Sustainable and Secure Future

The threat of climate change is a serious global concern. India faces the twin challenges of adaptation and mitigation. As a country with many critical sectors and regions that are highly climate sensitive, there are significant costs associated with addressing the impacts of climate variability and future climate change. The National Action on Climate Change has set up an Expert Group to evolve Low Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth.

Under National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE), Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) is one of the flagship programmes launched by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Ministry of Power and Government of India to enhance the cost effectiveness of the improvements in Energy Efficiency (EE) in energy-intensive large industries (known as Designated Consumers or DCs). The identified cement DCs have a minimum annual energy consumption equivalent to 30,000 tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) or above.

On a per capita basis, India is one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world, yet it is threatened by the impact of global warming and climate change. The Expert Group on Low Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth has evolved a macro-model to fully elucidate the inter-sectoral implications of different mitigation measures and ensure that the low carbon strategies being recommended are mutually consistent with each other. The model output is summarised through two endpoint scenarios: BIG (Baseline, Inclusive Growth) and LCIG (Low Carbon, Inclusive Growth).

As a large developing country, India’s challenge is to meet its development aspirations in a carbon-constrained world. This study, undertaken by CSTEP, uses Sustainable Development (SD) as the overarching framework and aims at equitable access to energy, clean air and water, food, health and livelihoods and economic growth. The study connects elements of SD in an integrated bottom-up approach to understand the implications for economy, energy trajectories, emissions and costs. Any reduction of CO2 is treated as a co-benefit of the framework mentioned above.

Sand is an essential element in concrete and hence plays an important role in the construction and infrastructure industry in a modern economy. It is typically sourced from riverbeds which are located in ecologically sensitive areas. Hence, excessive mining leads to the degradation of riverbeds, which affects the local groundwater system, potential biodiversity and the recreational potential of these regions. A large quantity of the official sand production per year in Karnataka is currently sourced from riverbed mining, some of which is also imported from neighbouring states.

There are continuing concerns over economic and environmental developments in many countries - some of these have intensified due to prolonged global energy, food and financial crises. In this context, “green economy” was proposed as a means for catalysing renewed national policy development and international cooperation and support for sustainable development. However, there is still a lack of clarity around what “green economy policy” encompasses and how it integrates with national and sub-national priorities and objectives relating to economic growth and poverty eradication.

Sustainable urbanization using high speed rail (HSR) in Karnataka, India.

Institutional analysis of urban transportation in Bangalore.This paper maps and explains the institutional structure of urban transportation policy in Bangalore, India. Our critique of individual agencies and methods of policy making and implementation will demonstrate how the current setup negatively affects urban transportation planning in Bangalore. We  suggest about broad institutional changes that we believe would improve outcomes and service delivery.