Webinars are now walking the talk: Action by Universities

‘Climate Change: Threat to Global Peace’

29th May 2020, New Delhi

Inspired by the key-note speech of Dr Rajendra Shende, Chairman, TERRE Policy Centre on ‘Climate Change: Threat to Global Peace’, universities are getting inspired to walk the talk. Dr Prashant Bhalla, President of Manav Rachna Educational Institutions (MREI) concluded the webinar by declaring the action that all the campuses of Manav Rachana Group of Institutes would be Carbon Neutral before 2045. Dr Amit Bhalla, Vice President of MERI added that during lockdown the university would prepare road map towards this goal in consultation with TERRE Policy Centre and AICTE according to the project of Smart Campus Cloud Network.

A Webinar was organized by Manav Rachna, one of the top 200 ranking universities in the world. Normally, a talk show, this webinar turned out to be ‘WebActionar’.

Dr Shende began his talk with a somber note stating that COVID19 has brought out fragility of the very foundation of our society and systemic problems, particularly of wellbeing and health of people, remained dormant due to our false ego. We call ourselves as possessing mighty weapons to defend our national borders, however we are not able to defend ourselves from micro-size virus. ‘We have not been able to quickly identify, characterize the new virus and address the health crisis it created. Our hollow claims of being a knowledge society are now preventing us to shred inertia and take action on climate crisis and calamity of bio-diversity’, Dr Shende lamented.  

Explaining the proven and undoubtedly strong linkages between climate change and global peace, Dr Shende recounted the people’s uprising triggered by the primary and secondary consequences of climate change in the recent past starting from Arab Spring, Syrian crisis and looming violence due to climate refugees. 

Interactive sessions included pointed questions and action-oriented responses. Asked about what course of action to take in the middle of COVID19, Dr Shende clearly laid out the priority. Monitoring to control the COVID19 must be the top of the agenda. But he emphatically stated that lockdown is the opportunity to reflect and prepare road maps based on the lessons learnt from CORONA to prepare for next global crisis including climate crisis.

What preparedness one can achieve for climate crisis? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by fixing the target years of achieving the carbon-neutrality. And who should achieve that? Dr Shende responded. “What could be better than Universities like Manav Rachna”.

TERRE has initiated global technological movement towards carbon neutrality for the colleges under its flagship project of Smart Campus Cloud Network (SCCN), he added.

Moving towards including ‘green economics’ in curriculum of universities as promoted by UNEP, making conscious ‘green choices’ and  adopting  self-reliant lifestyle, as promoted by PM Narendra Modi,  by the individuals including students and the faculty in universities were some of the practical ideas suggested at the end of the interactive session. Prof I K Bhat , Vice Chancellor and Prof Sanjay Srivastav summed up the actions that could be initiated  immediately. END

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Note for editors:

TERRE Policy Centre is a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization dedicated to sustainable solutions to our developmental imperatives. TERRE also is the abbreviation for ‘Technology, Education, Research and Rehabilitation for the Environment.’ TERRE strives to reach all strata of society, particularly the young generation and people at the bottom of the pyramid with capacity building tools on energy and food security. Its motto is: "To think is good but to act is better”.(https://terrepolicycentre.com)

SCCN (Smart Campus Cloud Network) facilitates colleges and universities to mainstream the future policy-makers and policy-implementers in implementing the SDGs by promoting sharing of the information on transformative actions undertaken by students and faculties in the campus. More importantly, it encourages to deploy the digital technologies like IoT (Internet of Thing), AI (Artificial Intelligence), Cloud-networking, Machine-to-machine learning and Block chain for optimum use of energy, water in campus and catalyse effective waste management, sustainable transport, air pollution and nature conservation within the campus. (www.sccnhub.com)