Twitter, TIME and Paris: CSE chief takes on US ambassador Richard Verma

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)’s tough stand against the US’ climate change policies seemingly spilled onto Twitter after the centre’s director general was named among TIME’s list of 100 most influential people

Updated on: Apr 25, 2016, 12:45:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)’s tough stand against the US’ climate change policies seemingly spilled onto Twitter after the centre’s director general was named among TIME’s list of 100 most influential people.

US ambassador to India, Richard Verma tweeted out his congratulations to Indians on the TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world, but didn’t mention the director general of CSE, Sunita Narain who was also named by TIME. (Virendra Singh Gosain/Hindustan Times)

US ambassador to India, Richard Verma had twitted out his congratulations to the Indians on the list, including Priyanka Chopra, Sania Mirza, Sudhir Pichai and Binny and Sachin Bansal, but conspicuously omitted Sunita Narain, CSE’s chief.

Quick to point it out, Narain took to Twitter and asked Verma whether she was deliberately left out because her views on climate change were too “inconvenient” for the United States. “I am also listed in TIME100,” Narain wrote. She jokingly added, “I may not be as sexy as Sania or Priyanka.”

Narain was ranked by the magazine for taking up the issues of environment and climate justice at the global level.

The reason for the seeming unfriendliness between the two is apparently CSE’s publication Captain America that came out before the Paris climate summit in December 2015 which contradicted US president Barack Obama’s stand on climate change.

While Obama was asking the world to adopt low carbon growth and sign the ambitious Paris climate deal, the US would continue to emit high rate of emissions, the book claimed. “The US is the villain of climate change,” Narain had said at the time.

Indian officials used data from the publication to show that US had not done enough to fight climate change, apparently irking the US team at the Paris climate summit, led by Secretary of State John Kerry.

The US embassy, however, did not give any reason for Verma’s actions.

In including Narain on the list, TIME Magazine appreciated her role for opposing “environmentalism of the elite” and speaking for the poor. Novelist Amitav Ghosh wrote in the magazine appreciating Narain for taking up the cause for poor forest dwellers and indigenous people.

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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