emerged from the school. The teachers emphasize language and learning through song, dance and drama, and they follow a philosophy of “thematic teaching”, where there is a connectivity between subjects.

This couple, silently trying to change the face of India in one remote corner of the country, are delighted at the decision they made 18 years ago. “We have to build up the institution, individuals do not matter. For us, it is like culmination of life experience here by making an impact,” says Padmini.

But for her and Ram, these children would never have got a chance. Indeed, it has become a different world out here.

Sailent Features

MYSS was declared one of the top 100 schools in India in a national contest called Design for Change last September. The students helped clean and beautify the Vilpatti bus stand and the nearby rural settlement Kota Teru. The school also bagged a special prize in the INTACH Heritage Club competition 2010 and the Bisnoi Trophy for environmental awareness and preservation 2010.

Up to primary level, MYSS is recognized by the Tamil Nadu State Education Department. For middle school, it is under the Open Basic Education Programme of the National Institute of Open Schools, Union Ministry of Human Resources Development.

Raison d'etre of MYSS is value acquisition. Emphasis is on life values like basic hygiene, civic sense, environmental sensitivity, honesty and on becoming a good and responsible citizen.

MYSS is run by the Satya Surabhi Trust. Among the six trustees are Padmini's elder sister Mohini Giri (founder chairperson of National Women's Commission and daughter-in-law of former President V.V. Giri) and Kathak exponent and author Jigyasa Giri.

Fair Use Notice: This post contains copyrighted material that has not been authorized by the copyright owners. PGI believes this educational use on the Green Eye Web-blog constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified or wants us to link to their web site which we routinely do as a business practice notwithstanding.

CSR: The India Perspective: Part I: The Softer Side of Supply Lines

Analyzing India's supply line crisis is needless to say are complex. The most common misconception is that underinvestment in roads, rail and infrastructure are the cause of the problem. This is of course partially true, but the ground reality illuminates that plenty of basic infrastructure exists; it is in fact an issue of strategic metrics preventing development. This is demonstrated in its most extreme form regarding the precarious nature of India's food security and mass need to provide humane amenities to rural communities. It is not so much that India's supply processes are 'archaic' as they are often described, but moreover disjointed, discriminatory and prone to derailment.

Let's take crops as an example. Supply lines from field to market exist. However, the economics of middle traders upset the flow through the well known practice of hoarding. The farmer who uses hard earned rupee to gather his crop into a bull cart, tractor wagon or rented lorry often travels a far distance to the wholesaler 'go-down'. The farmer usually has some speculative second or third hand information on what his goods will fetch on the spot market. Most rely on the wholesale buyer for the current rate. The wholesaler is part of a network of wholesalers that move goods from one hub to another, and each wholesaler in the chain is of course interested in achieving the highest profit for the goods in his go-down. As such, applying elementary supply and demand strategy, he hoards the goods he has until the price rises to a level that satisfies his desired margin. The problem is that each of a dozen wholesalers in the chain are doing the same thing. To worsen the situation, when the farmer arrives at the wholesaler go-down he is met with the sight of the hoarded stock that the wholesaler insists is because there is currently no demand. The farmer is then offered a below market price sum for his goods, which he must take to recoup the costs he has already come out of pocket to bring the goods to the wholesaler. (In some situations, the wholesaler takes the goods from the farmer at the farm and again the farmer is out-of-the-loop of the market price for his goods and will accept a depressed price for the goods as a convenience factor for not having to himself assume the cost of transporting his goods. (The realities are also often complicated by tenant farmer dynamics which charges farmers for not meeting crop quotas, which creates a downward economic cycle leading to inescapable bonded labor. http://bit.ly/etz0ct)

The inflationary issues are created by the wholesalers and futures brokers who hoard the perishable goods until the price rises as high as the market will handle. This 'hold-out' hoarding results in food inflation and the often publicized rotting of food in go-downs. It is not that the goods rot because they cannot reach the marketplace, it is that they are systematically prevented from reaching the market by agri-profiteers.

So what's the solution? As this example demonstrates is that no matter how many roads are paved and rails laid will the supply line issue be resolved. The weakest link in the supply chain, and the link that bears the greatest stress is the farmer. The annual rash of farmer suicides during harvest time is evidence of the fact that farmers, even with a healthy harvest, are victimized by a system that makes farming an unsustainable profession. The problem rests with the lack of farmer empowerment. Recent trials of farmer networks and 'knowledge centers' have put key business data like weather, harvest scheduling and market rates in the hands of farmers through the humble cell phone. (The pioneering for such endeavors goes without doubt to the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5967/808.full   http://www.mssrf.org/  'E farming' is key to empowering and modernizing the business side of farming and assuring the farmer is equipped with the basic data sets needed to be a competitive and successful player and self sufficient professional. (A great example is PGI's good friend Venkat of eFarm, Chennai http://www.efarm.in/ ) This is new but welcome technology that is changing the lives of many farmers. Not so long ago farmers produced goods only for their village and surrounding taluk. However with the massive swell of urban population, (who rely on millions of rural micro farmers for food security) requires that the farmer is brought into the supply chain as an equal participant. Failure to do so is a human rights issue that has already claimed the life of too many a farmer at their own hand. The aftermath are widowed mothers of small children who often are ostracized and become destitute migrant field workers. Their children robbed of opportunity for a sustainable home and education. During one of PGI's internal CSR initiatives, PGI learned first hand of this dilemma when it volunteered professional services to  My School Satya Surabhi free primary school. http://satyasurabhi.com/  This amazing school for nearly a decade has provided free high quality education to the children of single working mothers and underprivledged in the rural backlands of the Palani Hills. It is a replicable model that can resolve the pitiful situation of the over stressed and broken rural education system.

Whether it be farmer empowerment, dismantling of the go-down profiteers structure or development of free schools for the children of migrant workers, the key supply line issue is one of networks. So, why don't these networks already exist? One need only skim the surface to find that plenty of data exists on these problems but little initiative exists on the ground. Any initiatives that do exist are micro pilot scale and lack traction to become a movement. Why? The answer can be found in the lack of connection between the scores of 'clubs' that analyze and apply solutions.

Another example, will help explain. When PGI was developing the Surabhi Bamboo company http://www.surabhibamboo.com/, its intent was to design a best of breed vertically integrated enterprise that included everything from the harvest of bamboo, its propagation and even the adoption of villages where workers and their families reside. The efficiencies continued through the treatment of the bamboo, the processing, the bringing to market and the marketing of the goods where they could receive the highest value addition. What resulted is an elegant model of closed loop network supply lines that demonstrate exactly how efficient India can be if processes are properly planned, implemented and socially fair. However, during the research phase for Surabhi Bamboo, PGI learned something very interesting that became an initial challenge for feasibility. PGI's research and countless meetings with all horizontals along the vertical demonstrated that invisible barriers exist that prevent a natural network to emerge which would allow supply line facility. PGI deemed this the 'club factor'. In short, the scientist club enjoyed their own company, the applied science club enjoyed their own company, the engineer processing club enjoyed their own company. At each of the meetings they shared with PGI their frustration that the bamboo industry is not taking off in India despite massive inventories and incentives. It was true that missions such as the National Bamboo Mission, Labor Department and CIBART had ample facilities for the setting up of a bamboo enterprise. However these could be categorized as in-the-box and out-of-the-box. The 'box' being the process machine line. Outside the box were the elements necessary to create a sustainable business. These include foremost raw material and marketing. Failure to create the connection between the innovative propagation clubs and introduction to private marketing platforms prevented any of the bamboo boxes to achieve the presumed level of output and success.

The best example was at the recent National Seminar on Bamboo technology and propagation last month in Bangalore. The room was full of scientists, a few representatives of bamboo business, the mandatory government guest of honor and interestingly, a contingent of farmers. After one very well rehearsed power point presentation by a senior member of the propagation club, a farmer raised his hand and asked the $50k question...'so, if I plant this variety of bamboo in my field, how much will I get per pole.' The speaker without a straightforward answer, looked to the distinguished club panel, who looked equally puzzled. The eventual response was very nebulous and never involved a rupee amount. The obvious reality of any industry is that unless someone needs the good, its impossible to know what to pay for the good. The trouble is that the processing club seldom connects with the propagation club despite the natural relationship they share, viz. The development of a bamboo industry in India. This is not to discount the clubs' good work and sincerity, it is the plain fact that most scientists are not comfortable with the 'business-side' and most processing centers are so focused on making sure their machines are able to process that there is little business analysis 'outside the box.'

A sound network such as the one designed into the Surabhi Bamboo enterprise would have made answering the farmer's question easy. The integration of science and propagation as an input factor of the processing costs and the market price would have made quoting the farmer a price per pole an easy analysis. A quick calculation of the three year input costs of propagation necessary to bring the bamboo clump and the quality of the bamboo that builds value addition to the market for the consumable results in a fixed number that can be quoted the farmer. With that knowledge the farmer (whose quantum of land is his means of revenue) can determine whether it makes sense to reserve boarder areas to the inter-cropping of bamboo. Issues of soil preservation, carbon credits and micro-climate considerations are other factors that can be included in the price per pole as a value addition that farmers appreciate and in sum, empowered. The farmer knows what he getting at market, the processor has the peace of mind of secure raw material at a fixed cost, and the supply line is established.

This same logic can be applied to any commodity but frankly it requires a broad focused plan analyzed through a business and economic lens through professionals accustom to setting up turnkey businesses. PGI has further found that the mere collection of data into a detailed plan report is often enough to generate private capital investment interest in agri-business, social corporations and supply line solutions. http://www.slideshare.net/ecologicalfox/elf-pgi-report-final1 It is therefore PGI's opinion that India supply line crisis cannot be legislated away, regulated away or paved over with new roads. The solution exists in the entrepreneurial and CSR private sector through efficiency process development that is a natural part of modern business practice.

In the next installment of CSR: The India Perspective: PGI will provide COP regarding the need and benefits of integrating technology with traditional and cultural processes that provide best entry potential for successful enterprises that are mindful of the indigenous CSR embedded in India's traditional culture.  This combination makes India a uniquely equipped platform to become the most sustainable nation on Earth.








First, of course, is the network of those you and your group need to do your day-to-day work. These are people in other units of the company, and outside, on whom and on whose work you depend to do your work. This is your operational network. Those in it don't work for you but your success depends on them. It also includes those who depend on you and your group to do their work. Though you may not need them, their demands on you can have a big impact on how you spend your time and attention.

Your developmental network is the collection of individuals whom you trust and to whom you can turn for a sympathetic ear, advice (depending on their experience), and a place to discuss and explore professional options. One way or another, these are people who help you grow as a manager and leader.

You create both operational and developmental networks naturally. The people in your operational network are those you must work with every day. And most of us naturally turn to knowledgeable friends and acquaintances for personal help with professional dilemmas. You may not have thought about these two collections as networks, but they are. In our experience, most managers spend too little time and care on building and maintaining them. They're mostly forged by immediate need and happenstance, and they often lack key people. But most managers create them, if only in rudimentary form.

The third network you need — your strategic network — is the one many managers don't create at all because it doesn't happen in the everyday course of work and life. A strategic network is about tomorrow. It comprises those who can help you do two critical tasks: first, define what the future will bring and second, prepare for and succeed in that future. There will be some overlap between this network and your operational network, but the differences are likely to be significant, too.  

Fair Use Notice: This post contains copyrighted material that has not been authorized by the copyright owners. PGI believes this educational use on the Green Eye Web-blog constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified or wants us to link to their web site which we routinely do as a business practice notwithstanding.

Defining CSR: The India Perspective: True sustainability versus a goodwill wash.

Defining CSR: The India Perspective:  
True sustainability versus a goodwill wash.

-The need for definition and integrated processes, viz. the Need for Corporate ‘Sacred Groves’

-Frank Costanzo

Director, Peerless Green Initiatives

When one of the fathers of India’s green revolution approached PGI in 2009 requesting assistance to resolve a decade old environmental disaster, we accepted with honor the opportunity to act as the facilitation arm for the stakeholders and NGO’s. A year later, PGI’s diligent pro-action was rewarded by being shown the exit, the primary reason being that PGI was a ‘for profit’ company. The sad reality was that PGI’s plans of action had upset an established ‘disaster economy’ that had cropped in the wake of the original toxic tort. For the members of that industry, mediation of the environmental tragedy would end a steady stream of funding. It was a hard but valuable lesson, but it illuminated the challenges and perceptions faced by private social initiatives (and the realities of a few disingenuous NGO using crisis as a means of revenue.) Can private companies do good while making profit, or are corporates doomed to the perception of acting only for the furtherance of bottom line gains? It all depends on ones understanding of CSR and what it means to be profitable.

These perceptions were recently unintentionally highlighted by the Hindu newspaper in their coverage of a corporate ceremony meant to illustrate the importance of CSR. The corporate had made a sizeable donation to a youth organization. The director of the corporation explained the importance of CSR and that corporations should be philanthropic and not pursue CSR for profit.

I would agree with the director’s assessment as it relates to the donation to charity. I categorically disagree as it relates to CSR. Again, the issue is definitional: What is CSR? What is profit? The director’s misinterpretation of CSR is an example of the increasingly common trend: a misunderstanding of CSR principles; and intentional ‘green washing’ of actions and processes for the appearance of CSR.

CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility. Terrible name. No wonder the confusion. The ‘S’ should be replaced with the word ‘Sustainable’. CSR is the act of looking at a company’s internal and external processes and determining whether it is in fact sustainable. For example, PGI has spent years analyzing this paradigm and came to the decision that the core prinicples of sustaibable business are contained in the maxims of the 10 principles of the UN Millennium Goal Global Compact. (See Footnote) It is an overarching guide for analytics and a roadmap for the companies we design and facilitate. They are:

Human Rights

• Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and

• Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.

Labour

• Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;

• Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;

• Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and

• Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Environment

• Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;

• Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and

• Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.

Anti-Corruption

• Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.

Using the GC lens, a company’s charitable donation may or may not be considered CSR. Charity is just that, charity. CSR and charity need to be distinguished. Whether a company feels morally or ethically obligated to donate revenues to charity is a singular discussion. A company’s ethical and moral decision to adopt CSR is a mandatory multi-channel discussion. Viz, actions that may be charitable but do not address that particular company’s internal and external sustainability are simply not CSR. To categorize the action as such is a pale gesture that does little more than discount true CSR and increase its misperception. Nevertheless, the action may be a generous act of charity.

Let me explain why this is the case. Times of India last week (Feb 12, 2011 p. 4, Chennai Edition, Arun Janardhanan) ran a terrific piece on the restoration of ‘Sacred Groves’ throughout Tamil Nadu. PGI has always maintained that India is the one place in the world where CSR and true conservationism could take hold in a meaningful way. The reason is that India-particularly in the South- is steeped in tradition and culture – a culture with an ingrained relationship between man and nature. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Sacred-groves-regain-pulse/articleshow/7471966.cms

PGI has always maintained that India is the one place in the world where CSR and true conservationism could take hold in a meaningful way.

Based inter alia on Vedic scripture. As part of the Vedic scriptures, society, nature, heaven, earth are all inextricably related. One of the finest examples of this is the concept of Sacred Groves which are made up of plants and trees that each community should nurture and preserve. Each sacred plant was deemed by the Vedics to have qualities necessary for sustainable nature and society. The depth of the relationship went so far as to correlate the sacred plants with the 27 constellations of Hindu astrology.

The recent news of groups going out and restoring sacred groves is indeed inspiring and could be the simple centerpiece of a CSR program of every company that occupies land, however small.

The wisdom of the Vedics made it such that the adoption of sacred groves in each community provided that community with a constant source of nutritious food, preservation of microclimate, a 24 hour pharmacy of medicinal herbs, a watershed, a source of rapidly renewable building materials and conservatory of endemic biodiversity. First millennium sustainable processes at its finest, lost recently to growing population, land mis management and short sighted agricultural expansions. So perfect is the Sacred Grove ethos, that PGI incorporated the concept in its landmark ag-business model (Eco Logical Fox) as it pertains to inter-cropping, carbon capture, biodiversity/micro-climate protection and conservation. The recent news of groups going out and restoring sacred groves is indeed inspiring and could be the simple centerpiece of a CSR program of every company that occupies land, however small. In fact, last year PGI presented its Peerless Award to the Eco-Club of Senior Secondary School, Madras for their self-initiated sacred grove project on an unused patch of barren property behind their main school building.. Sensational.

Coming to the point, CSR is about analysis and planning. Each company determining what impacts it has on the environment and society. The sum of which create outputs only possible through crowd sourcing. In other words, each company takes care of its impact as a part of its business ethic, thereby alleviating the task of legislating solutions by already overly stressed Governments.

The end result? Nature will profit, society will profit and in turn punitive taxation to stem irresponsible corporates will be reduced and the markets will profit. So in a sense, CSR is all about profit. PGI has found that approaching businesses with spreadsheets demonstrating these profits is a far better CSR tool than sensational photos of polluted lakes and distressed animals. Corporations exist for one reason and one reason only – generation of revenue for profit. If you are like the activist-journalist that expressed ‘suspicion’ of PGI and all corporations –even those with noble missions- then you’re living in a world unreal…and in fact unsustainable. The future will be governed by whether commerce can live in harmony with nature and social justice. Integration of commercial endeavor with conservation and social justice is an absolute ethical requirement of the times. The massive paradigm shift necessary to meet the challenge of feeding, sheltering, clothing and providing safe water to tomorrow’s 9 billion human inhabitants will be solved through corporate ethics and innovations and nothing else. Good intentions, Government legislation and piecemeal conservative practices will not change the course of the rapidly approaching tipping point.

Integration of commercial endeavor with conservation and social justice is an absolute ethical requirement of the times.

Profit: Only a profit model of natural and human economy and capital can influence the human mind and initiate change. This requires a different perception of the word ‘profit’ and the end of governments compartmentalizing and coddling social and environmental issues for which they are unable to execute integrated plans. Only through cross-cutting networked approaches, designed into plans of CSR, based on achievable outputs (aka profits) can mankind and economy reverse the trend and become sustainable.

CSR is ultimately about profitability in every sense of the word. It doesn’t matter whether the company makes solar panels or drills for oil. Their objective is identical. Further, CEO’s and CFO’s of corporations want profits they can measure on a P/L at the end of the year. Genuine CSR demonstrates how properly managed internal and external processes can create parallel profit streams to their workers, their families, their environment and their nation. And if that is not enough to convince the ‘board’, CSR case studies show conclusively that those parallel social and eco profits create ‘real’ corporate profit in the form of increased revenues, goodwill brand equity, lower overheads, reduced taxation and a healthier workforce with lower attrition. This forensic and evidence driven approach makes CSR a concept boards can accept, because they understand it in terms they are accustom to dealing.

Genuine CSR demonstrates how properly managed internal and external processes can create a parallel profit streams to their workers, their families, their environment and their nation.

The PGI vision is that Boards will not need to be explained why installing a solar panel (without more) is simply not CSR. They will instead look deeply at their processes, their efficiencies their waste streams and recognize the interdependence of their endeavors and the need for cross-cutting strategies, medium services and integrated approaches toward sustainability. They will voluntarily adopt and allocate resources to employee and community welfare schemes with an eye on outputs that measure social success and ultimately their own bottom lines. They will adopt processes and embrace infrastructure that increase their efficiency and reduce overhead; and as they progress will realize the interconnectivity of their actions on their bottom line running companion with natural capital resource profit . They will dig deeper and extend their influence further as their business grows due to their greater definition of profits. CSR will then become part of the corporate value chain - its ethos- and if each company applies these principles it will become the standard ethic that is scientifically taught with clarity in law schools and business schools and grade schools across the world.

Just like it is easier for one billion people to each plant one tree than a Government to implement legislation and facilitate the planting of a billion trees, so too will corporates create the Sacred Grove of sustainability through adoption of true CSR. So with the definitions imparted in this introduction, PGI invites you to follow our monthly installment, each highlighting one of the 10 Global Compact principles; and part of our virtual symposium re the ground realities of CSR in India, the product of which will be PGI’s COP contribution to UN, TEEB, CBD and GC. A dialogue of the integrated processes necessary to create the ‘profits’ needed to assure economic, social and natural capital resource security.

info@peerlessgreen.net



Footnote: The Global Compact is one of a number of metrics that PGI uses as a guide to designing and implementing CSR and other soci-eco-business models including the Eco Logical Fox agri-business model.  PGI is also aware of some of the criticisms of the GC as it relates to making concrete the scope of each principle and modes of monitoring.  The coming issues of Green Eye will address these and other issues, and prefers the GC's current framework as less rigid and self-monitoring as that respects the natural evolution of business ethics necessary for the GC to be a living constitution and platform.  Allowing corporations to determine ethical standards is a proven method of adoption versus impressing strict dogma.  "Those convinced against their will, are of the same opinion still." (attributed to Ben Franklin as modified by D Carnegie.)




Source : A man convinced against his will; is of the same opinion still. Source Unknown
Quotes
Dictionary of Quotes - quotes



Fair Use Notice: This post contains copyrighted material that has not been authorized by the copyright owners. PGI believes this educational use on the Green Eye Web-blog constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified or wants us to link to their web site which we routinely do as a business practice notwithstanding.

Just like it is easier for one billion people to each plant one tree than a Government to implement legislation to plant a billion trees, so too will corporates create the Sacred Grove of sustainability through the portal of true CSR.

The 2011 Agenda: The Basics-Food and Water Security

2010 was a tremendous year for PGI. One of great success, trial, tribulation and moreover learning.  With our objectives fixed and our reach growing, we accept the challenge of making the largest impact in 2011.  As many of our followers may have noted, PGI has focused its paradigm to focus on what PGI has determined to be the greatest challenges to India and global humanity.  Food and water.  So simple a mission objective, but with a depth of complexity that seems endless.  PGI's dedication to assisting clients design and implement agribusinesses that adhere to the UN Millennium Goals Global Compact is a heightening of the bar. However these are times wherein we haven't the convenience of time. Change must occur and quickly.  Economic parity in India and in other developing nations is an urgent and greatly invisible crisis that is rapidly reaching cataclysmic proportion.  PGI issued a statement in June 2010, that "2011 will be the year that India's economic rise will collide with the immovable object of wide-scale ecological and food security services collapse."  The statement is not flippant.  It is based on PGI's years of research, ground data and observed trends reported by the scores of experts PGI has consulted in providing services to its clients and initiatives.

The PGI Eco-Logical Fox Initiative (ELF) of developing and implementing sustainable Global Compact enterprises in the areas of scaled agribusiness development hit the ground running this month with its latest designed-for-purpose turnkey company Surabhi Bamboo for Sales Service Company, Chennai.  The model will be highlighted by PGI at the United Nations Global Compact National Conference in Hyderabad on February 7, 2011.  It is our most ambitious design and facilitation to date and we thank Sales Service Company for its vision and allowing PGI to design the Surabhi Bamboo business to exacting social and environmental standards.  Surabhi Bamboo is India's first fully integrated produce-process-consumer commercial level agribusiness that has applied-by-design all metrics of the Global Compact principles. With a built in system of CSR output monitoring, Surabhi aspires to demonstrate on scale the new normal business model of 21st century CSR.
To punctuate the critical nature of PGI's decision to focus its professional services attention to areas in greatest need of change, Below are two articles from Times of India related to the massive inflation that is deepening the chasm between those who have been beneficiary of India's economic boom and those who have been left out.  In a country where malnourishment continues to score among the highest in the world, and the incredible economic, social and cultural pressures on single and marginalized mothers to provide for their children, it is a situation that needs immediate address and rapidly implemented change.  PGI is certain that the Government cannot be relied upon to incentivize the problem away...only ground level changes of thinking and systems can produce the shift needed to come back from the brink.  The irony of India is that it leads the world in the development of sophisticated IT for which all the world enjoys. The brand India- larger than life- eclipses a real and present crisis of the most base and unsophisticated of human security needs...food and water.

As part of PGI's COP for United Nations, and its dedication to being a staunch advocate and contributor to Global Compact business implementation on scale, PGI will publish weekly its synopsis of each of the 10 GC principles as it relates the the state of affairs in India.  Each installment will digress re PGI's on-the-ground initiatives for change; highlight how our clients assure they are setting and meeting goals for change; and outline plans of action that have been shown to be vehicles of paradigm shift in each of the 10 principle areas.

So join us on the odyssey that is 2011, and please feel free to contribute in anyway to PGI's depth of understanding and network by sharing your thoughts, experiences and know-how. PGI's network has from the beginning has been about cross-cutting and connecting verticals that create real synergy and apply to real solutions. 

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TIMES OF INDIA Jan 13, 2010

Washed away by OUR SINS

Nitin Sethi
TNN

Geetika Narang walks around Connaught Place in Delhi, asking random people two simple questions: “Where do you get your water from and where does your shit go?” She is assisting Pradip Saha make a documentary: Faecal Attraction. It’s on the death of the Yamuna.

“My water? I guess, from Yamuna,” says a slightly embarrassed man caught by a TV camera. “And the shit?” Geetika persists. “Hmm, there only,” he says, as he shies away from the question. Most others are less sure. “Hain, shit? I don’t know, man, all of that happens automatically, I don’t know.’’ “Goes in the air.’’ “Goes into water.’’ “How do I know where it goes from the sewer?’’ Geetika records some of the answers and laughs over them later. But where does it really go? Most of it flows directly into our water systems. India generates a massive 38,000 million litres of sewage every day. Even for the record, the government has the capacity to treat only about 12,000 million tonnes, that’s less than one third of the muck. The 35 metropolitan cities of India alone produce 15,644 million litres of sewage daily.

In Delhi, where the government has over the decades spent the maximum amount of resources to clean the Yamuna, 40 per cent of the mess generated flows untreated into the river. The Supreme Court may have been seized of the matter for a decade but nearly half of the population in the Capital does not have a sewage system and the Delhi stretch of the Yamuna remains the most polluted river section in the country. According to the National Family Health Survey-3 (NFHS-3), conducted in 2005-2006, a mere 26 per cent of rural India has sanitation. The urban sanitation coverage is 83.2 per cent and the all-India coverage is an abysmal 44.6 per cent.

So this is what we do — load water systems close by with our sewage and then go further out to get water. And because water in the backyard is too dirty, we either dig underground or draw it from a source far up in the hills. Water for Delhi, for instance, comes from the Ganga and Beas rivers 400 km away. It is piped all the way to fulfill the need of millions in its unending sprawl. Bangalore has to get it from the Cauvery 90 km away and Hyderabad from the Krishna 116 km away. It costs 10 times more than we pay in some cases. But someone does pay, upstream or downstream of us.

The end result: we slowly kill our rivers, literally throttle them, even as the groundwater keeps depleting at a matching pace. In the hills, we dam the rivers — drawing water for irrigation, power and direct use. Downstream, once the river hits the plains, it becomes a dumping ground. It’s a double whammy for the river and a tragedy for the people who live along it. Degrading catchment areas make it worse. With the reduction in forests and the disappearance of natural recharge zones in the mountains, less and less water seeps into the rivers. In fact, almost all Indian rivers seem to be going through these calamitous changes. Large stretches of key rivers have become so polluted that they are not even safe to bathe in.

Take the case of the Sutlej, in which tonnes of dead fish were recently found floating on the surface, their underskin darkened, bellies putrid. This occurrence has, shockingly, recurred in the past four years in what once used to be the lifeline of the state. Industrial pollution, clearly, has taken its toll. Punjab witnesses major aquatic mortality in the rainy season because industries store their potent and untreated water in huge pits and, under the cover of the monsoon and flash floods, release the toxic waste into the river. Skin diseases are common among people who come in contact with the water.

It’s just the details that change as one looks across the country at the health of Indian rivers. In the industrial area of Bengal’s Burdwan, the Banka river, which runs parallel to the Damodar, has lost its navigability over the years, thanks to silting, dumping of city waste and polyethylene. During the colonial era, Banka was a drinking water source for Burdwan. But now, many points on the river are choked by brickfields and rice-mill waste.

In Maharashtra, five of the 20 notified rivers — Godavari, Tapi, Bheema, Krishna-Panchganga and Wainganga — are facing danger, reveals a survey done by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. While waste water discharge has increased manifold in the Godavari, at Panchavati in Nashik the construction of a dam at Gangapur has significantly reduced the dilution and selfpurification capacity of the river. “If the Godavari river is exploited further, it can die soon,” says a chief engineer with the Maharashtra irrigation department. Mumbai’s Mithi river is now a drain, but historians and naturalists remind us that there was a time when tigers from the forested area ventured out for a sip. Elsewhere in the state, several perennial rivers have either shrunk or become seasonal. Environmentalist Dilip Gode says rivers like the Kanhan, Kolar, Chudamani and Sitna were perennial until the early 1970s, but these days they dry up by February.

Turn south and the rivers flow no better. The meandering course of the Palar and its gurgling water was a lifeline for perennially rainstarved northern Tamil Nadu. But today, the water body is called the ‘lost’ river, vanquished by stinking effluents from leather tanneries lining its basin. And consider this for irony: the completely dry and woefully-polluted Palar bed and its once-fertile farms have now turned into a motor racing track. The tannery hub of Vellore, on the banks of the Palar, is now rated among the country’s most polluted spots.

If the Palar has ‘perished’ in northern Tamil Nadu, the textile export centre of western Tamil Nadu has turned the Noyyal river into a multi-coloured gutter. Tirupur’s textile units fetch over Rs 10,000 crore in foreign exchange every year, but the price for the exponential export growth, mostly over the last two decades, has been paid by the Noyyal, whose waters were once famed for being “sweet and tasty’’. Karnataka, too, is in trouble. “There is no dispute about the fact that the water level in the Cauvery has come down drastically,’’ says Dr P N Ravindra of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board.

Rivers are dead and dying in India with no plan for recovery or revival. And though the government has not sat idle, all its money seems to be lost in technical ‘solutions’ that fail miserably. “Rajasthan was a waterborne state,’’ says Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra ‘Waterman’ Singh. “About 200 years back, thousands of travellers would stop by Jaisalmer for a drink of water. But now it is totally dry, the result of doing away with the earlier system of community-driven water management. Now, the Maru Ganga, or the Luni river, is well on its way to getting lost in the desert trail. The river is near dead. Industrial pollution murdered it.’’

Nitish Priyadarshi, professor of geology and environmental science at Ranchi University, says rivers like the Argora and the Harmu have vanished in Jharkhand. Leading Damodar Bachao Adolan activist Saryu Rai says there’s a reason for this. “We have no authority that takes care of the rivers and regulates construction of dams.’’ Not that we don’t have a plethora of laws and regulations. There are wings of the central and state government obsessed with rivers. It’s just that they work at cross purposes or remain disconnected from each other. “For the state, the rivers have two purposes — to extract from (and store) and to dump into. A river with flowing fresh water has no value,” says Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network of Dams, Rivers and People.

The trouble, primarily, lies in the disaggregated management of rivers. While the power and water ministries look at rivers merely as a source of hydropower and irrigation, the environment and forests ministry is concerned only with the quality of water. Then there is the urban development ministry, which wants to set up as many sewage

treatment plants and drinking water regimes as it can. The rural development ministry, too, has a sanitation target to pursue. Laws and regulations do not mandate that the entire gamut of projects on a river basin be tested for their cumulative impact on the river system and the people living near it. Each hydroelectric/irrigation scheme comes up for clearance at different levels — financial, environmental and technical. This piecemeal approach has inherent flaws.

So, even as sewage treatment facilities are being built downstream on the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh, dam proponents merrily plan to create dozens of reservoirs on the tributaries to the river, reducing its flow and making sewage treatment ineffective. “There is no basin-wide blueprint for our rivers,” says S V Suresh Babu, a Bangalore-based water policy expert. “There has to be a plan for the entire basin. A plan that says this is the carrying capacity of the river for extraction or for dumping. Or, for just leaving the river alone for a stretch.”

The first such attempt, though, has been made with the formation of the National Ganga River Basin Authority, where all the riparian states and various arms of the central government will sit together to plan a future course that will manage both the ‘quality and quantity’ of the river. But it’s a nebulous start — and with a river on which the government has already spent countless thousands of crores to clean up, with little or no result.

Thakkar points out that at the moment the government does not even mandate a minimum ecological flow to be maintained in the river basins. While an unbridled river would be ideal, with so many competing demands on the river basin, environmentalists suggest that rivers carry at least a minimal level of water that keeps the basic ecological functions alive.

Curiously, when Himachal Pradesh in 2007 passed a notification calling for such a minimum ecological flow in sections of the river flowing through the hill state, a power project developer opposed it in court and the environment and forests ministry (MoEF) came out in support of the developer, stating that the laws and regulations did not allow for such a direction.

“We have created this bizarre artifice of river management by drawing political boundaries over resources and waste,’’ says Pradip Saha. “We call the river water as ‘x’ state’s resource and the waste that flows into it as ‘y’ state’s mess. To keep a check on the health of Indian rivers, the basic unit of planning has to be the basin.” He wonders if five years from now he’ll be able to tell where water comes from and where waste disappears into. Nor would anyone else, unless a proper river management system is put in place. Everything, as they say, will continue to go down the drain. And as a mahant at Varanasi said, “Where will we go to wash our sins if the rivers dry up?’

(With reports from Yogesh Naik, Swati Sengupta, Radha Venkatesan, Ashish Roy, Balwant Garg, Priya Yadav, Yudhvir Rana, Anindo Dey, Jayashree Nandi, Sanjeev Kumar Verma)






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NATURAL RESOURCES = NATIONAL SECURITY

With special thanks we highlight the outstanding OpEd in Today's Times of India written by Michael Kugelman of WWICS. http://bit.ly/eCNLkq    PGI has been promoting this same message over the years in many of its installments, DPR's and at speaking engagements.  Economic data sets forecast India's growth -if unchecked- will rapidly deplete natural resources and further advance climatic change.  PGI's on-the-ground observations suggest the present stress on ecology, biodiversity, and social-environmental services are far more advanced than officially reported.  This finding suggests that economist forecasts are based on overvalued and misleading data; thus the timetable to tipping point accelerated.  PGI will be releasing in early 2011 a report to TEEB and UNGC regarding these findings, ie. the problem that imperfect information is masking what is rapidly becoming a crisis condition that threatens then entire breakdown of the security of India's natural capital reserves and services.

In sum, the growth of India's national economy versus its natural services economy do not need to be a zero sum game. However it will take a massive paradigm shift in policy and broader cultural norms.   India's drive to break the 10% GDP glass ceiling has resulted in the construction of a precarious tower built on thin foundation.  The architects of this metaphorical tower -by and large- pay lip service to conservation and CSR and moreover exclude India's massive rural population to the margins of economic sustenance. A true understanding of this dynamic supports Kugelman's observation that the rise of extremism is secondary to the lack of integration of local communities "in the fruits of ...resource extraction" and human right grievances that leave locals in "toxic living conditions."  The longer natural resource management is ignored and populations marginalized, the deeper and wider the divide will become between those enjoying economic prosperity and those being denied same. 

A retreat from the brink requires sweeping and revolutionary plans and facilitation of sustainable industry practices and processes particularly re human equality and conservation of water/ biodiversity. Couple this with broadbased education re the value of conservation and energy saving measures, and a more pyramidal national growth and security (based on sustainability) could be achieved. One that preserves natural capital and promotes human equality.  Failure to do so may have dramatic impact on the long term story of India's rise that- as PM Singh stated 'history will judge harshly.'  Due to the scale of India as a population and economy, any change would need to emerge from scaled grassroots initiatives, supported and networked through medium services and complimented by government incentives. The good news is India is historically famous for improbable and en mass migration of norms and beliefs.

-PGI is a UN Global Compact service provider in the business of designing and facilitating industries based on the precepts of the UN Millennium Goal Global Compact.  It's latest project is an efficiency-by-design vertically integrated private company for the propagation, production and world wide marketing of bamboo consumables from Arunachal Pradesh.  It will be the first of its kind, and the centerpiece of PGI's 2011 agribusiness initiative, Eco-Logical Fox. The company will be unvieled in January 2011 via press release. For more information write info@peerlessgreen.net

Below is a reprint of TOI Dec 28, 2010 OpEd:

A Crucial Connection

India can hardly overstress the link tying natural resources to national security

Michael Kugelman

With India’s soaring growth and rising global clout hogging media headlines, it is easy to forget the nation is beset by security challenges. Naxalite insurgency rages across more than two-thirds of India’s states, while long-simmering tensions in J&K exploded once again this summer. Meanwhile, two years post-Mumbai, Pakistan remains unwilling or unable to dismantle the anti-India militant groups on its soil. Finally, China’s military rise continues unabated. As Beijing increases its activities across the Himalayan and Indian Ocean regions, fears about Chinese encirclement are rife.

It is even easier to forget that these challenges are intertwined with natural resource issues. Policy makers in New Delhi often fail to make this connection, at their own peril. Twenty-five per cent of Indians lack access to clean drinking water; about 40 per cent have no electricity. These constraints intensify security problems.

India’s immense energy needs – household and commercial – have deepened its dependence on coal, its most heavily consumed energy source. But India’s main coal reserves are located in Naxalite bastions. With energy security at stake, New Delhi has a powerful incentive to flush out insurgents. It has done so with heavy-handed shows of force that often trigger civilian casualties. Additionally, intensive coal mining has displaced locals and created toxic living conditions for those who remain. All these outcomes boost support for the insurgency.

Meanwhile, the fruits of this heavy resource extraction elude local communities, fuelling grievances that Naxalites exploit. A similar dynamic plays out in J&K, where electricity-deficient residents decry the paltry proportion of power they receive from central government-owned hydroelectric companies. In both cases, resource inequities are a spark for violent anti-government fervour.

Resource constraints also inflame India’s tensions with Pakistan and China. As economic growth and energy demand have accelerated, India has increased its construction of hydropower projects on the western rivers of

the Indus Basin – waters that, while allocated to Pakistan by the Indus Waters Treaty, may be harnessed by India for run-of-theriver hydro facilities. Pakistani militants, however, do not make such distinctions. Lashkar-e-Taiba repeatedly lashes out at India’s alleged “water theft”. Lashkar, capitalising on Pakistan’s acute water crisis (it has Asia’s lowest per capita water availability), may well use water as a pretext for future attacks on India.

Oil and natural gas are resource catalysts for conflict with China. Due to insufficient energy supplies at home, India is launching aggressive efforts to secure hydrocarbons abroad. This race brings New Delhi into fierce competition with Beijing, whose growing presence in the Indian Ocean region is driven in large part by its own search for natural resources.

India’s inability to prevent Chinese energy deals with Myanmar (and its worries about similar future arrangements in Sri Lanka) feeds fears about Chinese encirclement, but also emboldens India to take its energy hunt further afield. Strategists now cite the protection of faraway future energy holdings as a core motivation for naval modernisation plans; India’s energy investments already extend from the Middle East and Africa to Latin America. Such reach exposes India to new vulnerabilities, underscoring the imperative of enhanced sea-based energy transit protection capabilities.

While sea-related China-India tensions revolve around energy, land-based discord is tied to water. South Asia holds less than 5 per cent of annual global renewable water resources, but China-India border tensions centre around the region’s rare water-rich areas, particularly Arunachal Pradesh. Additionally, Chinese dam-building on Tibetan Plateau rivers – including the mighty Brahmaputra – alarms lower-riparian India. With many Chinese agricultural areas water-scarce, and India supporting nearly 20 per cent of the world’s population with only 4 per cent of its water, neither nation takes such disputes lightly.

India’s resource constraints, impelled by population growth and climate change, will likely worsen in the years ahead. Recent estimates envision water deficits of 50 per cent by 2030 and outright scarcity by 2050, if not earlier. Meanwhile, India is expected to become the world’s third-largest energy consumer by 2030, when the country could import 50 per cent of its natural gas and a staggering 90 per cent of its oil. If such projections prove accurate, the impact on national security could be devastating.

So what can be done? First, New Delhi must integrate natural resource considerations into security policy and planning. India’s navy, with its goal of developing a blue-water force to safeguard energy resources overseas, has planted an initial seed. Yet much more must be done, and progress can be made only when policy makers better understand the destabilising effects of resource constraints. Second, India should acknowledge its poor resource governance, and craft demandside, conservation-based policies that better manage precious – but not scarce – resources. This means improved maintenance of water infrastructure (40 per cent of water in most Indian cities is lost to pipeline leaks), more equitable resource allocations, and stronger incentives for implementing water- and energy-efficient technologies (like drip irrigation) and policies (like rainwater harvesting).

Such steps will not make India’s security challenges disappear, but they will make the security situation less perilous. And they will move the country closer to the day when resource efficiency and equity join military modernisation and counterinsurgency as India’s security watchwords.

The writer is programme associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC.


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THANK YOU MR EXEC SEC CBD AHMED DJOGHLAF

Message

by Mr Ahmed Djoghlaf

The Executive Secretary of the

Convention on Biological Diversity

on the occasion of  the seminar “BANANAS AND BAMBOO”: Biodiversity management of at risk commercially valuable crops through community-technology integration

29-30 november 2010

KOLKATA, INDIA

Please accept my sincere thanks for including me in this important event as a part of the International Year of Biodiversity celebrations. I would also like to thank Lady Brabourne College and Peerless Green Initiatives for organizing and hosting this unique event.

For the last 11 months, the world has been celebrating the International Day for Biological Diversity, and this year, the focus is on Biodiversity, Development and Poverty Alleviation. Celebration of this theme provides a unique opportunity to raise public awareness on the importance of biodiversity to sustainable development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. These three aspects are inextricably linked to each other, and more importantly in this case, to agriculture. Poor rural communities depend on biodiversity and ecosystem services for health and nutrition, for crop development, and as a safety net when faced with climate variability and natural disasters. Agricultural biodiversity provides humans with food and raw materials for goods - such as cotton for clothing, wood for shelter and fuel, plants and roots for medicines, and materials for biofuels - and with incomes and livelihoods, including those derived from subsistence farming. Agricultural biodiversity also performs ecosystem services such as soil and water conservation, maintenance of soil fertility and biota, and pollination, all of which are essential to human survival. In addition, genetic diversity of agricultural biodiversity provides species with the ability to adapt to changing environment and evolve, by increasing their tolerance to frost, high temperature, drought and water-logging, as well as their resistance to particular diseases, pests and parasites for example.

During the last decades, worldwide biodiversity has been lost at an unprecedented rate in all the ecosystems, including agro-ecosystems. Homogenization of agricultural production systems, mainly due to intensification of agricultural systems coupled with specialization by plant and animals breeders and the harmonizing effects of globalization, is one of the greatest causes of agricultural biodiversity loss, through genetic erosion and the increasing levels of genetic vulnerability of specialized crops and livestock. According to the FAO, it is estimated that about three-quarters of the genetic diversity found in agricultural crops has been lost over the last century, and this genetic erosion continues. For example, today, 90% of our food energy and protein comes from only 15 plant and 8 animal species, with disturbing consequences for nutrition and food security. Wheat, rice and maize alone provide more than 50% of the global plant-based energy intake. In addition to agricultural biodiversity, modern agricultural practices can also impact biodiversity in other ecosystems through several ways such as unsustainable demands on water, overgrazing, as well as excessive use of nutrients and chemical inputs to control weeds, pests and diseases that result in problems of pollution and eutrophication. Furthermore, land and habitat conversion to large-scale agricultural production also cause significant loss of biodiversity.

Biodiversity and agriculture are strongly interrelated because while biodiversity is critical for agriculture, agriculture can also contribute to conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Indeed, sustainable agriculture both promotes and is enhanced by biodiversity. Maintenance of this biodiversity is essential for the sustainable production of food and other agricultural products and the benefits these provide to humanity, including food security, nutrition and livelihoods. The major challenge for agriculture is to ensure food security, adequate nutrition and stable livelihoods for all, now and in the future, by increasing food production while adopting sustainable and efficient agriculture, sustainable consumption of resources, and landscape-level planning to ensure the preservation of biodiversity. On the positive side, over the past few decades agriculture has made enormous contributions to feeding the planet and lifting people out of poverty. Farmers have also played the leading role in maintaining the agricultural biodiversity we still have and many have made genuine efforts to reduce the impact of farming. However, the recently-released third edition of the Convention on Biological Diversity‟s Global Biodiversity Outlook – a wide-ranging synthesis of the state of biodiversity today – shows that the nations of the world have individually and collectively failed to meet the 2010 Biodiversity Target. We continue to drive species extinct at up to 1,000 times the natural background rate. We therefore need to do more, and I am hopeful that today’s debate will provide for an exchange of best practices as well as inspiration for further concrete action.

The Convention on Biological Diversity and I share your concern about biodiversity issues as they relate to agriculture and we are involved in helping member parties to not only be aware of this growing problem, but also to take the next step; action. The CBD programme of work on agricultural biological diversity works to promote the positive effects and mitigate the negative impacts of agricultural practices as well as the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources of actual and potential value for food and agriculture. Biodiversity is the basis of agriculture. It has enabled farming systems to evolve ever since agriculture was first developed some 10,000 years ago. Biodiversity is the origin of all species of crops and domesticated livestock and the variety within them. It is also the foundation of ecosystem services essential to sustain agriculture and human well-being. Today's crop and livestock biodiversity are the result of many thousands years of human intervention.

Preserving agricultural biodiversity and plant genetic resources plays a large role in the Convention’s 2011-2020 Strategic Plan, which was recently adopted at COP10 in Nagoya, Japan. Also the adoption of an international protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, has given greater legal certainty and clarity to both users and providers of genetic resources by providing an incentive for public and private sector research while ensuring that a fair and equitable share of benefits arising from this research accrues to the countries providing the genetic resources. These decisions demonstrates the international community’s commitment to the preservation of biodiversity in all its forms.



The 2010 International Year of Biodiversity offers a unique opportunity to ensure that the voice of farmers, speaking in unison for life on Earth and the future of humanity, is heard far and wide. I therefore commend you for your participation in today’s meeting. Mahatma Gandhi, that great defender of farmers, famously said: “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.” These words need to motivate our actions from now until end of 2010 and beyond. By redoubling our efforts over the coming months and years, I am sure that we will be able to preserve agricultural biodiversity, and thus help to protect our future wellbeing and prosperity. As the slogan of the International Year reminds us, “Biodiversity is life…biodiversity is OUR life.”



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THE LIVING BRIDGES OF ASSAM

During our study of the bamboo industry in Assam, we became aware of the famous Umshiang Double-Decker Root Bridge in Cherrapunji, near city of Shillong. The native inhabitants for time immemorial have trained the secondary root system of a ficus elastica (rubber) tree and the result is a truly 'green' living bridge. The Khasis use hollowed betel nut trunks to channel the rubber tree roots to the far side of the river where they are rooted.

For PGI, these bridges have become a very special icon of our core values: The merger of respect for traditional knowledge, an overlay of technology and utility existing within nature not against it. PGI's field economist, Rajendran mused whether the natural capital value of this particular tree is more than other trees. What a wonderful question. It makes us realize that the utility of natural capital resources (whether a bridge or not) service mankind, and with proper care we can be economically viable while servicing nature. Win-win. Value chain. Sustainability. It is the metaphorical bridge that we in the Eco-facilitation industry must act as foreperson. At PGI we are committed to channelling the inspirations of Social NGOs, Institutes and Tech scientists into the commercial CSR and the consumer mainstream... to literally implement and grow the sturdy and durable bridge leading to our common evergreen existence.

Thanks to Atlas Obscura for the great pictures...way better than any of us took!

Fair Use Notice: This post contains copyrighted material that has not been authorized by the copyright owners. PGI believes this educational use on the Green Eye Web-blog constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified or wants us to link to their web site which we routinely do as a business practice notwithstanding.