Idling under the Neem Tree

  Climate friendly infrastructure Building disasters shelters in critical in the day and age of Climate Change By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation In the day and age of Climate Change we need to adapt to help mitigate the debilitating impact Climate Change will make not just on our lives but also on the lives of other Creatures, Great and Small. Every small source of global warming needs to be countered with cooling factors. Common Property Resources like transport infrastructure / public transport and emission from private transport,  water supply, Climate friendly agriculture, aviation and architecture, Climate Change adapted fuel and energy supply infrastructure,  constructed landscape, or areas of human footprint / Carbon footprint, total emissions in a micro climate,  are all to be ‘planned’ for Climate Change Adaptation. In short the human landscape as to be Climate Change adapted. Climate Change does not manifest as a single violent watershed ev...

 Solid Wase Management Guidelines Paper and packaging Ware, Glassware, manufactured / hazardous stuffs, and toilet wastes that can be incinerated ... are stashed away in colour coded containers as shown here in Germany - the leader in Solid Waste Management.  By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation One of the greatest challenges of modern city management / governance is solid waste management. It can almost wholly be rooted to plastics mismanagement. Although plastics less than 20 microns have been banned legally, it is practised most in the breach. This is perhaps due to lack of effective publicity for guidelines. Equally significant is the fact that packaging material have not been given policy guidelines. Lack of effective enforcement of laws is largely to blame too. Citizens’ lack of separation of wastes and their lack of knowledge seems to be another primary cause. The citizens’ lackadaisical approach to SWM (more in the breach) lacks penalties so it’s a vici...

 Green Cover in Urban areas and their legal / administrative protection (Green Belt) Aiming to include a live water body like a river in its most pristine form inside a throbbing urban sace is the ideal for civic administrators to aim for.  © Malini Shankar  By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation Environmental concerns has become the central focus of urban governance over the decades as Climate Change manifests itself in more frequent extreme weather events to the detriment of the average citizen. Extreme weather events means more days of heat n cold waves per year in a given area. Other ‘hydrometeorological events’ include Avalanches, blizzards, cyclone, coastal incursion, Climate Change, desertification, droughts, epidemics and El Nino, fires, fog, floods, flash floods, hurricanes,   infernos, lightning strikes, landslides, mudslides, mud flows, twisters and tornadoes, thunderstorms, and urban floods… Volcanoes and earthquakes, sea level rise and rela...

  Incorporating HDI Common Property Resources like road infrastructure is mandatory for Smart City Governance. " Day 64/365 - Hong Kong street lights " by  natasia.causse  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0 . By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation I was recently told “Malini your articles recently are becoming so esoteric that you will be well advised to put it in simple parlance, and preferably in Indian languages if you want our politicians to read and assimilate what you are saying”. So: Simply put Incorporating HDI means calibrating human development on a per capita basis. What is the value that our tax payments are giving us? How much of our tax returns are being invested by the Governments in Common Property Resources like roads, air quality management, capex on transport infrastructure and logistics, food security, livelihood security, cyber security, energy security, power supply infrastructure, industrial policy, insurance, manufacturing output, mana...