CBU is discovering the opportunities

This summer I was lucky enough to explore a bit of India as a CBU student there. The course was held by Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources (CEENR) of the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, India in collaboration with the Nordic Centre - Sweden in India (NCI). The course is equivalent to 7.5 ECTS and open for graduate students from the Nordic countries. This multi-disciplinary course introduces students to recent theories and methods in the study of contemporary environmental issues in India. The group of 10 students were representing 5 different countries by origin: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Poland, however by place of studies student were representing 3 Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden and Denmark. My personal expectations before the course were mainly regarding gaining practical knowledge about current environmental issues in India (including forestry) and its relation to social aspects, in terms of public's reflection towards the problems they are facing.

We were warmly welcomed by the director of the institute, coordinators and honoured professors.

The schedule of the course was divided into blocks on week basis. First week of the course was aimed on overview of the ecological history of India, and the Indian environment from different perspectives and sectors such as environment policy, forests, land and water resources, urbanization, culture, religion and environment etcThe second week of the course was emphasized on introduction participants to theories, methods and applications in environmental/ecological economics. Case studies with Indian examples of biodiversity, wetlands, watersheds, farm forestry, groundwater, common property resources, urban solid waste management, health etc.

The third week of the course was aimed to present a few more case studies on the Indian environment as well introduce the participants to political ecology, environmental politics and environmental management as well present case studies on participatory forest and irrigation/water management with Indian case studies.

Fourth and final week of the course was devoted to field trip report, article review, seminar presentations and written final report by the course participants on assigned or selected topics in the broad area of Indian environment.

Besides that according to the programme we had three field visits.

1) Visit to E-Parisaraa Pvt. Ltd. This company is working on the market of electronic waste management.

2) Visit to Biome company. On the picture is roof of so called "green building" aimed for harvesting of rain water with supplementary installed solar panels.

3) Tree planting event in rural forestry school

I really enjoyed the Indian course and thanks CBU for partial financial support.