The Hindu Business Line : `Glocalisation can help preserve natural resources'

Dr Ashok Khosla (left), President, Development Alternatives, India, and Mr Fritz Balkau, Director, UNEP's Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, Paris, at the two-day CII-UNIDO conference on `Resource sustainability — Closing the materials loop', in Hyderabad on Tuesday. — A. Roy Chowdhury

Hyderabad , Sept. 21

WHEN you talk about growth and development, you should factor in on the fact that resources on this planet are limited and some are non-renewable.

Better choose the path of glocalisation, says Dr Ashok Khosla, one of the founding members of the Factor 10 Club, and President of Development Alternatives.

Glocalisation, he said, meant using locally available resources such ipomoea (weed) for generating energy and tiles to provide livelihoods and market opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

The club, a global Alliance for Global Eco-Structuring (AGES), calls for productivity of resource use to be raised by at least a factor of 10.

Giving a perspective on `Resource Sustainability' from a developing country's point of view, Dr Khosla said `glocalisation' could be a solution for preserving resources. First step could be local production for local consumption.

Talking on the yawning gap between the resources used by the North and the South, he said 1.3 billion people on the globe have no clean drinking water. Two billion people do not have commercial energy and 2.5 billion in the third world have no proper sanitation. About 30 million stunted babies are born every year.

He said both the rich and poor have responsibility to achieve a more sustainable world. "The rich, in the North and the South, must adopt new lifestyles. Material and energy use should be brought down by a factor of 10," Dr Khosla said.

"We can reduce it by a factor of four (referring to the theory of Factor 4)," he argued.

On their part, the poor must find new livelihoods and production systems to improve output and efficiency by a factor of 10.

According to him, sustainable development meant equity, ecological security, economic efficiency and endogenous choices.