Chennai: British economists have urged India to help mitigate climate change, saying vulnerability to the phenomenon went hand in hand with poverty.
Dimitri Zenghelis, the lead author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, which examined the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation, said this while addressing policymakers and academics here this weekend.
Pointing out that “there was 90% adaptation to the phenomenon of climate change by developed countries and 50% adaptation by developing countries”, he said vulnerability to climate change and poverty went hand in hand.
The ‘Stern Review’ is considered a comprehensive baseline study by a section of environmentalists and policymakers worldwide while others have criticised it as alarmist. India and the US argue that the Stern Review caps growth.
Nicholas Stern, head of the British government economic service and a former World Bank chief economist, was mandated by the Tony Blair government in 2005 to study the impact of climate change and presented his report in 2006.
Zenghelis, its lead author, along with Justin Mundy, adviser to the British government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office experts’ team on Climate Change, have been touring India this week explaining the Stern Review.
The interaction was sponsored by the CPR Environment Foundation, a Chennai-based NGO, and the British High Commission.
Britain supports 22 climate change projects in India and provides £1.8m to sustain this, along with another half a million pounds on a ministry of environment and forests climate change programme.
Climate change enjoys “top political priority for my team”, Deborah Patterson, first secretary for energy and sustainable development at the British High Commission, said here on the occasion.
Mundy warned that developing countries could not just seek foreign investment to mitigate climate change, “domestic investment” has to be equal and a “viable private-public partnership needs to be developed for countries to be able to meet the challenges of the clean development mechanism (CDM) and carbon point transfers”.
The US emits 24% of the world’s carbon dioxide but it is not ready to accept that human carbon dioxide emissions cause cyclones, hurricanes, droughts and floods across the world. It has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, saying cutting emission checks development but is spending $2bn on climate change.
A developing country like India emits per capita 0.93 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, well below the world average of 3.87 tonnes per annum and funds 300 CDM projects, dedicating nearly Rs.5mn to climate change. – IANS