State of the World 2009 Launches in India

Every year, Worldwatch Institute publishes it's annual ‘State of the World' report, and this year's theme is Climate Change: Into a Warming World. The Indian Edition of the 2009 issue is being launched by the Centre for Environment Education (CEE).

State of the World has been a benchmark for discussions on various issues of sustainability and the annual volume acts as a platform to launch further discussion, study, and research.

The launch of the Indian edition is being organized in different parts of the country - Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Lucknow, Orissa and Pune. In Pune, the launch and panel discussions are scheduled to be at 2.30 pm, on 6th October, 2009 at ICC, Senapati Bapat Road in partnership with Janwani and MCCIA. While the larger issues relating to climate change will be discussed, each launch event is focusing on specific themes. The theme for the Pune launch is ‘Cities'.

David Satterthwaite and David Dodman's article on ‘The Role of Cities in Climate Change' in SoW 2009 highlights:

• Cities are often implicated in discussions on CC. They have been made a focus of reductions in GHGs, the sources of which include industrial production, transport, buildings, waste, etc.
• However, it is difficult to decide how GHG allocation is done in the case of industrial production (or even power production) - at the point of production or at the point of consumption? And cities that have manufacturers of ‘green products' like solar panels and windmills - they will have high local GHG emissions, but would be contributing to savings elsewhere
• There is a lot of variation regarding quantity of GHG emissions between different cities. Satterthwaite suggests that maybe cities in developed world are to blame? He however, also points out that some studied cities show lower GHG levels than their national averages in Europe and North America e.g. New York and London.
• So instead of a blanket blame on cities, it is better to assess particular activities. Making cities the culprit misses the fact that GHG emissions are caused by consumption patterns of middle and upper income groups.
• Also, it misses the role that well-planned cities have in achieving good a good quality of life with low GHG levels.
• Cities also have a concentration of opportunities for enhancing Quality of Life with low GHG emissions: arts, theatre, music, library etc
• Cities also need to focus on vulnerability, protecting people, preparedness, resilience, such as the steps taken in the city of Manizales, Colombia for lowering risk

For more information on Worldwatch Institute's India program, click here.