HYDERABAD: Legal experts strongly suggest the adoption of a climate change law to create liability and exert pressure on the people to follow measures to tackle the climate change crisis. On Tuesday, the ‘Conference of the People’ webinar was organised by the Council for Green Resolution on the lines of the COP 27 climate summit currently being held in Egypt, where legal experts spoke about the legal approach to climate change, and what more governments could do to control the crisis.
Addressing the meeting virtually, Professor Pushpa Kumar, College of Law, University of Delhi, spoke about how the idea of combating climate change had evolved in 1992 when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted, laying the foundation for the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. He suggested incentivising and recognising those who were willing to share their technology and equipment, and also to incentivise the industries which could reduce the emissions.
While recognising the eight measures adopted as part of the National Climate Change Action Plan in India, and four more measures added to it, he felt that unless a climate change law, the draft of which he said, has already been prepared by the Centre was enacted; reducing greenhouse emissions by 45 % by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2070 may not be a distant possibility.
By having a legally-binding enforcement, he said that liability could be created and people could be made to follow the measures. Also noting that a legal aspect alone couldn’t help, he said that the citizens needed to protect their environment as per the Article 51 (A) of the constitution.
Help ‘climate refugees’
Cautioning that 200 million people may be displaced by climate-induced conflicts and hazards in the next 25 years, Sriharshita Chada, a city-based advocate, felt that ‘climate change migration’ was a real global issue.
“Climate vulnerable communities should be empowered and there should be an institutional mechanism to resolve climate-related disputes. As of now, there is no data in India to identify climate change refugees and there is no specific policy for such refugees. India has not been a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees,” she pointed out.
“In India it is difficult to understand migration. We don’t have evidence that it is climate-induced. As of now we are understanding them as refugees who are migrating for employment, due to a water problem or other reasons. Can we identify them as climate refugees? Once we identify them, what remedy do we have to support them,” asked Pushpa Kumar