LEH: Activist Sonam Wangchuk on Tuesday said the planet does not need people’s money but lifestyle modifications to overcome challenges like climate change.
Wangchuk, an innovator and educational reformer based in Ladakh, cited recent events in the mountainous region in the north like flash floods, which illustrate the impact of climate change, and said these changes have been caused by people in big cities of the world.
”We want to appeal to the world to live simply so that we in the mountains can simply live,” Wangchuk said while addressing a G-20 event in New Delhi.
”… the planet doesn’t need your money. It needs lifestyle change,” he added, describing a ‘crowdfunding’ project launched by his NGO where people ‘earn’ dollars for every commitment on lifestyle change, like walking or cycling in lieu of driving a car.
He said so far, 23 million ‘green dollars’ have been collected by people under the initiative, but added that there is a need to do more.
Climate finance has been made one of the key themes which India is pressing for during its ongoing G-20 presidency, wherein the local policymakers emphasise on not causing the climate crisis and look up to the developed world for help in financing the changes to be implemented in the developing countries.
Speaking at the same event, India’s G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant questioned governments’ commitment to stated goals on green initiatives.
”Governments across the world… their track record is very poor. They will give long term commitment (which) they will never fulfil,” Kant remarked. He said over half a billion people will shift into Indian cities over the next five decades and the country does not have the luxury of building sprawling cities like the ones built in US. We will have to create cities which are vertical, depend a lot on cycling, walking, renewable energy and e-mobility, he noted. The career bureaucrat, however, sounded sceptical about the talent availability to handle the challenge. ”You will have to train your urban planners for another pattern of urbanisation which Indian planners are not equipped to. They have all been trained in the American model of urbanisation. You will have to bring in a lot of behaviourial change,” he said.
He underlined that the idea of ‘Life’ being mooted by India at the G-20 forum is not anti-consumerism. ”’Life’ is not about being anti-consumerism, it is about a completely new model of development which involves a behaviourial change towards completely new areas,” he said, adding that decarbonising needs to be the focus area.
