The elephant in the conference room at COP26 in Glasgow

Reading Time: 7 minutes Climate finance lags way behind rich world commitments As the United States mounts pressure on developing nations, including India, to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, President Joe Biden and other developed world nations need to remember and fulfil their part of the deal as well – providing adequate financial assistance to the developing …

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 …

Reading Time: < 1 minutes August 5 was the first Death Anniversary of my beloved mother, Smt Vimlabai Shende. She was not just a mother but a guide and teacher to me, having a profound influence on my life and my personal and professional journey. Her death anniversary was observed in my native place Rahimatpur and was attended by people …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Rescuing & reviving Indian rivers By Rajendra Shende, former Director UNEP, IIT Alumni Getting to the roots of the problem, rapid bio-assessment of river water downstream Most water bodies across the globe and notably in India have been decimated to a large extent due to human greed and uncontrolled pollution and dam building. Attempts to …

Reading Time: 7 minutes How battle warriors can become climate warriors: India’s visionary policy to rescue a planet on fire By Rajendra Shende , former Director UNEP, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre , IIT Alumni and well known environmentalist -Their Way Propaganist Jul 05, 2022 The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has operations in more than 130 countries. In …

Reading Time: 2 minutes The G20 countries, which include India and China, are responsible for around 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and 85 % of global GDP. In the G20 countries, around 70 % of climate impacts could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5°C instead of 3°C. The recent meeting of the Environment, Climate and Energy ministers of G20 …

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: 2 minutes The sea is swallowing villages, rivers are sweeping away the dams, fires are gulping forests, heat waves are frying the ecosystem around us. Time is running out to arrest the catastrophic global warming. There is no need at all to question the existence of global warming. One can see all the extreme events happening more intensely …

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 …