Bengaluru: India has taken many transformative steps in advocating for ‘climate justice’ in the last eight year, said the Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri on Friday.
“Prime Minister Modi’s bold announcement of the Panchamrit Action Plan at COP-26 in Glasgow envisages India becoming a net-zero emissions country by 2070” he said while addressing the delegates the meeting of the Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group under India’s G20 Presidency at Bengaluru.
“This is one of the shortest time-spans proposed between peak emissions and net zero status by a developing economy” he said.
Mr Puri emphasised that, “India is demonstrating that economy and ecology are not at odds with each other, but in fact, fundamentally intertwined”.
The Minister said that the consequences of degrading biodiversity and environment are leading to increasing costs and complexity in all aspects of life.
“Tackling the interrelated matters of climate change and biodiversity loss demands a concerted and calibrated global effort” he added.
Highliting the role of G20 countries to mitigate the climate challenges, he said, “The Global South, in particular, looks up to the G-20 dialogue and desires an urgent consensus that prevents both a climate crisis and a debt crisis for developing nations, adding that India is uniquely positioned to champion the aspirations of the Global South”.
The Minister said , “This will require committed and farsighted leadership by the G20 nations which collectively account for 85 percent of the world’s GDP, 75 percent of the global trade, and two-thirds of the global population”.
Talking about the importance of the Working Group Meeting, Mr Puri said that this year’s Working Group provides an opportunity for G20 nations to conceptualise and adopt a concrete roadmap based on the recommendations at COP-27 in Sharm el-Sheikh and the Biodiversity Conference held in Montreal this year.
He added that the Working Group will enable a shift in mindset from ownership to stewardship of natural resources.
Affirming the significance of adopting a sustainable lifestyle, the Minister said that it is encouraging to note that the three identified priority areas to be discussed in this Working Group are aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s, Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) mission, which emphasises “mindful and deliberate utilisation, instead of mindless and destructive consumption to protect and preserve the environment.”
“Working Group can be the catalyst for the G20 countries to adopt the core tenets of the LiFE movement and promote the uptake of sustainable living at a global scale” he said.
The Minister expressed confidence that the collective experiences and the lessons learnt during the deliberations in the inaugural meeting of the Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group will help to build a bold and visionary roadmap that can be shared with the G20 leaders.
