By IANS
Stockholm : Renowned Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain, winner of the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize, is among the global experts invited to join a high level international commission for climate-proof development that the Swedish government is setting up.
The commission, headed by Gunilla Carlsson, the Swedish minister for International Development Cooperation, consists of twelve members from different countries that represent different perspectives, experience and expertise in the field of climate change.
Besides Sunita Narain, the commission members include Kenyan Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, President of the World Resources Institute, Jonathan Lash from the US, Youba Sokona, the Malian head of the Sahara and Sahel Observatory, Professor Sun Honglie from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and head of its expert committee on climate change and Margareta Wahlström, deputy head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance.
In addition, the new commission will also include representatives from reinsurance company Swiss Re, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank and the European Union (EU) Commission.
The secretariat will be located at the Stockholm Environment Institute, an organisation of great international renown with an active expert role in the work of the IPCC.
Carlsson quoted development economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen: “Development is freedom. It is our shared responsibility to ensure that the decisions we take today and over the next few years will enable future generations to achieve this freedom.”
Explaining that Rajendra Pachauri was the motivating factor behind the Swedish initiative, Carlsson told IANS Wednesday: “The forecasts issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are becoming more certain and more disturbing. Even if we succeed in stabilising and reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases, we will face serious consequences of the global warming that is already taking place. This means that the freedom of future generations is at risk.
“It is a tragedy that the world’s poorest people – those who barely leave a carbon footprint – are those who will be worst affected by the impact of global warming. Those who have contributed least to climate change are also those with the fewest resources to deal with the consequences”, she added.
“We are already experiencing more intense and more unexpected weather. We can see how disease, accidents or disasters destroy assets that have taken considerable time and effort to build up and that are fundamental for growth and the chance of rising out of poverty,” Carlsson said.
A few weeks ago the UNDP launched its annual Human Development Report on the theme of climate change. It contains clear examples of how the combination of external events and the vulnerability that characterises poor people’s living conditions results in missed development opportunities and lifelong handicaps.
“For Ethiopian children under the age of five, the risk of malnutrition increases by 36 percent and the risk of stunted growth by 41 percent if they are born during a drought year. This means that in a drought year, two million more children suffer from malnutrition,” Carlsson added.
Indian women born in families during periods of drought or floods in the 1970s had 19 percent less chance of ever starting school than those who did not experience a natural disaster. Climate change will soon result in many more poor people being affected this way. “One of the most dramatic figures in the latest IPCC report is that between 75 and 250 million Africans will not have sufficient access to water in 2020,” Carlsson pointed out.
Again citing Amartya Sen, she said: “Efforts to improve poor people’s ability to adapt must focus on both the environment they live in and ways to reduce their vulnerability. The human consequences of climate change must be dealt with as an environmental and development issue. This requires coordination and coherence between different policy areas.
“The commission’s proposals will be presented immediately prior to the start of Sweden’s Presidency of the EU in the second half of 2009. This is also when we hope that a new climate change agreement will be signed in Copenhagen. We hope that the commission’s proposals will directly influence European and international policies for tackling climate change and its impact on poor people,” Carlsson said.