The awareness program for Delhi Schools launched by The Climate Project-India and supported by Paharpur Business Centre & others, aims to make all school children in Delhi aware about the challenge of climate change and its impacts by training teachers in every school before the Commonwealth Games, 2010.

Anushka Pinto, Country Manager, TCPI remarked “We will conduct workshops for teachers and provide them with material specially designed to use in their classroom. We will also provide teachers with ongoing content and technical support”.

With over 2000 schools to cover, this initiative calls for individuals and corporates to volunteer their time to mentor the teachers being trained. Support can also be extended in the form of sponsorship, donation and advertisements.

“Delhi is the greenest capitals in the world and we are trying to inculcate good clean habits among kids. We are looking forward to a clean and green Commonwealth Games” the Chief Minister said.

GreenSpaces Ideas, launched by Paharpur Business Centre, is an online platform to post green ideas. Mrs. Sheila Dikshit posted her idea – “reduce, reuse and recycle” and inaugurated the initiative.

The Government of Delhi, AMCHAM, American Center, ASSOCHAM, CII, Indo – American Chamber of Commerce and Indo – German Chamber of Commerce are partnering for this program.

The Climate Project India (TCPI) founded in March 2008 with training conducted for civic and business leaders by Nobel Laureate Al Gore and Dr. R.K. Pachauri. These trained leaders form the core of the project’s volunteer based organization which now spans six countries and over 2,500 climate leaders. Its mission is to raise awareness on man-made Climate Change and to help India respond.

Since its inception in India, TCP Leaders have made presentations to various corporates, politicians, universities, clubs, schools, RWAs and to interested parties who understand the need for urgent action on Climate Change. These committed volunteers have conducted over a thousand presentations and workshops.
Mr. Kamal Meattle, Trustee, TCPI & CEO- Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park (PBCTM – STIP) & GreenSpaces has been a keen environmental activist, he has taken up various social and environmental issues, creating public awareness as well as advocating policy change. He remarked “We need to act and make ‘Green Living’ a way of life. We need to organize huge grassroots awareness in our City and in our country over what is happening to our environment and do something about it, and not simply talk about it”.

PBC expects to be the first USGBC LEED (EB) Platinum certified – a retrofit building and its new project – GreenSpaces™ is being built as the World’s most energy efficient commercial building. This assumes great importance given the fact that buildings use 40% of the world’s energy and that the world’s energy demand is expected to increase by 30% in the next decade. 60% of the World inhabitants will be living in cities with a population of over 1 million by 2024.

Sponsors for the Earth Day event were Bisleri, ConferenceSpa, Clausthaler, CuisineArt, GreenSpaces, IBM, Max Healthcare, Nestle, Pepsi, Dabur, SpringClean and Taj Mahal Hotel.

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About Paharpur Business Centre

GreenSpaces is an undertaking by the experienced management team of the Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park (PBC-STIP) and EcoTrust Capital Advisors. Established in 1990, PBC-STIP is a Government of India approved Infrastructure service provider and a private Software Technology Park (STP).

PBC-STIP is one of the first fully serviced office spaces in the country, based on “Green building” and “instant office” concepts. It provides 50,000 square feet of office space in various modules, operates over 28 different in-house support services, and is one of the most sought after commercial spaces in the National Capital Region (NCR). Clients have included – Canon, Microsoft, Intel, Shell, 3M, KFC, Mobil, British Telecom, etc.

It has achieved five international certifications – ISO 9001:2008; ISO 14001:2004; ISO 22000:2005; OHSAS 18001:2007 & SA 8000:2001. PBC-STIP is also a participant to the UN Global Compact. It is rated by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Government of India as one of the healthiest buildings in Delhi to work in.

For more information on PBC-STIP is available at www.pbcnet.com

New Delhi, 7 July 2009

As leaders of the world’s 13 major countries prepare to meet at the G8+5 summit in Italy this week, 24 leading scientists from these countries have appealed to them to take immediate action to combat climate change.

“We come together to call on our government leaders to recognise both the unacceptable risks that climate change creates for our societies, and the unprecedented opportunities a clean energy, low-carbon transition creates for our economies,” the scientists said in a joint appeal.

The appeal appeared as an advertisement in the International Herald Tribune newspaper Tuesday. The scientists asked the leaders of the industrialised eight and developing five countries to take five specific steps at their summit this week:

• Recognise that present global warming of 0.8 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels is already having a significant impact, and that warming exceeding 2 degrees Celsius predicted for later this century would create great risks and have irreversible consequences.
• Commit to peak global greenhouse gas emissions by no later than 2020 and reduce these by at least 50 percent relative to 1990 levels by 2050.
• For developed countries, commit to emissions reductions of at least 80 percent relative to 1990 by 2050 with appropriate intermediate targets set in time for Copenhagen (the next climate summit scheduled this December).
• For developing countries, commit by Copenhagen summit to significant gains in energy efficiency, reductions in carbon intensity, and cuts in non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades; this should be designed to support sustainable development and to lead to substantial reduction from business-as-usual emissions.
• Recognise that the impacts of existing changes in climate are primarily due to past emissions by developed nations, and that unless the burden of poverty in developing nations is alleviated by significant financial support for mitigation, adaptation, and the reduction of deforestation, that ability of developing countries to pursue sustainable development is likely to diminish, to the economic and environmental detriment of all.

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New govt buildings must be sustainable

Kamal Meattle, June 4, 2009

The Indian construction sector is growing rapidly at 13%, despite the recession and slowdown in the global economy, contributing 10% of India’s GDP.

The need of the hour is to look at clean and environment friendly construction technologies and this must set the tone of the agenda for the new government. The government must ensure that all new construction, at least all government buildings in the country, is green, and effectively demonstrates the benefits to the private sector.

In the past few years, the concept of green buildings has caught the imagination of the real estate sector. It has been proven over time how a green building can help in reducing operational expenditure by a marginal increase in CAPEX, thereby shoring up the financial bottom line.

The reason why developers do not invest in green buildings is because they don’t run the building and are not aware about the savings in running costs. The buyers of such buildings need to be made aware of this fact and be informed so that they demand buildings with lower running costs from developers.

The slowdown also poses a great opportunity for the construction and real estate sectors in terms of reducing chances of cost overruns and hence it’s attractive to build green now.

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by Rajiv Tikoo, Financial Express, January 26, 2009

WHEN Barack Obama talked about harnessing renewables in his presidential address, he was summing up the agenda of his new green deal for an energy secure United States unveiled during his election campaign.

The New Energy for America plan provides for an investment of $150 billion over ten years to fuel private endeavours in clean energy, generate five million green jobs, do away with imports from the Middle East and Venezuela, generate 10% electricity from renewables by 2012, deploy 1 million US-made plug-in hybrids by 2015, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 and make the US a leader on climate change…

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