“We have to see beyond the collaboration of think tanks and policy makers and move to trans-boundary initiatives. They are critical because we have shared ecosystems,” said Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, an Indian scientist who heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore in 2007 for their work in raising awareness of climate change.

The Rio Earth Summit or Rio+20 represents another milestone in an ongoing global effort to achieve sustainable development goals. The challenges emanating from population growth, high natural resource consumption, rising pollution and climate change can derail, or render India’s growth process unsustainable.

India will host the 45th Cocotech meeting of the Asian and Pacific Coconut Community (APCC) here during July 2-6. The theme of the meeting is “Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development of the Coconut Industry”.

Reports come in that China may be undereporting its carbon emissions estimated to be more than a billion tonnes roughly around that of Japan’s and could be more than 20% than usual. 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that the current consumption patterns of the industrialised countries are unsustainable and asked for equitable burden sharing, with common but differentiated responsibilities in tackling problems of global environmental damage of which climate change is but one element. He was speaking at the Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable development. What he said is obviously right. But the point is, this applies not just to the rich-poor divide across nations but also to the social divide within nations. With rising incomes and growing inequality, a section of India’s own population enjoys lifestyles comparable to those that are commonplace in the industrialised countries, precisely the ones the PM termed unsustainable.

A new report on water sector options in the face of changing climate has called for fresh approach to studying alterations in the patterns of rainfall and snowfall, availability of surface and ground water and the existing water infrastructure.

The Department of Environmental Science at Central University of Rajasthan and Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Sweden has jointly received a grant of Rs 1.6 crore for an Indo-Swedish collaboration project entitled ‘Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources in the Luni River Basin, Rajasthan, India.

Buoyed by New Delhi’s success at the Rio+20 summit, Union environment and forests minister Jayanthi Natarajan summed up the mood in the Indian camp at Rio de Janeiro, “One significant development has been the restoration of the centrality of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) in the environmental discourse.” 

Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jayanti Natarajan smiles when she says India’s known stand on climate change mitigation has been accepted. But the smile is replaced by a frown when someone asks if the developed countries have pledged any money to help the developing countries. No, she says, adding valiantly that India does not want to commodify the environment.

In the June 8 Asia edition of Financial Times, an activist group comprising Greenpeace, GetUp and Banktrack put out a full-page advertisement opposing the proposed Alpha coal project in the Galilee Basin in Australia, and targeting its potential international investors. The advertisement cautioned interested backers against “key investment risks”, pointing out that “national and international NGOs are vowing to fight these coal projects every step of the way”.