A generous award seeks to encourage green energy pathways over a carbon intensive economy for India The Sierra Club, the oldest and largest grassroots environment organisation in the US, has instituted an annual $100,000 (Rs40 lakh) Green Energy and Green Livelihoods Achievement Award to recognise outstanding environmental success in India. "The winner will be announced in early 2009 in Mumbai," says Carl Pope, a crusading environmentalist who has been associated for 30 years with the Sierra Club, the last 16 as its executive director. "An Indian nominations board and an nri and Sierra Club prize jury are currently shortlisting civil society organisations, such as ngos, cooperatives, small businesses and labour unions, working at the grassroots level." This 'high profile high impact award', he adds, will increase the visibility and credibility of Indian environmental achievement on a global stage. Pope, together with Sierra Club International Programmes director Stephen Mills, and Sunil Deshmukh and Pritpal Singh Kochhar, nris and founding members of Sierra Club's India Advisory Council, is in India for month-long consultations with various interest groups. including the political leadership. Deshmukh, who has spearheaded the fund-raising for the award, says the objective is to promote achievements in the area of clean and green energy that are replicable and scaleable. He assures an infallible selection process, considering that the term 'ngo' often has negative connotation in India where many such outfits are perceived to be self-serving and flourishing on contributions from overseas. Sierra Club staff and the India-based recommendation committee will recommend three semi-finalists to the Sierra Club prize jury. Facilitating a dialogue "Grassroots initiatives, rather than scientific, academic or government activities, will merit consideration," indicates Deshmukh, who is the former president of Maharashtra Foundation, a 30 year old New York-based non-profit agency active in the fields of healthcare, education, and family welfare. The Sierra Club hopes to facilitate a dialogue and participatory process within India's civil society to be a catalyst for a credible ecological movement, explains Pope. India will benefit visibly by pursuing a green energy pathway. He notes that India has far more of the resources needed for renewable energy - sun, wind and^ bio-mass, plus enormous engineering capacity - than it does of the resources needed for a fossil economy. Pope believes the Indo-US nuclear deal is tilted towards big American nuclear utilities and will eventually lead India onto the path of energy denial. His comments are driven by his familiarity with India, having spent two years (1967-'69) as a Peace Corps volunteer in Barhi, in Bihar, which resulted in his first book, Sahib, an American Misadventure in India. "Our award is only part of the new Sierra Club effort we are developing in India," observes Kochhar. "We also wish to develop strategic regional partnerships with India's environmental organisations to promote two-way communications, by informing Americans about India's environmental successes and Indians about America's environmental achievements." Pope, Deshmukh and Kochhar underscore the Sierra Club's support for India's desire to become a global leader in new energy technologies that reduce pollution and do not contribute to global warming. "Coal-based dirty energy can be devastating," says Deshmukh. Pope believes that India and China, both emerging economic powers requiring enormous energy resources, must collaborate on clean energy technologies. "One of the remarkable benefits of a renewable energy economy is that countries collaborate by exchanging technology, rather than competing to buy up scarce fuels," he explains. "There is no competition between India and China for the solar energy that falls on Saurashtra, or the Gobi Desert, or for the wind resources of the Deccan and the Khansu corridor." In addition to the award, the Sierra Club will soon be establishing a Centre for Green Livelihoods, in Mumbai, that will partner civil society organisations to explore other ways of creating a robust dialogue on developing a green economy.