This write-up has to be attributed to Mr. Sanjay Bhatia, President, PHDCCI

PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) believes that global warming will have adverse impact on industry. The impact could be of two types. One, industry getting affected by the environmental degradation, such as natural disasters like flood, tsunami, hurricanes, etc. Second would be the huge loss of human lives.

The natural question that arises is  what action the industry can taken to abate the process of global warming. It should be a continuous process and not a switch on and switch off policy.  It is a fact that the public attention to a catastrophe is mostly limited to the time of the occurrence of that event and gradually the concerns and follow up actions to avert  such situations wane out. The tsunami has taught us a lesson. We have to introspect  on what would happen if our long sea coast line attract more investment that it can hold.   Investments of certain kinds  in these fragile  areas   would definitely  create environmental degradation. Also, we have to bear in mind most of the oil industries – mining to downstream production – are based mostly in the sea coast. Because of historic reasons major trading and manufacturing centres have come up near the sea impacting the environment in these areas. In the event of a  natural calamity, the loss of lives and destruction of capital assets will be substantial. High rising buildings in the metropolis and warming created by the concrete jungles is another matter of concern. 

PHDCCI thinks that global warming presents both threats and opportunities to the Indian industry. Corporate India has shown its willingness to accept more environmental responsibility and industry bodies like PHDCCI are spreading greater awareness amongst Indian companies . Propagation of the benefits of Clean Development Mechanism and opportunities arising out of carbon trading across the industrial sector in India is being seriously pursued, though a lot remains to be done.

We have an Expert Committee on Environment which motivates and advises the members in taking up environment friendly manufacturing process. Very recently, we have done a series of training programmes for the corporate leadership on management of hazardous wastes including e-wastes in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Forests at various centres in North India.  Many of our members are actively involved in environment protection, manufacture of environment control equipment and a few of our members are also actively involved in giving consultancy services on these areas.