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Climate Change
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- Climate Change data post Industrial Revolution; Correlation between GHG concentrations and temperature rise
- Differentiation between 'Natural' and 'Human' induced causes of rise in GHG concentration.
- Sources of GHG emissions e.g. Agriculture,Industry,Land Use etc
- Future projections of temperature rise as correlated to rise in GHG concentration
- Future projections of consequences of temperature rise e.g. changes in weather patterns, sea levels, species loss, impact on cropping patterns etc
- What will it take to mitigate the effects of Global Warming ? What will it take to reverse the effects of GW ? e.g. Cap GHG emissions at 350 PPM and what that translates into for social actors ( Industry, Agri etc)
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- Specific effects of GW on tropical countries like India i.e. Change in cropping patterns, increase in vector borne diseases, Himalayan glacier melting, Increased Water Stress
- What is India's contribution to GW Per Capita and Total ? how will this play out in the next two decades ?
- How is India to balance its compulsions for poverty alleviation, economic growth and GHG mitigation ?
- What will it take for India to adopt the Low-Carbon pathway - from the perspectives of Policies, Governance, Investments etc ?
- What will be the impact of climate change on India's disadvantaged ? What adaptation mechanisms will work best for India ?
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- The complex patterns of interconnectedness between and within natural ecosystems e.g. the link between rise inatmospheric CO2 concentrations and the acidification of oceans, the latter's impact on marine life and the feedback effect on the former ; The impact of melting polar ice on ocean currents with consequent impact on weather patterns across the world
- The impact of biodiversity loss on finding new medical cures
- Changes in weather patterns and their impact on cropping patterns - specifically, how this will play out in different geographic and climatic zones of the world ? And the consequent effect on food security, and food prices with all its geopolitical dimensions !
- The impact of changes in rainfall patterns on water endowment - esepcially when combined with the effect of water runoffs on account of deforestation
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- The probabilistic nature of climate change predictions pose this fundamental question -'How real are the risks of widespread damage and destruction from global warming ?"
- What approach should we adopt - a precautionary one that is pivoted on trying to slow the causes of GW Or a pragmatic one that suggests 'Adaptation as we go by' ?
- How should India respond ? Should it continue with its Economic agenda and concentrate primarily on economic well being for its population or should it try to balance socioeconomic with ecological goals ?
- To what extent should India take responsibility for GHG mitigation ? How should its efforts towarda a Low-Carbon economy be funded - substantially by developed countries or only partially with the balance being funded by a progressive Carbon Taxation regime of the kind that Australia has recently promulgated ?
- Where should the solutions focus be - on large scale investments in R&D on alternatives to Coal and other Hydrocarbon fuels....Or preventing deforestation....Or on a balance of both ?
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Water
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- How do we collect water cycle data ?
- What, if any, are the boundaries of the water cycle in a chosen area ?
- Ground water - the challenges of rights, responsibility in its usage.
- Water usage in/around your community
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- Water and its social context in Indian history?
- What has changed? Why ?
- How is water usage distributed across different sectors in India - agriculture, home use, industry etc?
- How does water pollution happen and what is the extent of this pollution?
- What are aquifers and what is its significance to our lives and what are the trends?
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- Who owns water ? Is It free ?
- If it is free, how can we be responsible ?
- If it is to be purchased, how do we ensure equity (i.e, access to disadvantaged and unrepresented sections?)
- Water and big cities - the costs and issues
- Agriculture - The debate on dams and alternative forms of harvesting.
- Big Dams (can feed a power hungry nation) Vs smaller dams (lesser harm for environment, diffciult to harvest power?)
- Waste wate - Waste is linked to what we produce and cosume.
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- No regulation or governance on water usage for Agriculture ?
- Usage policies for water ?
- How do we ensure equity in water ?
- The debate on recycled water and its use.
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Production and Consumption
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- How much do we consume as individuals/family/community/residental colony/schools/colleges?
- How does consumption patterns link to different class of people (rich, poor etc), castes, rural v/s urban?
- What is the lifecycle of important products we use in our lives: from where something is extracted from earth (wood, energy, mining) to where it is disposed as waste?
- What is the lifecycle impact of different products and servcies we use ?
- How can companies disclose the lifecycle impact?
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- What are the key issues in production and consumption in India and how do they link to sustainability:
- primary extraction (forest, mining etc): have there been any change in policies?
- manufacturing (low scale, high scale, factory): what are the major trends? how sustainable are our industries?
- agriculture: Are our consumption styles promoting unsustainable agriculture ? Short term yield Vs Sustainability?
- labour & technology: what are the interlinakges of technologies with different labour-intensiveness to sustainability?
- consumerism: Is consumerism rampant in the country? what are the ethical issues underlying sustainability?
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- What are the external effects of our production and consumption economy? where does economy meet ecology? Eg: We all eat food, build houses, move around in vehicles, wear clothes etc. Where does each of it come from? Is it related to ecology?
- Are more and more of life's essentials and what we value being commoditised? Eg: What is all the discussion about water privatisation all about?
- Is there a distancing of sources of production from consumption and from waste displosal? Eg: The petrol we use in a car or bus or bike, where does it come from? where does it go to after the drive? same with the wood in our furniture?
Are we citizen's of India or consumers of a globalising economy? what does these two conceptions of human beings mean to our identity?
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- There is a school of thought that we should focus on creating more jobs. Little bit of damage to environment on the way is inevitable but we shouldn't be dettered by that. There is another school of thought that we should move ahead cautiously and even if a new factory creates jobs we shouldn't permit it if damages the environment. That environment friendly development is possible. Can you trace these two points of view through an issue (like water, some new factory, or SEZ, agriculture, transportation etc) close to your city or town or village and come out with what these mean in real terms and how our decisions would be different in each case. Which side are you on and why?
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Cities and communities
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- Cities have an advantage of scale and efficiency in a globalised/connected world. What are the future trends ? Do we know the true environmental costs ? Social impact due to move to city centers..?
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- How does this stack against the "India lives in its villages" ?
- Wide variations in socio-economic status of people in cities….Why and what can one do…?
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- City ecosystem and its impact on energy, water usage and due to waste/pollution.
- How is it impacting farming practices - urban farming anyone ?
- What is the impact on biodiversity - is it only for far-off forests and reserves ?
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- The shift from agrarian/local economy to a services/production led globalised economy was/is inevitable ?
- Primary aim of cities is efficiency and economic growth opportunities for masses. What about other impacts ?
- ICT and effective policies can enable decentralised/responsible growth
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Our Homes
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- What are the different kinds of homes in rural and urban India and what are the recent trends - huts, slums, simple pucca houses, flats? How are these constructed and what are the sustainability issues around construction and maintenance of our homes?
- What is the energy , water use in our homes and are these different in different kind of homes, different in urban and rural areas? What data can you gather on this?
Types of homes - owned, rented, leased, shared and its impact on resource governance
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- How many people in India have homes? How many have kacha v/s pucca homes?
- What happens to homes in different disaster zones - floods, earthquakes etc? are our homes safe?
- What are the major trends in housing especially as there is a mass migration to urban centers?
- Homes - what functions does it have - Stay…Work?, Produce/Grow ? Study? Learn ?
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- Homes and community responsibility - for energy, water usage and waste disposal.
Using ICT's for resource management
Framing policies that help homes and communities
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- Framing of policies (enablers) that give individuals/homes the choice.
- Homes, communities based on integration and colocation of services and production.
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Biodiversity
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- How much information do you have about our local and regional - climate, trees, plants, insects, animals, water bodies, nearby forests, soil etc.
- How will you go about finding more about it?
- What are extinctions and what is the rate and nature of extinctions happening on the planet?
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- What is the State of the Environment in India as far as biodiversity is concerned? What is your understanding of your region's biodiversity and the trends? Give examples to illustrate your point.
- Describe and analyse Indian traditions, relgious or otherwise which directly or indirectly relate to protection of biodiversity.
- What are the major environmental conservation efforts in India and how effective have they been?
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- Biodiversity has been identified with three levels: species diversity, ecosystem diversity and genetic diversity. What do these 3 levels mean and give examples and illustrate these three levels in the context of India? What are the trends in biodiversity in India and the world?
- Biodiversity is related to agricutlure, human health, business and industry, technology. Pick up any 2 or 3 of these and trace the linkages of these with biodiversity.
What is the significance of the acronym coined by E.O. Wilson: HIPPO? Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, human over-Population and Over-harvesting. What do these mean and quote data, analyse and establish linkages.
- What are the major conservation efforts and how effective have they been?
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- There is a school of thought saying that biodiversity loss has occurred throughout ecological history and this is nothing new and we are worrying about a non-existent problem. There is another school of thought that such mass extinctions are quite rare and caused by us. There is another more skeptical school which says that if we are destroying the fragile ecosystem which made our own lives possible then the planet's climate will change in the direction of making us extinct and the problem will be solved thus!
Where do you stand and why?
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Agriculture
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- The availability of food and its prices is closely linked to world food production and its trade - variations impact the vulnerable the most...What are your views on globalisation of the food chain ?
- What are different agricultural practices in India? What are the different agriculture produces - numbers, statistics etc?
What are the facts, numbers and statistics related to the Public Distribution System in India and how does this link to agriculture?
- Agriculture - Yield, overall production capacity and goal of meeting nutrition needs.
What are your views on the science of nutrition which is mainly based on breaking the "sum into parts" and delivering the parts separately ? Is it holistic and beneficial to the society ?
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- Agriculture provides for human nutritional needs. Recently ICMR has published a detailed report on nutritional requirements & recommended dietary allowances for Indians which has been widely debated.
- What do the reports and the facts and numbers in it really say? How are nutritional needs related to poverty? Why has this report acquired centrality in the poverty debate?
- Agriculture remains the mainstay of rural India. What is our understanding of rural areas and the practice of agricutlure in India?
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- Agricutlure is related to livelihood, rural life, urban consumption patterns, right to food, public distribution system, environmental damage & pollution (pesticides, high extraction of ground water), deforestation. Pick up any 2 or 3 of these and trace the linkages from agricultural practices to the other factors.
- For example: Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is projected to increase prodction capacity by around 13% this century due to carbon fertilisation effects (Worldwatch Institute). How do we assess the benign effects of this vis-a-vis the other adverse impacts of climate change ?
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- The "Green Revolution" stressed mechanised production and productivity. What about the environmental impacts and distribution aspects ? Are farmers more dependent on external inputs now ?
- Did the predominatly mono culture type of production ignore the complex ecosystem of food production and its wider impacts ? Assess the debate between mechanical/fertiliser farming and 'back in vogue' organic farming.
- What was the debate around genetically modified crops all about? What were the different points of views around this issue?
- Thomas Malthus's point of view on the possibility and impact of increasing human population... Did history prove him right or wrong? Why? Or is it too early to comment on it?
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Role of ICT
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- ICT's role in collecting and sharing information.
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- ICT penetration
- Misuse Vs empowerment
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- Digital divide and ICT
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- ICT - only an information tool and thus can only achieve so much ?
- Bridging the divide through interactive and alternate channels in ICT
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Role of Policies, Regulations
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- The track record of environmental policies in India and World
- Policy diversity, acceptance, representatio
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- Governance and implementation issues
- Local governance enablers
- Amorphous bondaries of sustainability issues.
- Top down or Grassroots led
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- Equity gap - and impact on policy implementation
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- Policy approaches - Enabling Vs Directive approach
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