Rising coherence leads to a greener world: Trends in gardening and sustainable agriculture

Coherence-creating groups in a few countries are lifting the collective consciousness globally. These groups of Yogic Flyers—practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation Technique and Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme—are dedicated to creating peace for their nations and the world. When the number of Yogic Flyers reaches the square root of one percent of a nation's population, that country is said to be invincible, according to the Global Country of World Peace, the educational organization established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Founder of the Transcendental Meditation Programme. As a result of the continuing Invincible America Assembly, the Invincible Holland Assembly, school groups in Invincible Latin America, and the Maharishi Vedic Pandits in India, positivity is rising worldwide. This article highlights examples of increased coherence reflected in the trend toward the greening of urban areas, sustainable agriculture, and organic gardening. An interest in healthy eating, self-sufficiency, and a desire to reduce carbon emissions caused by food imports is motivating a 'green revolution' in thinking, said a spokesperson for the Global Country of World Peace. • The BBC reports, 'Queen goes green with veg patch'. Her Majesty, the Queen of England has established The Royal Sustainable Vegetable Patch inside the 40-acre grounds of Buckingham Palace. The garden will provide vegetables for the palace and guests. The manager of the garden said the aim is to inspire people to grow more of their own food, and to get families and children involved in the wholesome activity of gardening. • The First Lady of the USA, Michelle Obama, has planted an organic vegetable garden at the White House. • A crime-ridden district of Tokyo, with a population of 500,000, has turned to planting flowers as part of its efforts to reduce crime. Neighborhood watch groups noticed there were fewer burglaries on streets lined with flowers; a city leader commented that the increased attractiveness may have caused people to pay more attention to their neighborhood. 'Operation Flower' began three years ago as part of a wider crime prevention campaign, and since then burglaries have decreased from 1,700 in 2002, to 390 incidents in 2008. • 'Guerrilla gardening' is taking root in many countries. The term, first used in Australia in the 1970s, describes activists who, often at night, transform trash-ridden, unused urban land into attractive green spaces with flowers, vegetables and trees. • Poor farmers are encouraged 'to guard earth's crop riches', reported the New Scientist magazine. A global fund was established last week to pay small-scale farmers to act as custodians of the world's threatened crops. Crop diversity is essential to ensure against food crises that could result from climate change or plant diseases. Among the first of the fund recipients, 'Peruvian farmers will be paid to look after the most diverse collection of potatoes in the world', experimenting with growing conditions at different elevations and climatic zones. The fund is a key element of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Also part of the treaty, a seed vault with over one million seed varieties has been established in Norway to ensure against loss of the genetic diversity of the world's food heritage.

Beauty Products Get Fairtrade Makeover

public from hereafter will be able to buy products including lip balms, face masks, body butters and shower gels from 5 companies including Boots, Bubble & Balm, Essential Care, Lush and Neal's Yard. Each beauty product contains one or more Fairtrade certified ingredient such as cocoa butter, shea nut butter, sugar or brazil nut oil, benefitting disadvantaged producers from countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To date, 57 beauty products have been licensed by the Fairtrade Foundation and it is expected that many more will follow.
Fearne Cotton, TV presenter and long-standing Fairtrade supporter, says: "I am really excited about this new opportunity to transform trade through the way I shop. I've tried out several of the new beauty products for myself and love them. Not only are they great quality, but they make me feel good using them because I know that the farmers who grew the ingredients that went into them are now able to improve their lives."
Beauty products, toiletries and fragrance products play an important part in our lives. In Europe at least 5 billion units of cosmetics[1] are sold each year[2] using around 1.5 million tonnes of ingredients.[3] Increasingly, people are keen to lead a Fairtrade lifestyle and expect sustainable attributes to be an inherent part of the products and services that they buy. In a recent survey by Globescan, 31% of people in the UK said they are interested in purchasing cosmetics carrying the FAIRTRADE Mark. There is huge potential within the beauty and cosmetics sector for producers of existing Fairtrade certified ingredients and also of potential new ingredients or their derivatives to benefit from this new market opportunity.
Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation says: "It's great news that now the beauty industry will get a Fairtrade makeover and the farmers who grow the natural ingredients will get a fairer deal because we think they're worth it. This exciting launch brings much needed positive change for producers who need Fairtrade now more than ever. The public has said they want to lead a sustainable lifestyle and this is the next step along the path to looking good and feeling great. So go out and treat yourself to these great new products!"
Introducing Fairtrade labelling to beauty products will increase the overall number of Fairtrade products in UK shops and the volumes of ingredients which producers are able to sell under Fairtrade terms, which in turn increases the benefits back to farmers.
Ms Nana Yago, a Fairtrade shea nut producer from Burkina Faso says: "When we work together, we can help many people out of poverty. Most importantly, Fairtrade enables us to help ourselves and to support each other. The premium allows us to offer training courses to the women in our group. They learn to write and can see how important it is to have their independence in life. The status of women in our society has now increased."
Landlocked Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world. Ms Yago is a member of the Union of Women Producers of Shea Products of the Sissili and Ziro provinces, a group representing 2,000 women. The group was set up to improve the position of women involved in shea butter production, most of whom are illiterate, and reduce poverty in the villages. Traditional shea butter processing is done by village women who gather, boil and sun-dry the nuts before they are pounded and ground to a paste. The paste is mixed with water to separate the fat, which is then manually churned into creamy butter.
Through Fairtrade labelled beauty products, producers will benefit in three ways.
1. Producers will get the Fairtrade minimum price plus a premium, a bit extra to invest in community projects such as schools and healthcare.2. The companies behind the products will have a partnership plan in place showing how they will additionally support producers to develop their businesses and communities.3. The Fairtrade Foundation has worked hard to set minimum thresholds of Fairtrade ingredients at levels which allow best selling volume lines of beauty products containing natural ingredients to be certified.
Notes to Editors
1. The FAIRTRADE Mark is a certification mark and a registered trademark of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO) of which the Fairtrade Foundation is the UK member. The Fairtrade Foundation is an independent certification body which licenses the use of the FAIRTRADE Mark on products which meet international Fairtrade standards. This independent consumer label is now recognised by 70% of UK consumers and appears on products as a guarantee that disadvantaged producers are getting a better deal. Today, more than 7.5 million people - farmers, workers and their families - across 58 developing countries benefit from the international Fairtrade system.
2. Thresholds defined within the Cosmetics policy for a product to be eligible for Fairtrade labelling have been set at the following wet weight formulation levels:
Minimum 2% for ‘wash off' products (on a whole product
Minimum 5% for ‘leave on' products (on a whole product basis) e.g. face masks and scrubs
These thresholds open up the potential market for Fairtrade labelling to 53% of the total cosmetics market because they are applicable to the best selling volume lines (where higher thresholds would not) and permit a wide range of cosmetics products to be formulated containing Fairtrade ingredients and their derivatives.
3. Over 4,500 products have been licensed to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark including coffee, tea, herbal teas, chocolate, cocoa, sugar, bananas, grapes, pineapples, mangoes, avocados, apples, pears, plums, grapefruit, lemons, oranges, satsumas, clementines, mandarins, lychees, coconuts, dried fruit, juices, smoothies, biscuits, cakes & snacks, honey, jams & preserves, chutney & sauces, rice, quinoa, herbs & spices, seeds, nuts & nut oil, wines, beers, rum, confectionary, muesli, cereal bars, yoghurt, ice-cream, flowers, sports balls, sugar body scrub and cotton products including clothing, homeware, cloth toys, cotton wool, olive oil and beauty products.
4. Seven in 10 households purchase Fairtrade goods, including an extra 1.3 million more households in 2008, helping Fairtrade sales reach an estimated £700m in 2008, a 43% increase on the previous year. There are over 460 producer organisations selling to the UK and 746 to the global Fairtrade system, representing more than 1.5 million farmers and workers.
[1] Cosmetics defined as all toiletries, skin care, hair care, make up, perfumes and fragrances
[2] Source: European Commission and COLIPA
[3] Figures are extrapolated from Euromonitor data 2005 and from COLIPA data. UK market share is ~17% of EU market. The combined market share for cosmetics in Germany, France and UK is 57% of the EU market.

Obama vows U.S. will lead the way on climate change

President Obama praised efforts by industrialized and developing nations to set guidelines in the battle to control climate change and said today that the United States will increase its role in that fight.Speaking from Italy, where officials from 17 nations met and set the new targets, Obama warned that further steps would be needed and cautioned against those who would dismiss today's announced agreement, which fell short of what some environmentalists had hoped for but was a significant step from the policies of the Bush administration.

We've made a good start, but I am the first one to acknowledge that on this issue it will not be easy," Obama said. "I think one of the things we will have to do is fight the temptation toward cynicism, to feel that the problem is so immense that somehow we cannot make significant strides."It is no small task for 17 leaders to bridge their differences on an issue like climate change," Obama said.The president spoke at the news conference after the forum that included key industrialized countries and developing economies such as Australia, India, China and South Korea. The countries represent more than three-quarters of emissions blamed for raising the world's temperature.
The group agreed to prevent the Earth's climate from rising by 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degree Fahrenheit). That will entail a sharp cut in emissions by 2050, about 80% for industrialized nations and 50% for the developing world."Developed countries like my own have a historic responsibility to take the lead," Obama said. "We have the much larger carbon footprint per capita, and I know that sometimes the U.S. has fallen short of meeting our responsibilities.""Those days are over," Obama said."We don't expect to solve this problem in one meeting or in one summit," Obama said, adding that he believed some progress had been made."Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time," read the official statement by the 17 nations. "As leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, we intend to respond vigorously to this challenge, being convinced that climate change poses a clear danger requiring an extraordinary global response."Among other things, the leaders agreed to establish a global carbon capture institute, charged with spurring large-scale research programs around the world. Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd predicted the initiative, to be based in his country, will speed the development of technology critical for reducing carbon emissions.In his comments after the meeting, Rudd said he welcomed the return of U.S. leadership on the climate front.Several nations also agreed to take the lead on particular technologies, including solar energy and advanced vehicles.The fact that developing nations balked at the plan reflects in part their contending political and economic needs, Obama suggested."Each of our nations comes to the table with different needs," said Obama. They want to make sure they don't have to sacrifice prosperity for progress on climate change, he said.The progress of the president's climate bill through Congress made it easier for Obama to push other nations on the climate-change measures, White House officials said."It strengthens our hand in those negotiations," press secretary Robert Gibbs said. The vote demonstrates "for the first time in many, many years our country's grave concern, shared by others in Europe . . . and how important that is to driving consensus.""We all have some skin in this game," said Gibbs."I'm not entirely sure that we expected to come here and have eight to 10 years of disagreement wash away in a couple of days in July in Italy. I think everybody understands that -- everybody understands that this is going to take some time."

Global warming: The heat is on the U.S.

This week's Group of 8 summit has pretty much lived down to the low expectations it generated from the outset, yet it did produce a long-overdue agreement to fight climate change.The club of industrialized nations agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. It was less than President Obama had hoped for -- he had aimed to get developing countries such as China and India to sign on as well -- but it represents the first time the United States has taken the international lead on climate change since the 1990s, and demonstrates to recalcitrant nations that the industrialized world is willing to take responsibility for its outsized contribution to the problem.

Such international pacts are usually meaningless without the backing of Congress; President Clinton, after all, signed the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming in 1998, but it was never ratified by the Senate. That chamber once again finds itself in a position to overrule the president as it considers a sweeping climate-change bill that was narrowly approved last month in the House. It would fulfill Obama's G-8 promise by meeting the 2050 goal.The clamor from global-warming deniers has heated up as the nation gets closer to taking action, yet their comprehension of climate science hasn't improved. A particularly common obfuscation from right-wing pundits is the "revelation" that global temperatures have been declining since 1998, even as carbon emissions during the intervening 11 years have risen. This hardly debunks the climate change theory. The cyclical El Niño phenomenon and heavy greenhouse gas concentrations combined to make 1998 the hottest year in recorded history. Such statistical blips are properly ignored by most climatologists, who look at average temperatures over time rather than year-to-year data. And the last decade was on average the hottest ever recorded. Conservatives are trotting out other long-discredited hypotheses, such as the notion that solar activity rather than greenhouse gases is responsible for rising global temperatures, but the climate bill's fate in the Senate will depend less on crackpot theories than on hardheaded horse-trading. Its effectiveness was undermined in the House by special interests seeking to maximize profits at the expense of the environment, and the same is happening in the Senate as the bill makes its way through various committees.
With his leadership on climate change at the G-8, Obama posited that the United States would no longer ignore a pressing global threat that is largely of its making. If the Senate proves him wrong, it would harm more than our international standing. Those who advocate inaction are gambling with the future of everyone on Earth, and those stakes are too high.

Despite Obama's pledge, G-8 makes little headway on global warming

Addressing leaders of the world's most important economies early Thursday, President Obama wasted no time in proclaiming a new day for U.S. policy on climate change."I know that in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities," he said. "So let me be clear: Those days are over."
But by the end of the day, when the Group of 8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, wrapped up its deliberations on climate, Obama found himself stymied by many of the same roadblocks that plagued previous efforts to tackle global warming.Leaders of the most developed nations again declined to commit themselves to any specific actions now or in the immediate future to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming -- actions that would require increasing energy prices, raising taxes or imposing other unpopular economic measures on their people.Instead, they embraced the high-sounding goal of reducing their own emissions by 80% and worldwide emissions by 50% by 2050 -- without pledging to take any specific steps to get there. China, India and other major developing countries, which pressed for action in the next decade by the G-8 countries, reacted by rejecting the package.
And a side meeting Obama convened Thursday to bring together the nations most responsible for greenhouse emissions ended with only general pronouncements, and no firm financial commitments, to work against warming and share emissions-curbing technologies in the future.Paying the economic and political costs for effective action against climate change has always been a problem. But it was especially difficult this time because of the global recession, even with a popular new leader such as Obama seeking to forge ahead."There's always a high expectation for what the U.S. can deliver, and higher expectations for Obama, because he's Obama," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Those are difficult expectations to meet."Schmidt and other activists said that Obama, by bringing the United States to the table on global warming after what they called foot-dragging by the Bush administration, has given new steam to negotiations that will culminate at a United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in December.The Italy talks represented small but important progress in the debate, they said.The environmental group Greenpeace, by contrast, derided the package as a "missed opportunity" for more aggressive emissions reductions and a failure of leadership by Obama and the G-8.Obama convened the 17-nation climate meeting at a giant circular table, inviting fellow leaders to speak openly about their hopes and concerns. Several acknowledged the new leadership from the U.S., administration officials said.The discussions yielded a consensus declaration that the world should try to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures, a level scientists say would minimize the dangers of the most catastrophic warming effects.The 17 major emitters -- the most advanced economies that make up the G-8, plus the nine biggest emerging economies -- also agreed to partner in research on energy technologies that would reduce emissions, such as solar power and the capture and storage of carbon from coal.They set broad principles for financing the effort, but did not pledge specific contributions.After the meeting, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd praised the American president for his role in the sessions."Can I say on behalf of so many of us," he told Obama, "how welcome it is to see the return of U.S. global leadership on climate change under your presidency."The warm words did not change the fact that, with the global economy racked by recession and even the wealthiest countries struggling with unemployment and other economic pain, considerable obstacles remain for moving against climate change now -- in the United States and elsewhere.Reflecting the challenge on the home front, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), head of the committee drafting the centerpiece of Obama's climate change legislation, announced that she was pulling back from a promise to act swiftly and would not finish work on a bill until at least September.The House last month passed a climate bill that would gradually impose carbon emissions limits and set up a "cap and trade" system to encourage industries to reduce pollution. Europe has already created such a system.During the climate talks, Obama aides said, some developing nations asked why they should sacrifice when other countries have caused more of the damage. Analysts said Obama would have more leverage in dealing with such objections from other countries if the Senate approved a climate bill.The president's clear call for action in Italy could help down the road, too, they said.Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geoscientist and longtime participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that the G-8 meeting was "a chance for the heads of state to look at each other in the eye and say, 'Yeah, we agree about this' -- and then the word goes down to the negotiators.""That kind of signal then reverberates," he said, "and then a deal that seems impossible can be done."The climate discussions dominated a day at the G-8 that saw little other action.Leaders did agree to work toward completing a long-stalled global trade agreement, and Obama became the first U.S. president to shake hands with Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, whose country has won favor in Washington in recent years since he abandoned its nuclear program.

G-8 pledges $20 billion to fight world hunger after appeal from Obama

World leaders agreed to come up with $20 billion to fight hunger after a personal appeal from President Obama, who capped the European leg of his latest foreign trip with a visit to the Vatican this morning.At a news conference summarizing his first Group of 8 summit, Obama said the leading industrialized nations had made progress on feeding the hungry in the less developed world, controlling climate change and dealing with nuclear proliferation. His next and final stop before heading home to Washington will be Ghana.


Obama and his wife, Michelle, met for about 25 minutes with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, where the pair also exchanged gifts."It's a great honor for me. Thank you so much," Obama said as he met the pontiff for the first time. The two have talked by phone, however.The pope and Obama share similar concerns on some issues. Both have blamed greed for the current economic crisis around the globe and urged reforms for the business world. They also share a long-standing concern with providing economic help for the poor around the world.
"The president, in both his words and in his deeds, expresses many things that many Catholics recognize as fundamental to our teaching," said Denis McDonough, a devout Catholic and foreign policy advisor to the president. "One is that the president often refers to the fundamental belief that each person is endowed with dignity . . . and the president often underscores that dignity of people is a driving goal in what we hope to accomplish in development policy, for example, and in foreign policy."But the two are separated by issues as well, especially abortion rights, supported by Obama and vigorously opposed by the Vatican. Aides hope the papal audience helps Obama boost to his efforts to court American Catholics, and to rewrite the dialogue between progressives and the church in general.For weeks, aides to the president have been inviting abortion opponents to Washington to talk about finding common ground on issues like family planning, sex education and adoption. The White House is trying to come up with a series of recommendations by the end of the summer that both sides of the abortion issue can support.At the beginning of the Group of 8 summit here this week, world leaders had planned to raise $15 billion toward humanitarian efforts to feed the hungry, but decided over the course of two days to increase the amount to $20 billion at the request of Obama.During his news conference, Obama said the G-8 had made some progress, especially in getting nations to work together on common problems."We've come to L'Aquila [Italy] for a very simple reason: because the challenges of our time threaten the peace and prosperity of every single nation, and no one nation can meet these challenges alone," Obama said."The threat of climate change can't be contained by borders on a map, and the theft of loose nuclear materials could lead to the extermination of any city on Earth," he said. "Reckless actions by a few have fueled a recession that spans the globe, and rising food prices means that 100 million of our fellow citizens are expected to fall into desperate poverty."So right now, at this defining moment, we face a choice. We can either shape our future or let events shape it for us. We can let the stale debates and old disagreements of the past divide us, or we can recognize our shared interests and shared aspirations and work together to create a safer and cleaner and more prosperous world for future generations," Obama said.At the news conference Obama also defended his administration's work at home to pass healthcare reform, an effort that has come under fire from some on Capitol Hill as he takes his fourth foreign trip while lawmakers wrestle with his proposal.He also called on leaders of Iran to take note of the G-8 statement condemning its treatment of peaceful protests, Holocaust denial and defiance of international nuclear standards. Obama emphasized the consensus in the statement, noting that it included Russia, "which doesn't make statements like that lightly."As leaders discussed the problem of world hunger, according to people who were present, Obama at one point rose to make a personal appeal for a more substantial commitment to food security.When his father left Kenya five decades ago, his home country had a higher per capita income and gross domestic product than did South Korea. Today, South Korea is prosperous and Kenya still struggles with poverty, a state Obama attributes to stronger social institutions in South Korea.At his news conference, Obama acknowledged relying on his own history in arguing for extra aid."My father traveled to the United States a mere 50 years ago," he said. "Yet now I have family members who . . . live in villages where hunger is real."The question he raised in the meeting, he said, was, "Why is that?""If you talk to people on the ground in Africa, certainly in Kenya, they will say that, part of the issue here is the institutions aren't working for ordinary people," he said. For instance, he said, many people know they can't get jobs and other opportunities without paying bribes.Strengthening democracies and social institutions will be a key theme Obama emphasizes when he travels to Africa today. It will be the African American president's first trip to sub-Saharan Africa since his election last year.While there, Obama is expected to emphasize the responsibility of developing nations to use international assistance in a transparent and accountable way.

Environmental education finally finds a place in India's school textbooks

Thanks to a two-year study that identified the gaps and anomalies in environmental education in India, 800 schools now have a new and improved syllabus that promotes an understanding of environmental issues
More than 100 schools in the state of Maharashtra, and 700 more around India, now have a syllabus that aims to improve children's understanding and knowledge of the environment.
This change stems from a World Bank-aided study, undertaken by the Indian government since 1999, with the objectives of strengthening environment education in the formal school system. Apart from Maharashtra, seven other states -- Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Orissa, Punjab and Uttaranchal -- were selected for the pilot implementation of this project.
The project was designed in two phases. In the first phase, a critical content analysis was undertaken in order to find out the status of environmental content in the textbooks currently being used in the schools. On the basis of the findings, the second phase of pilot implementation was designed, to ensure that environmental education is covered through infusion in existing subjects and not as a separate subject. Practical, hands-on activities, field experiences, work experiences etc are important components of environmental learning. These need to be planned and operationalised with inputs from NGOs and learning centres like museums, zoos etc.
The eight states were selected for the project on the basis of their geographical spread, existing environmental content in textbooks and willingness of the state to participate in the exercise. Eight hundred schools in these states (100 schools in each state) were selected for the initiative.
The Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Environment Education and Research (BVIEER), Pune, did a two-year content analysis of more than 1,800 textbooks from all over the country, studying their handling of environmental subjects. Textbooks in General Science, Geography and Languages were analysed to assess the environment education inputs.
The BVIEER content analysis identified 99 environmental concepts including Natural Resources, Biodiversity, Pollution, People and Environment, Energy etc. Each concept was assessed for accuracy, relevance to the text, appropriateness to the age-group, consistency, bias etc. Once the matrix was complete it was easy to identify the lacunae or 'gaps' in the curriculum.
While most of the Geography textbooks did discuss the importance of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere in detail, and focused on the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion etc, the researchers found that there is little effort to interlink environmental concepts and real life experiences. This means that most students learn the subject by rote and do not identify or believe in the cause of environmental protection. There is a serious absence of locale-specific information and several gaps in the appreciation of ecosystems, their structure, functions, uses, degradation and conservation. There is hardly any information on sustainable lifestyles and what individuals can and should do for environmental preservation as a part of personal day-to-day activity.
Several simple environmental topics such as the variety of plant and animal species in the world, in India and in each state, do not find appropriate representation in the curriculum. Very often, information provided is dated. For instance, DDT in most books is mentioned as a common pesticide, even though commercial production and use of DDT is banned in India.While solar energy is frequently focused on, other sources of non-conventional energy are not dealt with adequately. In most instances it is observed that the complexity and frequency of each concept does not progress over the years.
Comprehension and the will to teach these topics seemed dismal amongst most teachers. Most put this down to lack of time, lack of sufficiently locale-specific environmentally relevant educational material, lack of institutional and parental support and a host of such explanations.
The researchers subsequently suggested changes in the textbooks. Dr E K Bharucha, director of BVIEER says, "Based on the analysis we made of the textbooks, the textbooks of standards 6, 7 and 8 have been redrafted in eight states of the country." In Maharashtra, BVIEER actually sat with the textbook writers to bring about changes in the curriculum.
For the pilot implementation of Phase II, textbooks of science, social sciences and languages at middle school level (standards VI to VIII) were targeted. The concerned textbooks in these states have been modified to strengthen the infusion of environmental concepts and have been introduced in the selected project schools in six states. The remaining two states are in the process of introducing these modified textbooks. The project also involved orientation for all the major stakeholders. This was done through workshops for the Educational Administrators, concerned officials of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) Textbook Bureaus and state education departments, besides school principals and parents of students. At the same time, workshops were also conducted for textbook writers and illustrators, where experts from the field of environment education provided inputs and helped the writers revise the existing textbooks.
Model textbooks have thus been created by each state for standards 6, 7 and 8. The 'good' lessons that need to be replicated across states were retained and the poor or incorrect concepts and identified gaps that need to be addressed in future textbooks were corrected. At a larger level, there is increased interaction between textbook writers, NGOs and government bureaus. "They are now more aware of what issues to handle and how," says project coordinator Shamita Kumar.
As Dr Bharucha says, "The change has been different in different states, but you cannot expect everyone to react in the same manner. The report is so complex and large that it will take some time for the changes to register properly."