Earth day- Every Day

Hey all,
Loads of thoughts have been running across my mind in the recent times. Thought I should share at least some of them here. Apologies for not being in touch since April. Thanks to the connectivity problems in Bolivia and semester exams back in college.

First a good news, the Forest Survey of India has reported a 0.2% rise in forest cover this year and estimates that the forest cover in India is around 21.06%. Inspite of all our efforts, 150-200 species becoming extinct every 24 hours! This is one of the reason why the WED 2010 was so important to all of us. But, unfortunately we had to celebrate this day, which apparently had the theme as " Many species, One planet, One future" with oil flowing out of Deep Horizon drilling station.

I realised how much work we have to make the folks around us realise the danger Mother Earth is facing. Yes, loads and loads of youth across the globe are joining the climate campaign to bring the change, realising that the leaders have cheated them. They want the leaders to take a commitment we need to avoid the catastrophic climate change that affects everyone, the commitment required to help those already facing the effects of it, at the earliest.

I think it is time for us to strategise our actions to try and give a human face to environment issues and enable the young and energetic to realise not only their responsiblity, but also their power to become the messengers for change in support of sustainable and equitable development.

We would be successful in this if we can some how communicate the "Earth day - Every day" concept of Kartikeya Singh effectively to the youth. Kartik feels that we need more than just one day , we need everyday to be an Earth day or World Environment Day to embody he spirit of the planet in every decision we make.He also feels that the various challenges being faced by us should be addressed first. These Challenges force us to think about how we might serve as key stone species, vital to planets bio diversity and not the opposite.

I completely agree with Kartik. That is how we can make the most of our remaining days on Earth!

smoke free village

COOKERS ALL THE WAY: On a street in Bysanivaripalle in Andhra Pradesh.

Here is a bright little village in Andhra Pradesh that is all solar and smoke-free — the first of its kind in the country.

Bysanivaripalle, 125 km northwest of Tirupati, has 36 families. Their main means of livelihood is sericulture. The eco-conscious residents of the electrified village went in for the first biogas plant in the region two decades ago. The officials of the Non-Conventional Energy Development Corporation of Andhra Pradesh (NEDCAP) did not need to put in much effort to motivate them to go solar.

Intersol, an Austrian non-governmental organisation, sponsored the provision of "Sk-14" cookers here last year. Gadhia Solar, a Valsad-based environmental body that imports, supplies and installs them, executed the job. It is the single largest cluster of cookers that Gadhia Solar has installed anywhere. A group of schoolchildren from Austria visited the village last year to witness the project.

"With 23 biogas plants and 26 solar cookers, we do not have to use a matchstick," says Sadananda Reddy, a progressive sericulturist who was honoured by the Karnataka Government recently for his top quality cocoons.

Apart from preparing rice, the solar cookers are used to fry chips, roast peanuts and make traditional Andhra sweets. Eyeing sales in the nearby Madanapalle town, a few enterprising people are baking cakes and biscuits too.

The physically challenged local washerman has stopped buying coal: he keeps his traditional iron on the cooker and takes it out burning hot in 10 minutes before he flattens creases into a starchy crisp.

Says Papulamma, who cooks midday meals for 48 children in the village school: "No need to go to the forest anymore to fetch firewood. I cook the meal in less than two hours and avoid coughing, and burning in the eyes." To counter the harsh sunrays, NEDCAP has provided the women sunglasses.

The village saves 72 tonnes of firewood, or 5,832 kg of LPG, cutting carbon dioxide emissions to the tune of 104 tonnes a year, according to Jagadeeswar Reddy, NEDCAP's district manager.

The village has come in for praise from the developer of the Sk-14 cooker, Dieter Seifert of Germany. In an e-mail message, he says: "There may be places where there are more number of solar cookers, but I have never come across an entire village using just solar cookers and biogas, which makes it a smoke-free village in the real sense."