Sunita Narain: Change isn`t easy

DOWN TO EARTH

Did the Nobel Prize committee make a mistake when it gave the 2007 Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US vice-president Al Gore? My disquiet is not because the prize recognised and put climate change at the centre of global debate. It stems from the fact that the Nobel Prize has held up, as champions, an organisation and individuals who are cautious, conservative and play strictly by the book when searching for answers to tackling climate change. There is nothing wrong in being so. Except that this is a time the world needs to re-invent what it means by growth and development. It needs hard answers for a crisis that is already hitting large parts of the poorest world, but has been created because of economic wealth and power.

 

I believe change will be difficult. It will require us to stand behind the tough measures that society has to take. Let me share an experience from my own city: the introduction of a bus rapid transit (BRT) system on a 15-km road in the heart of New Delhi, and the uproar around it.

Everybody agrees public transport is important. It is a policy prescription everybody believes will happen, as all good things do, without discord or disruption. But nobody says why, if it is so easy, is it that cities of the rich world have never made the transition to mass rapid transport