The regional conferences will begin to consider ideas to support local communities to protect their
environment and will cover similar issues as the local conferences including, water, agriculture,
forestation, waste management and pollution. At the regional conference, discussion of the
environmental issues highlighted at the local conferences will be discussed and the most important
issues and how collectively the local issues could be resolved. Also, because the regional
conferences will cover a greater geographic area, environmental issues will still be locally relevant,
but also encompass environmental issues that are present at a larger scale and could be tackled
collectively at a this scale.
4.3
International conference
A four-day international conference on the environment and climate change will take place in 2014.
Experts from many countries will meet with national leaders in India over four days. This conference
will occur at the end of the chain of conferences, thereby bringing all the lessons and stories learnt
from the local and regional conferences, in addition to the national tour, to a culmination point at
the international conference. The expected gathering will be around 5,000-15000 people. The
international conference will cover the following issues: climate change; conservation; water
reservoirs; energy; environment degradation; farming and agriculture; land degradation and use;
waste management; health; resource depletion; water pollution; air pollution; industrial pollution;
food pollution; population; consumerism. All the environmental issues from the local and regional
conferences will be brought to this conference and discussed. The role of each sector and each
community will be discussed to see how each can assist the other.
The two main aims of the international conference are to:
? Link the network of people working in the environment, with the hope that it could join India’s
local environmental leaders with international campaigns/movements for environmental and
climate change. At the international conference, the ground environmental leaders and genuine
interested people will be introduced to the international community – that is people who are
really interested in environmental issues and have been working for it. Because the Indian
population is very large thus it could play a larger role in global environmental movements. The
international conference will provide an opportunity to explore how this could be done. The
local conferences, regional conferences and 100,000 kilometres exclusive national tour will build
a ground network in thousands of villages, sub-urban and urban areas for the international
environment movements.
? Discuss the recorded documentation of environmental problems and issues from the local and
regional conferences. Through this activity we hope that participants will begin to see the
important role of each individual and organisation in working to assist local communities across
the nation to solve the identified environmental issues.
Page 5 of 7