"Copenhagen Accord" as it has been named may be a solace for those putting together their heads on climate change for last two weeks. In the course the long and stormy discussions with the world watching eagerly to see the world leaders arriving at a consensus, the accord may well lay the path for future agreements. Promising to mobilize  $100 billion funding per annum for developing countries from 2020 with a pledge of about $30 billion by 2012 to meet the challenges of climate change the accord sets a target of limiting temperature increase to a maximum of two degrees Celsius. But the fact that the accord has not been adopted as a consensus document with the summit only taking note of it and failure to specify the greenhouse gas emission cuts that nations need to commit themselves keeps one guessing about the final outcome.

"Copenhagen Accord" underlines the fact that the nations of the world have yet to agree upon a plan to ameliorate man's contribution to this complex climatic change. This is largely due to powerful forces in some nations which are seen opposing any such attempt, challenging the very concept that unnatural climate change. The Indian tradition presupposes that man is not separate from nature, that we are linked by spiritual, psychological and physical bonds with the elements around us. Knowing that the Divine is present everywhere and in all things, our civilizational ethos strives to do no harm in any form. Indian values hold a deep reverence for life and an awareness that the great forces of nature-the earth, the water, the fire, the air and space-as well as all the various orders of life, including plants and trees, forests and animals, are bound to each other within life's cosmic web. Bhumi Suktam states, "Earth, in which the seas, the rivers and many waters lie, from which arise foods and fields of grain, abode to all that breathes and moves, may She confer on us Her finest yield". (Atharva Veda xii.1.3). Unless world communities have such traditions, ethos and value system to back the efforts to meet the challenges of climate change, it remains a ramote possibility that accords like the one struck in Copenhagen would really work.  

Last update : 20-12-2009 05:44

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