Footprints on the Mountainside

Ugh. I think it is an occupational hazard for a consultant to feel obligated to have a say on everything, regardless of how inane it sounds. The more broke the consultant, the more desperate he is to say something, anything, as advice. I found this article on CiteMan.

Overcoming Office irritations

My response to this was of such magnitude, that I thought comments wouldn’t suffice, and dragged the whole thing here.

The article opens with seeming to be about employees being unlucky in their employers and suffering from an unhappy work life. Ok, so far, so good. Looks like we have a subject.

Then, we get into generalities about the employers practices and how they are not all bad and also say, “they will definitely not turn ones workplace a place where one wants to be for a long time“!!!???!!! Does that really mean that the employer will want to leave?

Then the whole article does a nose dive and turns into that “ten tips for career success” tone, with a whole load of advice given without any qualification of circumstance whatsoever. What is happening?

We have “An employee must get himself assigned to a project.” Come again? Do employers really leave employees idling around until they get themselves assigned somewhere? Why work at all? Just sit around and enjoy the salary. Then “An employee can tell the employer that to keep ahead of competitors he wants to do research and find out the need of customers and solution to solve their problems. This will give a chance to step out and speak to people and the employee can interact with people on line or simply get busy on the telephone or go and meet them.” No comments.

And, hold-your-breath “Sometimes it is just not the day when one feels like going to work. If that’s the case and if ones work permits then all one has to do is work from home. Do the work in the same fashion as watching TV or play with ones child and send in reports twice in a day. If ones boss resists, explain that this style of working is helping him get the work done efficiently and could not attend work because of minor health problem.” Have I missed something about the corporate world completely? Is being a well taken care of employee about working from home if one doesn’t feel likegoing to work? Does the author realize how condescending it sounds to be explaining to a boss “resisting” this working from home thing? Particularly when speaking of efficiency as the explanation, while doing the work like watching TV or playing with a kid - as in, not with any major effort or concentration?

I’m not continuing with this nonsense, because I just realize I’m copying almost the entire article - each sentence is a masterpiece of “teenager-playing-dream-consultant”, and I just suggest you hop over to the article to believe it.

Is this a training article or what? It sounds more like something from Cosmopolitan - “Ten things to do when you’re bored at work“

It is really a pity there is no author here to quote, but the link leads to the CiteHR. Honestly, I would have expected far better from an HR site, but that just goes to show how the better consultants mint money with competition like this.

I have news for you, Mr. Author, whoever you are. If the employee can genuinely think of working from home, opting in for projects when he feels like it, exchange assignments in the name of multitasking and do any of the many of the things you recommend, it is the employer, not the employee that is unfortunate.

I have just one reply to any whining employee following this nonsense, and even more to the “trainer” who wrote this - If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Not only can we do things to save the environment, we can spread awareness about the environment and awareness of the choices open to people that they can easily make to create a large collective impact.

Creating awareness can be done in many ways. One of the best is actions. Do it, share it, encourage it.

Another way is sharing information and ideas. Like I’m doing out here, and in my interactions with people in relevant situations.

Another great way is to take an initiative. Announce a clean up drive and encourage people to join in and spread the message. Announce a tree plantation programme. Approach local authorities for the setting up of a rain harvesting scheme for your locality and share your knowledge and experience with other localities.

Confront people who litter and request them to support the environment through their actions and explain why it is necessary.

Create motivation and interest in local schools.

There is so much that can be done. I do things and new things occur to my mind. It is a journey of feeling for this world we live in. Will you do it? Will you travel along?

Not much is happening work wise, but life looks good!

Planning a set of camps for children in the summer holidays, and this always sets me all fired up with enthusiasm. The variety is quite large this time too. Wide Aware has the usual adventure camps with mountaineering and basic orienteering, as well as some camps about life in the wilderness. On a more dramatic side, there are some wildlife tours timed specially for students in their summer vacations.

Then there is my favourite part. Himalayan tours for Spiti. This year, I’ve finally done away with the usual predesigned tours completely (I know I’d been promising that for a long time) and designed some tours specially based on my years of living in the mountains. What I’m trying to do, is show people a side of life in the Himalaya, that standard tours cannot.

Enthusiasm is flowing, and dreams are a plenty. I’ve completed itineraries for two tours in Spiti. One focuses on the culture, while the other is about wildlife at high altitudes - both subjects close to my heart.

The strange thing is that now I’ve got my pen on paper (or fingers to the keyboard) I don’t want to stop. So for all those who have been writing to me for more tour ideas and more tours along the lines of experiences I share, this seems promising. I’ve got a couple of other locations in mind.

If there is something specific you guys would like to see before I head on my own route, feel free to let me know, and I’ll see if I can make it a priority.

As for the rest….

Now is a time to take a nice deep breath and enjoy the fruits of all these months of labour. I’ve made new friends, introduced many more people to the outdoor addiction, and the payments are rolling in.

Life doesn’t get any better!

For those who don’t know, ISABS (Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Sciences) is a fantastic place for those inclined to dig deeper into their minds. My journey with ISABS began in August ‘06, when I did my Basic Lab in Human Processes or BLHP with them. This was now ALHP.

The T-groups are an unnerving experience the first time. No agenda, no nothing. Take each moment as it comes, and begin your own journey into yourself.

My BLHP was an insight. It went pretty easy, considering that I’ve got lots I hide. Apparently I was pretty transparent as well. Not so this time.

As I explored my emotions and motivations deeper, I was faced with the full wonder of what makes ISABS so great. Everyone I was with was here to face themselves, and the laboratory was indeed a laboratory, where I could examine myself and the people I was with to my hearts content, express what I was going through, and trust that we all were on the same boat.

Admitting our nicer emotions is easy, and it came easily to me, but facing areas of myself, that were not so nice, was not just difficult, but I have a feeling that I wouldn’t have been able to ever see myself from so close, if it weren’t for the “safety” of our group. This gave me an opportunity to see myself far more clearly, and examine my needs and motivations behind the parts of me that I found appealing, so that I could actually address them and experiment with the options I had, in the supportive environment of my group.

For those who have no clue on what this is all about, I can only say that there is no real way to describe it. There is so much that goes on inside us, and on levels that are emotional and non-verbal, that it is to be experienced to be understood. Unstructured here, really means unstructured. What we make, is what happens.

I’m back, empowered with my new understanding, and a direction to make my own emotional life more satisfying for me as a person. I see slightly better, how my words and actions impact myself and the relationships I have with people. I have an idea on what I can explore to discover myself more.

I dare say, that this is one journey that cannot have an end and I have a hunch that this is one journey which could be one of the most important initiatives I have made in my life.

For the curious, you can check out the ISABS website, and see if there is something near you that you can experience for yourself. For those who are into people professions, in search of more meaningful existences, or simply on a curve for self-development, this is one experience I recommend from the bottom of my heart.

Nairobi, Kenya – A new report released today by WWF finds a clear and escalating pattern of climate change impacts on bird species around the world, suggesting a trend towards a major bird extinction from global warming.

The report, Bird Species and Climate Change, reviews more than 200 scientific articles on birds in every continent to build up a global picture of climate change impacts.

“Robust scientific evidence shows that climate change is now affecting birds’ behaviour,” said Dr Karl Mallon, Scientific Director at Climate Risk Pty Ltd and one of the authors of the report. “We are seeing migratory birds failing to migrate, and climate change pushing increasing numbers of birds out of synchrony with key elements of their ecosystems.”

The report, prepared by international climate change specialists, identifies groups of birds at high risk from climate change: migratory, mountain, island, wetland, Arctic, Antarctic and seabirds. While bird species that can move and adapt easily to different habitat are expected to continue to do well, bird species that thrive only in a narrow environmental range are expected to decline, and to be outnumbered by invasive species.

The report also shows that birds suffer from climate change effects in every part of the globe. Scientists have found declines of up to 90 per cent in some bird populations, as well as total and unprecedented reproductive failure in others.

Scientists also analyzed available projections of future impacts, including bird species extinction. They found that bird extinction rates could be as high as 38 per cent in Europe, and 72 per cent in northeastern Australia, if global warming exceeds 2ºC above pre-industrial levels (currently it is 0.8ºC above).

“Birds have long been used as indicators of environmental change, and with this report we see they are the quintessential ‘canaries in the coal mine’ when it comes to climate change,” said Hans Verolme, Director of WWF’s Global Climate Change Programme.

“This report finds certain bird groups, such as seabirds and migratory birds, to be early, very sensitive, responders to current levels of climate change. Large-scale bird extinctions may occur sooner than we thought.”

If high rates of extinction are to be avoided, rapid and significant greenhouse gas emission cuts must be made, WWF says.

The global conservation organization also believes that the current approach to bird conservation, focused on protecting specific areas with a high bird diversity, will fail because climate change will force birds to shift into unprotected zones. A major change in approach to bird conservation is required, according to WWF.

END NOTES:

Examples of how climate change is affecting some bird species around the world:

Africa: The tawny eagle is an arid savanna raptor found in Asia and Africa. Small changes in precipitation predicted with climate change would likely result in the bird’s extinction in its African habitat in the southern Kalahari. If the mean annual precipitation stays the same but the inter-annual (year to year) variation increases by less than 10 per cent, the bird’s population will decrease considerably.

UK: The particular vulnerability of seabirds to climate change is illustrated by the unprecedented breeding crash of UK North Sea seabirds in 2004. The direct cause for the breeding failure of common guillemots, Arctic skuas, great skuas, kittiwakes, Arctic terns and other seabirds at Shetland and Orkney colonies was a shortage of small fish called sandeels, a crucial prey species for the seabirds. As a result, the nearly 7,000 pairs of great skuas in the Shetlands, for example, produced only a handful of chicks and starving adult birds ate their own young. Warming ocean waters and major shifts in species that underpin the ocean food web are thought to be behind the major sandeel decline.

USA: An unprecedented 2002 drought in southern California caused a 97 per cent breeding decline in four species: the rufous crowned sparrow, wrentit, spotted towhee and California towhee. Breeding success dropped from 2.37 fledglings per pair in 2001 (a normal year) to 0.07 fledglings per pair during 2002, the driest year in the region’s 150-year climate record. Precipitation in this region is expected to decrease and become more variable with global warming. Even slight increases in arid conditions would make these species vulnerable to extinction in a dry year.

Europe/Africa: Pied flycatcher birds and other species are shifting the timing of seasonal behaviors in response to climate change. Shifts like these can cause problems for birds if the plants and animals they interact with do not shift at the same rate. In Europe, earlier spring peaks in insect numbers mean that some pied flycatchers (long-distance migratory birds) no longer arrive from Africa in time to match food peaks with peak demands of their nestlings. This climate-change induced mismatch is strongly linked to 90 per cent declines in some European pied flycatcher populations over the past two decades.

Australia: Illustrating the vulnerability of mountain birds to climate change, the habitat of the golden bowerbird is predicted to shrink by 97.5 per cent with a future warming of 3°C and a 10 per cent decline in rainfall. The bird occupies cool habitat in Australia’s wet tropics on conical mountains surrounded by warmer lowlands. As temperatures rise, its suitable habitat will contract, and beyond 3˚C of warming is expected to completely disappear.

For more information, please contact:
Anshuman Atroley
Communications Manager
WWF-India
Tel:+91-11-4150 4797
E-mail:aatroley@wwfindia.net

© [14 Nov 2006] WWF. Some rights reserved. WWF-India