United Nations Archives - The India Climate Observatory

PM Modi at the Climate Action Summit

September 24, 2019 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

From the Prime Minister’s Office, this is the text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address (the original in Hindi) on 23 September 2019, at the Climate Action Summit 2019 during the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, USA:

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi addressing at the (United Nations) Climate Action Summit- 2019, in New York, USA on September 23, 2019.

I thank UN Secretary General for organising the Global climate summit.
After having received the Champion of the Earth award last year, this is my first opportunity to address the United Nations. I am pleased that my first meeting during my visit to New York is on the subject of Climate.
Excellencies, various efforts are being made by different countries to fight climate change. We must accept that if we have to overcome a serious challenge like climate change, then what we are doing at the moment is just not enough.
What is needed today, is a comprehensive approach which covers everything from education to values, and from lifestyle to developmental philosophy. What we need is a global people’s movement to bring about behavioral change.
The respect for nature, the judicious use of resources, reducing our needs and living within our means have all been important aspects of both our traditions and present day efforts. Need not Greed has been our guiding principle.
And therefore India today has come not just to talk about the seriousness of this issue, but to present a practical approach and a roadmap. We believe that an ounce of practice is worth more than a ton of preaching.
In India, we are going to increase the share of non fossil fuel, and by 2022 we plan to increase our renewable energy capacity to much beyond 175 GW, and later till 450 GW. In India we have made plans to make our transport sector green through e mobility. India is also working to considerably increase the proportion of the biofuel blend in petrol and diesel.
We have provided clean cooking gas to 150 million families. We have launched the Jal Jeevan mission for water conservation, rainwater harvesting and for the development of water resources. India is going to spend approximately 50 billion dollars on this in the next few years.
On the International forum, almost 80 countries have joined our International Solar Alliance campaign. India and Sweden together with other partners are launching the Leadership group within the Industry transition track. This initiative will provide a platform for governments and the private sector with opportunities for cooperation in the area of Technology innovation. This will help to develop low carbon pathways for industry.
In order to make our infrastructure disaster resilient, India is launching a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. I invite Member states to join this coalition.
This year on the occasion of India’s Independence day on 15th August, we called for a peoples movement to end the use of single use plastic. I hope that this will create an awareness at a global level about the harmful effects of single use plastic.
Excellencies, I am happy to announce that tomorrow we are going to inaugurate solar panels on the roof of the UN building, funded by India at a cost of 1 million dollars.
The time for talking is over; the world needs to act now. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Source: Press Information Bureau, Government of India

The IPCC’s India voice?

November 4, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The three working groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report have occupied, for months on end, 837 of what the IPCC method calls ‘authors’. Most are scientists, with considerable experience in the areas of atmospheric, cryospheric, oceanographic or bio-geochemical sciences, but they are also social scientists and economists, administrators and statisticians.

Insofar as the ‘inter-governmental’ aspect of the IPCC is concerned, they have been drawn from a number of countries, and have usually classified themselves by country of residence and work (though some are classified by institution too, especially when that institution is directly or indirectly a United Nations institute). All have contributed – as coordinating lead author, lead author, review editor, or for a technical summary – to the many voluminous chapters that have taken shape as the Fifth Assessment Report.

Amongst this corps is India’s contribution to the effort, with 33 authors. This is not a small group, for there are 43 from China and 31 from Japan (these groups exclude those of Indian or Asian origin who are authors but who have identified themselves under other countries and institutions). Compared with the contingents from western Europe, the USA and the OECD countries (as a bloc), Asia may be seen to be under-represented (and Africa very much more so) in the IPCC evidence examining and report writing process but that is a separate matter.

What is germane to us is: has the IPCC process and method an Indian outlook that will be of as much utility at home as it has been to the inter-governmental effort? A short answer will be ‘no’ to the first query (because it is about science, evidence and international consensus and not about national priorities) and ‘don’t know’ to the second. There is no reason why a ‘don’t know’ should persist, as the Fifth Assessment process comes to a close, for the size of India’s population and economy, and the likely effects climate change has and is forecast to have on our 35 states and union territories ought to have turned climate change into common currency wherever planning is carried out and implemented.

But that is not so, despite 33 Indian authors having contributed to the IPCC Fifth Assessment. They represent a far greater number who are, in one or more ways, concerned with the impacts of climate change in India and with our responses to those changes. What has seemed to have stood in the way of an Indian and a Bharatiya view of climate change is the predilection by academicians (particularly from those used to working in inter-governmental and UN circles) to propagate at home the language of international climate negotiation rather than direct statements and questions that have to do with conditions on the ground in Madhya Maharashtra or Assam or Jharkhand.

Consider one amongst the several quotes lent to our media following the release of the Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report: “The IPCC synthesis report suggests a way of thinking about climate change that is deeply relevant to India. There is a complex two way relationship between sustainable development and climate change: climate policies should support not undermine sustainable development; but limiting the effects of climate change is necessary to achieve sustainable development. The report clearly states there are limits to adaptation. For India the message is that while adaptation is critical, keeping the pressure on for global mitigation is also key.”

Unfortunately for any administrator (such as a district collector or a watershed mapper or the superintendent of a regional referral hospital) such a statement says very little. It neither draws out any interest in further understanding the effects of climate change in the districts and towns of Bharat, nor does it help provide a personal context to what is unquestionably a reporting process of vital importance to us all.

Part of the problem is the UN/inter-governmental language of negotiation that has become the norm when speaking about (or writing about, for several of these 33 contribute articles to the media regularly) climate change. As busy people, they may expect the media to interpret into popular idiom, simplify and amplify, and otherwise lend local colour to their prose. If so, they are plain wrong, for the responsibility to do so is theirs, not the media’s.

Is there a demand for explanation that is true to context? There is practically none, and that is why this group (the 33 Indian contributors to the Fifth Assessment report) must be called upon to translate the IPCC method for local administrations. This is important as there are several worlds which do not intersect. That of the IPCC and the sophisticated cohort of institutions which have contributed to the Fifth Assessment report on the one hand, whereas everyday workaday life in Bharat’s 7,935 towns, cities and metropolises proceeds for many tens of millions with or without the magisterial pronouncements of the IPCC’s working groups. There will always be a gulf between these worlds, but there must also be bridges, and currently there are far too few.

Who can be called upon? Here is the current roll call. There are: Krishna Mirle Achutarao, Indian Institute of Technology; Pramod Aggarwal, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security; Govindasamy Bala, Indian Institute of Science; Suruchi Bhadwal, The Energy and Resources Institute; Abha Chhabra, Indian Space Research Organisation; Pradeep Kumar Dadhich, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd.; Purnamita Dasgupta, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi Enclave; Navroz Dubash, Centre for Policy Research; Varun Dutt, Indian Institute of Technology; Amit Garg, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Prashant Goswami, CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation; Anil Kumar Gupta, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology; Shreekant Gupta, University of Delhi; Sujata Gupta, Asian Development Bank (ADB); and Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

Furthermore, there are: Arun Kansal, TERI University; Surender Kumar, University of Delhi; Ritu Mathur, The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI); Harini Nagendra, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE); Kirit S Parikh, Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe); Jyoti Parikh, Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe); Himanshu Pathak, Indian Agricultural Research Institute; Anand Patwardhan, Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay; Rengaswamy Ramesh, Physical Research Laboratory; Nijavalli H. Ravindranath, Indian Institute of Science; Aromar Revi, Indian Institute for Human Settlements; Joyashree Roy, Jadavpur University; Ambuj Sagar, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi; S. K. Satheesh, Indian Institute of Science; Priyadarshi R. Shukla, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Eswaran Somanathan, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi; Geetam Tiwari, Indian Institute of Technology; and Alakkat Unnikrishnan, National Institute of Oceanography. Who amongst these will stand up in the talukas and in the melee of our class II towns for Bharat?

– Rahul Goswami

We need more than summits and marches to deal with climate change

September 22, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Ban Ki-moon with marchers. "There is no 'Plan B' because we do not have 'Planet B'." Photo: UN Photo / Mark Garten

Who is the man in the blue cap and why is he on the street? Ban Ki-moon with marchers. “There is no ‘Plan B’ because we do not have ‘Planet B’.” Photo: UN Photo / Mark Garten

On September 20 and 21, the gathering of what has been called ‘climate marchers’, including many youth, expresses a growing popular concern over the impact of global warming on the world’s environment. During the march in New York, USA, the largest of the several marches held in several cities and countries, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, joined the marchers. On 23 September, the Climate Summit he has called is expected to draw more than 120 heads of government to, as the UN puts it, “galvanise action on climate change”.

Ban said he hoped the peoples’ voices will be “truly reflected to the leaders” when they meet. “Climate change is a defining issue of our time,” he added. “There is no time to lose. If we do not take action now we will have to pay much more.” There is widespread expectation that government delegations to the summit will have “concrete initiatives and that it will provide significant momentum for a global agreement on tackling climate change”.

All this has likely been of interest to the youth, but the expectation of a new push towards a global agreement on dealing with climate change needs to be balanced by even the most cursory examination of the last 20 years of climate negotiations, under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC), and particularly the last four years of an ever larger number of meetings all of which have singly and together contributed nothing to any hoped-for global agreement.

Nonetheless, climate change continues, the science gathers experience and the evidence accumulates. Moreover, it has become clear that a climate treaty (if and when it is signed) will not be about a single issue. Climate change is one amongst an inter-connected web of subjects related to development, sustainability, habitats and settlements, equity and justice, trade, public and social institutions, technology, investments and finance, innovation and national priorities. In many ways, the responses to climate change are directly influenced by thinking and practice in all these areas.

In a short new collection of working ideas, ‘The Way Forward in International Climate Policy: Key Issues and New Ideas 2014’, published and distributed by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, the thesis that is advanced is: “research suggests that economic and ecological aims can co-exist, and even reinforce each other”. This may be partly true but is also contestable. As the CDKN collection also has pointed out, political tensions persist between economic growth and development on the one hand (but these should more correctly be called business and industry interests), and environmental sustainability on the other.

The term ‘sustainable development’ has engaged policy-makers and academics for 40 years now, and remains central to a set of goals (and large numbers of ‘targets’ and indicators) which will be finalised by the UN this year. Much more swiftly, ‘green growth’ has come forward as a competing idea, because ‘growth’ sounds more powerful to industry and investors, whereas ‘sustainability’ seems to imply conservation and status quo.

Historical contributions to greenhouse gases and the socio-political Southern view.

The marchers in New York may harbour some ideas about fairness, equity and the ethical issues surrounding climate change and those it affects. These concepts have indeed been highlighted by the IPCC climate change mitigation and adaptation reports. Although necessary, these concepts may be interpreted and implemented within the framework of national priorities and goals, yet the connections – between the concepts around equity, between what happens on the ground, and between the thickets of negotiating text – must be made.

Fairness between countries also underlies the idea of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ which many of the so-called ‘developing’ and the so-called ‘less developed’ countries invoke during climate negotiations. It is a concept seen as being one of the key principles of the UNFCCC and a central element of fairness and equity discussions. But it has lead to intractable arguments that pit South versus North. Who should bear the burden of investments towards adaptation and mitigation and who should benefit? Without internationally agreed climate action costs continue to mount: how should these be dealt with? Unfortunately, these questions are debated in the UN and at international negotiations not by those affected but by the financial institutions and their technology providers.

The 23 September UN Climate Summit has already focused on public spectacle and visual stylistics in the days before the meeting, rather than outline the substantial and very delayed points of discussion. The UN headquarters has been lit up with what is described as “a spectacular 30-storey architectural projection show aimed to inspire global citizens to take climate action” which is to provide a “visual reminder of what is at stake”. This is wasteful and distracting – those who have been affected by climate change in its many forms have no need to be reminded by expensive spectacle half a world away.

That is why, 22 years after countries joined the UNFCCC, there remains a clear contrast between the urgency of the situation and the absence of any significant response from the political establishment. The urgency is:

(1) The hottest March-May period in the global record which has pushed numerous record spikes in the global measures this summer. By August, according to NASA, the global average had again climbed to new high levels. NASA showed that the Global Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Index had climbed to 0.70 degrees Celsius above the mid 20th century average and about 0.95 degrees Celsius above the 1880s average. The previous record high for the period was set in 2011 at 0.69 degrees C above the global 1951 to 1980 average.

(2) For the first time, monthly concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million (ppm) in April 2014 throughout the northern hemisphere. “This threshold is of symbolic and scientific significance and reinforces evidence that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are responsible for the continuing increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases warming our planet.” All the northern hemisphere monitoring stations forming the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch network reported record atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the seasonal maximum. This occurs early in the northern hemisphere spring before vegetation growth absorbs CO2.

The contrast between urgency and the response of the world’s political leaders has occurred, in large part, due to the contradiction which climate negotiations carefully steer around – it is not possible to resolve climate change and other major environmental problems within the framework of a macro-economic system based on GDP growth and monetary expansion. For this reason, the perspective on which the People’s Climate March was organised offers no way forward and will contribute little to a lasting and fair climate treaty.

Five months ago the secretary general of the World Meteorlogical Organisation warned that “time is running out” when the 400 ppm was crossed. “This should serve as yet another wakeup call about the constantly rising levels of greenhouse gases which are driving climate change. If we are to preserve our planet for future generations, we need urgent action to curb new emissions of these heat trapping gases.” he said. Growth and consumption – green or sustainable or otherwise – is not the answer. And a recognition of that essential condition must be the starting point at the UN Climate Summit on 23 September 2014.

– Rahul Goswami