Climate change treaties have been notoriously hard to implement in the past, but the Paris Agreement, signed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference last year, could be a different story.
That’s according to U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Dr. Jonathan Pershing who says that the will of countries, such as India and the United States, to expedite change could see the agreement come into force as early as this year.
Dr. Pershing was speaking to students at the Xavier Institute of Communication on Friday, days after he had arrived in India to attend the U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue as co-chair of the U.S.-India Joint Working Group on Combating Climate Change.
The group was formed to review progress made in the bilateral relationship on climate resilience, air quality, forestry, capacity building and clean energy, and to discuss opportunities for future collaboration in shared climate priorities.
Dr. Pershing said, “The conversation between India and the U.S. is strongly focused on advancing our work. It is both technical and academic, with interactions between experts and academics on both sides.”
The meetings between the two governments, he said, focused on how the two sides could increase interactions in terms of experts travelling each way for fellowships. He highlighted that the talks looked at the question of climate resilience in a new light.
‘It’s already here’“The question of resilience has often not been given that much importance as countries have focused more on the policy changes they can make to combat climate change, but in some cases it has to be acknowledged that climate change is already happening and we have to look at ways to manage it.”
Dr. Pershing said, “While we were speaking about resilience, there was a massive rain in New Delhi when it looked like we were walking out into rivers of water. So the immediacy of the question of climate resilience was evident right there.”
In the area of resilience, Dr. Pershing said, discussions were held about water, agriculture, food, energy systems, and the focus once again was on the kind of expertise each side can contribute to the other.
The Indian government under Prime Minister Modi, he said, has been committed to looking for solutions to climate change problems.
He said, “Each department has been given a clear mandate that they cannot think about development without factoring in the question of climate change. Decisions will not be made that keep the question of climate change separate.”
