Two Day National  Seminar  :  Environmental Behavior: Issues, Challenges & Prospects (26th ,  27th  March  2010)

Environmental Behaviour: Issues, Challenges and Prospects was the core theme of the two day National level Seminar organized by the Abbé Faria Post Graduate Department of Psychology, St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa, Goa.
 
Our environment is the stage and scenery in which the story of our life unfolds. The healthy functioning of our planet’s ecosystem – air, water and land, and the vast diversity of our life on earth – is worth preserving. Recognizing that a sustainable balance among environmental, economic and psychosocial systems is a key to sustaining the quality of life for all of earths inhabitants, this seminar aimed at creating awareness about these issues in the hope for a better tomorrow.
 
In the Inaugural function that began by invoking Almighty’s blessings, the principal of the college Dr. (Fr.) Walter de Sa welcomed the gathering and passionately presented his views toward the chief global concern – environmental degradation and its restitution. He expressed that it was time each individual got motivated to act toward environmental preservation, and said the seminar was one such attempt to enthuse within the participants an inner zeal to act. Ms. Ashwini Bandekar, Student coordinator of the Seminar outlined the conceptualization and journey of the seminar till the final day. She also made clear the idea behind the backdrop created by the dept students, how can one use environmentally friendly technology to enhance quality of life. The Chief Guest for the day Dr. Sudhir Kakkar reflected upon the various angles from which one could understand human psyche and behavior. He also lamented the lack of attention given in the discipline of Environmental Psychology. He called for a balance between the material and spiritual so that the environmental conservation progress could be sustainable. Ms Tina D’Cunha, teacher coordinator of the seminar presented a gracious vote of thanks.
 
The key-note address was delivered by Dr. Arindham Ghosh, Scientist and Head, R and D dept NEERI Nagpur. He outlined the history of environmental stressors and spoke comprehensively on the issue of environmental impact and behavior. He presented a mathematic equation to elucidate the same.
 Environmental Behaviour = f [ Environmental awareness among people ]
                                                        = a₁ [education] + a₂ [social ambience] + a₃ [ robustness of legal frame work] + a₄ [political will] + a₅ [ all other parameters that shape political will] + a₆[ any other parameter….]
                                                            Where a₁,a₂,a₃,… are co-efficients which are again dependent on the ‘enlightenment’ of the population. Dr. Ghosh concluded by discussing the preventive means one could adopt to bring about the Green Change!
 
The Scientific Session I, chaired by Dr, Mahesh Pai was next on schedule. The papers varied from a case study approach, an experimental design, a theoretical framework to interview based models. Each of the papers presented highlighted the importance of awareness, pro – environmental attitude and the role of youth in initiating the change process. A delicious meal was served after which followed the poster session. Budding researchers got an opportunity to creatively display their research findings. It was indeed an interesting session and set the tone for the 2 expert speakers.
 

Dr. Shirisha Sathe, Asst Prof. Foundation for Liberal and Management Education, Pune, in her lively speech brought out the significance of the role played by a psychologist toward Pro-environmental behaviour. Through plenty of anecdotes she elucidated that for any change to take place, one must begin with a small step. If change has to take place, individuals need to regard themselves as change agents and shrug off self defeating behaviors, learned helplessness and the varied defense mechanisms as rationalization, intellectualization, and projection. She echoed the words of, Gaylord Nelson, former governor of Wisconsin, co-founder of Earth Day "The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."

Dr. Nandakumar Kamat, in his speech gave an extensive account of literature available on environmental psychology, and asserted a need toward sustainable perspective. He laid stress on environmental education with special emphasis on nature appreciation, wilderness preservation, earth salvation, environmental issue resolution, species protection and environment ethics.
 
Each of the sessions was followed by a question and answer session. A movie clip on global warming and protection of trees and ecology concluded the day-long deliberation.
 
Day two began officially with a prayer which led us to focus on our earth and the peace which we find in this entity. The report was read and the first Scientific Session was introduced. The Session included 7 papers presented by lecturers, students and researchers from Dharwad, Punjab and Goa. The papers focused on gender differences in environmental psychology, the role of the youth and changing attitudes in order to make a real difference in the environment. Sir Clifford deliberated on the presentations and commented that ‘Attitude is Everything!’ As youth we should participate in events like earth day, as Gandhi said, ‘future of the country is in the classroom’. Sir Clifford felt strongly that we need to focus on the ‘commercial factor’ and its effect on the environment.
 
The second half of the morning saw a very interesting Panel Discussion by eminent personalities, Mr Roland Martins, who spoke very practically about Garbage issue and how the consumption pattern is changing and causing the increase of garbage in terms of plastic. He also said the consumers need to make a responsible choice. Dr. Antonio Mascharenhas from NIO spoke avidly about the effect of humans on the sand dunes and coastal erosion. Mr. Ramesh Gauns shared passionately on the mining issue, pictorially depicting the sad truth of the rivers and tributaries in the state of Goa. Mr. Rajendra Kerkar spoke on the relationship between government policies and the presence of endangered species that are not even recognized. He also shared about different wildlife sanctuaries that are protecting wild life. Dr. Nagendranath spoke on the issues concerning the ocean, its resources and impact.

In the afternoon the participants attended a workshop which focused on ‘preventive and action oriented resolutions, all groups participated enthusiastically and made a personal green resolution! Let’s begin the change movement by observing the EARTH HOUR and not being de-motivated by bureaucratic hassles in continuing the restitution process. The vote of thanks was proposed by Dr. Suhas Shetgovekar.