GRIHA - ADaRSH

Mr. Sivakisan
CEO - GRIHA

The Past

Environmentalists across the world are taking stock of the progress made since the Earth Summit held at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Next year, we have many events across the globe to mark the 20 years post Rio. In India, the NAPCC (National Action Plan on Climate Change) from the Government of India (2008) articulates 8 missions focussing on specific aspects of environment – development balance. The National Mission on Sustainable Habitat is probably the most important as it is concerned with getting our buildings right, given the fact that most of the buildings we will be having in the years to come are yet to be built. Therefore green buildings help us make the biggest difference from a climate change point of view for us in India.

The control of various constituents of construction activity falls under the jurisdiction of various ministries like Urban Development, Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, Environment & Forests, Power, New and Renewable Energy to name a few in the central government. While policies are framed at the central level, implementation often is the prerogative of the state or local governments. Implementation of such ambitious and appropriate initiatives such as National Building Code and Energy Conservation Building Code has not been fast enough due to multiple agency involvement and therefore not really effective in bringing quick change.

However, the pace of construction activity is so fast today that opportunity to regulate it in an environmentally sound manner cannot be missed at any cost because it is the last we have.