“Not everything (on sustainable development) happens atDavos. A large part of it happens here in Delhi (as well),” external affairsminister Salman Khurshid said during a special address at the concludingsession of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit here last weekend.
While Khurshid justifiably hailed RK Pachauri ” hisorganisation, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) organised the event,held in the national capital between January 31 and February 2 ” the questionis how much of the brave discussions on issues such as resource efficiency,climate change, clean energy and sustainable development would percolate downfrom the dais and drawing board to the drawing rooms and real world ” startingwith the awareness down to the policy, planning and implementation levels.
At Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel, it was a sizeable gathering ofscientists, activists, authors and media persons, all discussing the immediateand long-term effects of climate change and other environmental issues. Themost important debate was on resource efficiency in the days to come, andwhether the world would be able to sustain its growth if it goes on depletingnatural resources at the present pace.
Shorn of the heavy-duty words, it boils down to a simplerights issue: whether the fruit of growth is present for all. Or, everyoneshould have access to clean drinking water ” even those who cannot pay for thatmineral water bottle.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who inaugurated the session,hit the nail on its head when he emphasised the need to recognise that naturalresources are not going to be present forever. “Scarcity of natural resourcesdirectly hit the poor,” he said. “Thus, resource-efficiency should be the mostimportant aspect of development.”
At the end of the day, it is as simple as that: peopleshould be allowed to believe that development is a good thing; and the word“people” includes everyone, not just the ones with the means living in gatedcolonies and possessing a rare connect to the physical realities of life.
What this means is also that a few people should not beallowed to corner all the benefits of the natural resources. Cut to the chase,it means Jharkhand, for example, should not be among the poorest states of thecountry even though it sits on a goldmine of natural resources. The story issimilar in Odisha and several other such places across the country.
As Ali Tauquer Sheikh of the Climate and DevelopmentKnowledge Network said, “We need to reach out to those who have beenmarginalised. Millions of people have been excluded from development and thetrickle-down effect has not worked.”
Bittu Sehgal, the editor of ‘Sanctuary’ magazine also made acase for understanding the role of even a common butterfly in keeping us aliveand well. “Though we have positioned the tiger to be the face of environmentprotection, it is important to understand the contribution of the butterfly inpollen distribution, which keeps the trees alive,” he said.
A lively session with US journalist and writer ThomasFriedman drove home the point that climate change is real ” it’s here, and it’simpacting us now ” and its effect becomes bigger and bigger with eachsuccessive year. “When I wrote ‘The Earth is Flat’, Facebook did not exist;twitter was a sound; LinkedIn a prison; Cloud was still in the air;Applications were something you sent to college and for most people, Skype wasa typo. The world is deeply interconnected and interdependent and we cannotsolve any of our problems independently but only in an alliance,” he said.
In all, the sustainability summit was a regular greensummit: a little bit of doomsday coupled with a we-can-do-it-if-we-try-nowapproach. Between these two ends, people tried to make sense about what isbeing said about the whole green thing. However, it was difficult to imagine a“green” summit with a carbon footprint as large as a dinosaur’s paw. Athree-day summit held in a huge five star hotel with air-conditioners andheaters blasting away to glory, and energy being consumed all over, also madeit look a little ironical.
in association with Governance Now
