sustainable planet institute (spi)

The Sustainable Planet Institute (SPI), was established as a not-for-profit Trust in early 2009. Housed at SSAA as SPI@Sushant, The institute takes a multi-disciplinary approach to further the cause of economic, social and, most importantly, environmental sustainability. Urbanization is a special focus area for SPI given the enormous scale of India’s impending urbanization over the next three decades. Other areas of interest range from alternative energy to environmental accounting. Sanjeev Sanyal is Founder and President of SPI. The platform is supported by leading experts including: Ravi Singh (CEO, WWF-India), Pavan Sukhdev (UNEP & TEEB), Arun Kapur (Founder & Director of Vasant Valley School), Gaurav Gupta (Director, The Climate Project-India), Philip Rode (London School of Economics), and Rajiv Sinha (Arizona State University).

The Sustainable Planet Institute intends to take a multi-disciplinary approach to deal with economic and environmental sustainability. Its special focus is on Cities and the impact of rapid urbanization in India. SPI’s mandate is to work through three overlapping channels:

  • Think Tank: SPI hopes to grow into a multi-disciplinary center of excellence for research and discussion on economic, social and environmental sustainability. To this end, it has already held a series of seminars and workshops that have attracted the country’s leading policy-makers, academics and practitioners.
  • Education: SPI aims to spread best practice in environmental and urban management. The approach would be use the knowledge pool in the think-tank to create a system of standard curriculums and teacher-training in order to spread this knowledge.
  • Innovation: SPI intends to actively support innovative solutions to environmental and urban problems. The institute advocates the use of “strategic interventions” for re-engineering urban India. SPI has teamed up with the Indian Heritage Hotels Association, the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy and the Solar Energy Society of India to do pilot projects in the use of alternative energy in the hospitality industry.

For more information see: www.sustainableplanetinstitute.org