Volume 6 : Issue 2 (2019)

CLIMATE CHANGE & SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: ACTS, IMAPACTS & PERSPECTIVE

The reality of climate change is arguably no longer in question. It has been widely demonstrated that developing countries will be especially hard-hit by the changing climate and new interrelated risks. In most countries, climate change is expected to exacerbate existing development challenges through diminished agricultural productivity and food accessibility, enhanced water scarcity, financial insecurity and incidence of illness. This paper reviews the two approaches to climate change, namely mitigation and adaptation, and examines the complex interrelationships between them, and between climate change and sustainable development. Adaptation is about reducing the effects of climate change on both human and natural systems; and mitigation is about reducing the causes of climate change by decreasing the anthropogenic impact on the climate system. The implications of an apparently warming world clearly mean that there is need for mitigation; but how effective will mitigation be, and how far are we prepared to go, to reconcile conflicting interests and tensions? Despite relatively slow progress, some forms of sustainable development have appeared, and these offer the best hope we have of mitigating human contribution to climate change, and adapting to its consequences. One such experiment is of the state of Sikkim : India’s first organic state &its contribution towards sustainable social change. Hoping this paper will initiate a series of serious and productive deliberation on the topic

Action research, Attitude

1. Benyus, J.M. (2002). Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature. HarperCollins, New York 2. Hoogh-Guldberg, O. (2007). Coral reefs under rapid climate change and ocean acidification. Science ,318, 1737-1742 3. King, D.A. (2004). Climate change science: adopt, mitigate, or ignore?Science203, 176-177. 4. Parikh, J.K. & Parikh, K. (2002). Climate change: India‘s perceptions, positions, policies and possibilities. Climate Change and Development 5. Rosenzweig, C. & Parry, M.L. (1994). Potential impact of climate change on world food supply. Nature, 367, 133- 139. 6. Sathaye, J., Shukla, P.R., & Ravindranath, N.H. (2006). Climate change, sustainable development and India: global and national concern. Current Science , 90 (3), 314-325.