The side event was well attended and the quality of the presentations were good. The UNEP presentation seemed more appropriate to the theme of the workshop and PwC presented their project plans.The presentation from Saurabh Kumar at BEE was also useful. Most of the other presentations ended up presenting their organisations or their projects rather than speak to the occasion. But all in all a good show. Majumdar, Chair of IREDA did a nice summary and conclusion at the end.
The DSDS opening ceremony was very impressive with two presidents and four prime ministers. It is interesting to see the climate divide and the difference in positions between both the developing and developed countries surface again. The president of Maldives who won the DSDS sustainable leadership award reminded both groups about the plight of his country and other small islands. It is unclear whether any action taken post 2012 will have singificant effect on reducing climate change impacts in the next 50 years but I hope we all do something about the problem as a civilised society.
The project managers meeting was organised at the TERI RETREAT near the Solar Energy centre. My second time at the RETREAT and liked it better this time. The after-dinner speech from Ajay mathur was very good. The level of participation was not as good as last year and were mostly managers rather than heads of organisations and so were the quality of the outcomes. We need to see beyond the mist of minor operational issues and create a strategic vision for REEEP programmes in such occasions. It is important to structure and orient this meeting to make it more strategic and less operational. Anyway something to ponder about before the next installment…
Several meetings on the sidelines IREDA, BEE and Pachauri at TERI. There seems to be a healthy respect for REEEP and its activities across the board. We need to quickly leverage this into action on the ground through our actions/programmes.
