Chennai Students Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan School International Competition Climate Change Energising Sustainable Communities

Chennai Students Win Contest on Climate Change

Chennai Students Win Contest on Climate Change

Chennai: An eleventh standard student from Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan school in Nungambakkam, Chennai, has won an international competition on climate change for suggesting innovative ways to redesign existing communities in Chennai to make them more environmentally-friendly.

Jaswanth Madhavan, 16, had his entry selected over more than 50 entries from countries from around the world.

Nine students from Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan in T. Nagar also won the runner-up prize in the competition for middle-school students.

The “Energising Sustainable Communities” competition, organised by the Government of South Australia, was held as a precursor to an International Solar Cities Congress, which will be hosted by the Government of South Australia in Adelaide in February.

The students will all be flown to Adelaide to attend the conference and will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interact with the world’s leaders in the fight against climate change – the Congress will be attended by over 90 speakers from 30 countries, including Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an environmental lawyer who was named one of Time magazine’s ‘Heroes for the Planet.’

“The competition was a great opportunity for us to involve the next generation of students to come up with innovative ideas to combat global warming,” A.K. Tareen, Director of Trade and Investment in India and South Asia, Government of South Australia, said.

“We organised this initiative to help stimulate students around the world to develop an understanding of environment sustainability issues and showcase their skills in tackling climate change.”

Madhavan suggested greater use of solar energy, tidal power and osmotic power in his 143-page entry.

He also outlined plans for establishing a nature park in Adyar estuary and small-scale micro-electricity generators on the wheels of commuter trains to generate power. “We have a lot of problems in Chennai, and energy and water are the most important of them all,” Madhavan said.

N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, said there was “a gap” between the way young people and policy-makers envisaged the problem of climate change. “Students seem much more progressive in their thinking than the people at the top,” he said.

“I hope they will exert more pressure on policy-makers. We have to take a more active role in seizing the small window of opportunity we now have, to do much better [in the fight against climate change] than we have done in the past.”

Parithi Ilamvazhuthi, State Minister for Information, urged communities to protect the environment better by planting more trees.

He said that the Tamil Nadu government would organise a ceremony to felicitate the award-winners.

Chennai Students Win Contest on Climate Change

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