'Artificial' means 'not Natural'. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is therefore not a 'Natural Intelligence'. It is not like human brains and human instincts. AI is related to machine-intelligence. Simple definition of AI is: the ability of a computer to think and learn. With AI, computers perform tasks that can be processed faster than and e...

When the war in Gaza was just 15 days away from its first anniversary, and invasion of Ukraine by Russia had already crossed 30 months, not to forget lesser known civil war in Sudan (Africa) that is going on for 18 months, United Nations held 'Summit of the Future' in New York on 22-23 September 2024. That was bold move by UN. Holding such glo...

We need to Sum-It all from Past and Present  'Once-in-a-generation opportunity', that's how United Nations describes the 'Summit for the Future' to be held in New York at UN Head Quarters on 22-23 September 2024. The Summit is described as 'a high-level event, bringing world leaders together to forge a new international consensus on how w...

Do you know the Alphabets of Triple Crisis facing our planet - ABC? Air Pollution, Bio-Diversity Loss and Climate change! This triple crisis is crippling our planet. The first alphabet A for Air pollution is the greatest environmental threat to public health globally and accounts for an estimated 7 million premature deaths every year, which av...

Records are not getting broken, smashed, and shattered only regarding global warming and temperatures that began to be recorded in the 1940s. 2024 is the year when globally, more voters than ever in history will head to the polls in at least 64 countries plus the European Union! Nearly half of the population resides in these countries that would go...

Message on the birth anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji (Maharaj)​ On 19th February 2024, I was at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, located in the Indian state of Assam. Assam is in the Eastern Region of India known as the 'State of Rising Sun'. I was there on the IIT campus for the 'Regional Workshop of the National Movement of Net-Zer...

"Nature knows no borders" is the slogan for the most important UN wildlife conference this year. The 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals #CMSCoP14 will be hosted by the Government of Uzbekistan in the historic city of Samarkand from 12th to 17th February 2024 https://www.cms.int/cop14...

Digital Measurement Prevents Green Washing  ​"What is not Measured, Cannot be Managed". One of the important discussions of U75 during India's presidency of G20 was to track emission reduction and real-time monitoring and mapping of CO2 emission in the educational campuses /universities to help understand their progress towards net zero. ...

Are we Transitioning Away from Climate Pledges?  COP28 ended in the hottest year on record in human history. The record volume of ice melted in the Arctic, Antarctic and Himalayas. But it did not thaw the solid frigid iceberg of the world's addiction to fossil fuel. 'Transition away from fossil fuel', were the words in the final decisions that...

Achieving Net Zero does not need upskilling but it demands green skilling. Fortunately, those green skills are not difficult to acquire. The nature is the university, and the flora and fauna are the professors. Observations are the textbooks. Biodiversity represents various departments of the universities and the projects already implemen...

'Transition away from fossil fuels' was historic inclusion in final UAE Consensus​ After being extended, hardly an unusual development for the global climate change negotiations nowadays, COP28 in Dubai did manage to deliver what was sorely needed, an agreement on transition away from fossil fuels, as it has been labelled in the agreement. How...

SDGs 7 (Clean Energy) and SDGs 13 (Action on Climate) are directly impacting climate change. But 7 years after SDGs were agreed by all the countries in the world, energy transition and action on climate are far slower than the spread of extreme climate events and their severity. The climate crisis is spreading like a Pandemic. The last 4 months are...

I consider that PM Modi's 'Mission LiFE' - LifeStyle for Environment is an enabling and essential tool for achieving SDGs and carbon neutrality. An example of one such LifeStyles change that has emerged during the COVID pandemic is Work From Home (WFH)! WFH is a practice that was used rarely but then emerged to protect humanity from CORONA virus. I...

That's what Global Network of Universities is all about  'SDG4Education' is a very apt term! All the 17 SDGs require 'education for all' in order that their implementation takes place on time and effectively SDG 4 is about Ensuring inclusive and equitable education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all. Four underlying principl...

Every minute 20 people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror. They are displaced within their own countries or in other countries, mostly neighbouring. World Refugee Day falls every year on the 20th of June. It is an international day declared by the United Nations to respect, honour and care for refugees around the glob...

Yes, we can beat plastic pollution. Just start from Campus! The water that we drink today is possibly what thirsty dinosaurs were drinking about 65 million years ago. This is just one example of nature's invisible 'circular economy'! As the water warms up, it travels into the sky as vapour-very tiny droplets. It comes back as rainwater, when t...

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Confirms it! 'There is a 66% likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year', stated the annual report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that was released on 17th May 2023. This is ...

World Health Day- 7 April 2023 The World Health Organisation (WHO) is a specialised agency within the United Nations system. Established on April 7 1948, with its headquarter in Geneva, it promotes health, keeps people safe and serves the most vulnerable and underdeveloped regions on the planet. WHO also prevents public health emergencies like...

286 years! That's the time needed to promote, enforce and monitor gender equality in public life. This stark reality and the fate of SDG 5 on gender equality, are to be achieved by 2030. It was so stated by a multi-agency programme of the United Nations called 'UN Woman'. - Seven years from now. We are not only far away from meeting this goal,...

​Wild animals are not wilder any more. Frankly stating "wild animal" is the term developed and used by the humans who are now walking the path of wilderness. We humans have proved from our actions that we are now "Wild Humans" destroying the nature, killing the biodiversity and spreading the seeds of inhumanity between nations. Unlike, animals have...

Imagine that every single second 24,000 tons of blinding white ice solidified thousands of years back melts and adds blue water to the world's oceans?  That is equivalent to 750 billion tons of ice every year. Reason? The black emissions. Effect? Deaths of polar bears that live only in ice continents in polar regions. The fiery dance of colour...

COVID-19 is not the only pandemic that has trapped humanity. Conflicts between nations, climate change that is heating the world and catastrophic loss of biodiversity are also pandemics that have invisibly engulfed the world. Worse, these three pandemics are interlinked between themselves and also with COVID19! The classical definition of...

Catch-22 is defined as a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. An example of a catch-22 is a thought: 'How can one get any experience without getting a job that gives one experience'. We had a such situation in the year 2022. While humanity was succeeding in the war against COVID...

​We all heard an alarming cry of 2022. It was the cry of the 8 billionth baby borne on the Earth. It was in reality a roaring warning for the world to change our developmental path. The world now needs to produce more Food and Energy and draw more Water for the population of 8 billion which would reach about 8.6 billion by 2030 and nearly 9.8 billi...

COVID, Conflict and Climate, 3-Cs, seem to be at the core of the planet's complex challenges in 2022 that are now risking global SDGs. Our pledge of 'Leaving no one Behind' is failing is nearly forgotten. We are far from meeting SDGs, and we already left so many behind last year. We are left with a dilemma as to which is the case, and which is the ...

In absence of our willingness to use ' Natural Intelligence' to take any actions on the unprecedented climate crisis, we have now no choice but to rely on the accelerated deployment of Artificial Intelligence to predict extreme climate events, and weather patterns and save our civilization. One of the seminal cores of AI is related to improving pre...

The world faces ever-escalating, cascading and entwined global crises and conflicts. The aspirations set out at the beginning of the 21st century and capsuled by United Nations in Millennium Development Goals and later booster-dosed in 2015 through with a vaccine of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are in jeopardy. The UN Se...

​Each hour of video conferencing, which is the average time for online meetings and classes in the university nowadays, emits 1 kilogram of Carbon dioxide. Online meetings are now becoming common features of not only University education but entering the bottom of the social pyramid in developing countries. Smart and educated farmers are negot...

United Nations emphasize the role of Media United Nations termed Climate Change as a war against nature. Journalism is now taking a central role to address the global challenge of Climate Change. Mass communication from television and radio, to newspapers and magazines, to websites and social media, has the power of enhancing the scale and spe...

Key-board of Sustainable Development Education is a Human right. Out of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Goal 4 is about quality education. It is expected to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. SDG 4 is in focus for two reasons. First, the 10 targets of SDGs4 are far off...

New Math of Global Cooperation "Reinvigorating Multilateralism" was the theme of the report, 'Our Common Agenda' released by Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) one year back. UN SG's report had an important message which was kind of a vaccine for multiple crises gripping the world. That vaccine was a blend of multilateralism,...

100 Days to COP 27 0 Days to Begin Action 30th July 2022 marks 100 days to go for the UN global conference of COP27 to be held in Egypt. Are we really going to make any progress in that COP (Conference of Parties) in November 2022? A window of opportunity is cracked open for the humanity that is dangerously balancing on the cliff. To be positive, t...

A Message for City-University Partnership Common Wealth Games is the global multi-sport event of 72 nations. The nations, many of which larger in area, wealth and population were once ruled by one empire, are now liberated from the clutches of that kingdom and coming together to compete in sports events in the same kingdom. A unique twist to histor...

Adversity is the mother of Invention  London was melting. Never before did London see the mercury rising to 40 Deg C. I am sure that 'the empire on which the sun never sets" must have wished that Sun should set much early on July 19th-the hottest day in the history of the island nation. Temp in Spain too reached even 50 deg C. Global warm...

This is how they can never be. More than 90% of the world's economy is now covered by promises by world leaders to reach net zero. One-third of the world's largest publicly-traded companies also now have net zero goals while half of the major cities have pledged to be net zero. Net-zero pledges are now omnipresent among corporations, financial inst...

COVID19 has now new medicine. It's not a vaccine. It's not a tablet. Nor syrup or herbal. Neither is intravenous injection. It need not be consumed. It is not the one sold by any pharmacy. Indeed, health regimes and medical science are undergoing 'disruptive transformation'. It is curative and preventive. And this medicine can cure as well as make ...

Can Universities Counter the Trend?  The disastrous convergence of three global crises is an assault on global efforts to achieve SDGs and meet the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement. 3Cs are Conflicts, COVID19 and Climate-Change. In 2015, all the nations in the world agreed to meet the 17 goals called Sustainable Development Goals that ar...

 Single Use Plastic Free Campus Pune, 1st July 2022, Carrying forward the spirit of 'Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsava', an activity named "Single Use Plastic Free Campus" was organised by National Service Scheme Unit of Fergusson College (Autonomous), Pune on 1st July, 2022. Aiming on creating the awareness among the people to curb pollution caused by...

We Can Extinguish It! Just a few days to go for World Environmental Day, 5th June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on May 18 launched a plan to revolutionise the use of renewable energies. The plan comes when the UN's weather agency World Meteorological Organisation, WMO, in Geneva stated in its 2021 report that greenhouse gas conce...

There is a frustrating feeling all around that our race towards keeping the Earth's average rise in temperature below 1.5 deg C, as compared to pre-industrial times, is now almost lost. The latest report from World Meteorological Organization (WMO) stated this week that there is a 50-50 chance the world could temporarily exceed 1.5 degrees Cel...

We can Alter Trajectory   Universities have immense potential to predict the future when it comes to climate change which undoubtedly is the most fatal threat to our planet. This potential is enhanced and précised by big data and modelling. Smart digital technologies are coming to help in assessing the future under climate change. Two res...

'Technology is Two Edge Sword', that's how the world has coined the phrase after looking back into the history of human development starting with hunting weapons to nuclear fusion. Here comes brand new technology, 'AI - Artificial Intelligence'. Humans can make it not just a double-edged but even a double sharp-edged sword. Here, however, I would l...

Rejuvenation of Adyar river  INTRODUCTION: As we peep into the history of life on the Earth for billions of years, we see that water was the origin of life. Life emerged underwater. Thousands of years back, the human settlements and their lifestyles developed and revolved around the rivers. Priority was to fulfil water and food needs. Rivers b...

'Covid-19 pandemic is far from over', is the clear warning given by United Nations a few days back. People must not let their guard down against Covid-19. More than the warnings, I consider, that what is most disturbing is the fallouts from pandemics. That list of fallouts too, is 'far from over. 23 countries have yet to fully re-open educatio...

This is how evacuated University Students Could Help 'Evacuation' of their own university students trapped in Ukraine is the topmost agenda of countries around the world. That sounds quite logical. What can one do when the house is on fire? Priority would obviously be to save the lives by evacuating as many people as possible from the house on...

WORLD WATER DAY, 22nd MARCH 2022  Can the global community make visible the invisible? I am neither referring to God nor ether. This year's theme for 'World Water Day' is making "Making the invisible visible". It is about Groundwater. The theme was decided by the UN organisation called 'UN-Water.' Over 50 del...

The modern digital world of the 21st century has been 'turned upside down' due to the Pandemic Crises of COVID 19. It has brought a major change in our daily life. Humanity came out of caves millions of years back mainly to explore the outside world. Now humanity is required to remain confined to modern 'caves' like houses, classrooms and hostels. ...

Power-Solution to Climate Crisis? Lakes, rivers, swamps, reservoirs, aquifers and other similar small and large water bodies are all part of Wetlands. They cover only around 6 per cent of the Earth's land surface, but surprisingly 40 per cent of all plant and animal species live or breed in them. One in eight people on Earth depends on them for the...

UNESCO-TERRE collaboration makes Smart Campus Cloud Network as Accelerator for Access to Open Data on top of the SDGs and Climate Agenda  ​Paris-Pune 26th January 2022.  "World is tremendously off track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently. While COVID19 pandemic...

Dr Rajendra Shende, Chairman of TERRE Policy Centre, former Director UNEP and IIT Alumnus was invited by Press to assess India's Federal Budget 2022-2023 presented by India's Central Finance Minister and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman, on 1 February 2022. Dr Shende within a couple of hours after the end of the full presentation as viewed on ...

​21st Sept 2021, Kolkata, For the first time ever, one of the largest industry associations and leading civil society organizations together forged a partnership that will be a game-changer in the practical education of sustainable development. "United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the seventeen interlinked pillars for a better a...

In 2022 India has turned 75. It is no coincidence that India's literacy rate has reached 75 Percent from 12 percent in 1947 when India got independence from British rule. Though the rise in literacy rate has been steep, India and so also many African countries have herculin task to continue that rise to keep with global trends. More than ...

​In April of 2020, an unusual World War started. Strangely, the enemy was invisible. Never before in the war, the enemy was of size less than half a micron and cannot be detected by the naked eye. That unprecedented war is still on. The enemy, capable to change its avatar, is not yet fully conquered. Mighty humanity, which boasts of artificial...

Rankings of the Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs)\, initiated for the first time in the 1950s, are well debated since then. They are criticized extensively among academicians, local and international governments, the industries. The debates and criticisms are mainly centred around transparency, verification system of collated data, purpose ranki...

When the world is not on track to achieve the Goals by 2030, with more action needed across the global community, particularly in light of the coronavirus pandemic and its unprecedented impact on sustainable development, the University College of London (UCL) has published its first report describing how staff and student communities are supporting...

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) launched a global assessment of the marine pollution crisis in the lead up to the Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow, UK. Meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a working paper titled: 'From Pollution to Solution: A global assessment of marine...

While the world is dismally engaged in titling and headlining the cloudy outcome of the COP26 in Glasgow, a promising interconnected web of Universities called 'Smart Campus Cloud Network' cast it's net wider to trigger actions at the planetary level for carbon neutrality at the place where it matters most-in Campuses. Glasgow deal does not seal th...

​Are the global efforts to reduce the GHGs (Green House Gases) emissions after 29 years of the UNFCCC (United Nations Convention on Climate Change), 25 years after signing of the Kyoto Protocol and 6 years after signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, flatly failed and fatally flawed? From the latest report called 'Emission Gap Report 2021' release...

The world is shaken by the Pandemic. The window of opportunity for carbon-emission reduction is also closing fast signalling a 'Red Alert' on Climate emergencies. Once closed, humanity would be trapped in the planet engulfed with carbon and other GHGs (Global Warming Gases) emissions. As we brace ourselves for COP26 dialogues in the Scottish city o...

1050 universities and colleges from 68 countries have pledged to half their emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050 at the very latest, impacting over 10 million students, was announced on 28th October at the Times Higher Education Climate Impact Forum, showing the education sector's leadership ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, UK. Universities and c...

Today, 24th October is UN Day. It is worth recalling that there is no other global organization with the legitimacy, convening power and normative impact as the United Nations. No other global organization gives hope to so many people for a better world and can deliver the future we want. I am proud that I was one of the blue flag holders in the UN...

​World Health Organisation on 11 March 2020 declared COVID 19 as a pandemic. I would venture to emphasise that there are four pandemics running parallel Covd19 PandemicPlastic PandemicClimate Change Pandemic, Bio-diversity Pandemic. ​ The first one is declared by WHO. Others are not declared by WHO but by UNEP as an unprecedented global crisis...

Most of the "New" Policy Documents - be on Environment or Education or Employment or even on the recent policy treatises in vogue that are mushrooming on "building back better post-COVID19 era," have one thing in common. They are all led by thought leaders of earlier generations. We all know that the these old generations are characterised by the d...

​Climate action commitments from rich countries and fury of discussions during pre-COP26 almost overflowed in September 2021. Carbon Neutrality, no-Coal but new clean energy announcements echoed in various international corridors. No one described, however, how those commitments would be implemented and realised. Particularly in 76th General A...

12 August is International Youth Day. In 1999, when the world was entering a new millennium United Nations General Assembly endorsed the recommendation made by the World Conference of Ministers of Youth that ended in Lisbon on 12th August 1998 that 12 August be declared International Youth Day. Undoubtedly 21st Century belongs to youth. Today, youn...

​Smart Campus Cloud Network ( sccnhub.com) is not just a digital network of students and faculty of higher educational institutes ( HEIs) but a key driver for change and tool to attain SDGs. TERRE, through its facilitative and catalytic role, allows the students and faculty to prioritize and select the SDGs to launch in their campus for implementat...

There is no Vaccine for our Sick Planet  The International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN)'s latest Congress, the very first one after the COVID19 that broke out on our already sick planet was held in the southern French city of Marseille on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The timing, 3-11 September 2021, was the most crucial. The...

COVID-19 is the pandemic that has shaken the world never before. It came as ' A bolt from the blue'.When the world was busy planning for the new year of 2020, came this thunderbolt. No one was prepared. Its impact on education is yet to be known. But severe impacts have been felt and emerging as the world starts and learns to live with the deadly v...

The sea is swallowing villages, rivers are sweeping away the dams, fires are gulping forests, heat waves are frying the ecosystem around us. Time is running out to arrest the catastrophic global warming. There is no need at all to question the existence of global warming. One can see all the extreme events happening more intensely and more fre...

The Great Green Wall is not just about growing trees and plants it is a movement to make indispensable contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Great Green Wall on completion will be the largest living structure on the Earth. It is an ambitious movement to grow an 8,000 km natural wonder of the world across the entire width...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), as per the endorsement by United Nations General Assembly. The First Assessment Report - in 1990 - consisting of working Group I – Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific ...

COVID-19 is already challenging youth worldwide to test their resilience for the gloomy job market. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported that in the first quarter of 2020 ,when COVID-19 set to define the 21st century's mega-calamity, about 5.4% of global working hours, that is equivalent to 155 million full-time jobs, were lost rela...

Universities help in Our understanding The record-breaking heatwave in parts of the US and Canada has brought the mercury rise up to nearly 50 deg C normally seen in the Middle East and in deserts in Northern India. The international team of leading climate scientists concluded that these extreme temperatures at the end of June 2021 would have been...

 Smart Campus for Smart Future The news that newly elected US President Joe Biden has decided to rejoin the Paris Agreement is reassuring to environmentalists. When I shared this news through my social media, many people replied that what exactly is this Paris Agreement? Five years after the agreement was signed by 197 countries, many of my fr...

In the morning I get zoomed on subjects like 'recreating the education'. Come evening and I get webexed on 'reimagining education'. Then I get youtubed on 'rebooting the education', followed by facebooked session on 'redesigning the education'. Finally, when I go to bed I dream of 're-dreaming the education'. I consider it a welcome sign that many ...

IITM ENVIS and TERRE Policy Centre organized a unique World Ozone day celebration on the 16th of September. It included speakers from NASA and UNEP , Question and Answers and prizes for the winners of the various competition. Dr Paul Newman from NASA and Dr Gilbert Bankobeza from UNEP were invited to celebrate 35 years of Ozone layer protection und...

 Terre Policy Centre, as a part of an 'International E Internship Program on Climate Change and Biodiversity', invited Dr Ian Redmond, world renowned Naturalist and Conservationist to give a talk on the 'Role of Apes and elephants in Combating dangerous Climate Change' on 30th June 2020. The International E-Internship program is a 7 week long ...

Interaction with Minister Prakash Javadekar In wake of Tsunami of COVID19 Indian Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar has not forgotten yet another Tsunami that is waiting in the wing to take over the world by yet another disaster of planetary proportion. His Keynote speech in the webinar organized by TERRE Policy Ce...

The serene campus of MIT Arts, Design & Technology (MITADT) University is now ready to become Carbon Neutral. A formal meeting was organized with Dr. Sunil Rai, Vice-Chancellor and SCCN Core Group representatives of the campus in 2nd Jan 2020. Rajendra Shende, Chairman and Dinah Gengmei, Project Leader from SCCN of TERRE Policy Centre had an in...

Climate Action and Sustainable Future Imagine selling refrigerator and Air conditioners to people in Arctic Circle. It will be like selling the solar panels and wind mills to generate electricity in Middle East countries, which are fossil fuel rich. Middle East countries couldn't care less. Right? Wrong. One of the Middle East countries is now...

Mr. Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre was invited as an expert guest to speak on Sustainable Development Goals and relevance of sustainable development for educational campuses. As a part of climate education, TERRE under its Smart Campus Cloud Network (https://www.sccnhub.com) and the Climate Reality Project (www.climate...