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.”



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.

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!

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PGI: Millenium Compact Acceptance Letter

Dear Peerless Green Initiatives,


Welcome to the United Nations Global Compact. We are pleased to inform you that Peerless Green Initiatives has been added to our register of participants: http://unglobalcompact.org/participant/12629

Thank you for joining our corporate responsibility initiative - the world's largest with over 8,000 business and non-business participants in 135 countries. An official welcome letter and information package will be sent to your organization's top executive via mail. Please allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery.


Expectations of Participation

As a participant, Peerless Green Initiatives commits to:

* Set in motion changes to business operations so that the UN Global Compact and our Ten Principles become part of strategy, culture and day-to-day operations, including in subsidiaries and the supply chain;

* Advocate the UN Global Compact and the Ten Principles via available communications channels; and

* Communicate annually with your stakeholders on efforts to implement the UN Global Compact principles, and post this Communication on Progress (COP) on the UN Global Compact website. Failure to post a COP annually will result in loss of an "active" status in the UN Global Compact, and eventual removal from the initiative.

New participants are urged to review the Communication on Progress section of the UN Global Compact website. Information can be found on: minimum requirements for the COP; guidance on creating, sharing and posting a COP; and practical examples of how companies are communicating progress.

A resource library is available on our website to aid UN Global Compact participants in implementing the Ten Principles, engaging in partnerships and communicating progress on corporate responsibility actions.

Local Networks

We encourage your company - and any subsidiaries, if relevant - to engage in Global Compact Local Networks, which can be found in over 80 countries. Within a local context, these networks provide opportunities for participants to improve understanding and share experiences on the Ten Principles and partnerships, as well as how to report on progress in these areas. Collective action campaigns and government policy dialogues are also organized through the Local Networks. More information can be found in the "Local Networks" section of our website:


Sincerely,

The Global Compact Office

United Nations Global Compact

Two United Nations Plaza

New York, NY 10017

Email: globalcompact@un.org

Website: http://www.unglobalcompact.org/




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.

India's Landmark Energy Reduction Program to Launch April 2011

NEW BUZZWORD: SAVING ENERGY

(India) firms are gearing up for a new green regime called PAT (perform, achieve, trade). This will ensure that smoke-spewing manufacturing units bring down their energy intensity. The scheme would also produce a
75,000-crore (1.8 Trillion USD) energy efficiency market by 2015 in India

Namrata Singh
Times News Network http://www.timesofindia.com/

Century Group, the Rs 5,000-crore diversified conglomerate owned by B K Birla, has now turned its focus on how its units—comprising textiles, cement, pulp & paper and viscose filament yarn—could be made more energy efficient. The concern is not restricted to Century Group alone. All manufacturers are looking at ways to bring down energy intensity at their respective units.

A year ago, perhaps, one would have linked this overdrive to costcutting measures which companies had undertaken. Even today, cost reduction ranks high on every management’s agenda, but the reasons to achieve higher energy efficiency have changed. Energy audits are being carried out more aggressively than ever before, thanks to the energy efficiency scheme, PAT (perform, achieve,

trade), announced by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), the nodal agency spearheading the energy efficiency programme in India.

The plan is to give specific energy efficiency targets to every sector in the industry through PAT. “Companies will be given specific energy reduction targets which they will have to meet in three years. They can meet their targets either by bringing about changes in their manufacturing processes to reduce energy intensity or by purchasing energy saving certificates from the market. We will design a scheme in such a way so that there can be early price discovery,” said Ajay Mathur, director general, BEE.

After the three-year period, if a company meets the benchmark and exceeds the target, it would be issued energy saving certificates or ESCerts. However, if a company fails to meet the target, it will have to purchase ESCerts from other companies to bridge the gap. For a company which has a relatively new plant (new plants are more energy efficient than old ones), it would be easy to meet the target and earn ESCerts, which can then be traded with older plants that fell short of their energy efficiency targets. Given the global urgency on matters such as climate change—and PAT is only one step in the direction of reducing the country’s energy intensity—companies are keen to figure out the exact quantum of their units in the new scheme of things.

PAT is scheduled to be launched in April 2011. This will be done in consultation with individual units. The sectors to be covered by PAT are: aluminum, cement, iron and

steel, chlor alkali, thermal, power plants, fertilizer, pulp & paper, textiles and railways. These, by and large, cover all sectors that directly or indirectly trigger climate change.

BEE has already kicked off the process and is consulting industry bodies to get their views on the proposed format. Climate change consultants have swung into action to assist companies in need of information on how the scheme would work and how price discovery would occur. Clearly, trading of ESCerts will create a parallel market dealing with climate change, independent of the Kyoto Protocol. Under Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (part of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), Indian companies—which got their projects registered—were issued carbon credits for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.

Although trading under PAT will be restricted to the domestic market, industryexperts are talking big money for the kind of market it will create. “Overall, the scheme could generate an energy efficiency market of Rs 75,000 crore by 2015 in India,” said Vivek Dhariwal, senior consultant, EVI, a carbon market consultant. The scheme aims to achieve a 5% reduction in overall energy consumption by industries in three years i.e. during 2011-14. After the end of the first phase, each industry will submit its PAT assessment document, stating the reduction in their specific energy consumption. This report will be validated by an agency designated by BEE.

According to Anmol Singh Jaggi, director, Gensol Carbon Consultants, “After the benchmarks are set, for one year there will be no trading of ESCerts. Companies will be given time to adapt to the benchmarks of energy efficiency. Trading will begin after that.”

Manufacturing companies feel that energy efficiency is not a new concept for them-it is something they have always endeavoured to achieve. “We are constantly looking at ways of reducing energy costs, either through specific modifications or replacements. We also get audits done to assist us in the process. So energy efficiency is not a new thing,” said RK Dalmia, president, Century Textiles.

Consultants, however, believe that companies would have to get their act together to become PATprepared. According to P Ram Babu, CEO, General Carbon Advisory Services, companies would need to establish a robust baseline of energy footprint. They would also need to focus on a continuous process improvement to meet and exceed specific energy consumption targeting. “For this, companies need to graduate from an audit-oriented approach in their energy management to a process-based performance improvement approach,” said Ram Babu. Dhariwal of EVI foresees an important role played by the private sector in the implementation of the various measures. “We, at EVI, are geared now for offering such solutions to our clients,” said Dhariwal.

It is becoming increasingly evident that the Indian industry needs to look at reduction of emissions beyond those supported by projectbased offset generation such as CDM. “While the project-based emission reduction offset generation enables industries to lap up those opportunities which are not viable without revenue from offset sale, the opportunities of becoming energy and emission efficient on other fronts remain untapped,” said Ram Babu.

National actions like the creation of a PAT-type mechanism lead to added risk for those who do not manage their energy-and hence emissions-wisely and reward those who perform well on this front. This will ensure that industries continually undertake a disciplined process-based approach to optimize, reduce energy/specific consumption and, thereby, systematically reduce emission over a period of time.

Given the complexities, it seems like companies have no choice but to work out their math on energy efficiency well in advance. And accounting consultants are more than willing to help firms unearth opportunities to not just meet the target but exceed them to capitalize on opportunities to earn energy efficiency assets.

JSW Steel, for one, has hired one of the big four consultants to conduct a study to assess its carbon footprint to be benchmarked against the best in the world. “We understand that we are 20% higher (than the benchmark), but that may not be as bad based on Indian standards of energy efficiency. We are making an effort to bring it down by 20%,” said Seshagiri Rao, joint managing director, JSW Steel.

***

PGI is an Indo-American facilitation group specializing in the migration of technology and sustainable processes that promote ecology, economy and equality. For questions or interest in the PAT program: info@peerlessgreen.net subject PAT

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.

The Plague of Gender Inequality

PGI's media department has a daily ritual of scanning news sources in our target area of South India for issues germane to our initiatives. Occasionally they find something that is not exactly on point, but somehow is on point. Today we clipped a QA column wherein readers ask the columnist lawyer a question.  The question related to distribution of a father's real property among his six children.  That's not the interesting issue. It was the way in which the question was asked, that was begging a certain answer. The six children were specifically identified as four sons and two daughters. The rest of the question went through the lines of consanguinity regarding only the daughters...one deceased with a surviving daughter, the other with a daughter who had one child, also a girl.

The author of the question does not come right out and ask whether the sons' claim somehow trump the daughters' claim, but it's clearly implied.  In fact, the question could be rewritten without reference to gender and it would have been exactly the same question.  This is disturbing and is reflective of the social acceptability of making gender differentiation when it is not material nor relevant. (Otherwise, the questioner would have never sent his question to a widely circulated newspaper.) Dodging the issue, the column lawyer plainly cites the (gender neutral) law splits estates in equal shares. Period. Full stop.  But law is not always the mind of its culture. 

In juxtaposition, we were also pleased to find in today's news that the India Supreme Court is taking a firm position on 'dowry deaths' (more accurately dowry murders) and the recent inexplicable rise of the barberous act of husbands dousing their spouses (and sometimes children) with kerosene and lighting them afire.

PGI sincerely urges all readers to visit the new UN website "Every Woman, Every Child" http://www.everywomaneverychild.org/pages?pageid=3 and get involved.  Nearly every project we have worked on and reviewed has always had an underlying gender issue that was in need of address.  There is much work to be done on this front. There are some tremendous stories of success (such as woman self help groups and financial clubs) but these are too few, far between. The process of global gender equality must be accelerated for the preservation of society and humanity on our ever crowding planet.



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.

IYBD Kolkata Nov 29-30 2010

Elephant eating banana plants on a West Tamil Nadu farm

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT OF AT RISK COMMERCIALLY VALUABLE CROPS THROUGH COMMUNITY and TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

Focus on “BANANA & BAMBOO”

The Challenges of Agriculture in a Crowded World: Balancing Stakeholder Interests Through Integrated Networks and Processes

-Peerless Green Initiatives

Initiative Eco Logical Fox

http://www.peerlessgreen.net/

Food. Every living creature on Earth's most basic need. If one were to judge the most critical issue creating risk to humanity and nature, this would be undoubtedly at the top of the list. With a human population burgeoning and wildlife conservation holds ever shrinking, we are in store for a critical collision that ignores political borders, economic growth and commercial ambition. More than consumption of resources for energy, the relationship between commercial farming and preservation of biodiversity has reached tipping point, requiring integrated efforts toward scaled sustainable stakeholder processes.



The world's population, today numbering some 5.5 billion people, will likely have increased by about 2.5 billion to a total of 8 billion people by 2020. This is an increase of nearly 100 million a year. Over 93 percent of this growth will take place in the developing countries As such, the November 29-30, International Year of Biodiversity Conference at Lady Brabourne College in Kolkata, India could be considered the most important and ambitious gathering to protect and preserve the world's biodiversity and establish agricultural security to realize the goal of the elimination of poverty, malnourishment and inequality.



It is the opinion of PGI, and scores of others in the industry, that only though the integrated sustainable management of commercial agriculture, through the free transfer of technology and comprehensive stakeholder processes can humankind establish a coexistent balance with environmental services it relies on for survival and needed to preserve biodiversity.



The humble rural farmer and family is perhaps the most vulnerable to the myriad of new challenges that face the world current. Their issues are myriad: social and gender inequality, climate change, rising cost of farming, rampant migrations of alien plant and insect, unmitigated commercial development of farm land, decrepit farming infrastructure, lack of access to technology and increasing wildlife confrontation due to shrinking ecology reserves and gerrymandered native corridors. This list is not exhaustive but illustrates the tremendous challenge ahead for those stakeholders and accordingly policymakers and ultimately the consumer.



It has been the opinion of PGI, due to its deep experience in creating sustainable businesses for private clients, that the solution will not be found in government initiatives (albeit helpful) but in the able hands of those professionals who deeply understand their specialty vertical. Together these specializations can be stacked to form comprehensive integrated sustainable systems.



The term 'professional' here is used in its broadest definition- an individual who holds personal knowledge based on their endeavors and experience. Application of this definition happens to also promote equality. The farmer is a professional. The farmer's spouse is a professional. The biologist who develops the seed that lightens the farmer's burden is a professional. The marketer who takes the elite seed to the industry is a professional. Conservationists who understand the native ecology and society from village to village, city to city and region, all professionals. Each of these professionals must act in a coordinated manner, all mindful and respectful of the individual contribution of others, uncorrupted by greed or favoritism, and willing to communicate with other professionals who can suggest and implement meaningful processes of integration and coordinate risk-management efforts and transfer of information and technology.



It is with sincere hope that you will join us and bring your particular professional skill and experience to make the LBC-PGI International Year of Biodiversity gathering in Kolkata a meaningful and productive event. The subject matter is vast and accordingly the focus has been placed on two representative critical crops, bamboo and banana. Both key to agricultural viability and in need of sustainable processes to promote biodiversity. It will be a unique event in that invitees include those from the business, science, policy, education, youth and conservation sectors...all with the singular goal of discussing solutions, not just rehashing challenges. The time is now and the need for real change is critical.



If you cannot attend your generous direct or in-kind contribution toward the Conference costs can be coordinated by contacting the organizing committee joint treasurers Madhulika Gupta Chaudhuri or Sudipta Paul Bhattacharya, Asst. Professors , Dept of Microbiology , Lady Brabourne College: odditybiom@yahoo.com, 091 9830905534. Registration: http://www.ladybrabourne.com/notice.html





Sincerely,

Frank Costanzo
Managing Director

Peerless Green Initiatives

Joint Convenor , IYBD Kolkata

91 812 419 5292


Logo designed by students of LBC, Kolkata