Jaipur. PAIRVI was invited to provide an update on global regional and national developments on climate change and sustainable development issues. The meeting was organized by CECOEDECON on the occasion of its Annual day, where more than 150 farmers, women farmers (federations), partners and other stakeholders were invited. Ajay K Jha represented PAIRVI and apprised the audience of the state of affairs on climate change (urgency and scale) and the sustainable development goals (covid 19 pandemic set back). The emphasis of his presentation was that there is a very small window of opportunity available now if the global rise in temperature by the end of the century has to be kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius. It requires that global carbon emission must peak by 2030, emissions must be halved by 2030 and world must achieve net zero by 2050. He also underlined that the UNFCCC COP 26 in Glasgow has though kept the 1.5 degrees target alive, but no strong actions on fossil fuel exploration and use, (or FF subsidies) will trigger many positive feedbacks, which may push the temp far beyond Paris Agreement targets due to lack of near term actions. The global governance on climate change also remains extremely apathetic to increasing number of people who are facing climate change impacts and disasters esp in countries like India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal in South Asia.
On SDGs he said that no country was in a position to achieve all the SDGs by 2030 but after covid 19 pandemic it has become almost impossible. However, it would be inappropriate to put all the blame on the pandemic. The blame must be borne by poor multilateralism and international cooperation, which is putting more burden on developing and least developed countries in terms of mobilizing resources, procuring technology and deploying them without much help from the developed countries. Referring to the HLPF he said that the international community has almost admitted that its impossible to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030 due the impacts of the pandemic which have had huge impacts on widening poverty, deepening hunger and inequality, impoverishment of health services and closure of schools. He explained disaggregated impacts on several goals. Referring to the APFSD, he underlined that the ESCAP Report says that the region cannot achieve SDGs before 2065.
The presentation was followed by an interesting exchange and debate on what needs to be done to recalibrate the goals, and how to enhance the means of implementation so that the SDGs can be achieved within out life times. Many groups suggested a number of advocacy actions at local, state and national levels.