 Sir, my question is, we are talking about sustainable development and sustainability. My question is, what is sustainable living? Okay, if I understand the question correctly, you are asking what is sustainable living? That is an interesting question, sustainable living. There are a number of dimensions, so sustainable living. So we are talking about human life or human life in a society. So life, human life has got many, many aspects. So it is not only those three dimensions that, you know, environment, society and economy, but there are many other factors that also are subsumed under the term life. So I think it, the sky's the limit, you can include as many parameters to define your life as you want and each person would have a different perspective on that. But I think what we can commonly agree is that there are not only one, two or only three dimensions to life, but that there are many, many more. Is that a reasonable thing to say? Would you like to respond to that? Yes, sir. Living within the available resources, using natural resources optimally. Yeah, see one of the questions we've started engaging in is 2070, 2070. Is the expected time when the population of the world would have stabilized? Okay, so if you look at the stable population and you set up some kind of a food requirement, energy requirement, water requirement and then look to see if you were to, in some way, some fair way, be able to have that equally be available, what would that number be? Okay. Now, it's not going to get answered here, but I'm sure Nikhil has some resources and some tools that you can use to test out what would be sustainable and how you would actually be able to do your own calculations. And I think we encourage students to do that, actually have students look into what is the energy needs, what is the energy need they have today versus what they might have 10 years from now and what is the relative scale of energy usage in United States versus in a village in Maharashtra. Okay, so the quality of life is definitely associated with the amount of energy being used, but then it's up for us to again look to see what is it that we're calling quality of life. Okay, so I know these are burning questions and I also want you to know that we don't have answers to these. At the same time, I would like for us to use this opportunity to see how we can engage our students who would have similar questions and share these questions and have them be our partners in answering this question from the tools that we already know are available. Yeah, Nikhil, does that kind of sound? Yes, I'm Nanded. Sir, my question is what exactly sustainable development in the city with reference to construction or destruction of building and increase in size of road for public use? Okay, your question is about sustainable building or green building. There are a number of resources on green buildings that's an interesting area. I'm not a civil engineer, so whatever information I have, neither am I involved in town planning, city planning, those are not my areas of expertise, but there are very nice things going on in that area and I will definitely share some resources. I will probably show you some snapshots of some green buildings and there is an interesting video which we are all going to watch together. So maybe I'll partly give an answer to you on that, but about the specifics and how to design sustainable cities and all that and not the right resource. One more question from this. It's a very basic question. I've got this question while watching the movie related to wolf. It's related to the farmers. We are residing in an area which are plain fields. Here, deer hunting is prohibited. That's why their population has been increased twice, twice and so on. The farmers are finding it difficult to protect their fields. Can you suggest some measures for that? I don't think there can be a blanket solution. It would change case by case. I can make a general observation in areas where you are saying that there is some wildlife, but there is also agricultural activity. It is quite likely that the predator population might have suffered a major decline and as people expand into natural habitats for agriculture or for any other activity, it is quite likely that the predator population took a hit and as a result the deer population is going out of control. So I would say that it only reinforces what I was explaining in the beginning that this entire system knows how to balance itself. It can even absorb some disturbance from our side, but there is a limit to the disturbance. I gave you the example of the air conditioners. If I switch off the air conditioners, your body knows how to control its temperature, but there is a limit to that. I cannot put on all the heaters and if I raise the room temperature to 70 degrees Celsius and expect everybody's bodies to naturally cool themselves, that's not going to be possible. So there is a limit to the disturbance which the system can take. And I think these problems happen because we have disturbed the natural system beyond what it can take, beyond what it can handle. As to the specific answer to your question, that has to be seen. You have to look at what are the natural habitats near the agricultural fields and there may be some specific ecological issues over there. So only an expert can answer that question. Actually there are a number of non-governmental organizations, experts, naturalists, which are there in every area particularly, you are in Maharashtra, right? Yeah. So there are many naturalists and people who have researchers in the field of ecological sciences who might have studied those regions and their specific problems. Maybe you can get in touch with these NGOs and try to work, maybe even have some student projects with them. If your student had asked you this question, what would you do? Sir, I'm not finding solutions, that's why I asked. No, not a problem. I'm just saying one and a half years, what is it that you have done and failed, tell me that and then I'll be with you. But by tonight, let's begin with by tonight, you've got to give me three experts who will be able to help in this area. Okay, sir. Okay, now that's the kind of relationship you want with your student. The student will come and ask you this question. Do not let them off the hook. You got to have them get to work. Okay, sir. Thank you for all your questions and contributions. Okay, so we were at this point where I mentioned that it is not only resource management. So again, I think in the previous center that I asked the question, somebody defined sustainable living as merely living or consuming resources that the earth can sustainably supply. I think that is a very, very narrow definition. As I said, life has many more aspects. All those aspects are subsumed under the term living. And in all those aspects, we have to be sustainable. So actually there's much more, it's much wider. So mere resource management and sustainable resource management is not enough. There are many other things and even to have that sustainable resource management, many more technologies like for instance, your solar photovoltaics technology or solar thermal technologies, wind energy. So many other technologies, this is in the area of energy, but then there are many other fields of technology which will be required. But again, the governmental policies, social structures, economics, everything has a part to play. So now we are actually going to look at what are the requirements. I told, in fact, my intention of going to the various centers was not merely taking questions from everybody. But I wanted to ask a few questions of what you did with my assignment. And that didn't happen unfortunately because we had so many questions and very interesting ones. But I hope that in your notebook you have tried to answer my question. So I said that let us try to frame at least a few points on what can be a working document towards the necessary and sufficient conditions for sustainability. So what I mean by that is what are those things that are absolutely essential for us to have in order to achieve sustainable development. And then are those sufficient? So do you understand the difference between necessary and sufficient? I hope you do. So just please apply your mind, ponder over it and maybe you might think of maybe four or five points right now. But then I think by tomorrow morning if you are pondering further on it, then you would come up with more points. And that's how it should happen. You should maybe you might feel the need to maybe refer to some resources and all that, that's great. I mean I'd be really happy if you can do that. Okay, so I'm going to broadly state some of those requirements. The overriding message that I want to give over here is that simultaneous interventions from many fields are going to be required. So developments in technology are necessary. Developments in business, economics, in policy, governance. From many areas we require a convergence and agreement on the need for sustainable development and actually practical steps in each of these fields. Now that does not mean that each person, the economist, I think Professor Parthasarthi mentioned about the silo effect. Where you sit in your own silo, I'm an economist and I sit in my own silo and imagine how sustainable development should be. And maybe I draft a policy of how the nation's economy should be. And I do not consult anybody else. And the technologist, he sits in his own silo and he does the same exercise. So again that is not going to work. There has to be a dialogue between people working in different fields. And it has to evolve. So there is going to be trial and error. There are going to be failures, but the failure should not deter us. And in fact, they should help us learn and evolve to a much higher place than where we are now. So I've classified those requirements into some four points. And again, I'm saying that these are definitely necessary. But I don't think I have the sufficient set of conditions. So I think more necessary items are also here which I have not been able to write. So I'm counting on everybody else in their contributions towards getting a closer to sufficient set of conditions. So number one, there should be the governance and policies set up by the government. They should be sustainability based. So in other words, sustainability should be the end goal. And there should be a balance between the economic development, social justice, and environmental protection. These three parameters balancing these three is absolutely important. Yes, there are other factors also. But if you cannot balance these three, then I don't think sustainability is even possible. Then there has to be sustainable business. So the businesses should take responsibility in while they achieve their profits. They should also be ethical and socially responsible. Technologists have got a big responsibility. Within technology, I talked about closed loop resource management systems. Then there are renewable energy technologies and so many more things. And then there has to be regulation as well. So the industries, I know some industries are very good and they are very responsible. But there are always defaulters and swift and fair regulation is necessary. It should be objective, the regulation should not depend on who's company it is. If it is a very influential person, then he gets away with it scot-free. So such a system is not likely to lead to sustainability. So all these things and many more, all these have to come together for sustainability, okay? I've just described each of these areas in little more detail, which I leave for you to read up later. I'm just going to go through the slides. And I'm going to show you a nice video. This video is about some people, some individuals, just like you and me. They thought that their commitment to the environment doesn't stop at nearly discussing about the environment and talking about sustainability. But they actually wanted to live sustainably. So a few of these people got together, they shared a common dream. And they have come together and started sustainable communities, which are small. Some of them are the size of a small village. Some of them are even the size of a small town. So such sustainable communities have sprouted up all over the world. And India has one such community that is called as Auroville. So Auroville actually is supposed to be an international city. And it has several small communities with each community with its slightly different goals and slightly different approaches. But all within the sustainable framework. All of them generally in agreement with the sustainable paradigm. And there is one very, very interesting community called Findhorn in Scotland. There are many, many more all over the world. So what is nice about these communities? I know they are small villages and many of the things that we face in our urban lifestyle. Maybe the problems and the solutions that these people in these sustainable communities, the problems and the solutions that they encountered and the solutions that they came up with. Maybe they are not directly relevant to us in our urban lifestyle. But I think it is very instructive to study there. The way in which they have designed their way of living. And the funny thing or the most interesting part is that they live in a very, they live in a very, I would not say luxurious but very comfortable settings. So their living environment is actually quite modern and they have pukka houses. It's not like they lived, all of them live in attached roofs or something. They have good houses and the amenities and they get fresh air and organic food and nice things. In order to expose our students to such a community and such possibilities. We had taken a group of our students to Oroville, Oroville in Pondicherry. Along with there was another team from Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts. So a team from their side and a team from Amruta. All of them visited this community Oroville in Pondicherry. And the video that I'm going to show you is a documentary of what all they saw and that educational visit. So it's about that there are actually two parts to it. But I'm going to show you only one part for want of time. So with this I think what my purpose of showing this video is for you to be able to relate all those concepts that I talked about. That various areas have to coordinate together like the food, water, the agriculture, transportation. All these areas have to be thought of in a coordinated fashion to design a community like this. So even at the level of a small community, you have to integrate all these areas. So you can imagine when you scale up how difficult and how complex the design becomes. Nevertheless, I think this is very, very, very instructive. So I'm going to play this and let us watch the video. Okay, before that I want you all to just spend five minutes noting down all the new things that you learned in this video, in the Auroville video, all the new things that you saw over there, which maybe you didn't understand completely, but you saw was something good, new and things that made an impact on you. For instance, they talked about the solar bowl, solar cooking. So normally we understand solar cookers as a box that you keep outside in your terrace or your balcony and you have to shift it, but this was different. This was like a large scale canteen that was running the solar kitchen that was running on it. So you had these large parabolic reflectors and there are places in India which have even larger installations of solar cooking, steam based cooking which are running very successfully. So that was one such technology. I mean that had a great impact on my mind. Now I'm again going to play the devil's advocate. Let's imagine that somehow we managed to implement all these major changes to our industrial processes. You remember industrial symbiosis, industrial ecology, our resource management and then so many changes in our economic and governance systems, all these, they are very drastic changes. I mean we are nowhere close to implementing them. But at least conceptually let us try to understand what all is required for sustainable development. So how can we be sure that even if we somehow magically were able to achieve all of this that we will achieve sustainability? Why I'm saying I'm playing the devil's advocate is that we cannot be sure because I told you to note down the set of necessary and sufficient conditions because so far whatever we have covered are necessary conditions, but they are not sufficient. Many more things are sufficient which we have probably we do not have an adequate understanding or which we have not thought of so far. For instance one important thing something that we didn't pay much attention to maybe it was at the back of our minds but we probably did not give much importance to it and that is that we never questioned what causes unsustainability in a fundamental way. So what caused this unsustainability unless we understand that how can we remove the problem? So if you don't go to the root of the problem how can you understand what the solution might be? What are the chances of you just coming up with the correct solution when you don't even know what the cause is? The chances are very slim and since we never did that analysis of what caused unsustainability in the first place, why we got into this place it is very likely that we probably do not have the complete set of conditions required for sustainability. So that that says that that emphasizes the need for a deeper inquiry. Now I'm going to point you to some of my initial slides where I had posed a question and I think some of you might have even noted it down. It was about questioning whether the various problems which constitute unsustainability whether all those problems are mere symptoms of something deeper, some deeper root cause. So I had asked people to just keep that question in your minds and we would come back to it and we are at that point now. So I'm going to give you an example. See, let's say you have a viral infection so the virus is the root cause and that manifests as various symptoms such as headache, fever, coughing, sneezing, runny nose and so many things, right? So how do you normally deal with any disease where there is a root cause which may be either a bacterial infection or a viral infection and the symptoms? So there are two things that are required, two approaches that have to be simultaneously pursued. The first is controlling the symptoms. So if you have a high fever, you obviously have to control the fever. But that doesn't cure the disease. So I'm helping you relate that with the environmental problems. Let's say you have a high fever that is called global warming. Yes, global warming needs to be controlled otherwise a person can die of fever. So global warming should be controlled. But what if that global warming is merely one of the many symptoms? And I told you that there are environmental problems and simultaneously there are social problems. Is it possible that all of them have a common root? So again I want people to ponder on this. So the symptomatic treatment is one part and then diagnosis and treatment, the actual treatment of the disease is the second part. So the diagnosis and specific treatment alone is the permanent solution. But the temporary solution must also be pursued. So one should not be complacent enough to think that merely by solving all the symptoms separately and independently that we have cured the disease. It doesn't work that way. So bringing you back to our discussion where we saw various environmental problems like global warming, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water pollution, waste problem. And then social problems like crime, poverty, hunger, corruption and all these things, wars, terrorism. So we have environmental problems, we have social problems. Is it possible that all these are mere symptoms of a common root cause? I want you to take this in, assimilate it a little bit. I'm not expecting anybody to answer this question right now. Neither am I going to provide an answer, a very direct answer in this session. But I want you to think about it. For want of time, I'm going to allow you to ponder later. Although I might ask you questions about this in my next session tomorrow. So please be prepared. So we don't know what that root cause is, okay? And that analysis is to be done by you over a long period of time. And the answers are not going to come up right away. You may have certain perspectives and I may have slightly different perspectives. I don't think anybody knows the right answer. Maybe few people do have the right answer, but maybe not all of us know about it or agree with it, okay? Now thinking in this direction, many people have understood that it is after all about human well-being. The sustainability is in the context of consumption of resources. So at a very gross level, it is about consumption of resources. If we are over consuming, then it is unsustainable. If we are consuming within the earth's bio capacity, then it is sustainable. So sustainability and consumption are very closely related. Even in a social context, consumption in a slightly broader sense is still valid. So consumption and sustainability are very closely related. And consumption and well-being are very closely related. Why do you consume? You will continue to consume unless you are in a state of well-being. As long as you feel inadequacy, you will consume. So you will ask for some resources, you will want, okay? So consumption, sustainability and well-being, human well-being are all very closely related. And it is in this context that people have tried to quantify human well-being. So there are various metrics that people use and each have their own pros and cons. There is, so one thing is very clear that it is not only the standard of living that is relevant, but it is the quality of life that includes other aspects such as the cultural aspects, the ecological aspects, which also need to be included in our concept of human well-being. There is also the human development index. There is something called as the happy planet index. So where it quantifies the attained well-being, which may not necessarily come from material goods per unit of extraction or consumption of resources. So in other words, if you are consuming less, but if you are achieving more satisfaction or more well-being, then on the happy planet index scale you are higher as opposed to a person who is getting the same amount of well-being with larger amount of resources. So there are various indices that people are looking at in order to arrive at a good connection between consumption, sustainability and well-being. So in this discussion there are several questions that, see I would like to maybe state a disclaimer in that this topic again at Amruta we cover in much greater detail, but again in the limited time it is very tough to go deep into this. But I am just maybe posing a few questions for you to ponder and then let you take it from there. So according to some of these indices like particularly the happy planet index where the consumption of resources need not necessarily to well-being and well-being can be achieved even without consuming of certain resources. So maybe we even need to question indiscriminate use of technology. I am not questioning technology. Technology is very important, but indiscriminate use of technology to satisfy market demand is what I am suggesting that we question. So maybe we can ask questions like I mean what is the harm in asking a question like is the technology even satisfying a basic need or can that need be satisfied by a commonsense solution? I will give you an example. Old curtains can be easily stitched into cloth shopping bags. My mother has been doing that for a very long time. All our shopping bags in my home they are made out of old curtains. They look a little odd, but they are sometimes quite colorful also. So I have even had questions from fellow shoppers as to where I got that bag from. Some of them look pretty, quite pretty also. So then if we, if the shopping bag market can be satisfied by old curtains and we are not consuming any new cloth for that, they are just old curtains which have, which have been reused. So in that case the technology of these ultra high molecular weight polyethylene carry bags which are a problem from the recycling point of view, they become unnecessary. I am not saying that the ultra high molecular weight polyethylene is to be banned or something like that. Don't construe me as a, as a kind of radical person, I am not that. But my question is that we need to think in that way also. There is another example that I see in Maharashtra and many places in very dry places people try to grow fruits like strawberries because they are good cash crops. My question is that really required. Indian jujube which is bear or in Marathi called as bore grows wild in such places. It does not even require irrigation. The fruits are so tasty, they are highly nutritious. They have much greater shelf life. But we insist on not growing that and growing strawberry. I know Indian jujube is also cultivated. It is not like it is not cultivated. But people have a preference for strawberries and they do not give much importance to Indian jujube. I remember a time during my college days I had gone to Sariska Tiger Reserve and with a couple of friends and we were planning an environmental camp over there. So we were in the reserve park for some three days and we did not have any source of food over there. So on the three days we really survived by eating bear. We had gone in winter and the entire forest floor is like covered with in places where you have this bear. It is like covered with fallen fruit and we feasted on that and really they are quite satisfying and little supplemented a little bit with some namkeen that we had carried with us. So this is a very nice fruit and there is no need to just have because growing strawberries in a dry place, you know, you are placing a lot of demand on irrigation water, a lot of pesticides, herbicides that are used in the process. So what is the need when alternative fruits are there? So now don't hold me to this one example, I am just posing a generic question. So the happy planet index, the quality of life index, the various indices are pointing out that human well-being has many other dimensions not only consumption of resources and beyond the point, you know, once your basic needs are met through consuming of physical resources then the focus should shift from that to somewhere else. There are many other areas which define us as human beings. So maybe we should shift our emphasis beyond a certain point away from consumption. Now in this process education plays a vital role. This slide is slightly out of place but this slide should have come maybe a little before where I expected people to ponder and investigate on their own on what the root cause of unsustainability is. Maybe very closely related to that root cause is the erosion of values that is seen nowadays and which is now many people agree is a very serious problem. So that can be implicated in all environmental problems as well as social problems. So you talk about corruption, is that not an evidence of erosion of values or you talk about, you know, greedy consumption of resources even though you know that other people are suffering because of your overconsumption that is clearly it points to erosion of values. So maybe the root cause is hidden somewhere there, maybe it is somewhat related to the erosion of values but again if somebody talks about values we generally do not like it. So I am going to be smart about it and not discuss it further but it does not stop you from thinking about it. So what I was saying was that education is actually fundamentally essential for sustainability because the ideas about sustainability of how to live with nature in harmony as we saw in some of those sustainable communities of how people are living very close to the earth and who are living very comfortable lives, who are very aware educated, who have a very broad understanding how those people are living. If we have to ensure that our future generations are also living in the same manner then we need to educate our future generations. So the education must have two components. One is our regular education which includes your science, mathematics and all the good subjects that we study but along with that there should be ethics should also be integrated with that. When we have a balanced holistic education which includes even the value systems because unless you have those value systems how will you make decisions in favor of somebody else's benefit? How will you make decisions in favor of the environment? You would only make decisions in the favor of your selfish interest and that is what this problem is about. If you have to make decisions in favor of the common good in favor of environmental protection then we need altered value systems. So a value based holistic education is absolutely essential for sustainability. So it is quiz time, here are some instructions for the quiz. I want everybody to take a sheet of paper, maybe half a sheet of paper. There are three multiple choice questions and one slightly descriptive question. So I want people to take maybe half a sheet of paper, write your remote center name or code whichever you may have, your name the participant name. If there is a registration number you can write that and the session name you can write a sustainable development followed by my name. For the multiple choice questions I will flash the question and the options on the screen. You have to read that and you have to answer as follows. For example, if you think B is the right option for question number 1 then just write 1 B and then a comma and then for the second question you can write 2 D if you think D is the answer and 3 C. For question 4 you can give a brief descriptive answer then you have to submit this sheet to the remote coordinator at the end of the session who will then communicate it to us. So is that fair ok, here we go first question coming up, so if you have paid attention if you have taken notes throughout my session then I think it is going to be a breeze. So you have four options and they are a bit confusing intentionally. So please read them carefully, make sense out of it and then choose the right answer. What do you understand by sustainable and unsustainable development? Next question, so what is necessary for sustainability? I told you to note down the necessary set of conditions and sufficient set of conditions. So what is necessary for sustainability? Choose the best option because more than one option might fit but there is only one best answer. Shall we move to the next one and now the last question. So this is a descriptive question, are social and environmental problems related? Explain your stand briefly. So you may either say yes they are related or you can say no they are not related or you can qualify that by saying that yes they are related under certain circumstances. So explain it briefly, explain your stand fine. So that is all from me for now, thank you all, thank you very much for attending.