Daily Times

While realizing climate change as harsh reality badly impacting life on planet earth, there is dire need of promoting the concept of `Green Entrepreneurship’ to combat the menace through diverting attention of enterprises towards social profit along with economic gains.

This observation was made by Dr. Ansir Ali Rajput, Head of Entrepreneurship Development Center Capital University of Science and Technology (CUST) in a podcast organized by Institute of Urbanization (IoU), an organization striving for making cities green.

IoU is holding on regular basis different events including workshops, webinars, podcast and journalists fellowship programme to create awareness in society about adoption of modern practices aimed at protection of environment and achievement of sustainable development goals.

“Green entrepreneurship refers to a special form of entrepreneurship that aims at creating and implementing solutions to environmental problems and to promote social change so that the environment is not harmed,” he explains.

“Due to our excessive money conscious approach in the last several decades, the maximum focus of ventures remained tilted toward profit making, ignoring the environment totally that ensued in harsh reaction from nature in shape of extreme events caused by climatic changes,” opined Ansir Ali Rajput while informing about the concept of Green or Eco Entrepreneurship in the podcast.

The hardships faced by humans through out the globe in wake of climate induced disasters are mainly due to not giving due consideration to nature in our eco system which showed its reaction by causing catastrophic disasters like recent flooding in Pakistan, Dr. Ansir elaborates.

Unprecedented increase in natural disasters through out the world has made a realization among people at global level of giving due consideration to nature by including social profit in our priority list in parallel with economic gains, he continued. Now its time to think at collective level as what to do and what role we can assign to youth of the country to assume in making its niche in developing green economy, Dr. Ansir asked.

This concept of Green Entrepreneurship is also creating a very big opportunity for our youth to work over sustainable governance for educating exporters through advocacy on this practice without adoption of which business cannot be continued in future, he opined.

In international markets there is visible realization among consumers of eco-friendly products and those who purchase items first ask as how much carbon footprints is emitted in its production.

So our exporters needed to be educated on fulfilling of international obligations and importance of taking licence of sustainable governance for continuing their business at international level, Ansir stressed.

Entrepreneurship does not mean that we have to manufacture products , it can take both sides including production and services. Pakistan is fast switching towards services economy so we should concentrate on offering such services which can really help in reducing and mitigating climate change impacts, he suggested.

In this regard, services entrepreneurship can be developed on educating sustainable governance and our youth can play very important role in this regard by utilizing modern gadgets they posses in learning of these skills besides passing on to others.

The Pakistani enterprises can be apprised that through reduction of carbon emission and implementation of eco-friendly standards they can make larger benefits of better exports besides environment protection and services to community.

“While realizing growing awareness of environmental knowledge among consumers who are becoming more receptive towards eco-friendly products, there is dire need of educating people especially youth about the concept and requirements of emerging green markets in the world,” Dr. Ansir advised.