Climate change, desertification and the sustainability-affordability linkage three extremely critical issues facing India today
Bhupender Yadav is the Union minister for environment, forests, and climate change. Down To Earth’s Annual State of India’s Environment Report 2022At the Anil Aggarwal Dialogue, organized by Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi (CSE), March 1, 2022.
“Reducing consumption and forming a self-restrained society is the only way that we can live with nature harmoniously,” Yadav said on the occasion.
Anil Agarwal’s Dialogue is an annual, four-day gathering of journalists. After almost two years of lockdown-induced pandemics and a physical hiatus, it’s back in its original physical form.
The event, which has over 60 journalists participating from across India, is being held at CSE’s state-of-the-art residential environmental training facility, the Anil Agarwal Environment Training Institute (AAETI), in Nimli, Alwar district, Rajasthan.
CSE director general Sunita Narain said: “In the last two years, the world has seen disruption at a scale not seen before. Both COVID-19 and climate change are the result of our ‘dystopian’ relationship with nature — call this the revenge of nature.”
COVID-19 was created by humans breaking down the barrier between wild habitats, and how humanity produces its food. Narain stated that climate change is the result of economic growth and emissions.
“Both are also linked and are being exacerbated because of our mismanagement of health systems and the environment,” she added.
Yadav highlighted three extremely critical issues that confronted India today — climate change, desertification and the sustainability-affordability linkage.
He said:
We can change people’s lives by linking affordability with sustainability. We need to link traditional knowledge and scientific temperament. Sometimes, we are so proud about our traditional knowledge that we forget logic. To make it work, we must consider logic and affordability in addition to tradition.
Yadav stressed on the fact that his ministry was keen to have an “open debate on environment”. He said: “Our goals are the same: how to ensure a good life for everybody. We should learn from each other.”
Yadav noted that because the energy sector had the highest emissions, the government was putting more focus on it.
He said:
We plan to have 500 GW of renewable energy by 2030. Railways will be electrified by 2030 — that will reduce 80 billion tonnes of emissions. We also plan to use LED bulbs on large scales, which can reduce 40 million tonnes of emissions. We are also focused on hydrogen. We can make hydrogen affordable and sustainable, and bring about big changes in the world.
The minister said environmental negotiations “is not about give and take — it is about saving humanity. The developed nations must take historic responsibility and consider what their ancestors have done in the past.”
Narain spoke about the challenges of climate change.
She said: “India needs to act in its own self-interest. Our climate change strategy has to be based on the principle of co-benefits — we will do something for climate change because it is good for the world, but also because it is good for us.”
She added: “We need a low-carbon strategy for every sector; we must also ask the developed world to pay for and give us the high-cost options so that we can leapfrog.”
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