Fixing Noah’s Ark

Never has humanity been faced with a challenge such as that posed by climate change and its inevitable social, economic and political impacts, the first symptoms of which are already making themselves felt. Witness Ethiopia's increasingly unpredictable weather patterns…..
In climate change terms, the bottom line is not the shrinking dollar but the very survival of our species and the earth as we know it but before doomsday strikes, and newspapers disappear because no one is left to write them, global tensions stemming from an increasingly dwindling supply of resources will potentially entail life or death conflict. Water may become more precious than oil is today.
Arable land will turn into a strategic asset. Without urgent and intensive intervention to mitigate this looming global disaster, conflict over the basics of life will pervade the earth. Indeed, it was quite appropriate that the Nobel Committee awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to former US Vice President Al Gore and to the International Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) as represented by Dr. Rajendra K. Pachuari, who was in Addis Ababa this concluded week. Dr. Pachuari is also the Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute of India (TERI) which specializes in environmental research and climate change.
With the science having already concluded that Africa in particular will suffer most from the effects of climate change, the signing of an MOU between TERI and the UN/ECA to establish the UNECA-TERI Africa Center for Climate Change Policy Studies (AC3PS) is a milestone event and could not have come any sooner. The AC3PS aims to set up a pool of knowledge by which it will be able to bolster Africa's capacity to adapt to the challenges of climate change.
The initiative is also a hallmark of the increasingly intimate and across the board relationship between Africa and India and comes at an auspicious moment that coincides with the first ever India-Africa Forum Summit being held in New Delhi, from April 4-9, 2008. The Summit should furnish further impetus to this burgeoning trans Indian Ocean Cooperation so that the two sides may create more such knowledge sharing exchanges in a multitude of areas. India and Africa have a lot in common. Both are resource rich yet do not have correspondingly prosperous societies, as too many of their respective peoples live below the poverty line of a dollar a day per person. Therefore, no other two regions on earth can cooperate with a better intent of purpose than India and Africa.
Their greatest asset toward a future of sustained and sustainable development is the good will of their peoples - as represented by the African Heads of State attending the India Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi.
It is out of such august conclaves that together, India and Africa can reaffirm their commitment to mutually advantageous co-operation, including on climate change - a problem that will especially affect Africa.