Peace Nobel for Gore, Pachauri’s IPCC

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize is jointly awarded to the former US vice president and the green panel, headed by India's Dr RK Pachauri.

Updated on: Oct 13, 2007, 04:46:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former US vice-president Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), headed by Indian scientist Dr RK Pachauri, on Friday. Their achievement: international action on climate change before it gets out of mankind’s control, the Nobel Committee said in Oslo on Friday.

Minutes after receiving a congratulatory call from Al Gore, the 67-year-old Dr Pachauri, said, “I cannot believe it. I feel privileged sharing the award with someone as distinguished as Al Gore”. He dedicated the award to hundreds of scientists and authors who are attached with the IPCC.

Gore had lectured extensively on the threat of global warming through his Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, whereas the IPCC created an ever-broader informed consensus between human activities and global warming, the Nobel Committee said.

Pachauri agreed with the citation that warned of the future dangers of global warning, saying it has the potential to disturb peace through a major impact in vulnerable areas. It called for a mechanism where the developed and the developing world can reach a consensus on greenhouse gas reduction after 2050. “The developed world has a bigger commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as they are bigger polluters,” he said.

He also expressed his disappointment at the world community for not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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