PUDUCHERRY: Advocating reduced carbon dioxide emissions for a sustainable world, Dr Miranda Schreurs, Professor of comparative politics at Freie Universität, Berlin, said that India has crucial role to play in the field of climate change.
Speaking at the ‘International Conference on Climate Change Resilience’, here on Sunday, Dr Schreurs said with an young population, India has the potential to play a major role in formulating policies on climate change. This is real challenge and an opportunity for India, she added.
Pointing to the announcement made by India that it would reduce energy consumption by 30 per cent and similar declarations made by the United States and China, Dr Miranda Schreurs said that the three countries put together will have a reduction of 55 per cent carbon dioxide emissions. This put together with the reduction in European Union would result in 70 per cent reduced emission globally, she further added and expressed the hope that an agreement would be signed at the Paris conference on climate change in December.
Professor Anisa B Khan, vice-chancellor (in-charge) of the Pondicherry University, Dr Pierre Grard, Director of French Institute, Prof Kirsten Joergensen too addressed the gathering.
The three-day conference aims to understand and manage burning issues related to food, water, energy and forests besides the current climate change scenario and its resilience.
Climate Change Resilience (CCR) is to build up a strategy based on the processes involving people and the natural environment that enables ecosystems to tolerate disturbances without collapsing to a qualitatively different state.
It can generally be defined as the capacity of a socio-ecological system to absorb stress and still function in the face of external stress imposed on it by climate change and adapt, re-organise and evolve into more desirable configurations that can improve the sustainability of the system thereby leaving it better prepared for future climate change impacts. The conference is organised by the Department of Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Pondicherry University in partnership with the Environmental Policy Research Centre, Free University of Berlin; Faculty of Policy and Planning, TERI University, New Delhi; Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam; and Global Change Programme, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
The trans-disciplinary conference has the following objectives: namely to bring closer the emerging threats of global warming on the resilience of the ecological/environmental/socioeconomic systems to the doorsteps of key stakeholders such as experts, researchers, scientists, engineers, practitioners, industrialists, policy makers, and politicians from India and abroad.
It also intends to identify the state of the art technologies/policies/strategies that are essential for fostering climate resilient development models at different levels of governance and investigate technical, environmental, economic, financial and institutional challenges and opportunities for realising climate resilient development models in India and Europe. Further, it aims at identifying research gaps and develop an action research agenda that can take into account the emerging opportunities for climate change mitigation, adaptation as well as resilience along with associated policy/governance problems and challenges.
It aims to propose effective, implementable measures to build an integrated resilience enhancement strategy and explore opportunities for sustained sharing of knowledge on CCR and governance among the academic community and policy-makers through training and capacity building activities.