Green Literature Festival - Complete Event

December 8th 2021, 4 to 7 pm

The purpose of business has moved from looking at pure profits to benefitting people and the planet as well. The needle has moved further – from ‘Doing well by doing Good’ to ‘Profit from Good’; from doing less harm to ecology to believing how businesses can have a transformational impact on all stakeholders.

The purpose of an exclusive session on Green Business Writing at the Greenlitfest is to curate conversations around hot ideas for leaders, entrepreneurs and executives from books.

4 pm – 5 pm

Inauguration

Welcome – Benedict Paramanand, Founder, Greenlitfest

Inauguration – John Elkington, Author, Advisor, Entrepreneur

Fireside Chat – Green Swans

John Elkington, author of The Green Swan: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism. He is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable capitalism, a bestselling author and a serial entrepreneur.

With Santhosh Jayaram, Global Head – Sustainability, HCL Technologies Limited. He is the author of Still Speaking – Volume 1 – Lockdown Days and Still Speaking – Volume 2 – Garden Chronicles

5 pm – 5.30 pm

What Businesses can Learn from Nature

by R Gopalakrishnan, author of Case of the Bonsai Manager – Lessons on Intuition

5.35 pm – 6.15 pm

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) Investing – How India can Build Outstanding Sustainable Businesses

Mukund Govind Rajan, author of OUTLAST – How ESG Can Benefit Your Business, a pioneering Indian business leader in ESG investing

Anirban Ghosh, Chief Sustainability Officer, Mahindra Group

With Padmini Srinivasan, Associate Professor, Finance & Accounting, Chairperson, Centre for Corporate Governance and Citizenship, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. She has varied professional interests in teaching, research and consulting in the areas of Financial Reporting, Management Accounting, Corporate Governance and Accountability

6.20 pm – 7 pm

GLF Honour Books (Business) Award Ceremony

Awards will be presented by Business Leader

Jury Remarks – Ajay Poddar, MD, Syenergy Environics Ltd

Roselin Minj, Lead (Partnerships) - Sustainable Cities, World Resources Institute India

Santhosh Jayaram, Global Head – Sustainability, HCL Technologies Limited

December 9th 2021, 4 to 8 pm

Literature on the environment, be it fiction or nonfiction, has the power to connect us to nature and open the door to climate consciousness in a myriad ways.

Tune into bold conversations and edgy panel discussions with some of the best minds and litterateurs in the green space. Also, hold your breath for the announcement of honour books and awards in the general category.

6.00 pm – 7.00 pm

The Age & Rage of Cli-Fi

Rumour has it that in the near future all fiction is going to blend into climate fiction. Why is this new genre so hot? How are Indian and international authors showing us climate-change possibilities and eventualities through fiction? Have prophecies already turned true? Gear-up for a 360 degree look at climate-change fiction with authors who’re pushing the boundaries from writing cli-fi for children to penning eco-thrillers for adults and creating futuristic worlds with eco-centric development to imagining anthropocene epochs in eco-dystopias.

Chen Qiufan a.k.a. Stanley Chan is an award-winning Chinese speculative fiction author of acclaimed eco-techno-thriller Waste Tide, translator, creative producer and curator. Founder of Thema Mundi Studio. Honorary President of Chinese Science Fiction Writers Association.

Bijal Vachharajani is a certified Climate ‘Worrier’, editor at Pratham Books, and author of award-winning children’s books including A Cloud Called Bhura and Savi and the Memory Keeper.

Atulya Misra is a senior IAS officer, Additional Chief Secretary (Tamil Nadu Government), and author of Oxygen Manifesto and Vultures of Paradise.

In conversation with Rajat Chaudhuri, bilingual writer, columnist, editor and co-editor of speculative and solar punk stories and author of several books, including The Butterfly Effect, twice by Book Riot as a ‘Fifty must read eco-disasters in fiction’ and among ‘Ten works of environmental literature from around the world’. He has advocated climate issues at UN, New York, been a Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow, a Hawthornden Castle Fellow, Korean Arts Council Fellow-InKo and a past resident of the Sangam House International Writers Residency.

7 pm – 8 pm

The Chipko Movement & Chronicling Environment History

Shekhar Pathak is a writer, academician, founder of PAHAR (People’s Association for Himalaya Area Research) and a quintessential historian-as-fieldworker, who has authored ‘The Chipko Movement: A People’s History‘ after having lived in many valleys, studied several landscapes where the Chipko protests took place and spoken at length with protesters and communities.

In conversation with Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament, Former Minister of Environment and Forest and author of Green Signals: Ecology, Growth, and Democracy in India, Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature, and The Light of Asia: The Poem that Defined The Buddha.

8.00 pm – 9.00 pm

GLF Honour Books (General) Award Ceremony

Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament, Former Minister of Environment and Forest, Prolific Author

Neha Dara, Business Head, RoundGlass Sustain

Zai Whitaker, Acclaimed Naturalist, Educator and Writer

December 10th 2021, 4 to 7 pm

The Earth is getting hotter every year, many species of plants and animals are vanishing, the seas are rising and natural disasters like floods, heatwaves and droughts have become common… The children of today live in a world beset by climate change and anxiety. So, it matters what we’re telling them through literature. Greenlitfest’s children’s programme is a unique bid to engage with Indian children’s literature on the environment. Our inaugural programme will have conservationists, educationists, publishing professionals, writers and the children themselves talking about why we need to go green with children’s literature and the books that pave the way.

4 pm – 4.30 pm

Why Green Literature Matters?

An educationist and storyteller at heart, Radhika Suri is the Director of Environment Education at WWF India. From urban areas to the remotest parts of India, WWFs standardized education programs, designed under her leadership, continue to have an impact on the lives of over 500,000 children and youth every year. A true believer in the power of books and stories as teaching tools, she has focused on expanding WWFs publication repository to include engaging and creative books, guides, manuals and more for teachers, students and youth.

A passionate educator for over two decades, Neha is an Education Specialist: Content & Training at WWF-India. She joined the organisation in 2015 and has made significant contributions to its vision for environment education by building and executing its strategy for promoting green literature and engaging with a variety of stakeholders, especially students, educators and school heads of government and private schools across the country.

4.30 pm – 5.10 pm

Nature, childhood and our emotional lives: how literature binds us

Can books really make a difference to how we interact with the natural world? In this insightful conversation, the internationally renowned, award-winning children’s writer, Nicola Davies, shares her experiences with Funky Rainbow’s Vidya Mani.

English zoologist and children’s author, Nicola Davies has been writing books set in the natural world since the 1990s. She has written over 60 children’s books in her long career and was also a presenter at the BBC’s popular children’s wildlife programme that began in the 1980s and ended in 2006. Her latest book, The Song that Sings Us is an epic environmental adventure novel published by Firefly Press in October this year.

One of India’s foremost children’s book curators, Vidya Mani was the managing editor of the children’s book review site Goodbooks, and helped institute The Hindu Young World-Goodbooks Awards for children’s books. She runs a content and design studio called Melting Pot that creates children’s books and magazines for publishers and NGOs, and is a founder-member of Funky Rainbow, a travelling bookshop and book consultancy.

5.10 pm – 6.00 pm

Role of Green Literature in My Life: A panel discussion with children

Our children’s jury has the last word on how they engage with literature on the environment, before announcing the Honour Books as chosen by them.

Nine-year-old Arunima Ghosh is a student at the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad. She loves music, art, reading books, writing and playing with her pup, Jasmine. For the last two years, she has been running a reading club called ‘Book Club Buddies’.

Twelve-year-old Ragavan Balaji is a student at the Bombay International School. He loves to discover the how and why of the world and dreams of becoming an inventor one day. He enjoys reading, Minecraft and long swims.

Fourteen-year-old Celesta Fernandes lives in Goa and studies at the Sharada Mandir school. She loves to read and write stories.

In conversation with 23-year-old Tamanna Sengupta, an environmental enthusiast and science aficionado who works in the non-profit space and seeks to take scientific knowledge of climate change and action to the wider public, allowing them to understand the intricacies of the crisis better and, as a result, demand appropriate action from authorities.

6 pm – 7 pm

GLF – WWF Honour Books (Children) Award Ceremony

Archana Atri, Jury Moderator

A champion of Indian children’s literature, Archana Atri began one of the first indie book clubs – AA’s Book Nerds – for children in the NCR, to encourage them to read books in an unconstrained manner.

Arunima Ghosh, Student, Aga Khan Academy

Nine-year-old Arunima Ghosh is a student at the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad. She loves music, art, reading books, writing and playing with her pup, Jasmine. For the last two years, she has been running a reading club called ‘Book Club Buddies’.

Celesta Fernandes, Student, Sharada Mandir School

Fourteen-year-old Celesta Fernandes lives in Goa and studies at the Sharada Mandir school. She loves to read and write stories.

Ragavan Balaji, Student, Bombay International School

Twelve-year-old Ragavan Balaji is a student at the Bombay International School. He loves to discover the how and why of the world and dreams of becoming an inventor one day. He enjoys reading, Minecraft and long swims.

Ridhima Pandey, Young Climate Activist

Often likened to Greta Thunberg, 14-year-old Ridhima Pandey from Uttarakhand has been fighting for climate action since she was nine. In 2020, the BBC included her on its list of 100 inspiring and influential women.