Mumbai: India can take the lead in the global south in building creative and innovative climate solutions which can help the world deal with climate change at a very local and individual level, former United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on the second day of the Mumbai Climate Week (MCW) on Wednesday.
“The global south is ready to set the climate agenda. It’s necessary. We have to focus attention on solutions in the places that are clearly now most affected by climate change. Obviously, the whole world is,” said Clinton during a 30-minute fireside chat with Shloka Nath, chief executive officer of India Climate Collaborative.
The US was now seeing many more wildfires, severe storms and unusual heat patterns, Clinton said. “But the front lines of the fight against global climate change are right here in the global south. And I have full confidence that India can be the innovator, the implementer.”
Expressing her interest in being a cheerleader for efforts that come out of India, the former US state secretary said, “It will require partnerships between government at all levels here in India, businesses and corporations, philanthropies, family offices, activists. We all have to sit at the same table, my friends. We all have to quit the talk, talk, talk and start to act, act, act. It is not possible for us to wait any longer.”
North to south move
With climate change amplifying the impacts of migration, dislocation and conflict, “much of the influence, the power, the innovation must move from the (global) north to the (global) south”, Clinton said.
The global south comprises developing or less-developed countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia while the global north comprises wealthier, industrialised nations.
Even though US President Donald Trump was a climate change denier, the global north must get its act together, she said.
“You all know we now have a president who denies climate change and its ideology. It’s not reality. It is denying evidence and facts in our own country, let alone in the rest of the world. We cannot wait for the political change that I know will come to the United States because that’s a few years off. We have to build the models here. We have to do the innovation here,” she said.
Governments, businesses, corporations, and philanthropists need to collaborate on climate mitigation and adaptation, she stated.
“Just because the President of the United States does not want corporations to care about climate change, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about climate change. That’s frankly, that’s a political view of a dinosaur,” Clinton said.
Systemic changes in both mitigation and adaptation must continue despite some of the pushback coming from the US, she added.
Climate insurance
The former US Secretary of State spoke about interventions of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) – founded by her husband and former US President Bill Clinton two decades ago – in the areas of health and climate change. CGI tries to come to the aid of women in India who work outdoors, and are affected by rising temperatures up to 39 degrees Celsius in the summers.
“Women, especially in the global south, and obviously here in India, are very often working outdoors and now in extreme heat. So we’ve been focused now for a number of years about how we get good solutions on both mitigation and adaptation,” she said
Clinton cited CGI’s work among women salt workers in the deserts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, in partnership with the nonprofit Sewa. When women in these areas are compelled to skip work due to heat and thus forgo day’s pay, they are reimbursed, she said.
“We now have 500,000 insurance holders here in India. Women can ask for reimbursement because they’ve lost their day’s pay. India will be the model for the rest of the global south, she noted.