1. ED’s Note
The dark clouds
Recently, a post on my Facebook wall read something like this: the
Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Scaling it to 46 years, we’ve been here for
4 hours, and our industrial revolution began just a minute ago. In that
time, we have destroyed more than 50 percent of the world’s forests.
Indeed, the veracity of the facts presented in the post can be debated
and discussed, but we can’t debunk them anymore. It is a no-brainer that
the current model of growth and progress is no more sustainable from
an economic and ecological point of view. India stands to be impacted
relatively more severely, if a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) report
is to be any indicator.
The annual Global Competitiveness Report by WEF underscores the
co-relation of sustainability and economic well-being. For the first time,
WEF has come up with sustainability-adjusted Global Competitiveness
Index (GCI), a metric that intends to assess the “the set of institutions,
policies and factors that make a nation remain productive over the longer
term while ensuring social and environmental sustainability”. India, the
Shashwat DC world’s second-largest country by population, scores rather poorly on the
Editor -in-Chief new metric. Of the 144 countries ranked on the GCI scale, India slipped
in rank from 56 to 59.
A silver lining That’s not the worst part though.
When the sustainability metrics—social and environmental—were
is that India integrated, India’s overall score fell from 4.32 to 3.73, on a scale of seven.
Moreover, India was the worst performer among the BRIC nations, far
has the highest behind others in the group.
number of The writing is clear on the wall, and indeed our government needs
to draft thorough legislations that also incentivize the corporate sector
LEED-rated to accelerate the green uptake, but the industry too needs to proactively
find ways and means in which they can cut their carbon footprints. This
buildings after requires a holistic approach, inside-out and outside-in.
A good place to start would be the green buildings.
the US Over the past couple of years, green buildings as a concept have gained
momentum, thanks to the financial windfall it brought with certified
emission reductions (CERs). The good thing is now it’s going apace, sim-
ply because of the sheer savings in terms of energy consumption. The
movement has caught up so much these days that outside of the US, India
has the highest number of LEED-rated buildings in the world.
Considering this, SustaiNuance decided to dedicate a whole issue to
green buildings, discussing the benefits, the how-to and even the contro-
versies around the rating standards. Celebrated Indian architect Hafeez
Contractor too shares his candid views on the green building movement,
and why he thinks (or rather not) that the rating business is a joke when
it comes to India.
Needless to say, we are all ears to whatever comments, quips or
thoughts that you have on the subject or on the magazine. I would encour-
age you to drop me a line at editor@sustainuance.com. Green regards till
we meet next month..
External links on sustainability
http://www.weforum.org/reports
http://www.sustainability.com/blog
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainability/blog
October 2012 Sustainuance 3