Climate Solutions Project
Create
Communicate
Celebrate
About
About India Climate Solutions Project
Climate change is a rapidly escalating global crisis. With greenhouse gas emissions rising faster than the IPCC worst case scenario, and with the growing threats of climate shocks and resource conflicts, rapid action to mitigate and adapt is paramount. Yet as we seek solutions at every level of society, the challenges of historical responsibility, uneven distribution of resources and impacts, and conflicting global economic and political interests is proving an immense challenge to navigate.
In the face of this challenge, however, humanity is responding. A movement towards a low carbon economy and a sustainable future is beginning and we believe that this needs to be catalysed by a network that can promote increased awareness, collaboration, leadership, innovation and inspiration.
In India, a nation of creativity, diversity and dynamism, inspirational climate solutions already exist in pockets, demonstrating significant co-benefits for the economic, social and environmental welfare of the country. They are however poorly documented, analysed and communicated in general. To avoid a replication of efforts (reinventing the wheel), and to convince governments, businesses and communities to take action, these success stories need to be shared widely. India is a nation open to new ideas, with a strong intelligence, deep spirituality and profound respect for the natural world. As such, we, the Indian youth, believe that India can take a leadership role on climate change, for its own welfare and security as well as for that of the world as a whole.
With this in mind, the India Climate Solutions project is a collaboration of individuals, communities, academics, corporates, policymakers and artisans to catalyse action on climate change.
Objectives
Through raising the profile of existing climate solutions in India, IndiaClimateSolutions will become a resource for multiple Indian stakeholders on climate change best practice and a catalytic tool for accelerating the national and international climate response. Potentially this model could be expanded to other countries to become a global network of positive collaboration.
It will provide;
- A means to accelerate the uptake of climate change best practice and innovation across sectors.
- A means to showcase to the international community the work that India is doing, a potentially strategic negotiating tool for the Government of India in international fora.
- A forum to question, discuss and commenton India's climate strategy and how to capturelow carbon opportunities most effectively.
- An opportunity to demonstrate and encourage leadership on climate change from the Indian nation.
Team
The India Climate Solutions project is currently co-directed by its creators, Anna da Costa and Caroline Howe.
Anna da Costa hails from Goa and the UK, and graduated from Cambridge in 2006 with a BA in Zoology and Conservation. Since then, she has spent time in India and the UK, working and writing on climate change impacts, political and corporate leadership, and climate solutions with organizations including the Ecologist magazine, the Navdanya Trust, the St. Paul's Institute and The Climate Group. Anna is Co-Director for the Climate Solutions Project, and Advisor to the Cleanstar Trust on corporate engagement and climate policy.
Caroline Howe graduated from Yale College in Mechanical & Environmental Engineering in 2007, with a focus on climate change and Yale's campus sustainabilty. She has worked on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development projects in Central America, West Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, and has been living in India for the past two years working with The Energy & Resources Institute and Infosys. She is also working as the Climate Solutions Coordinator for IYCN.
Strategy
A two-part strategy will be utilised to achieve these objectives;
(1) Creation of the IndiaClimateSolutions.com website. This will be a highly dynamic and interactive website for sharing information on climate change best practice in India. It will comprise a database, an interactive forum and resources for creating new climate actions and felicitating successful solutions. The website has been structured into create, communicate, and celebrate sections.
(2) Development of an outreach and engagement strategy around the core website content, including IYCN talks (to schools, communities, businesses and policymakers), competitions, awards, and creative dissemination (eg articles, films, performances, artwork etc), to encourage innovation, raised awareness, and solution uptake (Create, Communicate and Celebrate).
About Indian Youth Climate Network
Dawn broke on the Bali beaches on December 1st, 2007 and the global negotiations on the fate of the post Kyoto framework started. Amidst the approximately 10,000 delegates convening from around the world a strong contingent of a growing youth movement were also making their voices heard. The significance of the conference being not only on an island but also in Asia was apparent: the future of the world lies in the hands of the one out every three citizens on the planet that resides in the rapidly industrializing nations of the East: India and China.
For the first time youth voices from Asia had been given a chance to come together and to begin to think about a common future in which their fates were so closely interwoven. Lacking from this discussion were youth from India. Would the approximately 1 billion people be missing from this debate forever? With 48% of the global population being youth and nearly 70 crore (700 million) people in India under the age of 35, it becomes obvious whose future is at stake.
Born with the vision that there is an urgent need to get youth and young professionals to begin to start contemplating the implications of climate change for India and the world, the Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) started connecting people across the nation. The IYCN seeks to empower the next generation for climate leaders and mobilize them into collective action to show the world that India is taking action and that the solutions exist and they are here to be utilized and replicated today.
Many years ago at the stroke of the midnight hour on August 15th, 1947, India was able to realize her “tryst” with destiny and to make a “pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.” Today as she forges a new dawn of the “Asian Age,” she grapples with issues of providing services to approximately 400 million of her rural citizens while islands of prosperity mushroom in her urban centers. Buoyed by her new found wealth and the idea of an India that can be, has brought her to the crossroads of determining not only her own developmental future but the ecological future of the entire planet.
But India is a nation born of the idea of decentralization and self-reliance. A nation which has the respect for nature embedded in her psyche. Her people sparked a movement of non-violence which signaled the end of an era of injustice in many corners of the world. Today, the Indian Youth Climate Network seeks to create a new movement: one that empowers people to be the change. One that brings them together to generate solutions and to support initiatives that are helping the country shape her destiny every day. As we are bound globally in the climate impacts, we are bound together to find the climate solutions and a nation of over one billion, India has more than a billion solutions to address the climate challenge.
About The India Climate Solutions Road Tour
Climate change is the biggest issue of our generation; threatening lives, livelihoods, culture and development. Our future is at stake, and it is critical that the world recognize the need for immediate action. This action will not only address climate change but offer the opportunity to create the world we have all been hoping for. No one else will do it for us -- WE are the ones we have been waiting for.
The world has not yet mobilized into large-scale action and implementation of climate solutions, and one of the major barriers for this is that many people are not aware of what is already happening across the nation. Inspirational climate solutions have already been put into action in pockets of innovation across India, with enormous co-benefits for community health, organizational profits, and business success, but we need to convince governments, businesses and communities to take action, and to do so, these success stories need to be shared widely.
We've created this website to document existing climate solutions through video, audio documentaries, written posts and images, collected and created by professional writers as well as by young India Climate Solutions Scouts, who are empowered young people in cities across the nation on the search for climate solutions. The India Climate Solutions site has resources for creating new climate actions and felicitating successful solutions, and is divided into create, communicate and celebrate sections.
We also hope to provide a support structure for climate solutions, by connecting design competitions for clean tech solutions, business plan competitions and workshops, and connecting individuals to the resources needed to implement their own climate solutions. We hope you'll share your community's climate solutions as a part of a national search for the most innovative climate solutions.
The Climate Solutions Road Tour has been launched to document a trail across the nation of climate solutions and empower youth along the route to create, communicate and celebrate their own solutions.
We believe that youth are the future -- Indian youth is the largest part of the Indian population, and we have the power, the potential and the vision to be the change that we wish to see and create a new vision for the world.
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