Hi,

For the past couple of years I have been worried at the rate at which the
Earth's environmental health is deteriorating. I was lying alone in a rented
room in europe when I heard about the disintegration of the Larsen-B ice
shelf on TV. A total of about 3,250 square kilometers of shelf area
disintegrated in a 35-day period beginning on January 31, 2002. Since then,
I have been seriously wondering about how I can contribute towards stemming
this tide of environmental disasters. Sure I do try to reduce my own carbon
footprint without taking it to ridiculously extreme levels, however, I would
like to do more.

As an educator who taught for 10 years at XLRI and during my Ph.D. days from
IIT Bombay, I have been interested in Knowledge Management, Epistemology,
History and Philosophy of Science and in general, about how soceity defines
knowledge (science) and how it is transmitted. I call my own firm, the Talk
Shop, a Knowledge Management firm, whose primary concern is how to optimize
how knowledge is generated, consolidated, transmitted, stored and utilized
(sorry if that sounds like a mouthful, but I had to find a short description
of what we do). We do this for individuals and organizations using the
metaphor of the Knowledge Ecology. Our academic wing deals with field of
education - the individual, the organization and the community. When the
firm was first established in 1996, it had the environment as one of its
strategic concerns.

G-Learning:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/*Glearning*

Concieved on the World Environment Day, June 5th 2009, we seek your help and
participation in launching G-learning. G-learning takes a cue from
E-learning and is a name for educational initiatives towards a healtheir
ecology. It doesnt need much research to realize that despite the media
interest, the Environment is still not high on a student's list of
priorities. (I am speaking from my experience in teaching at Bschools). G
Learning is an inclusive initiative (as opposed to an exclusive one) which
aims at promoting the cause of the Environment and Ecology in mainstream
education (given the obvious importance in grooming decision makers, we will
start with Business Schools). Please do sign up for the yahoo group above.

What can we do?

It is my observation that the reason why the environment is not popular is
because of the following.


1. *Students percieve that environmental related issues are not important
when organizations make recruitment decisions*: This can only change when
business firms clearly show that they DO care about environmental concerns
even when the recruitment is not directly for the environmental management
department. Many organizations already see the strategic advantage of the
environmental platform. The task is of getting senior managers to talk about
the environment to students and others. To do this we can create a network
of speakers, even help them in creating the talk through background
research, etc.
2. *Students do not see the economic sense of focussing on the
environment*: We need to create the business case for the environment.
The economics of the environment is not limited to Carbon Trading and firms
in the area of Alternative Energy like Suzlon, it is in all business
processes from environment friendly production and sourcing to marketing. We
need to create cases from companies that DO have enviornment-friendly
processes.
3. *The courses on offer about Environmental Management are not inspiring
*: Many of these courses have their base in Environmental Engineering and
is focussed on micro-issues of polution and effluent management, etc.
Students are increasingly unwilling to look at issues which do not flow from
a business issue. Business School Courses need to be redisgned focussing on
how the caring for the environment can make good business sense. Good
faculty must be inspired to take up the cause in all fields with say finance
faculty teaching cases about environment based business decisions. We need
to support faculty through (a) a network / platform where they can interact
including faculty who are not PRIMARILY teaching environment courses, but
have an interest in them (b) encouragement from the industry to come and
visit them on site to see their eco-friendly initiatives and encourage them
to write and talk about it (c) significant funding for such conferences that
make it attractive for faculty.
4. *Extra-curricular Activities*: Most colleges already have nature clubs
or wild life clubs that conduct activities to help students get closer to
nature, our G-Learning initiative can network between these clubs and offer
students exciting and interesting activities.


As a non-exclusive intiative, the Talk Shop does not claim or retain
ownership over G learning. We encourage others to also help the cause in any
way they can. Our actions are based on the proverb "It is better to light a
candle than to curse the darkness".

What can you do?

STEP 1.. if you find this initiative interesting, please do sign up for the
mailing list.
STEP 2. Lets meet up soon so that we can discuss how to take this
initiative forward ( send me an email: mathai@... )
STEP 3. Pass this email on to anyone you think might be interested.




--
Yours,

Mathai Fenn
Wikipedia write up on Larsen-B:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larsen_Ice_Shelf
My Personal Site: http://www.fenn.net
My Work Site: http://www.thetalkshop.in
My Blog: http://mathaifenn.blogspot.com


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