The Climate Change Group at the M.S Swaminathan
Research Foundation (MSSRF) Chennai, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Department at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) Bengaluru, have
launched a website to track equity in climate action.
The website called
the Climate Equity Monitor ( https://climateequitymonitor.in ) is
an online data tracker for assessing equity in climate action– in terms of
inequalities in energy and resource consumption across the world and climate
policies under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty to combat climate change to
stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.
The Hon’ble Minister for Environment, Forest and
Climate Change, Shri Bhupender Yadav welcomed the going live of the website
“Climate Equity Monitor” on global climate policy. On the occasion, the
Minister said, “I welcome this scientific initiative, Climate Equity Monitor,
that focuses on equity and climate action from a data and evidence-based
perspective. I hope it will encourage a vigorous discussion on this crucial issue and engage experts from all
countries. I congratulate the team that worked on this project and hope that
they will continue to improve and enhance it”.
The Climate Equity Monitor will track the
performance of developed countries on climate action based on the foundational
principles of UNFCCC . The performance and policies of the developing countries
will also be provided for comparison.
Experts have long been felt the need of such
platform. Such trackers are either based in the Global North (developed
economies) or funded by them, and they do not adequately address the crucial aspects of equity and differentiation.
The website has been
conceptualized and developed by independent researchers from India -- the
Climate Change Group at the M.S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai,
and the Natural Sciences and Engineering department at the National Institute
of Advanced Studies (NIAS) Bengaluru, with other independent researchers. The
MSSRF team was led by Prof. T. Jayaraman, Senior Fellow, Climate Change and the
NIAS team by Dr. Tejal Kanitkar, Associate Professor.
