Concept Note Jan 2012

205+1 environment conferences (2012-2014) for awareness, advocacy and public dialogue, engaging with local people across India www.environmentconferences.org 1 Why India plays an important role in protecting the environment India is a vast country with a large population, amazing social diversities, social & economic biases and inequalities. India is a growing consumer economy and will one day have amongst the largest group of consumers in the world. However, the population of India must be seen beyond that of potential consumers for international markets. The Indian population must play an important role in protecting the environment. It is therefore increasingly important that work is done to create environmental awareness with the common people of India towards sustainable development. We need to explore the people, groups and organizations working for environmental issues on the real ground if we are serious about protecting the environment. Exclusive awareness and participatory dialogue programs with the common people is needed that promote decentralized methods of protecting the environment. However, currently in India there is little public dialogue or community awareness about the local and global issues facing the environment. What is climate change? What are other issues facing the environment? And what are roles people can play to protect the environment? In answering these questions, it is our view that environmental issues cannot be resolved only by funded academic research, or through grants and programs supported by government agencies. Environmental problems need to be resolved by and between individuals, which includes common people, the corporate sector, academics, NGOs and government. All sectors and all individuals need to consider their role in protecting the environment and work together towards a common goal. In order to begin to work towards sustainable development, we propose a chain of environment conferences. The most important activity of this chain of environment conferences is a dialogue with common people about their environment, its problems and potential solutions. If common people will understand how environmental issues are related to them and their future generations, then they can start to work for the environment sincerely, including advocating to government and private sector to make better policies for the environment that promote its sustainability. 2 The activity Ground Report India (GRI) was founded as an accountable media platform. The people of GRI go to the ground for their reports. In this process they found that there is a missing gap - most people didn’t understand or were not aware about environmental issues, even though it is one of the most important issues of the world today. GRI has also published special editions on water, agriculture and tribal issues. Through this, GRI found that many common people and local communities are Page 1 of 7