Think Tank

SPI’s Think Tank provides thought leadership on key sustainability challenges facing India.

To clearly identify key problems related to sustainability and find scalable solutions, SPI has initiated work on 2 themes – Sustainable Cities and Climate Change. Our partners in this effort are:

GIST (The Green Indian States Trust)
GIST is an Indian NGO which was created in July 2004 to promote sustainable development in India. GIST’s first project was to research and publish State-level ‘Green Accounts’ to encourage India’s policy-makers and opinion-makers to overcome their almost exclusive dependence on the archaic and limited economic compass of “GDP Growth” to measure and manage India’s progress. GIST has replaced “GDP Growth” with a holistic alternative, Environmentally Adjusted GDP, by accounting for all major externalities.
 

Urban Habitats Forum
Urban Habitats Forum is a public-private partnership, led by the Delhi-based India Habitat Centre, and managed by Mirabilis Advisory. The forum serves as a collaborative platform for a network of multidisciplinary thinkers and changemakers to push for innovation in shaping the next generation of cities in India. The forum aims to mobilise action by being a platform for intelligent discourse, impactful research and result-driven advocacy.

The Urban Habitats Forum was launched in April 2008 with an inaugural symposium on “Creating Places for People” For an overview of the forum’s past events and activities, click here.
 

Climate Project
The Climate Project (TCP) organization was founded by Nobel Laureate, vice President Al Gore after the huge success and critical acclaim of his book and Academy Award winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The need for Mr. Gore to make live presentations on climate change - the central theme of the film - was so overwhelming and critical that Mr. Gore undertook an ambitious initiative to personally train a select group of individuals to be presenters of the slide show featured in An Inconvenient Truth. The organization was created in order to organize the trainings, support the presenters trained by Al Gore and facilitate further outreach of the message.

Within its first year, Mr.Gore trained a diverse cross-section of over 1,000 presenters in the United States. It proved so successful in his home country, that Mr.Gore decided to extend this initiative abroad. The presenter number increased to 2500 by October 2008, with new TCP chapters in Australia, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom and most recently, India.

TCP India was launched at a training session with Mr. Gore in New Delhi on March 15,2008. The 120 presenters who were trained here under the patronage of Dr. R K Pachauri, work based on a model which is quite different from the US model. Instead of just convincing people of the importance of climate change, they work to demonstrate how India can be at the forefront of finding the solution.

As of October 2008, Al Gore’s climate change speakers had delivered tens  of thousands of presentations to varied audiences around the world in a highly effective peer-to-peer approach. Already, more than 4 million people have seen such presentations in India and our presenters have reached over 35,000 in the span of six months.