Feb 02, 2012
The Green Globe Awards were given to ‘Planet Heroes’ - people as diverse as businessmen, political leaders and even a sports team, for their contribution to the environmental cause.
New Delhi: The Green Globe Foundation and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) award ceremony was completely hijacked by actor Abhishek Bachchan who urged people to do whatever they could to make a difference to the environment. He even said: “If I have to make a movie on environment, I will.” He said this to a roaring applause from the audience which was completely mesmerised by the actor.
This was the 4th edition of The Green Globe Foundation Awards that took place at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) 2012 organised in collaboration with TERI and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to honour outstanding green campaigners over their efforts to protect the planet.
Young people constitute over 40 per cent population of India and few question the power of youth to address social or environmental issues. In an effort to reach out to a young audience over environmental degradation, TERI had organised a YUVA MEET to inspire youth to play a proactive part in addressing sustainable development issues and engage them to take substantial actions. Rahul Saini, one of the 200 participants of the YUVA Meet was given the Youth Green Globe Award.
Cricket, almost considered a religion in India, can mobilise millions of people to go green. This was proved when Indian Premier League (IPL) Team, Royal Challengers Bangalore grabbed a green award for being the world’s only fan-driven, carbon-neutral sports team for spreading awareness among its huge fan-base about the criticalities of the environment.
Environment journalist Joydeep Gupta was honoured for his contribution on campaigning on behalf of Mother Earth and contributing to the environmental issues through his sustained write-ups in the media.
Nearly 25 per cent of Indians still don’t have electricity and their lives come to a standstill as soon as the sun sets every evening. To address this issue to some extent, Panasonic displayed its Life Innovation Container that has solar panels for creating and storing energy that can be used whenever needed.
Ironically, there was a setback at the Green Globe Awards as this year the jury abstained from giving away any award under the architecture category as it didn’t find any project worthy of it.
