📰 Health data shows India doesn’t need a two-child policy: experts
Use of contraceptives on the rise, rural-urban gap narrowing, finds analysis of NFHS-5
•The latest data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) provides evidence of an uptake in the use of modern contraceptives in rural and urban areas, an improvement in family planning demands being met, and a decline in the average number of children borne by a woman, and prove that the country’s population is stabilising and fears over a “population explosion” and calls for a “two-child policy” are misguided, say experts.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech in 2019 appealed to the country that population control was a form of patriotism. Months later, the NITI Aayog called various stakeholders for a national-level consultation on the issue, which was subsequently cancelled following media glare on it. In 2020, the PM spoke about a likely decision on revising the age of marriage for women, which many stakeholders view as an indirect attempt at controlling the population size.
•The first part of the NFHS-5 report, which was made public earlier this month, records data for 17 States and five Union Territories. The analysis of the data by the international non-profit Population Council (PC) shows that the Total Fertility Rate (number of children born per woman) has decreased across 14 out of 17 States and is either at 2.1 children per woman or less.
•This also implies that most States have attained replacement level fertility, i.e., the average number of children born per woman at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next.
•“We need to think through and move away from the narrative being built without any evidence. The data is the response to myth and misconception around the two-child norm,” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director, Population Foundation India, a national NGO. She added that it is family health programmes that are needed to uphold the right and dignity of individuals.
•While during NFHS-3 and NFHS-4, conducted between 2005 and 2016, there was a decline in the use of modern methods of contraception (oral pills, condoms, intra-uterine device) across 12 of 22 States and UTs, in NFHS-5 as many as 11 out of 12 States where there was a slump have witnessed an increase in their use, showed the analyses presented by Dr. Niranjan Saggurti, country director, PC, at a web conference.
•“The number of districts with a modern contraceptives prevalence rate of over 60% has also increased significantly between the survey rounds (from 37 in 2015-16 to 111 in 2019-20). This change was much better in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala,” explained Dr. Saggurti.
•Further, the indicator to gauge the demand met for contraception has also increased — only five States had more than 75% demand being met in NFHS-4, but now 10 States are able to cater to the demand for family planning by up to 75%. The top performers here are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana.
•Experts draw attention to the rise in child marriages recorded by the Survey and appeal that policy makers should pay attention to this area to curb early pregnancies.
•While there is no national policy mandating two children per family, leaders of the ruling party have sought to put the spotlight on the issue. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Rakesh Sinha tabled a Bill in the Rajya Sabha in November 2019 on the matter, proposing incentives for smaller families, and BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay approached the Delhi High Court seeking a law on population control but this was dropped.
Respondents want parents, doctors immunised first
•Less than half (44%) the respondents in a survey of rural households were willing to pay for vaccination against COVID-19 while 36% said outright that they would not pay for it.
•Conducted by Gaon Connection, a rural media platform, the ‘COVID-19 Vaccine and Rural India’ survey was conducted across 60 districts in 16 States and one Union Territory with a sample size of 6,040 households. The researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with the respondents on the perceptions of rural Indians around the vaccine.
•Since affordability is a big issue in rural areas, respondents were asked if they hypothetically had to pay ₹1,000 for two doses of the vaccine, then who would get vaccinated first in their family. To this, more than 33% of the respondents said they would vaccinate their old parents.
•Asked if the government had to prioritise vaccination, who should be given the top priority, 43.5% of those surveyed said it should be doctors and nurses.
•The Gaon Connection survey also aimed to find out beliefs and practices around COVID-19, a new disease.
Conspiracy theories
•More than 51% respondents said the disease was a “conspiracy by China”, 22% believed it was a failure of people to take precautions and 18% believed this was the government’s failure, noted the study.
•The survey also found that half the respondents were spending more money during the pandemic on buying and consuming packaged immunity boosting products, such as chyawanprash, giloy, kadah, vitamin tablets, etc.
•“COVID-19 has also changed the food habits of rural citizens with almost 70% respondents saying they had stopped eating outside food. Over 33% said they had started eating more vegetables, whereas 30% said they were eating more fruits,” noted the survey.
📰 650 leopards in Kerala’s tiger reserves
Third highest in Western Ghats region
•Kerala has 650 leopards stealthily roaming its tiger reserves.
•The State’s leopard population is the third highest in the Western Ghats region. Karnataka tops the list with 1,783 leopards, followed by Tamil Nadu with 868, according to the Status of Leopards in India 2018 report. Goa has 86.
•The Western Ghats region is home to 3,387 leopards, against India’s population of 12,852, says the report released recently by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
•The leopard population was counted during the tiger population assessment undertaken in 2018. The leopard population was estimated to be within the forested habitats in tiger-occupied States, the report said.
•The presence of the animal was recorded in the forested areas of Western Ghats, Nilgiris, and sporadically across much of the dry forests of Central Karnataka. Leopard population of the Western Ghats landscape was reported from the four distinct blocks.
•The Northern block covered the contiguous forests of Radhanagari and Goa covering Haliyal- Kali Tiger Reserve, Karwar, Honnavar, Madikeri, Kudremukh, Shettihali Wild Life Sanctuary (WLS), Bhadra and Chikmagalur.
•The Central population covered southern Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and northern Kerala covering the forests of Virajpet, Nagarhole, Bandipur, Madumalai, Satyamangalam, Nilgiris, Silent Valley, Wayanad, BRT Hills, MM Hills, Cauvery WLS, Bannerghhata National Park.
•A second central cluster covering central Kerala and Tamil Nadu comprising the Parambikulam-Anamalai - Eravikulum - Vazachal population.
Camera traps
•The southern leopard population block in southern Kerala and Tamil Nadu comprised the forests of Periyar-Kalakad Mundanthurai -Kanyakumari.
•A total of 6,758 leopard photographs were obtained from Western Ghats from camera traps. The images helped in the identification of 1,681 adults and sub-adults.
•While noting that the leopard population had increased in most of the tiger reserves in the Western Ghats landscape, the report cautioned that the growing human population and increasing fragmentation of landscape led to increased human-wildlife interactions in the region.
📰 Pokhran’s ‘firefly bird diverters’ shine to save the Great Indian Bustard
Flaps placed on power lines can protect the critically threatened large bird species from mortal collision
•The Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) along with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) India has come up with a unique initiative — a “firefly bird diverter” for overhead power lines in areas where Great Indian Bustard (GIB) populations are found in the wild. GIB is one of the most critically threatened species in India, with less than 150 birds left in the wild.
•A report by the Ministry, submitted to the National Green Tribunal in 2019, pointed out that power lines, especially high-voltage transmission lines with multiple overhead wires, are the most important current threat for GIBs in the Thar region, and are causing unsustainably high mortality in about 15% of their population.
•“Firefly bird diverters are flaps installed on power lines. They work as reflectors for bird species like the GIB. Birds can spot them from a distance of about 50 meters and change their path of flight to avoid collision with power lines. Smaller birds can change their direction [swiftly] but for larger bird species, it is difficult because their body weight and other factors,” Anil Kumar, team leader of the GIB project undertaken by WCS India, told The Hindu.
•The firefly detectors have been installed along two stretches of approximately 6.5 km, selected between Chacha to Dholiya villages in the Pokhran tehsil after ground surveys and due consultations with the Rajasthan Forest Department. A total of 1,813 firefly bird diverters are being installed in this stretch — a model that has been endorsed by experts from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission’s (SSC) Bustard Specialist Group.
•The diverters are called fireflies because they look like fireflies from a distance, shining on power lines in the night. The selected stretch is opposite the Pokhran Field Firing Range, which offers a safe habitat to a breeding population of GIBs outside the Desert National Park Sanctuary in Jaisalmer.
•Kapil Chandrwal, Deputy Conservator of Forest, Desert National Park Sanctuary, said that high-tension wires being a reason for GIB mortality had been proven by different studies. “GIBs are one of the heaviest flying birds in India. Therefore, when they encounter these wires, they are unable to change the direction of their flight. Death is most cases is due to impact with the wires and not due to electrocution,” Mr. Chandrwal added. The diverter will not only save GIB but other species of large birds, including migratory birds.
•The Supreme Court of India, in a recent hearing, directed that power lines in GIB landscapes should be placed underground. Experts said that the innovative firefly diverter installation could serve as an alternative means to species conservation. Experts say only two districts in Rajasthan — Jaisalmer and Barmer — have a breeding GIB population in the wild. The bird can also be found in very small numbers in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
📰 Pandemic resilience: On call for a new health law post-COVID-19
Parliamentary panel’s call for a new health law post-COVID-19 is a kernel for reform
•The report of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs calling for a comprehensive Public Health Act, as a response to the extreme stresses caused by COVID-19, is a welcome call to reform a fragmented health system. When the pandemic arrived, National Health Profile 2019 data showed that there were an estimated 0.55 government hospital beds for 1,000 people. Prolonged underinvestment in public health infrastructure thus left millions seeking help from a highly commercialised private sector with little regulatory oversight; the situation was even worse in rural areas, where care facilities are weaker, and urban workers fled to their villages, afraid of the cost of falling sick in cities. Acknowledging these distortions, and the inadequacy of existing legal frameworks, the panel has called for an omnibus law that will curb profiteering during such crises and provide robust cashless health insurance. Its indictment of the feverish commerce surrounding health-care provision, however, can serve a larger purpose if it covers overall system reform, addressing the structural asymmetry created by misguided policies. India has committed itself to covenants such as the Sustainable Development Goals, but continues to evade making the right to health a full legal and justiciable right under the National Health Policy.
•Among the committee’s observations is the absence of insurance cover for many and oversight on hospitals to ensure that patients are not turned away in a crisis such as COVID-19. While the panel is right to view this as a breach of trust, one of the pandemic’s impacts has been a staggering rise in premiums, especially for senior citizens, of even up to 25% of the insured value. What is more, the insurance regulator, IRDAI, set 65 as the maximum age of entry for a standard policy earlier this year, affecting older uninsured citizens. Such age limits must be fully removed. The answer to creating an equitable framework lies in a tax-funded system, with the government being the single and sole payer to care providers. This is a long-pending recommendation from the erstwhile Planning Commission, and should be part of any reform. The government, as the single-payer if not sole care provider at present, would be better able to resist commercial pressures in determining costs. This is equally applicable for central procurement of essential drugs, which can then be distributed free. Legal reform must provide for a time-bound transition to universal state-provided health services under a rights-based, non-exclusionary framework, with States implementing it. Private arrangements can be an option. COVID-19 has exposed the dangers of excessive reliance on private tertiary care. The corrective lies in raising public spending to the promised 2.5% of GDP on public facilities that are universally accessible.
📰 COVID-19 and limits of political accountability
With some leaders getting off lightly, the deeper challenges to democratic control of politicians need to be understood
•The year no one saw coming — 2020 — and that few will mourn as it passes into the history books, has upended a great many truisms of political life. Writing in this daily, (Troughs and crests in the pandemic response, April 25, 2020), I described the COVID-19 pandemic as a governance stress test that would expose how poorly prepared the world’s governments were. Eight long months later, the results are indisputable: they failed the exam, and how. Not all failures were equal though. Facing the hardest test imaginable, some struggled despite sincere efforts — see Japan, Germany, Norway, for example. But less forgiveable are the failures of leaders who quit immediately, resorting to mocking the exam and pretending that it was a figment of other people’s imaginations, to burying their heads in the sand even as the evidence of their abdication of responsibility was witnessed by body bags stacked in freezer trucks outside hospitals whose morgues were overflowing.
Spectacular failures, response
•This being 2020, though, nothing is as we might have predicted. Thus, not only did some of the world’s most powerful leaders fail spectacularly to do their sworn duty to protect all their citizens, but they also paid little to no cost for abandoning us. If anything, in some instances, they appear to have been rewarded for their defiance of reality and ignorant embrace of quack science and alternative facts. The presidential elections in the United States frame a fascinating paradox: even as much of the world stared aghast at the abject failure of the world’s most powerful nation to mount any resistance to the novel coronavirus, many Americans decided to vote for an incumbent under whose contemptuous watch as many lives are being lost daily as were killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
•In other countries, too, leaders enjoy uncontested popularity even as the virus scoffs at their efforts to contain it. Across the Atlantic, Boris Johnson, whose apparent haplessness in high-stakes negotiations is exceeded only by the incoherence of his coronavirus response, swung between flirting with pursuing herd immunity in March to, now, just three days after calling just such a decision ‘inhumane’, “cancelling Christmas” for the United Kingdom.
•In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has elevated his attacks on science to levels defying parody. Last week, while stating irresponsibly his refusal to be vaccinated, even as his own government has launched a national vaccination campaign, Mr. Bolsonaro suggested that the vaccine might turn people into crocodiles.
•In India, draconian lockdowns of limited efficacy and the sight of millions of our fellow countrymen desperately walking hundreds of miles back to their villages, the scapegoating of minority communities and the dubious distinction of having the second largest number of cases, have scarcely dented Prime Minister Modi’s popularity, or, vide Bihar, even the power of his brand.
•And, then, of course, is Vladimir Putin, who has been little seen, or heard from, even as the virus rages unchecked across Russia whose citizens are voting with their feet against a vaccine whose efficacy and safety are inadequately understood given the opacity of Russia’s protocols.
•Mr. Putin is a dictator, cloaked in the flimsiest veneer of legitimacy granted by a fawning media and by ritualised elections in which he faces no credible opposition. And, yes, Mr. Trump lost decisively in November, though U.S. President-elect Joe Biden must confront the reality of a nation deeply divided, with almost half the population grasping at conspiracy theories about the election and questioning the science of vaccines, with a significant minority elevating Mr. Trump to cult-leader status. But Mr. Modi, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Bolsonaro retain the reins of power firmly. How come? Why are citizens willing to reward populist leaders who fail their people?
Analysis and propositions
•The question requires us to confront the limits of political accountability in democracy, and to grapple with deeper, even existential, challenges to democratic control of politicians. Three propositions frame this analysis. First, while folk theories of democracy privilege retrospective accountability, that is the notion that voters use elections to render judgement about the incumbent’s record, the reality is we vote prospectively, granting leaders we believe represent people like us a mandate to govern in our name. Put differently, we vote against candidates who we fear will elevate our opponents to our disadvantage.
•A vote for Mr. Trump in 2020 was as much a rejection of some imagined socialist hellscape to be delivered by a Biden administration as it was an endorsement of Mr. Trump or his record in office. In Bihar, Mr. Modi campaigned that voting for his opponents was a vote for those against people saying ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ or ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Populist leaders grasp this visceral insight, offering voters stark choices between good, honest patriots battling anti-national elements, and the ‘tukde tukde gang’. Nuanced, evidence-based consideration of policy alternatives might set the pulses of academics and pundits racing, but is a feeble antidote to the addictive jingoism peddled by populist demagogues.
•Second, disease, unlike war, does not offer a clear enemy to target. Public health advice that emphasised the need for personal responsibility — stay home, wear a mask, wash your hands — underestimated the challenge of collective action predicted on hundreds of millions of individual responses. If each of us is responsible for our own health, then getting sick is our own fault. Why should those unafraid of a mere virus be required to sacrifice? Do not blame us for your pain, blame China, rang the coordinated messages of government-funded IT cells and bot armies, amplifying racist and xenophobic memes across social media.
Fading empathy
•Third, the coronavirus pandemic reveals the poverty of our collective ability to empathise with those we do not see. Like the uncounted deaths caused by air pollution, heat waves, or malnutrition, those dying from COVID-19 do so out-of-sight, alone. Reduced to data points, their deaths affect us less each day. Innovative data visualisation efforts initiated by news and academic organisations, once bookmarked in our web browsers and religiously referenced for daily updates, are now barely read by a global public inured to more data.
•Exponential growth is near impossible for the human brain to comprehend: in March, that Italy had crested 50,000 cumulative cases was international news; today alone the U.S. will record four times as many new cases. But even as the victims of the virus die considerately out of plain view, the economic devastation wrought by lockdowns is felt by us all. Grateful though we may be for being spared illness, we attribute that good fortune to our own responsible choices. But the loss of income and livelihood must be blamed on someone, and the same leaders whose indecision and ineptitude make draconian shutdowns necessary, redirect our anger elsewhere: on foreigners, on minorities, on globalists, on science, and especially on the institutions of government. Trust no one other than me, the populist incants, for I alone can save you.
Some action
•If there is a bright side, it is that the playbook of blaming economic downturns on others is limited in its efficacy. Citizens might be willing to give politicians an ATKT [Allowed To Keep Terms] for inadequate responses to a once-in-a-century pandemic that humbled even the richest, most powerful nations of the world, but prolonged economic suffering demands government remedy more immediately. Feverish efforts to squeeze all available policy levers to stimulate economies reveal the urgency politicians are feeling to deliver something, anything, to increasingly restive populations. It will be cold comfort to the dead and grieving, but perhaps the people will eventually have the last laugh over the populists. One must hope so, for without some measure of accountability, democracy loses its power, and so do the people.
📰 Put the farm laws on hold, uphold farmers’ rights
The small and marginal farm sector, especially, faces a threat and the government needs to ensure wide consultations
•The Supreme Court’s recent suggestion to form a joint panel to look into the demands of the agitating farmers, has given a breather to the government, although such an offer, made officially at the outset, was rejected by farmer groups as a “dilly-dallying tactic”.
•Farmers’ representatives see a moral victory in the Supreme Court’s observations, in that the top court did not outright reject their demands or the right to protest.
•Agriculture producers are demanding a total repeal of the new reforms-oriented laws that provide for setting up private markets outside of designated mandis, allow contract farming without government regulation and also lift stockholding limits for farm produce.
•Although the Court did not go into the merits of the demands, its intervention paved the way for farmers to challenge the constitutional validity of the central government enacting laws on agriculture, which is a State subject. A group has been formed on how to approach the matter legally.
•Be that as it may, the starting point of farmers’ demands in relation to the new farm laws was for mandatory payment of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for notified farm produce in private markets to be set up.
•Among other objections is the amendment to the Essential Commodities Act that provides for lifting of stock-holding limits on essential commodities. Under the new Act, any trader, company or agri-business, etc. will be able to store unlimited quantities of say, wheat, rice, sugar, onion and potato, for any period of time. Hoarding is normally related to speculation for profit that hits farmers and consumers alike.
•The government did not concede these demands in its proposals to the agitating farmers, which escalated the problem. Together, the new farm laws enable a private entity to control and monopolise the market. They can hold sway over not only the rate a farmer will get for his/her produce but also influence the market price at which the end-product will reach retail consumers.
It’s about corporatisation
•But more importantly, the mechanisation and corporatisation of agriculture, that is at the centre of the reforms-oriented laws, is the threat to the survival of 56.7% of the total workforce and 86.08% of small and marginal operational landholding farmers (as per the Tenth Agriculture Census, 2015-16) engaged in farming activity in the country.
•Without adequately skilling, training and empowering the small and marginal farmers to become competitive on their land holding of less than two hectares, the government brought the new laws through the ordinance route, and that too when the country has been preoccupied and grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reforms and governments
•Reforms in the agriculture sector have been an on and off process with successive governments since the economic liberalisation in 1991 and more so, under the subsequent World Trade Organization (WTO) norms. And, even though the WTO seems to be collapsing under its own weight from an unequal set of rules that favour developed countries, India and the other developing countries fought for a ‘peace clause’ to pursue country-specific food security policies in keeping with their socio-economic responsibility. Domestically, however, parties in opposition, in their time, raise objections to reforms in the farm and retail sectors.
•Having set a target of doubling farmers’ income by 2022, the Modi government seems to be in a hurry. Yet, it is important in the value chain to start from the backward linkage, i.e., the farmer, the last man as Gandhi would say. Will that last man benefit from these reforms? Or should there be efforts to lower input costs to make farming remunerative for producers? Instead, farmers are now faced with new amendments to the Electricity Act which propose to fully privatise distribution of power, a crucial input in farm irrigation.
•At present, payment of MSP for notified commodities even inside designated mandis is not mandatory. As a result, a majority of farmers are short changed. Without the backing of the law, there is no guarantee against this in the new markets that are being conceived — and what is agitating farmers.
•Fragmented landholdings have become a problem for big ticket farming seeking economies of scale in a competitive market. The government is banking on its reforms-oriented formation of producer companies as a panacea for all ills in the small and marginal farm sector.
•It has fixed an ambitious target of setting up 10,000 Farmer-Producer Organisations (FPOs) by 2023-24 which must be registered as a company or a cooperative to run farming as a business. Dovetailed into this plan is the requirement for an FPO to hire the services of an experienced resource institution as promoter.
•The promoter can belong to private companies or a non-governmental organisation arm of mega companies or agri businesses which claim know-how on availing government grants, tax rebates and can leverage official schemes. Thus, an agri business can have its foot in the door even before a FPO is registered. Government guidelines facilitate this.
•Even though the idea was floated almost two decades ago when company law was amended to enable this, only 881 FPOs have been registered so far.
•Significantly, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an affiliate of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has backed guaranteed payment of MSP to farmers so that growers are not exploited by big procurement companies.
Need for consensus
•For now, it will be appropriate for the government to put on hold the implementation of contentious pieces of legislation and initiate widespread, transparent and participative consultations with all stakeholders including gram panchayats to arrive at informed decisions by consensus.
•Whatever be the criticism of the National Advisory Council set up during the previous United Progressive Alliance regime, it played a significant role in making “pro-people” the rights-based National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the National Food Security Act.
•Such acknowledgement of farmers’ rights is the need of the hour.
📰 Five years since Paris, an opportunity to build back better
We owe it to the next generation who will have to bear the burden of climate change and pay off the debt of the recovery
•December 12 marked the five-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement. The international community, including the European Union (EU) and India, gathered at the Climate Ambition Summit 2020 to celebrate and recognise our resolve in working towards a safer, more resilient world with net-zero emissions. A world we can be proud to leave to our grandchildren.
•During the past five years, the determination of the global community has certainly been tested and, in the past few months, we have all been hit by a virus with a potentially long-lasting impact on our society and economies.
Green recovery
•In the midst of this pandemic, is it realistic to call for stronger global action to fight climate change? We believe that the case is more valid now than ever. Faced with overwhelming scientific evidence, a more pertinent question might be: Can we afford to let things worsen?
•The science is irrefutable: for future prosperity, we must invest in greening the global economy. We cannot afford not to do so. Post-COVID-19 recovery needs to be a green recovery.
•Back in December 2019, the European Commission launched the European Green Deal — a new growth model and roadmap to achieve climate neutrality in the EU by 2050. Our- “Next Generation EU” recovery package and our next long-term budget earmark more than half a trillion euros to address climate change.
•To reach climate neutrality by 2050, on December 11, EU leaders unanimously agreed on the 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990 levels. This will further accelerate the fast decrease in the costs of low carbon technologies. The cost of solar photovoltaics has already declined by 82% between 2010 and 2019. Achieving the 55% target will even help us to save €100 billion in the next decade and up to €3 trillion by 2050.
•No government can tackle climate change alone. We will pursue all avenues to foster cooperation with partners from all around the world. India is a key player in this global endeavour. The rapid development of solar and wind energy in India in the last few years is a good example of the action needed worldwide.
Working with India
•The EU and India are committed to the full implementation of the Paris Agreement. India has taken a number of very significant flagship initiatives in this respect, such as the International Solar Alliance, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and the Leadership Group for Industry Transition. India and Team Europe are engaged to make a success of the forthcoming international gatherings: COP 26 in Glasgow on climate change and COP 15 in Kunming on biodiversity.
•There is a sense of global momentum emerging towards keeping the promise of the Paris Agreement and securing our future on this planet. Five years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, it is more important than ever that the international community comes forward with clear strategies for net-zero emissions and to enhance the global level of ambition for 2030.
•Together with the delivery of the $100 billion of climate financing to countries most in need, these will be deliverables for the climate negotiations when they resume at COP 26 in Glasgow next November. Team Europe will continue to work closely with India on green investments and the sharing of best practices and technologies.
•We can avoid the most dramatic impacts of climate change on our societies. Our global, regional, national, local and individual recovery plans are an opportunity to ‘build back better’. We owe it to the next generation who will have to bear the burden of climate change and pay off the debt of the recovery.
•Good public policies are indispensable but not sufficient. We will also need to foster small individual actions to attain a big collective impact. This is the snowball effect we need starting from the Paris Agreement. With climate neutrality as our goal, the world should mobilise its best scientists, business people, policymakers, academics, civil society actors and citizens to protect together something we all share beyond borders and species: our planet.
