Global warming, Carbon footprints, the Greenhouse Effect, and Climate Crisis are all abstract ideas.

But Global warming will affect (and is involving) plants and animals, but overall, the planet will keep going long after people are gone. We are no longer talking about climate change but a climate crisis here and now. So if we want life here to be comfortable, we must do something serious about the climate crisis.

Some of the actions are easy, some a little harder, but think of it as a collective challenge like the “Tug of war” we used to play during childhood. In this game, we, the polluters, need to play against our collective behaviours and win the game.

Reducing our global carbon footprint will take a concerted effort from governments, companies, colleges/schools and individuals across the planet. And the best way to get started is in our backyard, New Delhi - plus in and around our homes.

The message around an abstract idea like carbon footprint and climate crisis can be communicated to common folks is simple:

Delhi has an air pollution problem all year round. It becomes most visible during winters when climactic conditions fuse with cultural imperatives like Diwali fireworks and agricultural traditions like crop stubble burning. Other round-the-year contributing factors include increased vehicular pollution and growing public works such as construction.

There is already so much news and noise around air pollution. People are generally aware of the issue. But “how to” mobilise ourselves and the community in the fight to improve air quality seems missing and deficient. A path needs to be carved out.

Wingify Foundation launched the project “Wingify Earth” with the sole objective of taking the people (polluters) from “I’m aware & I think we should do something” to “I will”, positive action towards solving this burning issue.

Picking the low-hanging fruits...

There are two ways to handle a crisis of this proportion. First is a capital-intensive way with a long gestation period. Like moving away from fossil fuels and replacing them with alternative energies like solar, wind and geothermal. More energy conservation and efficiency measures. Eco-friendly transportation like shifting to electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles. Green buildings are just a few well-known steps that cost massive amounts of public and private effort, money and time to implement.

However, research across the World over the years has abundantly made it clear that it is small, ordinary adjustments to our daily behaviour can cumulatively go a long way in minimising the impact of catastrophes like air pollution in your neighbourhood. Let’s call this a long way, to use the title of Led Zeppelin’s famous song “Stairway to heaven”.

Different routes can lead to this heaven on earth, or shall we call it mythical “Shangri La”? Wingify Earth has presently chosen four ways to help people reach this collective heaven on earth by making small changes in their behaviour in day-to-day life.

Stairway to heaven – Route 1 – Educate the Child, future polluter.

We all know that air pollution in India is a severe issue, especially in Delhi. Wingify proposes to teach young children and their family members how small actions/activities that don’t cost much, if undertaken daily, could help clean Delhi air, protect human health, reduce medical costs, and save the environment.

Early age is crucial in developing a person's behaviour, social awareness, and selflessness. At this stage, children learn values and behaviours from their parents, society and surroundings that will stay with them throughout adulthood and define who they are. That makes it essential to spark an interest in caring for and protecting the environment while children are still at an early age.

Wingify Earth shall develop content on general environmental sustainability and air pollution. It will mobilise children through different modes and channels and pass relevant content through child and family/school-friendly mediums to generate awareness about small behavioural changes that individuals and families can make without much cost and effort to help reduce their carbon footprints and thereby save their immediate environment.

Content would be in any form - products, designs, ideas, processes, posters, messages, games, jingles and videos etc. – which is creative and innovative and fits into the focused theme and is relatable to children to prevent them from becoming future polluters.

Stairway to heaven – Route 2 – Leverage, the innovative spirit of youth, to find solutions

Academic competitions are a critical part of enhancing your college and career opportunities. Using these competitions as a medium, Wingify wishes to incentivise young innovators and future entrepreneurs who can demonstrate their capacity and passion for making technology-based products or services more environmentally friendly.

Wingify Earth aims to spark a new level of community engagement in environmental sustainability through these competitions.

Incentives can be in the form of grants, awards, scholarships, fellowships, internships etc. Individual themes can be further sliced to bring a sharper focus on problems that require cheap, simple and quickly implementable solutions in the form of nudges.

Stairway to heaven – Route 3 – Create a board game to explain how the climate crisis will shape our cities.

Scientists, educators and policymakers continue to face challenges when finding effective strategies to engage the public on climate change. Researchers across the World have concluded that games on the subject of climate change are well-suited to address these challenges because they can serve as practical tools for education and engagement, particularly for school children and young adults.

We propose to build a game both in table game formats like monopoly and digital format that will incentivise correct ‘actions’ to save a city from over pollution. Let’s call the game “Breatheasy”.  In the games, players will act as stakeholders in the future of a town. They must work together to save it from pollution, climate change, and environmental sustainability.

The game will be tied in with the Class IX-XII Environmental Education textbooks, which will help situate their learnings and messages better. It will help them contextualise the problem and better understand the consequences of not being an active stakeholder in the future of the world they will inherit. The idea is to make this game intervention that school leadership and local government can own and play within their communities. It will be a simple game with high replayability and deployment ability. It is a game that focuses on Indian-specific issues and will be the first-of-its-kind initiative targeted at schools. School or student competitions can also be built around the game at a later day.

Stairway to heaven – Route 4 – Changing Farmers’ perceptions, insight, and behaviour for paddy growing and paddy stubble management in India’s major paddy growing States.

Those who live in Delhi or have a nose for news that matters would be fully aware of Delhi's notorious year-round air pollution. Going by the latest reports, Delhi NCR is the most polluted metropolitan area in the World.

The key contributors to this pollution in Delhi and its vicinity are vehicles; unchecked construction and road dust; garbage burning; paddy residues by farmers in Punjab, Haryana, UP etc.; and, of course, the Diwali firecrackers.

It has been scientifically proved that excessive paddy growing and stubble burning are significant pollution-causing activities during the paddy season. There is a strong need to reduce the area under paddy cultivation in Punjab and Haryana.

Wingify Earth shall engage with 50000 farmers on crop residue management tools in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh by providing timely, authentic, actionable knowledge content related to crop residue management (green alerts) through channels like Whats App, Telegram etc. Knowledge and awareness levels will be increased among farmers, which will help them make informed decisions on growing paddy and paddy crop residue management.

In addition, Wingify Earth shall recognise these thoughtful and progressive farmers as “Environment champions” and publish their success stories/videos on Wingify Earth and make become its brand ambassadors.

Wingify Earth shall also engage with school-going students in select paddy growing areas through activities like videos, posters, poems and plays to make them and their farmer parents aware of the climate crisis and how their actions can prevent it. Best entries will be suitably recognised/rewarded.

Stairway to heaven – Route 5 – Telling stories to reshape the environment

As we said earlier, the climate crisis is a complex and challenging problem to communicate. It is slow-moving, it only sometimes feels urgent, and there is often minimal effort to mitigate it. Humans have adversely affected the environment through actions and inactions, and climate emergency has put the World in grave peril. People often wonder what they can do about global warming short of putting the entire economy on a draconian carbon-free diet.

We need to rethink the way we communicate climate change. The typical mentality of millions of people, including those aware of the issue, needs to change from “I’m aware & I think we do something” to “I will.”

The best tool at our disposal is a simple one: Storytelling.

Stories can transform complex subjects into something that feels personal, local, immediate, relatable, solvable, and replicable. Stories about minor adjustments to our daily behaviour can go a long way in averting catastrophes.

Exciting and inspiring stories about the climate crisis - how people respond in real-time and make a difference - are few and far between or are hidden and not being told in a way that is attractive and eye-catching, which others would also want to follow and emulate.

We have realised that many stories are floating around the World on environmental sustainability-related matters, about people, products, processes, and places that cry loudly, "this is a story that needs to be shared and heard by many." These stories can reach many people, but only some have seen them because they need to be designed and packaged like those cats, dogs, and baby videos on TikTok or YouTube to capture the eyes of millions.

The sad news is that those cats, dogs, and baby videos achieve nothing but a momentary tickle without any lasting effect on our lives. But the kind of stories we are talking about here could change the face of the earth if acted upon by millions through their multiplier and compounding effect.

They recognise the severe gap between the impactful content (stories) that is already available and what millions of ordinary people need to know or do to leave a positive and lasting impact on environmental sustainability. Still, they don't have access to that content in a manner that makes it more accessible and palatable.

Wingify Earth shall curate, repackage, optimise, publish and promote such stories on environment sustainability from various sources and publish the same through a technology platform.

The stories shall be personal, local, and relatable about products, services, and initiatives, to name a few, which ordinary people would also want to follow and emulate.