Delhi Sustainable Development Summit(DSDS) 2010 organized by The Energy and Resources Institute witnessed mobilization of wide support for the scientific claims of IPCC and belief in it's leadership responsible for creating worldwide attention and public opinion about urgency to initiate mitigation, adaptation and legal steps in order to climate change. Prime Minister of India himself lauded the role played by IPCC in following words: “Some aspects of the science that is reflected in the work of the IPCC have faced criticism. But this debate does not challenge the core projections of the IPCC about the impact of greenhouse gas accumulations on temperature, rainfall and sea level rise. Let me here assert that India has full confidence in the IPCC process and its leadership and will support it in every way that it can.” These remarks were significant considering the recently levied serious allegations against senior leadership of IPCC. 1
The 10th DSDS focused it's theme of discussions around ‘Beyond Copenhagen: new pathways to sustainable development’. True to it's theme, this summit debated the modalities of upcoming strategies to be adopted in Mexico's city Cancun for the next COP 16 meeting. This summit reflected need for greater harmonization between much debated necessity of legally binding international agreements coupled with the emphasis on local action by decentralized governments. The heads of states participated in this event were premiers of the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Slovenia, the Hellenic Republic of Greece, Bhutan, Finland. The Environment Ministers from Denmark, France, India, Italy, Mexico and Spain represented their respective experiences about need to have legally binding agreement and ways to achieve that amidst the fresh experience of negotiations in Copenhagen.
Their was unanimity about Climate Change being a issue where democratic accountability, scientific accuracy and economic viability must be remembered while addressing the problem. The political agreement achieved in Copenhagen was repeatedly emphasized by environment ministers. The panel of Ministers noted that stagnation in efforts to counter the climate change is observed due to uncompromising position adopted by nations to have a legal agreement as a first step without heeding much attention towards local action. There was vigorous discussion and consensus about inability of isolated environment ministers to forge a pragmatic treaty aiming to remove the ever increasing percentage of anthropogenic carbon in atmosphere. It was reiterated that unless and until it becomes a strategic aspect of policy of national leadership only meetings like Copenhagen are here to stay as only a event documenting the evolving documentation of scientific and economic implications of climate change. Thus environment ministers expressed their hope that in future negotiations finance ministers and other related ministers would be included to cover comprehensive nature of the expanse of problem posed in front of international community.
Summit affirmed it's relevance by a commentary on recent developments by saying that widespread disappointment with respect to reliability of international political process in delivering an effective and timely climate regime doesn't diminishes the indispensability of response to climate change. It laid special emphasis on need to build consensus among various stakeholders particularly business community, civil society. This was evident from one of the sessions titled ‘The Urgency of Sustainability in Business’. The ethical accountability and legal force to implement all these agreed positions was the major inspiration behind bringing all the stakeholders together. The business community which influences the production flows and consumption patterns has important role to play in this direction. The business practices including resource utilization, income distribution, rate and direction of development is significant to achieve the criteria of sustainability while addressing the twin challenge of climate change and development. A major difficult task in this regard would be to develop rewarding business opportunities around sustainability,
The meeting raised key questions facing the global community which are still rooted in mitigation and adaptive capacities of developing countries simultaneously transforming unsustainable consumption patterns and life styles. The session titled ‘Enhancing Financial Flows and Technology Access’ brought to the fore the urgency to strengthen the enabling pillars i.e. access to technology, finance and mitigation and adaptation building. This regularly pronounced case for technology, along with increasing need to connect growing scientific certainty about climate change with climate strategy made pitch for immediate, comprehensive action plan. For such a visionary strategy embedded in action plan would require addressing two key questions: a) How do we aspire the developmental aspirations in favor of sustainable development. b) What needs to be done in social, political and economic spheres to implement the sustainable development agenda efficiently?
These two questions definitely follow the assumption that never before in human civilization, there is greater opportune time than this to seriously act to decouple the economic growth from the growing consumption pattern of energy. Gone are the days when the growth and development of the country was benchmarked in terms of degree of per capita energy consumption. Now, the world has to usher in new era of ‘Sustainability Benchmarks.’ Environmentally friendly infrastructure is vital during the emphasis on access to technology. So, the massive scaling up of proven technologies capable of contributing significantly to GHG reduction is the most sought after target. This quest of clean technology is unavoidable. It goes without saying that substantial R & D is still required to develop new technologies capable of mitigating and providing development benefits. This includes the issue of magnitude and sources of resource mobilization (private and public), technology road maps for mitigation and adaptation, absorption capacity(capacity building), accountability and transparency in investment and policy decisions. Major challenge remains in effective transfer, deployment and diffusion of technology is the rigid IPR regime., lack of finance and international cooperation.
The critical tasks around which the discussion followed lead the summit towards session of ‘Strengthening Knowledge Institutions and Dissemination.’ It reaffirmed the belief that deeper understanding of subject among the actors is necessary in comprehending the exact nature of the problem at hand and to design effective strategies to tackle it. Thus production and dissemination of precise knowledge is of vital importance. Without access to knowledge of the links between ecological processes and human activities, there can be little understanding of the seriousness of climate change. And without there can be no hope about actions and responsible behaviors from stakeholders. In this regard, it was felt that linkages of knowledge generating institutions with that of policy making institutions are vital to realize the seriousness of this behavior. Summit culminated with renowned emphasis on political accountability based on building blocks of mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance. This emphasis came with candid statement that the lack of legal agreement, rather merely a political accord at Copenhagen forces us to consider importance of working towards restoring trust in international political process as well as trust among countries.
a) http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15450615&source=features_box2
b) http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15473066
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