Environment and Emergency are Synonyms

Reading Time: 3 minutes 5th June World Environment Day (WED). It is an annual global event coordinated by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) where I led the most successful global programme of capacity building of the 146 developing countries that resulted in ‘flattening’ the rising curve (to use current COVID19 terminology!) of Ozone Layer Depletion. Now the ozone layer …

Acceptance Speech – Honaris Causa

Reading Time: 6 minutes Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre, Former Director UNEP and IIT Alumnus Chief Guest Dr G Madhavan-ji Nair-ji, founder President Dr Vishwanath-ji Karad, Executive Presidents Prof Dr Mangesh-ji Karad, my IIT Bombay colleague Vice Chancellor Sunil-ji Rai, Distinguished Guests, young, successful and jubilant Graduates and Post-graduates, their beaming and proud parents and grandparents, professors and …

Wuhan deadly Virus and Wuhan informal Spirit – Is there Missing Link?

Reading Time: 5 minutes By Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre, Former Director UNEP, Alumnus of IIT Bombay. This article appeared in Social Asia Monitor ( SAM) & Media India Group on 5th Feb 2020 as : Now that evacuation of Indian students and citizens from Wuhan city and the surrounding area in China has been nearly achieved and …

World Ozone Day 2019 Celebrating Montreal Protocol- Treaty to save the world

Reading Time: 3 minutes Every year September 16 is observed as the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer across the world. On this day in 1987, 197 nations inked the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. The celebrations are also known as World Ozone Day. According to the United Nations, the theme for …

Invisible but Invincible Link

Reading Time: 4 minutes Biodiversity , Climate Change and Economic Development  One million species of plants and animals face extinction. This is ominous.  Biodiversity crisis requires transformative change across economic, social and technological factors and that it is not too late to make a difference. Read : former IPBES Chair Sir Robert Watson. 

Reading Time: 2 minutes By Dr Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre, Former Director UNEP Young Leo , one of the interns of the International E-Internship Programme, launched by TERRE Policy Centre, asked a simple question that itself embedded a hidden solution to world’s most pressing and clamoring challenge. How to feed, soon to be, 9 billion humanity without ravaging …

Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s Modi’s Moment with Reverse Migration. Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre, former Director UNEP, IIT Alumni Also appeared in: PM Narendra Modi is at his best in the crisis. Because he knows the path-ways to transform the crisis into the opportunity. The tsunami of COVID19 pandemic has compelled him literally to lock down the …

Reading Time: 3 minutes Pune, 3 April 2020, Much needed internet tool for supporting poor, needy and stranded students in the midst of lockdown due to COVID19 was launched with express speed by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) today. Within two days of the video conferencing between TERRE Policy Centre and AICTE on need assessment, the experts …

Reading Time: 3 minutes By Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE, Former Director UNEP, IIT Alumnus More than his birth anniversary world knows more on his death itinerary. Not many were aware that 24th February was 65th birth anniversary of Steve Jobs . He was born on February 24, 1955. That was the day when a genius avatar arrived on the …

Reading Time: 6 minutes By Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre, former Director UNEP, and IIT Alumni This article appeared in https://mediaindia.eu/politics/sultan-qaboos-bin-said-henry-kissinger-of-middle-east-with-a-difference/ I strongly feel that the United Nations owes him more than just half-mast. My experience with Oman and visits during my UN days revealed Sultan Qaboos bin Said’s new world of quiet diplomacy, a monarchy committed to the people …

Reading Time: 3 minutes On the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, a unique initiative of Carbon Neutrality was taken by 12 Universities from across India in accordance with the theme of ‘Not Zero Net Zero’. Vice-Chancellors of these 12 leading institutions took a single-focused voluntary pledge in unison to develop the roadmap towards making …

Reading Time: 6 minutes COVID-19 and Rural India At a time when social media and some of the mainstream ones are spreading messages of communal hatred, stories of humanity are emerging from various parts of the country. Here is one such story from a small town in Satara in Maharashtra. Its roots go back to centuries. Rajendra Shende Chairman …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Yes, Narendra Modi has crossed the boundary of Gujarat and has become a national leader and world’s trailblazer. But when I met youth from three key universities in Gandhinagar, capital of the state of Gujarat, I could not hold my expression that they are “ Youth from Modi’s Gujarat”. Here is why: I was invited …

Reading Time: 2 minutes Time to Start Decarbonisation  We are heading for the sixth extinction of life on the earth. 5th extinction was 65 million years back when dinosaurs and life on the earth vanished when a meteorite struck our planet . The reason? If the temperature rise is to be limited to 2 deg C then unprecedented and far reaching …

Reading Time: 3 minutes It is not the number of trees you plant that matters. It is how early you plant them. The best time to plant the tree was not 20 years back. It was 27 years back when United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC) was signed in Earth Summit at Rio, Brazil. This is …