Stating that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has reaffirmed India’s call for equity and climate justice, Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister, Bhupender Yadav on Tuesday reminded the developed countries to take the lead in providing finance for mitigation and loss and damage.

“The IPCC report has, for the first time, mentioned what India has been all along. India is walking the path of climate-resilient development and has demonstrated a clear resolve to move ahead along a sustainable, resource-efficient growth path. The environmental negotiations are not about giving and taking – it is about saving humanity. The developed nations must take historic responsibility and consider what their ancestors have done in the past. Now it is for the rich countries to help urgent mitigation action by providing finance,” he said.

Yadav was speaking at an annual conclave of journalists, called the Anil Agarwal Dialogue, organised by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) at its state of the art residential environmental training facility, the Anil Agarwal Environment Training Institute (AAETI), here at Nimli in Rajasthan’s Alwar district.

He also released Down To Earth’s Annual State of India’s Environment Report 2022 on the occasion.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report of the Working Group II (AR6WGII) had on Monday released the report that said in unequivocal terms that “climate change is a threat to the human well-being and planetary health” and “any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.

Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks, it had said.

CSE Director General Sunita Narain said: “In the last two years, the world has seen disruption at a scale not seen before. Both Covid-19 and climate change are the results of our ‘dystopian’ relationship with nature — call this the revenge of nature. Covid-19 is because we are breaking the barrier between the wild habitats/humans and the way we produce our food.”

Asserting that climate change is the result of emissions needed for economic growth – fossil fuels are unsustainable, and our lifestyle is the problem, she said: “Both are also linked, and are being exacerbated because of our mismanagement of health systems and the environment.”