Chairman’s
remarks by Former Ambassador T. P. Sreenivasan at the inaugural session of the
Seminar on Climate Change: Extreme Events and Environmental Resilience. Sharing
Experiences for Sustainable Development. December 15, 2014.
Distinguished
Panelists and participants,
I
have a suspicion that I have been invited to chair this session, which focuses
on disaster prevention because of the perception that higher education is the
biggest disaster in the state. I do not think that higher education is a disaster,
but I have discovered that we need to have four “M”s to deal with the problems
in higher education, Motivation, Mobility, Mindset and Money. Perhaps they are
equally relevant in climate change and disaster mitigation.
I
would like to believe, however, that I am here because of my long association
with environmental issues at the UN between 1972 and 1995. As you know, it was
Indira Gandhi, who established the link between environment and development at
the Stockholm conference in 1972. Although our focus today is not on
international negotiations, it is useful to know what is happening in
international fora as a backdrop to this discussion. The Lima Conference of
Parties (COP) of the Climate Change Convention concluded yesterday
“successfully”. As you know, no conference fails at the UN as a last minute
compromise is always arrived at. What happened in Lama was merely a
postponement of the crucial issues, which could not be resolved. The major
issues like “common but differentiated responsibilities”, mandatory reduction
of emissions, per capita emissions and funding are merely forwarded to the
Paris Conference next year.
The
Rio consensus, Kyoto Protocol etc were almost abandoned in Copenhagen and the
recent understanding between the US and China augurs a new approach in which
there will be no mandatory cuts. Each country will submit its own mitigation
plan to ensure that the average temperature of the earth does not go beyond 2
degrees Celsius. From now on, it will be a different ball game in climate change
negotiations and there will not be much of a contribution from the developed
countries to the developing ones.
It
is encouraging that several SAARC countries are represented here. The recent
summit in Kathmandu has exposed the chinks in the armor of SAARC. We do not
even know whether SAARC in the present form will survive for long. But climate
change and disaster prevention are areas in which there is potential for
cooperation either with or without Pakistan. I welcome the delegates from SAARC
countries.
Our
session is meant to share experiences of Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh and
India. We have highly qualified and eminent people from these countries on the
panel and I am sure that we will benefit immensely from this session.
Thank
you.
No comments:
Post a Comment