Towards future-ready enterprise

Our planet is inching towards a tipping point. In potential jeopardy is a critical global commitment, made in the Paris climate summit in 2015, to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degree Celsius. At stake are life, land and livelihoods in vast swathes of the planet, which will be rendered inhospitable to life should we fail to prevent runaway warming. In light of this emergency, the United Nations and the UK are co-hosting a landmark event in Paris on December 12, to rally global leaders to greater climate action and ambition.There are hopeful signs that positive action will follow. The US, China and India are the three biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. Outgoing US president Donald Trump had pulled the US out of the Paris agreement but president-elect Joe Biden has declared the US will join a serious attempt to forestall the climate emergency. Chinese president Xi Jinping too has announced that China will peak emissions in 2030 and try to go carbon-neutral by 2060. India will most likely submit that we are taking positive action by promoting renewable energy. This is desirable, but not enough. We have substantial installed wind power capacity, but it is not generating the expected amount of electricity. More to the point, what is needed is moving towards carbon-neutrality as China is promising to do.Carbon neutrality means that a country’s carbon emissions are equal to absorptions in carbon sinks, including forests. Both sides of the equation need to be addressed simultaneously. But what is happening on the ground? In Goa, the coal berths at Vasco da Gama port, sponsored by the three big As, Adani, Ambani and Agarwal, of the mining giant Vedanta—will not only further increase greenhouse gas production but also lead to the felling of a large number of trees, including in Goa’s Mollem Wildlife Sanctuary for the coal train tracks. In Madhya Pradesh, 40 per cent of forests have been privatised and trees in these stretches are being remorselessly axed.In the bullish aftermath of Biden’s election victory, Forbes put out a (dynamic) list of billionaires whose wealth had grown the most in the stock market surge. Coincidentally or otherwise, at the top of that list was Elon Musk, arguably the greatest innovator-entrepreneur of modern times, whose company Tesla is the world’s leading producer of electric vehicles. At No. 5 in the list was He Xiaopeng, also a manufacturer of electric vehicles in China. Six other billionaires in that Forbes list are also prospering as a result of their innovations, efficiency and enterprise in various fields. The outlier in this apparent roll call of future-ready innovators was India’s Gautam Adani (at #7), whose coal berths at home and abroad (Australia) have been red-flagged over environmental concerns. Indeed, none of India’s big industrialists are shining examples of future-ready efficiency or innovation..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}On the other hand, at the grassroots, Indians have demonstrated innovative enterprise. Take, for example, Dnyaneshwar Bodke of Pune district. His is an inspiring success story of a marginal farmer who went on to become a successful farming entrepreneur. The Abhinav Farmers Club Bodke leads has 150,000 farmer members, spread across Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, and has a combined turnover of Rs 400 crore. Bodke has integrated his innovative polyhouse technology with water and climate sensors, linked to water and nutrient delivery though micro-irrigation for vegetables, fruits and pulse production with direct marketing and farming automation. His enterprise generates reasonably well-paid employment for the club’s farmers and for many others engaged in allied processing, packaging and marketing.What India needs is not top-down but bottom-up enterprise of this sort. To give another example, farmers and small traders have come to recognise that the prices some of their crops fetch also depend on the measured concentration of some chemicals, for instance, the oil content in soyabean or the sugar content in a batch of grapes. This knowledge has spurred entrepreneurs to set up labs in major markets to provide these measurements for a reasonable fee, equipping farmers with vital information to bargain with traders. Encouraging this kind of innovation can help India grow its own Samsung, Hyundai and LG, as did South Korea, a democracy with a population density higher than India’s, even after a devastating war. But to realise this dream in India, we must get past the prevailing culture of crony capitalism.Madhav Gadgil is a renowned ecologist and founder of the Centre of Ecological SciencePublished By: Iram Ara IbrahimPublished On: Dec 11, 2020--- ENDS ---

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Towards future-ready enterprise

The US, China and India are the three biggest emitters of greenhouse gases

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