Act timely on climate change: Pachauri asks world leaders

Warning that the impact of climate change will make some countries a 'failed state', top climatologist Rajendra Pachauri said world leaders have 'sacred duty' to protect the planet Earth.

Warning that the impact of climate change will make some countries a "failed state", top climatologist Rajendra Pachauri on Tuesday said world leaders have "sacred duty" to protect the planet Earth.

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Pachauri while addressing a gathering of 100 world leaders at the United Nations said that heat waves, droughts, melting glaciers, loss of the Greenland ice sheet and other dangers are fast approaching.

"If all the delegates present in the gathering do not act on time, then all of us will become leaders and citizens of failed states because we would be failing in our sacred duty to protect this planet which gives life to all species," said the chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

"The science leaves us with no room for inaction now," he said.

Pachauri said that according to his estimate around 12 countries of the world will become a "failed state" due to climate change problems like soil degradation, lack of food among others reasons.