Climate change

On Saturday, 1 March, the community was invited to come to Cinema Paradiso to hear community members telling short stories; transformative memories of the past or hopeful dreams about the future of Auroville.

Try to imagine a life without water. Just think of your morning routine: you drink water from your filter or tap, you flush your toilet, take a shower and brush your teeth.

On May 6th, the Auroville Forest Group, which was constituted by the RA in 1982 and which is endorsed in the Auroville Universal Township Master Plan – Perspective 2025, circulated an email reiterating its commitment to nurture and protect the green spaces and provide an integrated ecological basis for Auroville, physically and spiritually.

Silence Forest, an 11.2-acre green enclave neighbouring the Vérité community, is little known, even to many Aurovilians. In 2023, five research students from the University of Pondicherry, who were volunteering for the Auroville unit Yuvabe and were mentored by two professors, studied the flora and fauna of the forest and its ability to sequester carbon, conserve water, and increase resilience to adverse climate events.

Induja, a young Auroville architect, talks about how she came to Auroville, the work which inspires her and her hopes for the future.

We have grown accustomed to having a future. It’s why we have children, why we make long-term plans and investments, why we cling to the promise of unending progress.

Prof. Chetan S. Solanki, IIT Bombay and Brand Ambassador of Solar Energy Government of MP, also referred to as Solar Man of India or Solar Gandhi by the press, who has undertaken a world tour of 11 years in a solar bus to create a publics awareness movement called Energy Swaraj Yatra (2020-2030) to spread the message of solar energy as it relates to climate change, visited Auroville on April 14 and 15 and interacted with many Aurovilians.

The year 2021 was the wettest in a hundred years and the first aquifer below Auroville filled up, with unexpected consequences. To understand what is happening and what is likely to happen in the future, we talked to Aurovilian Giulio, a geo-archaeologist, who works for the Geomatics department of Auroville’s Centre of Scientific Research

The distant worlds of Zanskar, in the north Indian Himalayas, and Auroville’s coastal plains, met in December through the visit of Lobzang Wangtak, a Zanskari activist who journeyed down for the Auroville Learning Exchange (ALE).

This has been a record year for the rains. Weather watchers divide our year into a dry season (January – May), the South West monsoon (June – September) and the North West monsoon (October – December).

On August 20th, Auroville Consulting launched an online calculator of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions. The calculator, called the Carbon Converter, has been developed with the aim of helping individuals become aware of their impact on the environment and participate in climate action.

Is Auroville prepared for an uncertain future? In 1968, Auroville was a desertified plateau. Since then, the landscape has been greened by millions of trees and fauna and flora have exploded.

We need to recognise that widespread climatic, economic and social disruption due to climate change, global economic instability, etc. cannot be dealt with in isolation.

The future is very unpredictable and will unfold in many unexpected ways and we have to be responsive and alive to that. The weather is becoming more erratic and resources like water and energy will become scarcer and more costly.

Alan Watson Featherstone is a long-term member of the Findhorn community as well as a former Trustee of that community. He is also the Founder of Trees for Life, which has restored 10,000 acres of the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands of Scotland.

On Saturday 21st September, as part of the Global Climate Strikes and World Clean Up day, Auroville youth organized events to address challenges related to plastic consumption and the consequences of climate change, such as rising sea levels.

The communities of architects/ planners/ city-builders and greenbelters must come together in Auroville to manifest the city of the future (emphasis on “come together”).

The Sustainable Livelihood Institute (SLI) is a joint project of the Government of Tamil Nadu and Auroville to promote rural development based on the principles of sustainable development .

Bindu, who is working on a movie on the topic, shares her understanding of the importance of millets, internationally, nationally and locally.

It seemed that the skies would never relent. One woke up to the sound of the heavy, steady rain. One went to bed with that sound reverberating in one’s mind.

Alan Rusbridger, the retiring editor of The Guardian newspaper, recently wrote an article on climate change. One of the things he noted was that newspapers don’t always cover the most important topics because “they may be occurring too slowly or invisibly for the impatient tick-tock of the newsroom”.

With over 210 participating Aurovilians, the Auroville Singing Festival 2014 was doubtless the year’s largest cultural event. Spread over two evenings in October, with Bharat Nivas auditorium bursting at its seams, more than 36 groups and soloists showed their talents.