Caring the Mother Earth

Climate Change and Global Warming are the buzz words these days. Everyone talks about the rising temperatures, diminishing water resources, drought situations and melting of glaciers. However, it is high time we go beyond the discussions. We really need to come up with innovative ideas to mitigate the climate change.

While saying this, one should also notice that the picture is not so gloomy. There are a few efforts going on, on individual as well as institutional levels. Though scattered in the nooks and corners of the country, these efforts are worth making a difference! The need is to recognise, encourage and strengthen them by highlighting them and giving them the necessary technology support.

The JSW Foundation is exactly doing the same by creating a forum called Earth Care Awards that recognises the real heroes in the society, who are trying to come up with the solutions in their own innovative ways.

JSW Foundation

JSW Foundation is an independent institution and is governed by a Board of Trustees who is drawn from the senior management of the JSW group of companies. It plans and implements social development activities of the JSW group of companies. The Foundation is headed by Mrs Sangita Jindal while the executive is headed by Shri Jugal Tandon in his capacity as CEO, Corporate Sustainability.

A social development policy has been accepted by the group. JSW cherishes people and believes in inclusive growth to facilitate creation of a value based and empowered society through continuous and purposeful engagement of all stakeholders. In partnership with external development agencies, JSW would strive to achieve sustainable development in all spheres of life including integrated community development, promotion of arts and culture, environment protection and sports .

As a responsible corporate, JSW would integrate its environment, HR and ethical business policies with appropriate community engagement and gender equity. JSW is committed to allocation of 1.5% of its PAT to pursue its CSR policy. In tune with this, JSW Foundation works closely with village communities and creates synergies with other verticals of the JSW group to assimilate their intervention in a social development framework.

Environment Initiatives

To create an environmental friendly environ, the Foundation builds model villages by developing rural infrastructure complete with roads and drainage system. To improve living standards, it creates sanitary facilities for providing effective disposal of solid waste. The Foundation also sensitizes rural eco-friendliness through enhanced tree planting.

The Foundation builds libraries and has also built an art centre for accelerating rural socio-cultural development. To create garbage-free villages, the Foundation sets up garbage management units using proper garbage handling mechanism. It takes utmost care to create rural awareness on the importance of hygiene and the crucial role people can play to make that a reality. To minimize waste produced the Foundation has introduced scientific  recycling and reusing technologies.

Earth Care Awards

As a step forward to applaude the efforts of industries and communities across the country in mitigating Climate Change and coming up with new sustainable and energy efficient models of development , the JSW Foundation has started distributing the Earth Care Awards. It has come as an encouragement to the environment-friendly solutions and fosters excellence in mitigation and adaption.

The awards were instituted in 2008 as a small but strong beginning in an effort towards creative mass awareness on the issue of Climate Change. The Earth Care Awards is unique and is aimed at highlighting action of direct relevance to India to tackle challenges posed by climate change. This is in response to the recently growing consciousness about issues associated with climate change and that it is important to identify and foster locally evolved options to reduce emissions, approaches to protect land and water resources and other innovations for reducing impacts, emphasizing appropriate environmental action.

The awards are generally given in the 4 categories.

Community led action on Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change with respect to Water Resources, Land Use, Land Use Change & Forestry

Some major initiatives on conservation of water and land resources reflecting mitigation and adaptation goals justified the appropriateness of the framework and the scope defined in earlier editions of the award. This has infused confidence and the hope to encounter a much larger number of such initiatives this time around.

The Jai Malhar Village Watershed Committee were the winners of this category in 2010. It is based in the village Wankute in Sangamner taluka of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra. As the village falls in the rain shadow zone of the Sahyadri hills, water for both agriculture and for domestic use was very scarce. To overcome this situation, the villagers devised wide range of approaches to water conservation like various barriers (contour bunds, check dams, gabions) and shallow excavations (contour trenches, farm ponds, reservoirs in bedrock), starting from ridge to valley to arrest the flow of surface runoff.

Innovation For Climate Protection

The earlier edition of the award saw some interesting initiatives on energy efficiency enhancement, networking to reduce redundancy in energy use; capture of pollutants etc. with a significant bearing on mitigation performance of the innovations.

In 2010, Tarakanath Chowdhury was winner of this category. He has developed an electronic LPG optimum burning system. It is meant to regulate the flow of gas and therefore, making efficient use of fuel in the burners used predominantly in domestic gas –cooking system. This is designed to reduce consumption of LPG and also the emission intensities caused by burning of fuel.

Green House Gas mitigation in Small & Medium Enterprises

One of the most encouraging aspects of the award is the response from diverse sectors of industries showcasing their significant work on avoiding emissions and improving efficiency of energy use.

Green House Gas mitigation in Large Enterprises

Some of the evidences the award process looks for, include a clear reduction in the quantity and diversity of greenhouse gases released during various stages of production in large scale industry. The specific emphasis is on the release of these gases; thereby relying not exclusively on the correlates between reduction in energy consumption and on emissions alone.

Companies such as ONGC, Mahindra and Mahindra, Videocon, Air India have emerged winners in the last two categories thereby underlining their committment towards becoming energy efficient.

Besides the Earth Care Awards, there are some interesting Earth Care Initiatives such as Earth Care Quiz, Advertising, Painting and Roundtables that engage a variety of stakeholders. Ultimately, the idea is to come up with a plethora of innovations from across the different sections of the society.