Green insights

My steps to Little Acre...

gayatri — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:44:50 -0600

They say “God can’t be everywhere, so he created mothers” and I say “mothers can’t be everywhere, so he created nature.”

The tranquility gained in the lap of Mother Nature is an experience beyond description. The lush green grass under your feet, the sound of flowing water pampering your heartbeats, the tickling cold breeze caressing your cheeks, hues of vibgyor in sky widening your imagination…Is there a substitute for any of these?

It was 12th of June, and fortunately my birthday. There could have been no better present than the jaunt to Little Acre. Though it was a professional trip for I was the newly assigned architect for the project, I was already being killed by the excitement.
I was accompanied by our project manager and the HR manager.

Since I was the only female, I got the privilege to sit in the front and I really relished the drive, thanks to the excellent driving skills of our Chelpops. We were traveling and just traveling except for a small halt for breakfast. As we were getting closer to Madikeri, the air was getting colder and fresher.

Our drive further from Madikeri till Kopatti was just awesome; I was unable to close the shutters of my camera and went on capturing each and every sight I could. It felt as if it was the way to paradise.

On our way, I got to see Mr. Tusker Singh as well…sheer luck!! It was drizzling and the drive was becoming more and more exciting through the dense groves, intermittently revealing the lofty peaks of Western Ghats.

Finally we entered, our site of little acre and there I was, in the kingdom of beauty... Everything seemed to welcome us…The wet splendor of trees overlooking the drenched green grass looked stunning. I could see possibly all tints of green, as taught in our second semester by the arts professor.

We started with moving around the site, and I was familiarizing myself with the existing built and inbuilt environment. The preeminent part was that the built aura nowhere surpassed or intruded the serenity of the place; it was so subtly placed as if denying to claim any space for itself…the steps mysteriously winded up without revealing the destination they were up to…simply adding to the enigma of the place…

As we reached planter’s bungalow, we were offered lunch with great fervor. One thing I must admit, our people at little acre are excellent hosts. That was further testified by the surprise they had arranged for my birthday, an unforgettable bliss. I could feel that purity in life and lives there. The continuous drizzle indicated the celebration of that life which amplified every now and then.

After having our lunch, we started with the list of observations and corrections, additions and subtractions. That night I hardly caught any sleep. It was so quiet outside that my own movements kept me awake.

Next morning I got up early to fetch some early morning views in my camera. I trotted the pathway like an overjoyed kid.

I stood over the grass, silently watching the beauty spread across. The distant mountain ranges, as if being softly kissed by the clouds above. I could feel as if the wind was drifting away with the clouds somewhere until the rain came again, though the flowing water in the streams was constantly burbling…

I stood their agape to fill myself with the bountiful freshness and eyes wide open in an attempt to capture all the sights my camera could not.

In some time, my companions came searching for me and three of us set out for a walk, indeed a morning walk across the rainforest.

One of the most exciting features of a rainforest are its naturally made mini-waterfalls which are splendid in look, and my Little Acre has preserved them all. Enticed by one such fall, I decided to reach its apex but the only way was through the stream.
Though, as a part of instructions, I was already briefed about the terror of blood sucking leeches, it no way dwindled my zeal.

I took off my shoes and entered the stream…the springy cold ripples doted my feet and transmitted their energy in me. I got till the mid of it where I found a rock aptly sited as if the throne of a queen. I sat on that with my feet under the thudding water…and wished if everything could freeze in that moment and I had to never leave that place.

Such is the aura of my Little Acre, a rainforest resort in making…a tribute to God’s creation.

Gayatri
"There is only one sin: That is weakness...The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game."

Calling coexistence

gayatri — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:43:05 -0600

When we talk of co-existence, the good old principle of live and let live strikes our conscience. Isn’t it?

If we dive deep into its meaning we might learn that applying the principle of co-existence to our lives can answer most of our questions related to sustainability.

In nature, there are no loose ends; every thing is in a closed loop and is cyclic; hence whatever is produced, has to be consumed somewhere and a perfect balance of consumption and production has to be maintained. The entire balance is created by coexistence that is a win-win strategy- benefiting everyone with the presence of other ones.

In fact, the theme of vernacular is nothing but coexistence—to be in existence together with the surroundings without imposing yourself.

I recall a slogan from our mythology –Kshiti, jal, pawak, gagan, sameera, paanch tatva mil bana shareera--It implies that human body is made up of five elements of nature namely Earth, Water, Fire, Sky and Air; hence it is desirable to be in harmony with these elements.

Coexistence suggests relating not only to the landscape and climate, but also to the culture of the place. A trivial example of the life of a villager I would like to mention.

He co exists with the flora and fauna indigenous to that place. The waste in various forms released by him and the animals he keeps, is ultimately utilized for enriching the soil of the fields where he grows his crops. Remains of crop become the primary diet of his domestic animals which in turn provide him food and aid in farming & transportation, etc. while the food grains are his own staple diet.

It’s a kind of mutualistic symbiosis, a relation in which the output of one is the input for the other and vice versa.

The waste produced by the animals is also used as cooking fuel as well as a disinfectant for smoothening the walls and floors of the mud houses. The agricultural waste is further used in many forms into making mats, mattresses, containers, and so on. Thus he exists in harmony with other elements of life around him.

The essence of co-existence is togetherness. But one of the central challenges is that of individual growth and development.

Say Mr. X has a house in destination A, he produces two children Y and Z, grows them well, and they also turn out to be successful and in pursuit of their success and status they too build separate houses each for themselves at destinations say B and C.

Then, Y and Z also settle and produce children Y1 Y2 and Z1 Z2. Y1,Y2,Z1,Z2 also grow up and excel in their career and to prove their potential they too buy their own houses at four other destinations D,E,F,G…and hence the development goes on and on.

Had they all stayed together in the same house and had undertaken the same occupation, don’t you think they would have been more energy and resource savvy? Are we not exceeding our needs? Every time we initiate action to raise our living standards we enhance the burden on the natural resources, the thing which is fast depleting and cause irreplaceable loss to the nature which produced us and our environment.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, co-existence is the highest degree of self reliance.

One has to be self reliant till such extent that she/he overcomes the need to exploit others to meet her/his own needs. There is a fine line between working with someone and exploiting someone. With the passage of time we have crossed this distinction and have believed that we are the born leaders and are entitled with all rights to exploit each and everything that falls on our way.

What we call human development aims at achieving higher and higher standards of self-reliance and in our attempt to achieve that we are becoming more and more dependent—dependent on more energy, more resources -- denying the existence to others.

Gayatri
"There is only one sin: That is weakness...The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game."

Oh, The Times Are A-changed

Hariharan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:02:09 -0500

A friend, a mentor and a core colleague called me this evening. He had read a report in the morning’s papers of a researcher rediscovering and mapping some of the species in the land that Henry David Thoreau inhabited in those immortal times he wrote Of Walden Pond and those other works that have since then become guiding lights for a century of thinking on the environment.

The first thought came to me even as this colleague spoke to me about is that David Thoreau has become so irrelevant to our times. However radical that thought may be, you can’t refute the fact that the world has now redefined itself so far beyond recognition from the early 20th century that a Thoreau or an Aldo Leopold or many such leaders and pioneers of thought on environmentalism lived and wrote of a world to be.

They were not wrong in aspiring for a world that would remain sane and not destroy as much as they saw as damage in their times. Only, things are far worse today than their worst fears. What would perhaps make sense for us in our current times is that that world has changed so much, in a sense, for the good, that the sheer necessity for changing the way we abuse our planet has led to many different innovations for the good. So much so, that we don’t have to worry as much in our current times about the purer forms of environmentalism that protect sanctuaries and national parks, but work more toward homing in on solutions that will offer reduced dependence on external municipal or state resources for energy, water, waste water and waste. A whole new set of technologies, protocols and practices in these areas is what will drive the future before us, in the urban context. For this is where the challenge will lie in the decades ahead.

So why would this be? It takes no stretch of imagination for us to see that this sharp and decisive turn toward urbanization of the kind that we have seen in the last decade in the world, with the historic landmark of the urban population for the first time having exceeded the rural number this year, shows that the world, into the next hundred years, will be governed by decisions and destinies that two per cent of the world’s land mass will shape for us all.

A startling statistic that bears repetition is that this 2 per cent of the world’s landmass produces nearly two-thirds of the current GDP, has 55 pc of the world’s population living in it, and consuming 75 per cent of the world’s natural resources that come from the eco-systems that the other 98 per cent of the world’s land mass represents.

What does this mean and how will the world respond to this challenge? However impractical it may sound, the contour of the future tells us that the world will adapt the best of a sustainable, pre-industrial era, and that of the market-led world’s advantages. What it shows, therefore, as a trend into the future, is a clear turn to a point where these ecosystems beyond the urbanized regions will soon see a sharp reduction in the harm and damage that this 98 per cent of the lands are suffering today.

Business and Local Governments will quickly see that what are today nascent notions of, say, urban agriculture; treatment of all city waste to a point where we don’t just reuse them as a socially responsible thing to do, but as an economic imperative; producing power at levels were renewable energy either from the sun or the waste of cities becomes an economic reality; ‘growing your own water’ becomes a necessity where dependence on fresh water is reduced by nearly 70 per cent, and therefore growth of these urban nodes is made more possible….

When you have such inclusive, self-sustaining systems acquired by these urban pockets of the world, the city’s need to rely on the vast outlying ecosystems of forests and sanctuaries and the wealth of natural resources residing there will fall steadily.

Some examples of such sustainable growth are : top soil-free building blocks; increased use of lime and not limestone-based cement; non-forest timber or certified plantation timber; CFC- and HCFC-free air-conditioning systems that are non-ozone-depleting; energy-efficient building systems for hotels and hospitals, and so on.

What does all this mean in the context of naturalism or environmentalism that the Americas articulated a hundred years ago? What we will see is that the case for protection of these ecosystems needn’t quite be made with the same earnest that the early 20th century did, because of the sustainable processes that our urban nodes would have put into place pretty firmly over the next thirty years.

Remember, that there are indeed no precedents from the past for this future that is to be upon us soon, if it is not already upon us now. But today’s trends clearly presage such a future.

Naturalism will quickly be replaced by processes that will ensure that these systems continue to exist the way they have for long aeons of times, while they get monetized such that the urban world knows the significance and recognizes it in the marketplace with financial attributes provided for such carbon sequestration that these vegetated systems and forests offer to the smaller minority landmass of the urban world.

Beyond these, there is another reason why the environmentalism movement of the American kind relates poorly to the Indian situation. The vigilant activist models of environment development that first made its presence in the early 1970s with the Chipko movement in the sub-Himalayan hills of Garhwal in UP, served as an inspiring role model for action that was community-based, unlike the American line of thinking that has only focused on the vast expanse of forest and hilly regions and protection measures that was advocated for those sanctuaries and reservations. But that’s another story.

No place to stand on Earth?

murali — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:33:27 -0500

When we hear what Archimedes claimed, given a lever and a place to stand he could even move the earth, we sit back and smile. There is no possible place to stand, we smirk.

The right footing also seems to be the problem today when the world is asked to pull herself up by the bootstraps. How can we get to addressing these big changes we need to make in our very own lifestyles if we want that figurative lever to work?

It was only last week that I sat among a group of experts who were offering their views on what we see today as trends into the future, especially in the context of all that we have to build to protect us from the elements--whether it is a box called a house or an office; or those boxes that transport us or offer us transit places to stay. So as the discussion wore on, I was accosted by that inevitable question from a panelist, 'So what do you see as the trend emerging?'

There was another day some 200 years ago when life was much simpler without any notion, yet, of securing anything beyond one’s own means or those resources around you. There was the forest. There was the river. And all things came as food, clothing, and shelter from these resources around a village, town or a settlement. That was a world that could take care of itself in its various different forms and regions.

So what happened over the last 200 years is that it gave us the ability to produce more. The 'it' in this case is what we have come today to admire and revile: ‘the market’. We hate it, but we can’t do without it.

If you look at this span of the last 200 years, and then the last 10 years of convulsive change that has shown us the vulnerability of Earth and therefore scared us out of our own possible existence, you then begin to see a pattern.

It was Steven Spielberg who made that memorable film, Back to the Future. That was the phrase that first gained currency in the mid-70s with people like Alvin Toffler and before him, other thinkers of deep ecology. What we are seeing today is a bunch of buzzwords: full autonomy in energy, water and waste that severs your reliance on a City Corporation’s infrastructure for these resources; ‘sustainable development’ of buildings and our cities; ‘rapid renewables’ that reduce your consumption of exhaustible resources of the planet; and a host of other such thought directions which essentially are telling us of how we need to go back, in a sense, to that past which can help us see and manage our future better.

The trick is to combine the benefits that 'the market' has offered as a mechanism, while we drive hard and with focus the need for bringing a pre-industrial society where we don't centralize our challenges.

If a city chose to have every dwelling manage its own waste, reduce its dependence on water, generated its own energy to see that it eschews its need for external energy support…, we will then see a sharp and dramatic reduction in our reliance on market mechanisms.

The world is baulking at this prospect of ‘letting go’ of the markets and profits and power that these centralized agencies have given to a select few in all market-driven areas of life. It is not easy for Business and Government to divest themselves of these opportunities that such infrastructure creation offers. Such forces clearly see a threat to business and money spinning potential. They are willing to redefine business with a very fresh perspective that will empower the customer to the point that market need will be wholly created in a way that has seen no precedent in the past. It is much like asking a farmer to leave his land fallow for a whole season before he takes to a different crop. He resists the idea for it means loss of income for that one season, while he forgets the reward after one such fallow season will be far higher.

How do we, as a race and as captains of government and industry change the very way we think, and offer that space for us to leverage the change, is a question that this larger trend we see today will help us answer within the next 10 years.

Why 10 years? All that we have seen today as need for growth, is changing at least ten times in its size and dimension over just this next decade. If, for example, we have had a total of 100,000 rooms in the hotel industry created in all of fifty years, we will see in just the next ten years, the creation of an additional 100,000 rooms in just the next decade! This means the using up of as much cement and steel and timber and flooring materials, as the hotel industry has done in all of fifty years in India. This boggles the mind, for there is simply no such ability to secure such materials in as short a time as ten years, unless there is a complete new way of building that we invent.

While it is easy to despair at such a prospect, what I can see is huge opportunity there. Opportunity to fill a void, a need, with technology, and a return to that past which has a storehouse of wisdom: go local; find ways of enhancing your autonomy with technology options that help you take advantage of being small, while the economic benefits of access to a globalized world is used where needed.

Will we now want to scoff at Archimedes? Or will we find a possible place to stand and to bring ourselves up by our own bootstraps? Darwin discovered where we stand while pulling ourselves up. His great contribution, 200 years ago, was to suggest a mechanism to allow simpler forms of life to reach up, and bootstrap, to more intricate and sophisticated forms.

Therein lies a trick or two on what we need to do to invent our future. This is not fiction. If this was 2125, one of our grandchildren will smile at our myopic vision of destruction at the mass scale for a shorter term benefit, with much the same air of indulgence that we smile at Archimedes's idea.

--
Hariharan
28 Oct 2008

ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS

gayatri — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:14:56 -0500

When I look at a leaf, I wonder about its anatomy and its structure that enables it to trap CO2, one of the culprits of global warming, and liberate oxygen as its byproduct.

Plants, some bacteria and protistans are capable to use the energy from sunlight to produce sugar, which cellular respiration converts into ATP, the "fuel" used by all living things.
6H2O + 6CO2 ----------> C6H12O6+ 6O2

Our scientists have been busy trying to reproduce the process of photosynthesis.

Artificial photosynthesis has the potential to not only produce hydrogen that could be used as a clean fuel for vehicles but also mop up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

But the main hindrance was that such reaction required more energy and could proceed only when several energized electrons were available to contribute.

So far, nobody succeeded in making artificial multiple electron systems that could provide the necessary energy for artificial photosynthesis.
A system - that would comprise of a donor molecule that can absorb visible light and release many electrons, and a receiver molecule capable of accepting and storing those electrons.

Existing systems can donate and receive only one electron at a time. Visible photons can only contribute a limited amount of energy towards a chemical reaction which is absorbed by electrons involved in the reaction.

But recently, a team of Chinese researchers has found that carbon nano tubes mimic this important step in photosynthesis.

A team led by Xian-Fu Zhang at the Hebei Normal University of Science and Technology in Qinhuangdao, China, has found that single-walled carbon nanotubes could act as the chemical heart of a multiple electron system.

A carbon nanotube can accept one electron for every 32 carbon atoms it contains; hence could act as the receiver molecule in artificial photosynthesis.

Zhang's team realized that by covalently bonding a large number of PC molecules to a carbon nanotube, they could create a multiple electron system activated by visible light.

Such nanosystem could form a key component of an artificial photosynthesis model and once achieved, this would revolutionize the quality of life on our planet.

Journal Reference: ChemPhysChem (DOI: 10.1002/cphc.200800191)

Gayatri

"There is only one sin: That is weakness...The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game."

Connecting the Dots: So what’s the big picture at BCIL?

murali — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:58:45 -0500

So what’s the big picture at BCIL? Why does BCIL do what it does?

We had pulled up off the highway for a well-earned coffee break on our return from a visit to a small town in the hills of the Western Ghats where we sought to implement a system for greater efficiency in water supply, with the consent of the Urban Local Body. A new-found colleague turned around and asked, “So what is the connection at BCIL between an urban water supply development programme that we do in a small town in Coorg or Goa, and all the Green Residential Developments that we offer in cities?”
I was quite foxed. It seemed obvious to me that to 'connect the dots' that will draw up the bigger picture seemed to be beyond many of us right here at BCIL. A water supply project in Polibetta, a bustling, little planter’s town, or in an urbanized village to the South of Goa... and a residential or tourism project that BCIL, as a company, was promoting in Goa, or Coorg or Bangalore, in a sense, demonstrates the sort of business vision and impact the organization aspires to make into the future.
If there is one thing that we were clear about in the early 90’s, when we spun ourselves into an enterprise called BCIL, it was that we will be a company, alright [no donor funds, please], but will think of a 'single bottom line' in a way that it covers what a new generation of planners are calling the triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic success.
So how do we achieve such a single bottom line where we have both our financial balance sheets and our ecological balance sheet achieving much the same in terms of success, was the challenge before us then, and continues to be now. How do we reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable faces of Cause and Money, in a world where even the effective fulfillment of higher values is only measured by the yardstick of economic success?
BCIL has been basically driven by a single plank that addresses concerns of water and energy. All our Projects that offer eco-homes have drawn from this plank to relate to earth materials and embodied energy, to vegetation and water-saving species, as well as the impact of solid waste on land if we don’t take care of them sustainably, with or without interventions from the state government or state infrastructure--and doing all this, with technologies that are relatively new and seen to be 'unconventional', and therefore pushing the membrane of business possibility.
It would be the easier route, as regular builders adopt, to not worry about what we put out as waste from the residential townships that we create. It would be as easy as for us to not worry about water supply for such townships and tell our customers to sort their challenge out in a way that they take up those 'concerns' with local authorities or with other government agencies that are linked to water and waste management.
The important thing that BCIL has recognized is that every single project has to demonstrate possibilities of construction as well as management of these resources of energy, water and waste, in a way that other regular builders can see the practical 'do-ability' of these values, while at once being profitable.
An urban water supply programme in Polibetta helps us expand our own strengths in technical management of water resources, while the tourism destination in the District gains from the fact that it will be seen to be a responsible initiative that pays tribute to the region that has hosted the Project, and in the bargain wins the company new customers who are discerning, sensitive and secure a 'feel good' on their association with BCIL, while having their investments pay off handsomely. For, after all, as a business our prime objective is to grow the wealth of our investors.
If one were to look at the water supply project in Goa, for example, the idea is to see that successful implementation of the Project will bring the attention of the government to what it could be enabling other agencies to be doing, while with such positive community impact, BCIL’s commercial projects in the state [or in the neighbourhood of the community-developed water project] will gain in terms of possibly a more sympathetic position that the government will take--on the values and intent of such Projects into the longer term future.
The important thing for us all to realize is that BCIL has to be economically efficient, for its own long-term good. The talent and capacity of its professionals need opportunity for expressing their ability in these areas of infrastructure.
The group's professionals are aware of the challenges of dealing with heterogeneous groups of people when we work with larger, disparate communities that a regular urban town involves. It is, of course, easier to work with homogeneous groups of people who are “customers” and who clearly are on one page with us on what values and benefits or amenities will be delivered for the money they exchange with BCIL.
So what is the future and why does BCIL have to take these positions which seemingly are not in consonance with hard commercial objectives? To us at BCIL, no enterprise into the far future can actually succeed without social validation. There is no getting away from the fact that commerce and conservation have to go together with an eye trained constantly on the impact, positive, that we make on the people in the neighbourhood of projects that BCIL or any successful company creates. Yes, there will be the Doubting Thomases in the regular world who will not trust us. Their question will be: ‘So what’s in it for them? They won’t do it if they are not gaining.’ Or ‘This is a hoodwink act; they want to make money, while making us believe that they are being socially responsible.’
The immense learning that BCIL carries in terms of project execution prowess in these areas of infrastructure, only get sharpened with greater doing. The challenge of creating greater efficiency in urban water supply in heterogeneous communities is all the more exciting, therefore.
That is the reason we have broken our own management structure to see that we have two different divisions--one to serve the Company's commercial imperatives that offer value to customers who are home-owners; the other division, to those other beneficiaries of projects that the organisation promotes among communities at the urban planning level.
These two arms, BCIL Homes and BCIL Alt Tech Foundation, make for synergies with sharing of technical knowledge and expertise in a way that we are able to strike at both demands that are made upon our organization with projects in both the spheres. Remember that even a powerful business house such as the Tatas has over 50% of its ownership vested in a Trust.
An extension of such thinking on community-led activities has led us, beyond water supply, to look at commercially viable projects for the setting up of an exciting series of Energy Information Centres that will soon be reality. Further on, the group is contemplating offering Consulting inputs for cities which are seeking to look at Sewage Treatment at the city scale. For example, a town of the size of Hubli, will have, today, the challenge of treating as much as a 100 million litres per day. If the city fathers are able to sensitize themselves to this challenge early in their growth phase as they are now, the city will then be able to grow without the pangs of unorganized infrastructure and growth that cities like Bangalore are currently seeing.
If we look at the country at large, you will see that the fastest growing towns are those in the tier-2 and tier-3 categories. The cities at the top of the heap, including Bangalore and Hyderabad, confront challenges of far larger dimensions which need political will and technological expertise that is more formidable than in cities like Hubli or Rajkot or Dehradun. The rate of annual growth of these smaller towns is far higher than those of the larger cities/metros.
Companies like BCIL who are in the infrastructure business, cannot afford to lose sight of the potential that lies for business -- water and housing infrastructure, among other things -- into the future in these smaller cities and towns. And the impact that a BCIL can make with its central mission objective of ‘mainstreaming sustainability’ can be easier achieved with lesser resistance in the smaller towns than in the larger cities.
The balance that one strikes between business growth and the innovation agenda that one sets for the organization is a tricky challenge that can only be met with proper strategic perspectives, long-term planning, and with orientations of our professionals in a way that we are able to bring synergies between our innovation agenda with communities-targeted work, and the more lucrative business agenda and growth prospects that emerge from homes and other buildings created in larger cities which have a greater consumer propensity to spend.
The recent addition of Green Idea Lab as a Division of BCIL that extends such expertise from Green Buildings to other corporate entities or institutions that seek to build homes, offices, hospitals and hotels, emerge fundamentally from [a] our understanding of the rapid growth and therefore potential for such consulting opportunities for GIL as well as [b] the fact that, as pioneers, BCIL will stand the risk of being overtaken by larger players who will inevitably come into the picture in the next 2-3 years ahead.
Having consolidated its own resources, and found, happily, the world turning around to offering greater acceptance to these directions of 'sustainability', BCIL is now turning to the deeper challenge: How can it go about imagining the future it wants for itself, and figure out ways of getting there. Back in 1995, when BCIL set foot on this journey, many dismissed its vision as pie in the sky. No longer. But then, it pays to remember as Krish Murali Eswar, a core colleague at BCIL says, "A customer pays what you deserve, not what you desire. And the future belongs to only those who can demonstrate value."
Into this future, all BCIL has to do is [a] continue to believe, as strongly as it has done in the past, that it can be done, and [b] go after it single-mindedly! Incremental stuff isn't what dreams are made of.
And when I take a long ride these days and have colleagues around who talk shop, I am in an easier mode. There is a quicker understanding and a better 'connecting of dots' than I saw over that cup of coffee on a noisy highway some years ago.

- Hariharan

ORGANIC BUILDINGS ARE THE CHIC, NEW TREND.

murali — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:45:02 -0500

Article in Civic Society Sept-Oct 2008

Architects are altering the lexicon of construction world wide. Eco Cells and Natural Air-Conditioning are no longer science fiction. India’s current building boom will have a huge impact on the environment unless more sustainable practices are made the norm.
CHANDRA SEKHAR HARIHARAN.

“When we build, let us think we build for ever. Let it not be known for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as are descendants will tank us for; and let us think as we lay stone on stone that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labour, see! This our father did for us”. John Ruskin.

So what is the reality before us in an India that is moving rapidly and has ambitious aspirations? Let us ponder two grim facts. The Union Tourism Secretary, Silabhadra Banerjee, says that about 1,00,000 hotel rooms are likely to be constructed in India within the next ten years. Consider this: the number of hotel rooms we have today, built over the past 50 years, is about the same number! Consider another fact: in the next 10 years, India is set to construct roughly the same quantum of residential and commercial buildings it has built in all of post-independent India.

The maths of building is on the threshold of big change. The way we look at numbers that make up the sum total of the building scenario in India will undergo a transformation that will be beyond our current recognition. Energy figures will be crunched so differently in the future that we will have no precedence from the past that we can seek to learn from.

What is, or what should be, the future of construction? Do we see huge shortages of basic building materials? Are we likely to, for instance, run out of limestone for cement? At the current rate of extraction, limestone will be exhausted in about 40 years. What are the options for achieving bonding dimensional stability for all building materials if cement is not a viable option in future? Do we see ourselves securing as much steel as we did in the past 50 to 60 years, as as comfortably in price and supply terms?

A morning’s ride to the edge of any city in India will yield the ugly sight of rows of trucks laden with sand imported from river bed in the outflanks. Builders don’t have a choice because sand is intrinsic to ‘gluing’ building materials together to make the boxes we live in. But those rivers are dying a quick death after coursing through the once healthier veins of our eco systems for several centuries.

There is authentic data to indicate that about 50% of all energy generated in India (or on Earth) goes towards construction of buildings, bridges, roads and other infrastructures. Apart from sand, you could draw a list of over a dozen items you need to build your home, apartment block, work place, mall, or mega store, and fret over the shortages and inevitable price spirals that you will be faced with.

Building debris constitutes 26% of the waste generated by cities. Buildings use up to 48% of all non-renewable energy generated in the world. To produce the cement, steel, glass, building blocks, wood, floors and metal fabrications that make a home or an office, tons of energy and materials are used. The production process discharges huge amounts of energy, apart from polluting waste materials into the natural environment.

With the quantum of buildings already on earth, and the need for twice as much in the next 50 years, the earth’s natural system can take only this much, beyond this, there will be irreparable damage to the natural system – unless we wake up to bringing some fundamental and radical changes in the way we build.

The natural environment consists of abiotic and biotic components which act together to form complex eco systems. Yet, most of our shelters are essentially inorganic. By building more shelters to accommodate are increasing population we are, in effect, making the world more inorganic and synthetic.

Can we bear the massive loss of biodiversity that all this entails?

How do we address other concerns that go beyond materials but are increasingly desired by an affluent world for comfort and convenience? From air-conditioning to special lighting needs? From essentials like water and electricity which are outstripping supply? How do we handle the enormous amount of wastes that our houses, or smokestacks, or offices belch every hour, every day?

THINK AFRESH

It seems defeating one is forced to admit that at the end of 25 years of devotion to such concerns, that this writer and other concern planners shrug their helplessness, at times, at handling such formidable challenges. Some of us have been condemned to see all sides of each problem. When you are damned like that, questions multiply unless it is all questions and no answers.

The emphasis is on ecological cells and biodiversity corridors across cities sprawls. Take, for example, Seoul’s conversion of its sewage water into pretty fresh water canals.

What does one do in the face of such a stark future? Like most engineers, policy makers, planners, architects and consultants in the building industry who work on the essential services that plug in or plug out of every building constructed, we can wear blinkers like a horse and see only what is straight in front of us. We can see things in black and white. Or we can look beyond.

When the celebrated idea of a blue Ocean Strategy hit the market, a new crop of managers saw wisdom in the proposition that its inventors had made. They had said the only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.

Porponents of the Blue Ocean Strategy are publishing a new dimension which sees social legitimacy as a must for business. The strategy means, simply, that any business will lose its ability to succeed and its effectiveness if it ceases to be socially responsible. If prophets come at great cost to society, the business will eventually die. One could say that of the building industry, to, if it continues to bury its head in the sand, if it does not go beyond the belief that the responsibility of a business is to merely increase profit, the building industry will begin to fade away. If you flout social responsibility and then see your business dying, you will not yawn.

FORGACH’S MODEL

There is a seemless blend that the language of architecture has begun to assume in recent times with some seminal design work by architects across the world. A new expression is manifest in buildings with the emphasis on ‘ecological cells’ and ‘biodiversity corridors’ across city sprawls. Take, for example, Seoul’s conversion of its sewage water into pretty fresh water canals that course through the city. Or ‘green jackets’ that sheathe buildings in a way that there is greater shaping of the destinies of the micro regions that house home or work settlements. One of New Delhi’s own architects has drawn up one such master plan for cleaning up the city’s dirty wasters.

There are other ingenious business initiatives across the world that blend green and green backs. One notable example is forester, a London forestry insurance business in Panama, started four years ago.

John Forgach, ForestRe’s Chairman and an entrepreneur-banker headquartered in Paris, saw the huge business deficit that producers of consumer goods like China, Japan and Korea, or Walmart on the west coast of the US would face in the long term if the Panama Canal was forced to close due to massive silting caused by deforestation.

These ships would have to make a two to three week detour around South America. That would have a significant effect on the price of goods around much of the world.

Forgach talked to these companies about what it could mean to them over 50 years if the canal were to close. Companies quickly saw reason to invest in the forest bonds that Fortgach offered them.

He lost no time in going to the Smithsonian Institute’s biodiversity research wing to get an environment impact assessment of the entire region flanking the canal carried out by their researchers.

He found that a project for afforesting the entire region and for desilting the canal in phases would cost him anything upward a quarter billion dollars. The forest bonds were meant to ensure that these costs were recovered and his company would profit from the economic value he was offering these companies on the Pacific which wanted to get their commodities across to the eastern seaboard.

Business into the future will be much the same as they have been in the past, with this one quality shift that will spell sensitivity to the plants impending threats. As Kofi Annan said, “do the same businesses, do them differently.” Such change will be far more discernible in the building sector in future.

The important thing to recognize in such models – as this one of Forgach – is that the entire business seems out of concern for Earth, and secures a business model that bankers will love to work on.

DOING IT RIGHT

Building management systems (BMS) have seen a sea change at the turn of the century with companies quickly seeing the importance and need in the marketplace for systems, services, techniques, and tools that can bring operational efficiencies in a broad spectrum of utilities ranging from energy to water, from airconditioning to waste water, to efficient sanitation systems, and water efficient toilets. Companies have gone ahead with research and invented commercial applications which bring cost savings to businesses into buildings and building management.

More than ever, this shift in BMS has got planners, architects and builders to think of what the Japanese learnt to do so well in the 1970’s; do it right the first time.

This has meant that construction businesses are changing the quality and content of their design briefs to building professionals the world over. Design today has become so much more demanding of life-cycle cost and maintenance of the building or the envelope which will lead to great sensitivity on natural resources while cutting running costs of buildings.

The compelling drives of economic growth excite leaders, but the dangers of mass scale destruction that creation of projects entail, are not being recognized, not as yet. Developers are still rushing headlong into the Manhattan mode for getting that the silence of building has to seek change in the very way we think.

Skyscrapers will now turn to ground-scrapers and sub-scrapers. These will allow light, air and plant growth deep inside the developments. One architect calls these ‘ecocells’ which are developed as a means of integrating the inorganic mass of the built components with the organic ecoscaping.

We will soon see algae sewage treatment water tanks that offer you 100% fresh water. Nu water in Singapore heralds another dimension that the future of building will necessarily integrate. A city like Mumbai which requires 4500 million litres of fresh water every day can comfortably manage with 50% of that volume. If every real estate development responds to water treatment needs proactively – this will drop fresh water needs to just 2,000 million litres, or about the level that Mumbai needed in 1980!

It is hard to judge urban lifestyles. Do you battle consumption? Or do you promote sustainability? And where is the line that blurs the two challenges?
The world is showcasing answers to such questions. Kowloon in Hong Kong sports a building that offers links to key dream spaces in the district with a biodiversity corridors that winds through the island, and is home for many endemic species.

Architects are today designing green jackets with buildings placed on top, below or sandwiched between such jackets that cut into the building and slice down through all floors from the uppermost to the basement.

Design solutions will soon seek to provide environmentally sustainable urban eco-systems. This seems very do-able, especially if builders and users join hands to ensure – either by legislation or voluntarily – implementation of new building technologies for water and energy.

Cities will then become far more habitable: sewage water canals will become fresh water parks while also generating energy, landfills will morph into parks, consumers will become prosumers with consumption being a problem that the consumer will himself resolve with his own production.

Mumbai, which consumes about 2,000 megawatts, can slash its energy use by half if it implemented some very basic principles at end-use level, with greater consumer understanding, and with energy schemes that allow home-owners to sell energy to the great when they are ‘energy-positive’. To get a perspective on what such a saving on energy in one Mumbai means, remember that India produces just about 1,25,000 megawatt today.

THEY COST LESS TO RUN

The future of these new buildings clearly shows that there will be greater sensitivity to what comes after people have moved into these buildings. A simple set of installations, for example, for waste water can bring about post-occupancy cost reduction of as much as 20% on maintenance. These new buildings of the next generation will cost less to run regardless of weather they are residential, commercial or any other king.

If one extended many of the old principles of air management and responded to them terms of construction, design with appropriate building blocks that either retain heat or reduce heat gain, depending on the latitude you belong to, such technologies can bring about a saving of high 30% on air-conditioning bills alone, let alone lighting and pumps.

You may want to take a pause on this one: a typical 20,000 square feet envelope that is centrally air-conditioned can cost you as much as 200 KWH of power in a regular building. This can cost you as much as Rs.1,000/- an hour of its functioning. At 12 hours a day, this will mean about 3.5 million a month on just the AC cost! What’s more the carbon emission per annum on just one building will run into thousands of tons.

Are there ways of creating the building so that the total tonnage of designed air-conditioning is brought down by about a third of the regular tonnage needed? The impact on financial cost alone is so dramatically positive that there is today more than hope, in fact near certainty, that the world has reached some kind of tripping point when it comes such buildings or construction of the future, not because these technology directions are sensitive to the planet – that indeed they are – but because these technologies are enabling and facilitating huge financial saving for businesses.

There is a new surge of interest in green buildings: India will have in the next three years nearly 100 million square feet of such certified green residential buildings. There are, of course, challenges in execution and in securing certification for builders who want to take to these options but don’t know how – to’s.

Builders, the world over, are quickly seeing the savings and added business value that such green buildings or buildings of the future bring. That is enough incentive for the construction business to take to these values.

In a feature that discuses the future of construction we cannot omit the realty that there is dismaying damage to many ecosystems across India, and to the world beyond cities. In the urban world, our cities occupy less than two percent of the world’s landmass, have 55 per cent of us living in the small sliver of land, with 75 per cent of the world’s natural resources being consumed by us. The real bad news is that this tiny land mass of urban India and its population produces over 60% of the country’s GDP.

WILL WE CHANGE?

Our city dweller needs air-conditioned home spaces, offices and shelters. He wants to drives SUVs that emit green house gases, fly around the world in ozone-depleting planes, consume power that comes from dams that submerge forests, and build houses of materials that originate in strip mines in distant and fragile eco-systems.

We mine soils, gut our forests, misplace our industry priorities, waste vast sums in needless transportation, congest our population in settlements that don’t reckon with damages and implications of the future, and lower the physical vitality of poorer communities in our villages without immediately feeling the consequences of our action.

In January 1937, after a visit to Birbhum in West Bengal, Gandhiji defined his ideal village settlement. He wrote in Harijan: “It will have cottages with sufficient light and ventilation, built of a material obtainable within a radius of five miles. The cottages will have courtyards enabling householders to plant vegetables for domestic use and to house their cattle. The village lanes and streets will be free of all avoidable dust. It will have wells according to its needs and accessible to all. It will have a house of worship for all, also a common meeting place, a village common for grazing its cattle, a cooperative dairy, primary and secondary schools in which vocational education will be the central fact, and it will have panchayats for settling disputes. It will produce its own grains, vegetables and fruit, and its own khadi. This is roughly my idea of a model village.”

Is there a return to the past that we should reflect on, while bracing ourselves for the future!

The way we have built so far is doubly ruinous: we have steadily impoverished the earth by hastily removing resources that are millions of years old for the benefit of a few generations. Those common resources can never be restored once spent.

There has been a turn in the tide of such consciousness in the last decade which offers a happy augury for the future. Architects are beginning to see that in each geographic area a certain balance of natural resources and human settlements is possible for the land and the people.

There is a move challenging task that architects and builders have before them: their relationship has so far been fundamentally exploitative of the rest of the world. The Indian consuming world, for instance, has taken for granted the continued supply of teakwood from our own dwindling forests and from countries like Malaysia: limestone and ores from Africa, laminate floors and Australia and Europe, tiles from Italy which imports its raw materials from Africa … All this without being in the slightest degree responsible for the environmental implications of their lifestyles.

Chandrasekhar Hariharan heads Bangalore-based BCIL, a pioneer in green buildings. The company was recently conferred the distinguished RyutaroHashimoto Asia-Pacific Award for ‘mainstreaming sustainability.’

Prof H S Krishnaswamy

murali — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:56:49 -0500

Sometimes it is difficult to explain some cruel ironies of life.

Late last evening an oldtimer, serious journalist called me out of the blue, to ask if I knew of the demise of HSK. This morning's papers had a terse set of 3 paras on Prof H S Krishnaswamy's death. He was an economist, writer, journalist, among other things. He was part of another generation. A person who couldn't suffer stupidity; a 'Nehruvian Indian' who knew less of his own interest, as of the larger interest of the world and his country.

Ironic because here was a man I had known, oft and on, for 26 years, and who never once wrote about me or the work we have been doing. And in his very last column in life -- he wrote every week his notes for Star of Mysore, and early on used to write for Sudha, a wellknown magazine -- he chose to write about BCIL and the work we have represented. He wrote better in Kannada than he did in English, as another friend observed this morning.

I had known HSK for a brief while in the early 80s when I was a journalist filing stories on business, economy trends and so on for papers/magazines I worked for. Our first meeting was one where he stopped at a point and said, "You said you were an accountant, is that right?" I nodded. "You must be doing economics, young man! Why are you wasting time as a scribe?" A year later, some chance events had me moving to doing my further studies in the area of economics. He had sown the seed of that idea in my mind. Those early years of my career, I have played down, because they were a 'waste of time' as far as I was concerned. They never came in handy for those directions I chose to take in the next 25 years.

HSK didn't think so. I met him a couple of years ago at a wedding of a mutual friend's daughter. We could barely say hello to each other and only exchanged some pleasantries amid the noise and bustle. I was meeting him after nearly 15 years after, and I could see he still did not approve of my moving away from academics! Another senior journalist of the 80s was with us, and HS remarked to him that he thought I had wasted my years 'doing business'.
It is a strange feeling, personally, to read this feature of HSK, his life's last column written 2-3 days before his death. You can see from the feature that follows this mail, that he has quoted me at some fair length, although he didn't meet me or call! He must have gleaned what he has written about BCIL from what he had read in the news and web about our work. The last meeting was 2 years ago!
He must have had a premonition of death. He was probably making amends to me by finally conceding that there is some good coming out of all my 'wasted years'!

HSK used to teach economics at a well known College in Mysore. He counted as friends legends like Dr. C D Narasimhaiah, who was a giant among English teachers of the world, without any doubt. Many of our current writers like A K Ramanujam were CDN's students. HSK himself has had many admirers, many professionals whom he mentored quietly, in his self-effacing in his years.

In June 1983, when I covered the series of meetings at the National Economic Forum that Chief Minister Hegde called in Bangalore, with VKRV Rao and other eminent economists participating in the colloquium, HSK came up to me on the third day and said, "You seem to be an indignant young man!" I did not realize what he was saying until I went back to see what Business Standard had published that morning of my report with a byline. I had said something mildly disparaging about Ashok Mitra and his ambivalence on market capitalism. It is another matter that directions that people like Ashok Mitra gave to West Bengal eventually made Bengal the strident pro-capital state that it became later under Jyoti Basu.

Twenty five years later, I am still indignant about many things! It is not easy for for some of us to accept all those things around us that are not right.

With HSK's passing away, a part of me died yesterday. He was among the last bastions of value that was left in a time when a whole new generation of people who have not seen suffering, simply don't understand what it takes to uphold such principles as this wonderful man did.

Here is that last column of his. Wonder what he would have said to me, if I had had the chance to meet him...

BCIL signs CII Sustainability Mandate

murali — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:55:13 -0500

BCIL signed in August 2008, the CII Code for Sustainability as part of a roadshow organised by CII and the India Green Business Council. BCIL is one of 150 such signatories in the Indian corporate sector who have been invited to make this commitment to Ten Commandments for reducing natural resource use.

The CII has targeted for this year the enrolling of 500 Indian companies for the year. The Ten Commandments request for voluntary compliance on a spectrum of challenges relating to water, waste, energy, greening the supply chain, among other things, has been embraced by these signatory companies for implementation in their projects and product or service processes. The CII IGBC aims at achieving a saving of one million carbon tonnes in the year ahead, before setting formal targets for such carbon emission reduction.

I am glad that BCIL is part of this CII Mission. The CII and the India Green Business Council has been showing the way for industry to turn to sustainability.

- Hariharan, CEO

An India with no Bharat?

murali — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:49:06 -0500

P Chidambaram recently released a compilation of his writings of the last few years on many facets of India. He writes and reflects, among many things, upon his vision of a new India which will move into becoming environmentally sustainable. While he speaks with firmness and clarity on many issues ranging from finance to politics, there are some contours he foresees that will be deeply disturbing to any thinking professional or kisan.

His view--of an India where there will be more and more of our people drawn into industry, services and manufacture, away from agriculture--is representative of a future that the entire world of industrializing countries is recognizing in face of these difficult [or different?] new challenges, all unprecedented, that is before all of us. There will be only the 'India that is India' and no 'India that is Bharat'.

This is a future that political and business visionaries are beginning to articulate more strongly in recent years. In a sense, it means that the rural country in any part of the country will become as urbanized as it has been in Europe for the last 30 years—Belgium, for example, is 95 per cent urbanised. There is no looking back on such a trend. There is no way we can redefine desire among people who seek all those same values that the urban Indian has secured for himself---from cars to telephones; from water closets and showers; to perhaps even air-conditioning.

Should the world be alarmed by this? That is hard to tell. If the attention of the government as well as industry turns to bringing massive energy savings on every appliance that we use at present in city infrastructure, commercial or domestic, there will then be room for further such urbanization and consumption of the mega kind we will see into this future.

Looking back, through the 1950’s, we saw, after the ravages of the War, those development decades which completely was ignorant and oblivious of the dire ecological consequences that we have learnt about in recent years. The air then was suffused with optimism. Nehru called these large industrial behemoths that emerged in the early 60’s as the new ‘temples of India’.

Any talk of ecology was regarded as irrelevant at best, as a ‘dangerous deviation’ from the national agenda. The technologist ruled supreme. Metals and chemicals were twisted to forms that could offer new dimensions to comfort and luxury. No one thought of what it meant for Earth. In fact, in 1945, just after the War, the World Bank said that the future will offer a dynamic world economy ‘in which the peoples of every nation will be able to enjoy the fruits of material progress on an Earth infinitely blessed with natural riches’.

The songs of the time written for Indian films by poets like Shailendra, Kaifi Azmi and others, or the literature of the times, reflected the prospect of unending economic growth. The dream became synonymous with the American dream of prosperity. Science showed, they said, endless frontiers of technologies that could be harnessed for a better world for experience. An expert geologist from Harvard University said in 1952 that he believed that mother earth herself had enough and to spare for the good work that was before such creators of new industry.

We have come, but not a very long way over the last 50 years. Our desire levels have only gone up even further. There are reports that dismay--of the automobile industry or heavy manufacturing moving to ecosensitive regions like Uttarakhand thanks to subsidies and tax breaks offered to companies like Tatas and Mahindras. Dehradun or the outflanks of the valley is not any more the verdant lands they were even 50 years ago. All that seems to drive governments and bureaucrats is still the need for such development that will bring ‘employment to people’ apart from bringing in investments and money.

The story is not any different in what were once fragile regions of Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh. Only in August this year, the Central Government has cleared two massive projects for bauxite mining in Orissa and these two other states which were once part of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

No change can be brought about without the sort of seminal shifts that Manmohan Singh offered in 1991, and which unleashed human endeavour. That can be done only by the Government, not by industry. The good news we have had in the last 18 years is that no successor government retraces economic measures implemented once.

Our political parties and politicians must be driven to offer ‘business plans’ for their cities, tehsils, districts, blocks and states, for 20 years, and their re-election must depend on their performance when in office. How soon can industry realize that there is only a single bottom line--not profits but profits that come without the social and environmental cost that today’s industry entails?

If there is going to be any such change into the future where development and ecological maturity go hand-in-hand, the responsibility will be more of business than of government. The large companies of today have to change the way they look at business and what they want to bring as development in different regions that they choose to work in. To think only of financial benefits and concessions, without paying heed to the social and ecological bottom lines, will be a prescription to eventual closure of such business corporations.

What can Chidambaram, or the likes of such leaders who modulate policy framework, offer to industry in a way that such a stampede for setting up manufacturing plants is moderated? How can the Government do another '1991' on the economy and people--beyond incremental shifts we see? How can that central framework offered by the Union Government make a difference to the way the State Governments respond and articulate the business aspirations of industry positively to people and eco-regions? How can the people themselves who are seeking to be employed, who are seeking to make a living that is meaningful, be helped in this process?

Schumacher, the German economist who wrote ‘Small is Beautiful’ and brought a powerful shift in the 70’s in the world’s thinking on where it should be headed, said with remarkable prescience then: “Only in the last hundred years has man forcibly broken into nature’s larder and is now emptying it out at a breath-taking speed which increases from year to year.” That has not changed to this date. And if we don’t in the next ten years, see a massive change in the way we work things out there, there will be hell to pay.

The India we see now is too restless, on the move, determined to conquer and master nature rather than submit silently to its laws. No one will listen to these directions that we are suggesting here. There have been many visionaries who over the last hundred years have warned us of the cost we will pay. No one was at that or other times been interested in listening to arguments which suggest that a future can be built on dreams such as these.

If Chidambaram’s picture of an urbanised India with nearly all people depending on industry and manufacturing proves to be true, the sad part of this inevitable armageddon of development is that the next twenty years will see the loss of half the subject matter of Indian poetry! The puruvaiyya, or the easterly winds that sweep across most of the Gangetic heartland and Punjab has provoked some of the finest imaginative verse over the last thousand years, on swaying trees and rustling palms and paddy fields. That’s not going to be a pretty picture to come, alright.

- Chandrashekar Hariharan