Publication Date

10-13-2015

Description

The recently concluded review of the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) shows that if the international community and its various stakeholders put their minds, resources and energy together for common shared cause, success is possible. Enormous progress has been made by mankind by reducing poverty from 47 percent to 15 percent within a span of 25 years. This example provides an auspicious setting for the possibilities at the Paris Climate Change Conference to be held in November 2015. The journey from COP in Berlin to COP21 in Paris has not been a smooth ride. The period was dominated by debate between environmentalists and economists. Environmentalists were perceived as champions of retarding the progress of development. Developed countries had improved their own standards of living by using fossil fuels as source of energy and were now attempting to deny the fruits of better living standards for the majority of the people living in the developing world. How can they be expected to remain poor because of a problem mostly caused by people of the developed world. Economists were attacked by the environmentalists for their narrow preoccupation with growth and promotion of consumption standards that were unsustainable, could not be replicated and would cause huge damage to the planet.

Notes

Keynote address at The Lahore Forum on Climate Change organized by the Embassy of Paris at Lahore on October 13, 2015

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