“Follow Gujarat's lead in fighting climate change”

The former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, and the chairman of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), R.K. Pachauri, on Tuesday recommended that climate change should become the centre of all developmental policies and actions, and advised other States to follow the lead given by Gujarat in this direction.

Speaking at a function for the release of a book, Convenient Action: Gujarat's Response to Climate Change written by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, which details the steps taken in Gujarat to meet the challenge, Mr. Kalam said the problem of climate change could not be viewed in isolation, and that India must immediately adopted long-term programmes like the Integrated Water Connections and Energy Independent Mission and focus on renewable sources of energy to achieve the goals in the next two decades.

Mr. Kalam said he was ‘inspired” by Mr. Modi's “beautiful book” and Gujarat's programme on linking rivers, which helped rejuvenate the Sabarmati river and solve many of health and other problems in Ahmedabad.

Mr. Kalam said he had always believed that State-wise linking of rivers was a must, and had given detailed proposals to States like Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. He said this would not only solve perennial water problems, both for drinking and agricultural purposes, but also arrest the flooding of large areas every year and save over $500 million, which the government was forced to spend for short-term relief measures for the flood-affected.

Appreciating Gujarat's agricultural growth — which he said was three times higher than the national average, despite it being a drought-prone State — Mr. Kalam said that the construction of a series of check-dams, village bunds and other water conservation methods had largely contributed to achieving the goal.

Dr. Pachauri, who is also director-general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), said the world had no time to waste and wait for cent-per-cent scientific proof that climate change was affecting the earth. “Our future generation is moving towards destruction every minute; climate change is a reality and what is happening around us already is enough to compel us for actions.”

Mr. Modi — who was acclaimed as only the second political leader in the world, after former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, in writing a book on climate change — said that Indian scriptures written thousands of years ago had mentioned possible climate change and had given solutions, but not many people had the intention to follow the same. He said his inspiration came from Mr. Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth, which highlighted the resistance that people usually develop for any inconveniences caused by the problems arising out of climate change.