Aradhana Dwivedi-Verma, Manager, Communications and PR at Asia Society India Centre spoke with Dr. Rashneh Pardiwala, Founder and Director of the Centre for Environmental Research and Education (CERE). Trained as an ecologist with a PhD in climate change, Rashneh has been at the forefront of promoting environmental sustainability in India for over two decades. Her work spans corporate sustainability, urban afforestation, solar electrification, and water conservation. Under her leadership, CERE has grown from a modest start to one of India's leading environmental organisations, working with companies, schools, and communities to implement tangible climate solutions. We spoke to her about building a sustainable future, the evolving conversation around ESG in India, and how her journey has been shaped by both, her successes and challenges.

Could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your work? What led you to work in environmental research and set up CERE?

So essentially to give you a brief background about myself, by training, I am an ecologist. I did my Master's and my PhD from the University of Edinburgh. And I then decided to return to India because Mumbai is home.

I returned to India only to find that at that time, way back in 2002, nobody at that point was talking about sustainable development. If you look at the evolution of the environmental movement, it has always been either wildlife conservation being looked at by some of our most well-established environmental organisations in India or they have been grassroots level environmental movements. Be it the Narmada movement, be it the Dahanu movement, these have been grassroots level activists who have been pushing for the environmental cause. So it was always a case of either or. It was either you were an environmentalist or you were pro-development. Nobody wanted to walk the middle path. Nobody was talking about sustainable development. Climate change and global warming were not buzzwords.

I did my PhD in climate change, I'm an ecologist, and this was an area I wanted to work in. I remember having interviewed with many organisations and really not finding that niche, not finding the job I would be happy in. That's when a colleague of mine turned around after a few months and said, “Rashneh, stop cribbing. If you really aren't happy, why don't you start your own organisation?” And I was surprised. I had returned to India with a handful of student loans and all of one thousand rupees. I said to her, “Really? You can start an organisation?” And she said, “Yes, why don't you start your own?”

And so that's what I did. With youthful ignorance I started the Centre for Environmental Research and Education (CERE). To date, if you look at our trustee, as the sole settler of the trust, I have started it with all of one thousand rupees. I remember at that point going to the lawyer (who I cannot name because he is a high court judge now), saying, “Rashneh, are you crazy? You're starting a trust with a thousand rupees, that's just not done.” And I said, “Is it illegal?” He was saying, no, it's not tenable. I said, “Well, if it's not illegal, start it.” And so I started the organisation six months after graduating in September 2002.

I was very clear that the vision of the organisation was really to promote environmental sustainability, especially looking at urban India. I strongly felt that the problem lies in our urban jungles. Everything is fine with nature. It's how we human beings interact with nature. It's our consumption patterns, our development models that are not sustainable. It's our need to continuously extract and extract beyond the carrying capacity of this one planet. And that is where the problem lies. We have a number of organisations that are doing excellent work in our national parks, in our reserves. But I think the greater problem lies in our cities as more and more of India becomes urbanised.

We started in 2002, and today in 2024, we've completed twenty-two years. The organisation started with really just myself. The only people I could afford were one peon and a colleague. Today, I have a permanent team of almost twenty researchers. I have a field team who does a lot of our fieldwork based on the number of projects anywhere from fifty to seventy. We are now established as one of the largest, most reputable environmental organisations where our voice is being heard, where we are consultants to the government, to companies and to SEBI, developing Carbon Management Systems. So I think CERE has come a long way in the past twenty-two years.

So over those 22 years, I noticed that you worked a lot on corporate sustainability. I was curious to know how the field of environmental research and how conversation around these things has evolved over the years?

Absolutely. So as I mentioned way back, long before people understood carbon, the entire sector, a lot of corporate India thought the only polluters were the manufacturing sector. Terms like carbon footprinting were alien to them. They did not talk about carbon management systems, let alone about ESG. When we go out and talk to companies about being environmentally responsible, about carbon footprint; they'd reject the thought with the idea that as part of the service sector being a polluter doesn’t apply to them. “We aren't the polluters.”

The conversation would then start off by really educating them on the very fact that even if you use electricity, you have a carbon footprint. If you use any natural resource, be it fuel, be it electricity, be it corporate travel, be it even the paper on your desk, you are using a natural resource. And if you're using a natural resource, you have a carbon footprint and you're part of the problem. So you need to be a part of the solution.

A lot of the service sector companies, they'd sit up and say that the main polluters (factories) need to do more. I remember saying “yes, they already have statutory compliances. But everyone needs to be a part of this conversation.” It's not only the manufacturing sector, it's the service sector, every section of society, even civil society, needs to be a part of this conversation.

We started talking to companies and slowly over time, we realised that companies saw the value of it. We simply explained to them that the bottom line is you can't do business on a dead planet. You need to start looking after the environment. You need to start looking after the communities within which you operate. And even now, I think a lot of the mid-level companies, I think the top hundred companies are now well on their sustainability journey. They understand ESG. They've started progressing from just, you know, financial reporting to sustainability reporting to integrated reporting.

No longer do we have the luxury of time. Climate change and global warming is upon us. They need to start taking action now. It is going to impact their business and they've seen it time and again. So I think the top companies certainly see the value in it and have started putting systems in place, including targets, very tangible science-based targets. They've started putting in place wanting to achieve neutrality, wanting to achieve water positivity, and they've got their milestones down.I'm quite hopeful that with the support of the government, of both regulatory policies, slowly companies will start truly practising sustainability in letter and in spirit.

I just wish the pace of change was faster. Because I think we will soon breach all the climate levels that we had set. We will breach the parts per million BPM. We will breach the temperature level as well.

Were there challenges you faced in this work in India that would not have been issues elsewhere? In terms of discourse, in terms of persuading people to try something new and adapting conventional wisdom in the field to an Indian context.

I think it has been challenging because to be honest, India still has the mindset of a developing country. We still have a populace that comprises the haves and the have-nots. So yes, we still have a very large population that still does not have access to twenty-four hours of electricity supply, but on the other hand, we have cities that are lit up like Christmas trees, wasting electricity. Villages that do not have piped water supply, but we have cities that are wasting water. There is a lot of inequity, social inequity, environmental inequity. So, realistically, India comprises a developed nation,  a developing nation and an underdeveloped nation. It's all combined. When we have such a mixed society, it's very difficult to have one policy that meets the needs of everyone. It's always challenging.

I think that's one of the reasons why we've also designed our projects in such a way to ensure that we really help promote sustainable development. The aim of CERE has always been to develop successful models of environmental sustainability to prove that yes, it's possible. Even our programme is called Carbon Map and Cap.

For me, as an environmentalist, just mapping a company's carbon footprint is not what the paper is printed on. If they do not start capping it, if they do not start taking tangible action that really has a negative impact on the environment. There’s no point just crunching numbers unless it's going to lead to environmental change.

We have a few of our flagship projects that address this: the first one is urban afforestation. It's known as UAP, the Urban Afforestation Project, where the aim is really to green our concrete jungles. If you look at our cities, they’re becoming unlivable. They are constantly expanding and getting more and more concretised. All the natural resources being used, they're always guzzling but falling short.

So over the past eight years, CERE has planted over 300,000 large native trees across cities in India. And I'm talking of over 26 cities– Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, you name it. It's really difficult where a tree has to compete with high real estate prices and where per square foot, everyone would prefer to park a motorcycle but not allow you to plant a tree. Nonetheless, that's where we need it most. Because those are our pollution hotspots.

So with this aim, we have sequestered millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide because these trees are just absorbing carbon dioxide. We will determine how much carbon dioxide will be sequestered by our plantations over a lifespan of 15 years. We have achieved survival rates of 98.2%. Because for us, if we are given an opportunity to plant a tree, it has to survive. We won't be given that opportunity again. We will ensure that even if a plant does die through natural ways, we will go in and we will replant it.

Another vertical that we work in is solar electrification– SOS. Because we really feel this time, it's SOS. This project started off just before the pandemic COVID hit us. We started off as SOS – Schools On Solar. We were very keen to solar electrify worthy, charitable, educational institutions who would not have the capital to invest in rooftop solar PV systems. We would utilise CSR funds to help solar electrify these schools who would utilise the solar electricity in real time, so they would not require battery backup systems. That would be additional maintenance and a running cost. They would generate solar on their rooftop, utilise it in real time.

Electricity and energy is an entirely different sector in India where it seems like the government does not want to let go of power, pun intended. We started off SOS by solar electrifying a number of schools in Mumbai and Pune. Then sadly, the pandemic hit and schools were shut. There was no point in solar electrifying schools. And suddenly the need was for hospitals who were under a lot of pressure and stress to manage the added patient load. So, we went from schools to hospitals. From “Schools On Solar” to “Switch On Solar”. Today we have solar electrified many hospitals. Presently, one of our largest projects is solar electrifying the Memorial hospital, one of the largest single rooftop systems is via their entire campus at Harvard. It will be a huge installation of approximately six megawatt.

We have solar electrified old age homes, rescue centres, shelters, schools, colleges, and any worthy charitable institution who would benefit from solar electrification. For every project, we will calculate the amount of carbon that we have helped sequester and the positive impact that it will have and help mitigate climate change and global warming.

The third vertical that we work in of course is water. Water is again, another major natural resource that is under a lot of pressure and stress. Every city of ours faces severe water shortages, which shouldn't be the case because India is in the tropical belt. We are blessed with a lot of rainfall, but sadly with industrialisation and excessive concretisation, our groundwater tables across India have been falling and our water security has decreased.

I'll give you the example of Mumbai city and our lakes: it's like having one glass with 200 straws in it. Everyone is pulling out the water, but nobody is bothering to recharge our groundwater table. This is a groundwater table that has taken millions of years to form. It is our groundwater table that really forms the basis of our water security, driving our entire water cycles. So we need to start recharging and becoming self-sufficient instead of constantly just damming.

That's a project that we have been very conscientiously pushing for. I'm happy to say that CERE has created Mumbai, Pune and Nashik city's largest rainwater harvesting systems where we are harvesting more than 300 billion litres of water every monsoon season. Even now we are creating systems in rural India. We are partnering with Maharashtra police and really utilising their large campuses that run over acres and acres of land to recharge our groundwater tables. I remember when we recharged the groundwater table at one place, farmers that are five kilometres downstream benefit when their dry defunct borewells become perennial.

The fourth vertical that we work in is, of course, developing carbon management systems for corporate India; where unless you measure and map, I think it's very difficult to start quantifying your impact and then developing strategies and policies to start taking action. Like I mentioned earlier, we have our carbon map and cap programme that we work a lot with companies. We encourage employees to start participating and volunteering so that they themselves start feeling a part of this entire discourse and they get empowered to start taking action in both their personal and professional lives.

And finally, environmental education. I think that's our most important vertical where we have published over 29 titles. Our books are being used as prescribed curriculum, textbooks by schools across India. It is through our publications that I hope future generations will also start learning about environmental issues, start learning to take action. We as an organisation feel that literacy has always been defined by the three R's of literacy, “reading, writing, arithmetic” but we feel there is a fourth very important R, which is “resource literacy”. Unless you learn how to manage your precious natural resources, what good is your reading, writing, arithmetic? If future generations are going to survive on a planet with depleted resources, how will they survive?

In this path that you fought for yourself, where you took something you were passionate about and you turned it into a necessary institution in a changing country, did you have mentors there? And have you had the opportunity to mentor people in this path?

Yes, absolutely. I've always claimed that if I've seen further than others, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of giants. And I think my mentor has been Mrs. Kitayun Rustom, fondly known as Katy, one of India's leading pioneering environmental activists, who spent over 20 years in the Supreme Court, fighting for the Dahanu movement. Thanks to the Dahanu movement, a lot of our environmental law has come into existence. So certainly, I've had a mentor in Katy, who has helped me navigate the Indian landscape, helped me at every stage, while establishing CERE, and really taught me the nuances of what it means to be an environmentalist in a landmine called India.

In the last decade, the way that people access educational resources has changed, like you mentioned, through e-learning modules. Have you observed any change or anything interesting in that generation?

We realised that in COVID times, the entire world went digital. The whole learning and teaching processes changed. We've realised that even for a child, it's the experiential learning that is more important. So we have gone on to create biodiversity gardens, an area that we have worked in extensively, where we really want the biology books to come alive for a child.

So absolutely, I think children will need to learn to survive in a very different world on a very different planet with depleted resources. They will need all the learning they can get. And it's only going to be through experiential learning and through problem solving. It certainly is  the way forward.

What is your perspective on leadership in the sector?

I think without good leadership, our future is bleak. I don't mean to sound as an alarmist, but really look at what's happening across. Look at the hurricanes, at the desertification, the floods. I think without good global leadership, we will not be leaving a good planet for future generations. So the way I see good leadership is when a leader exhibits strong values. Because I think it's only strong values that will anchor you, anchor your course, and really help you navigate the intricacies of culture. Every nation, every region has its own intricacies. There will be difficult situations, your leadership will be questioned, and it's only a very strong value system that's going to hold you through.

I think another aspect that a strong leader must have is the ability to be inspirational. To inspire people to really transform their perspective and lifestyles to really evoke change.

What do you, in your experience, that inspires people to care about the environment? What makes the jump from apathy to caring and competence?

I realised that you cannot love something you don't know. You cannot care for something you do not know. So it's only when you start knowing that element, will you start caring for it. Will you want to protect it. I think we as human beings are so disconnected from nature in our lifestyles today, that we don't care about it. We don't think our survival depends on it.

We think we can just use it, discard it, throw it, and the planet will continue supporting us, sustaining us. And that's not the case. I think it's only when you realise that you are out there in a deep forest that you stop and care for it.