INECC: Live sustainably not smartly

PUNE: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE-   Sustainable living, a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual’s or society’s use of the Earth’s natural resources, and one’s personal resources. Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their carbon footprint by altering their methods of transportation, energy consumption or diet, while smart living is a trend encompassing advancements that give people the opportunity to benefit from new ways of living.

Recently, Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Changes organised a lecture with an aim to educate people on how to live in a sustainable way and not in a smart way.

The lecture also focused on how the city has problems even while the civic officials are trying to make in a smart city.

During the lecture, a study report on ‘Sustainable Smart Pune 2030’ was presented, which proposed the target for 2030 in terms of all sustainability indicators being minimised to 1 (close to the best-case scenario which is 0), except climate susceptibility, which must be minimised to 0.

Gurudas Nulkar, environmental sustainability expert explained that the civic officials of Pune are headed towards the Smart City initiative but being smart is not enough because there is no sustainable value involved in it. To become sustainable, the civic officials and the layman should go hand in hand and if some positive changes are made in the society, people should accept it and follow it.

Nulkar said, “To achieve the vision of Sustainable Pune rather than Smart Pune, we are going to make people aware as much as we can. We are not going to take the help of the civic body and make the citizens understand that it is their crucial role in articulating the vision of a Sustainable Smart Pune, pushing the administration in operationalising it and working with the administration to sustain it.”