GUWAHATI, Jan 13 – The Developed countries put up a planned and concreted effort to jettison the entire United Nations framework on climate change. This was the observation made by general secretary of the All India People’s Science Network Dr Amit Sengupta at a seminar held recently at the Pragjyoti ITA Centre for Performing Arts here on global warming and climate change. He was referring to the recently concluded international summit on climate change in Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen summit failed to meet its goal of arriving at a legally binding agreement due to the roles played by the rich and developed countries. A legally binding agreement was made impossible by the positions and tactics of the US and other developed countries, he said.
The Barak Obama administration and its allies tried their utmost to eliminate the Kyoto Protocol, negate the widely accepted and reasoned principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ between industrialized and developing countries.
They also mounted pressure on the developing countries to shoulder the major burden of reducing global emissions of green house gases, he said.
While the major developing countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa voluntarily announced their resolve to reduce emission growth rates in the greater interest of humanity, the US, European Union and other developed countries arrogantly stuck to the emission cut policy they declared on the eve of the Copenhagen summit.
It is an irrefutable fact that the developed countries contributed the most towards the damage to global climate and hence they should bear the greater burden of correcting this course, by accepting the historical facts. They are obliged to transfer fund and technology to the poor and developing countries, said Sengupta.
Dr Anup Talukdar of Gauhati University (GU) warned that the consequences of climate change being triggered by the concentration of green house gases in the atmosphere would be more felt in the developing countries.
He called for urgent measures to limit further rise in global temperatures below 2ºC Referring to the view that some factors other than the anthropogenic ones, may also be responsible for global warming, he called for sincere steps to examine all the aspects connected with the phenomenon.
However, he maintained such efforts should not derail the mankind’s efforts to ensure a pollution-free atmosphere.
The seminar jointly organised by the Ellora Vigyan Mancha, Assam Science Society, Gyan Bigyan Samiti and the NE Region unit of the Centre for Medical and Sales Representatives’ Union, was chaired by Dr Chandra Mohan Sarma.
Dr Sarma in his address underscored the need to sensitise the people on the issues connected with global warming and climate change and called for popular pressure on the political leaders for an equitable and effective agreement on the phenomenon of climate change. The function was also addressed by Science Society general secretary Bimal Kar and Ellora Vigyan Mancha’s Isfaqur Rahman.