News Archive: 2012

TCW has brought together young leaders from  Mumbai and Bristol. Through the TCW Global Citizen Twinning Programme, young people have been encouraged to think about shared issues, such as food miles and energy consumption, and to explore and communicate with each other through digital media around a range of environmental and cultural themes. The programme aims to support young leaders to play an active role in the global society and to develop aspirations to tackle shared issues.

This short film shows you what happened between Mumbai and Bristol:

In August last year, Wendy (our CEO) and John (our co-founder) were introduced to Vidya of the Ramakrishna Sarada Samiti Centre (RKSS) in Mumbai. The centre is on the edge of one of Mumbai's largests slums with a population the size of Bristol. Vidya and her team support the slum community by providing local health care, vocational training and a Young Leaders Support Programme. It was this latter activity that caught our imagination, and so TCW funded the Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol, who work with their local community, to develop a programme that brought together RKSS and Greenfields Primary School in Bristol.  

What followed was inspirational!

In Mumbai, our young leaders (aged 11-14) decided that they wanted to know more about food and how to grow their own. They went out of the slum every Sunday to a field centre to learn about soil and growing vegetables. Brimming with their new knowledge and bags of enthusiasm, they are now keen to turn part of the RKSS yard and roof into a vegetable patch. And not only that, they also want to clear up a rubbish tip on the edge of the slum and transform it into a beautiful garden.

In Bristol, the young leaders have been growing vegetables on a dedicated patch at the school. They also cooked curry (and some liked it for the first time!), made a film about the project and engaged over 90 people in the local community with the project.

The young people in both countries learnt many new skills, and all partners observed an increase in the young people’s confidence and self-esteem as a direct result of the project.

We started this project thinking that we could teach young people how to become global citizens, but in fact they have taught us that they just need a little support to enable and empower them to just get on with it. Through their action and energy, our young leaders are inspiring and challenging us to be better, more pro-active global citizens.

Planning for the next phase has already started and we are all excited about what lies in store. If you would like to support this programme through time or donation, please contact Anita Beardsley (anitabeardsley@theconvergingworld.org) for more information.

Sébastien Duyck, from RioPlusTwenties, reflects on the history of and recent developments in the Rio process and Wendy Stephenson, TCW's CEO, discusses the importance of the Rio+20 summit

Sébastien Duyck: Where did the road start and where is it going?

The Rio+20 conference, officially called UN Conference on Sustainable Development, is approaching rapidly, with just over two months before representatives from 190 countries and thousands of NGOs meet in the vibrant Brazilian city.

Just twenty years ago, the city of Rio hosted a major international conference dedicated to environment and development. During this Rio 1992 conference, governments recognised a set of principles, such as the polluter pays principle and the precautionary principle. They also negotiated three major international agreements dedicated to biological diversity, climate change, and desertification. In addition, Agenda 21 was adopted, a work program expected to guide governments and local communities towards a more sustainable development pathway.

This year, Brazil will host another international summit to provide the international community with a chance to find collective solutions to common crises. The conference will be the tipping point of a longer conversation among states and civil society, with two main themes. First, discussions on the transition to a green economy will focus on how development can simultaneously deliver environmental, social and economic benefits, which is a fairly controversial topic. The second track of discussions addresses the question of how to reform the UN and other levels of governance so that they can deliver better decisions that would better integrate the three dimensions of sustainable development (the environmental, social and economic dimensions). Finally, some states have proposed to develop new Sustainable Development Goals, perhaps as a follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals.

It is still very unclear whether governments will provide the political will that is required to ensure that concrete outcomes and effective solutions are adopted in Rio, instead of this conference simply becoming another talking shop. There is still much uncertainty as to what to expect, and at least two meetings are scheduled for the coming months for all governments to prepare the conference. However, perhaps more importantly, Rio+20 offers a unique opportunity to mobilise all stakeholders, from governments to NGOs and the science community, to focus their attention on sustainable development. It is hoped that the conference in June can stimulate, and perhaps inspire, all actors involved to re-engage in discussions on how to develop a model of society that would leave a healthy planet for the generations to come.

About the author: Sébastien Duyck is a passionate environmental advocate, working to support the active participation of young people in intergovernmental conferences related to sustainable development. He has been involved in UN negotiations in various capacities and is also writing a PhD dissertation on human rights and climate change at the University of Lapland, Finland.

Wendy Stephenson: More practitioners please!  

It is 20 years since the Rio Earth Summit and 20 years since I took the decision that I wanted to work in this field. I was first inspired by a picture of a wind turbine and thought that it just made sense. Twenty years later, I see some changes, some of these quite significant, such as the development of a carbon market, or the introduction of feed-in-tariffs to stimulate the deployment of renewable energy. Yet, although the mechanisms themselves are significant, progress on the ground, like implementing projects and social change, has been frustratingly and worringly slow.

Will another round of conferences, another round of talks deliver much more? Policies, regulations and schemes take time to develop and even longer when they need international agreement. Progress has undoubtedly been made and we must acknowledge that, but it has taken far too long to deliver far too little.

Everyone is talking about doing something. We have strategies and policies, conferences and networks, but can we find a way to convert this energy to action? Can we use this summit not just for reflection but as a call to action? Plant a tree, buy a woodstove for a family in a developing country, support a water project, or provide loans or donations to all those wonderful organisations that are doing stuff on the ground, often through volunteers, and making a difference!

Here is something really radical: Can we stop talking and start doing?

In December 2011, the Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change announced a £10M Local Energy Assessment Fund (LEAF) to support communities to find options for energy efficiency and renewable energy measures. TCW and the local community group Sustainable Backwell submitted a joint bid and received around £40,000 to model energy saving potential in the town, engage the community, and to further develop Backwell’s community wind turbine project.

With only two months to spend the money, TCW and Sustainable Backwell have been working hard during February and March to deliver the proposed work. Around 100 households have been surveyed using TCW’s online tool to assess the current levels of insulation in Backwell and to calculate how much energy could be saved in future by adding the maximum amount of energy efficiency measures. This sets the community up for the Government’s Green Deal scheme later this year which promises to make insulation financially viable for everybody.

Communities for Renewables, a not-for-profit wind consultancy, were drafted in to do extensive feasibility work on Backwell’s turbine project and the results from this will be available shortly.

The project culminated in a Big Energy day where the local community was able to learn about the results of the work. They were also provided information on how they can save money and carbon emissions by insulating their homes or installing renewables.