MODI: Adapt To Protect Planet Earth

Prime Minister Narendra Modi asks World Leaders to Adapt to Protect Planet Earth … A special report by Asian Lite News

Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the world leaders to change tactics to protect Planet Earth. He was addressing the ‘Action and Solidarity – The Critical Decade’ event at the CAP-26 Summit in Glasgow.

“The world’s response to the climate crisis must involve adaptation and not just mitigation,” Modi said.

“Adaptation has not received the kind of importance in global climate debate that mitigation has. This is an injustice to those developing nations that are more impacted by climate change. We will need to make adaptation the key component of our development policies and projects,” he said.

Picture by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street

“Just like in India, climate is a big challenge for agriculture sector for most developing countries. There are changes in the cropping patterns, untimely rains and floods, or crops are destroyed by regular typhoons,” Modi added.

He listed how the Indian government’s projects like Tapwater for All, Clean India Mission and Clean Cooking Fuel for all “have not only provided adaptation benefits to our citizens in need, but also improved their quality of life”.

“Many traditional communities possess the knowledge to live in harmony with nature. Such traditional practices must get appropriate attention in our adaptation policies,” Modi said.

“To ensure this knowledge is passed onto our younger generations, we must include it as part of our school syllabi. Preservation of lifestyle per local conditions can be an important pillar of adaptation,” he said.

“Even if the methods of adaptation are local, the support provided to vulnerable countries must be global, i.e. keeping in mind the need for global support for local adaptation that India took the initiative for Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure,” he said.

In his inaugural address, British Prime Minister appealed to the global leaders to fix the climate issue now.

“If we don’t get serious about climate change today, it will be too late for our children to do so tomorrow,” Mr Johnson said.

Mr Johnson said the conference in Glasgow “must mark the beginning of the end” of climate change.

“The longer we fail to act, the worse it gets and the higher the price when we are eventually forced by catastrophe to act,” he said.

“Humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change. It’s one minute to midnight on that Doomsday clock and we need to act now.”

The prime minister added: “If summits alone solve climate change then we wouldn’t have needed 25 previous COP summits to get where we are today.

“But while COP26 will not be the end of climate change it can and it must mark the beginning of the end.”

Veteran broadcaster and environmentalist Sir David Attenborough also spoke to the leaders, and was given a standing ovation by US President Joe Biden.

Alongside a dramatic soundtrack and a video showing striking images of the planet, Sir David said: “Today, those who have done the least to cause this problem are being the hardest hit – ultimately all of us will feel the impacts, some of which are now unavoidable.”

“We are already in trouble,” he told them – but said he hoped they would be motivated by a “desperate hope” rather than fear.

“In my lifetime I’ve witnessed a terrible decline,” said the 95-year-old. “In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery.”

And in his speech, Prince Charles urged the world leaders into action, saying he understood that many countries could not afford to “go green”.

Instead, he said, there needs to be a “vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector”, which had trillions of dollars at its disposal, he said.

The 200 countries going to the conference in Glasgow, Scotland, are being asked for plans to cut emissions by 2030.

Climate change is causing more extreme weather. The past decade was the warmest on record, and governments agree urgent change is needed. The COP26 conference is seen as crucial if temperature increases, and changes to the climate, are to be limited. The world is now about 1.2C warmer than it was in the 19th Century – and extreme weather events like heatwaves, floods and forest fires are already becoming more intense. The 2015 Paris climate conference called for average temperatures to rise by well below 2C, and preferably only 1.5C, when compared to pre-industrial averages. But unless more is done, the planet is already on track to warm by more than 2C by the end of this century.