By IANS
Bangalore : The confluence of modern life and spirituality for the betterment of humankind was the message seer Sri Sri Ravishankar chose to deliver at the inauguration of an environmental summit here Thursday.
Sangam 2008, the all-India NGO summit for the protection of environment and access to social justice, is being held at the Art of Living International Centre.
Sri Sri Ravishankar, who is the founder of the Art of Living, inaugurated the summit by watering a sapling of the Laxmi Taru plant, an oil-bearing plant that is being promoted as an alternative bio-fuel that can be grown at the village level without causing damage to land under food grain cultivation and the environment at large.
United Nations’ Millennium Campaign, Ecological Society (a leading green lobby), in partnership with Ministry of Environment and Forests and a host of corporate groups like Mitsubishi and Eureka Forbes are sponsoring the three-day summit.
Around 600 delegates from over 200 non-profit organisations are attending.
A group of 48 judges from high courts across the country are also present to help the Art of Living Foundation set up conflict management cells at state and provincial levels to ensure easy access to social justice at the grassroots.
Addressing the inaugural function, Sri Sri Ravishankar said mankind was under siege and “dangers lurked in every corner”.
“We should work out laws so that we can create a better life for the coming generations. We need to ensure a violence-free world, disease-free body and a prejudice-free mind,” the seer said.
R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shared the Nobel Peace Prtize last year, said climate change was a reflection of the fact that we have not been able to grow and develop sustainably.
“I would like suggest to our policy makers please think of all actions and forms of consumption that impose a load on society and pollute it and tax them. This includes our road space. The pollutants must pay for defiling the environment,” he said.
The immediate benefits of consumptive lifestyle are leading us to a direction that can cause problems, Pachauri added.
In her keynote address, green activist Vandana Shiva, director, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, said the “most serious problem confronting the nation today was the outsourcing of pollution”.
The country was inviting more industries to set shop and spread toxins on the land, the New Delhi-based green activist said.
Lashing out at the dilution of the laws for environmental protection, she said the country’s 7,000-km coastline was in peril because efforts were on to weaken the Coastal Regulation Zone Act.
The activist cited instances of mega industries coming up along the Orissa coast and a bid by the West Bengal government to create a special economic zone on an island in Ganga Sagar at the mouth of the Ganga, where the Indonesia-based Salim Group has been invited to set up chemical industries.
“It even tried to remove the island from the Coastal Zone Regulation Act to facilitate the industries. This is tantamount to the destruction of the island,” she said.
“We don’t have laws to protect the Yamuna,” she rued. The Delhi government is now building the Commonwealth Games village on the Yamuna riverbed.
Her message to the gathering of NGOs, United Nations representatives and a wide cross section of rights activists was: “We all need to become seed keepers, soil keepers, water keepers and the keepers of our sisters and brothers.”
P.P. Srivastava, a member of the North Eastern Council set up by the government for the development of the north eastern states, said: “The region (northeast) which has rich bio-diversity was a victim of unplanned progress.”
The three-day summit is divided into five working sessions including nature-nurture equilibrium, eco-ethics, environmental entrepreneurship and the green industry, sustainable urbanity and nature conservation. The highlight is an eco-friendly fair “Dil Se” (From The Heart) showcasing new age green products like Mitsubishi’s eco-friendly Cedia car, apparel, consumer goods and technologies.