It appears that National, Provincial & Local Governments are keen to discover the path of achieving the mission. LGNet believes Indian cities can turn themselves to a Low Carbon Society by increasing share of green energy, minimizing waste generation, using sustainable mobility, generating more green spaces and managing water efficiently. That would be a major undertaking, since the trend over the past 60 years is ever-increasing high consuming lifestyles. The challenge then is how to break this trend.

When it took sixty years to transform the country image, these predictions may seem like wishful thinking. The challenge is particularly striking when we consider how long it takes to bring about change. On average, if we buy today a public transport bus or street lighting equipments or waste management technology, someone will still be using it 10 years from now. The new bus we just bought could still be on the road 15 years from now, not necessarily in Cities, since it could be used in rural too. This means that until around 2025, we could be looked into many of the procurement decisions we are making today. For instance, how long would it take to switch all the public transport system or cars in India to plug-in hybrid versions? This would be a matter of calculating how many cars there are and dividing by the number of cars sold each year. Today every day one million vehicles add to cities mobility infrastructure, resulting in a congestion & GHG Emission. However, that would be overly optimistic since both consumer preferences and pricing play a significant role in determining how the market evolves to attract consumers on green products.

If we have only 10 years to reduce our emission intensity of our GDP growth by around 20% by 2020 in comparison to 2005, we should then begin making different informed decisions pretty soon. So LGNet begins a new approach of convincing key decision makers in Local Governments and Citizens’ on concepts of Low Carbon Future. “prompt actions need to be taken at the earliest stage in the roadmap.”

The vision of this Low Carbon Future is still a little fuzzy, and something of a cobbling together of ideas that have been around for some time in different identity. But the really exciting part is the fact that researchers, policy-makers, civil society and businesses houses are beginning to think seriously about what such a society could look like in India. Perhaps it is the first step in a long journey. The desire to take that step is so fundamentally important. So we need new approach of convincing key decision makers at Local Governments and Citizens’ on concepts of Low Carbon Future.

LGNet would like to partner or collaborate with researchers, policy-makers, civil society groups, media and businesses it is possible to fulfill the dream of Making Indian Cities follow the path of Low Carbon Future.