NEW DELHI, Aug 29: Many initiatives to combat climate change rely heavily on public support and taking a hard stand may not always be very practical in a democratic country, Union minister Kirti Vardhan Singh said on Thursday.
Addressing ASSOCHAM’s Environment and Carbon Conference here, Singh — the minister of state for environment — said a forward-thinking chief minister of Karnataka was promptly voted out after he decided to put a tax on “water usage for the farmers”.
“A lot of initiatives to prevent climate change are heavily dependant on people and being a democracy, you know what it means… Sometimes, taking the right stand, taking the hard stand may not be very practical in terms of being a democratic country,” the minister said.
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He said farmers in his home state of Uttar Pradesh were very happy because they had “all the power to pump out as much water as they want”.
“In the recent elections, this was the topic to talk about in a positive way because you need votes. So, we would say we have so much irrigation resources today that our farmer just turns on the pump, goes home to sleep… and in the morning when he comes back to the farm, he has not only irrigated his fields but flooded the fields of his neighbours. And this was very appreciated when actually it’s a sheer waste of our water resources,” Singh said.
“So, we have to take multiple facets into account when we talk about achieving net zero (emissions), when we talk about fighting climate change, when we look forward to the future that we are going to give our future generations,” he said.
The minister said the Narendra Modi government designed enabling policies for industries and businesses to help the country achieve its climate targets but “we also have to do our bit”.
UNFCCC and UN climate conferences focus a lot on how the industry can tackle climate change and what infrastructure changes are needed but, “sometimes, you also have to look inwards and see where we are unnecessarily exploiting the resources”, Singh said. (PTI)
