India cannot afford to waste time!

We are debating overtime and non-stop since yesterday evening here in Lima on a draft agreement on ADP (Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action), but without any consensus. After 13 days of heated talks and countless interventions the end result is: the ADP is suspended till February 2015 when the parties will meet again in Geneva. Today morning the battles lines were drawn clear between which countries will accept and reject the draft text of the agreement in the lead up to Paris next winter.

But, although we have been negotiating and debating and lobbying to suit our interests in vain and with no logical conclusion, the impact of climate change is becoming clearer with every passing day. While we are headed towards Paris like a bunch of headless chicken, another storm is building up somewhere to spread its wrath on small islands.

After more than 12 hours of intervention, today at the ADP plenary, India rejected the draft text of the ADP saying that what is at stake is the life of millions of poor people. It also called for in-depth discussion on countries’ Intended Nationally-determined Contributions. India’s minister for environment, forests and climate change Prakash Javadekar addressed the floor that we need an arrangement that recognises the importance of the elements of adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building, transparency and mitigation.

The minister has made an appeal to the delegates to think about billions of poor people pay the cost of climate change. But, the minister’s words sounded quite ironic when he said that it is a gross injustice to make the poor people pay instead of holding the polluters accountable. India cannot afford to waste any more time from taking climate action both domestically and globally.

Back home, millions of Indians are bearing the brunt of climate threat. As if that is not enough, indigenous people and forest-dependent communities are on the verge of losing their homes, their livelihood to coal mines and power plants. A spree of recent amendments proposed by the Government is likely to strip the forest communities of their rights. We have countless incidents of communities subjected to human rights violation in the hand of state forces for trying to protect their lands, forests and habitats.

The minister should turn his voice into action once he goes back to India.

Internationally, India has a big role to play if it wants to protect the interests of poor and developing nations. To start with, India must stop the same old lecture on leadership and action and declare its commitment towards tackling climate change.

India talked about ‘compromise’ today at Lima. Is it ready to clean its acts back home, for the interests of millions of poor people?