Time For A Climate Change Bench In Supreme Court, Says Sudhir Mishra

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Thousands of scientists and government reviewers concurred in a number of UN reports that keeping the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C will help us escape the worst effects of climate change and maintain a habitable climate. However, present practices indicate that temperatures will climb by 3°C by the end of the century.

While speaking at IACC Legal Services Summit, Amit Kapur, Managing Partner, J. Sagar Associates said that climate change is a problem of our own making. The industrialisation since the seventeenth century, has led to the carbon footprint that is now creating problems for all of us. 

"We are faced with the problem of solar caps, the issue of water tables, the ocean rising, the changes in the atmospheric conditions is impacting every human being across the board. This is reality of the globe," Kapur added.

He further said that the grassroot reality, every activity including activity of a human being in the 24 hours, had a carbon footprint. 

"Whether you're sleeping or you're awake or you're participating in agricultural activities, logistics, manufacturing consumption, every walk of our individual lives, has a clear impact on the climate," Kapur emphasised.

On sense of urgency to tackle climate change Sudhir Mishra, Founder and Managing Partner, Trust Legal said, "Threat is very real. But If you see India has done something impossible when it comes to saving the wildlife population and saving the forest. We had 9 per cent of forest cover at the time of independence, and we have 16.5 per cent forest cover today. So it's not that we haven't achieved that."

He further said that earlier we had a forest bench in Supreme Court which used to assemble every Friday. Unfortunately, we don't have a forest bench functioning regularly now. As now the need has completely changed we need a climate change bench in SC.

Purusharth Singh Energy and Infrastructure, Kochhar & Co said, "The collective consciousness has undergone a paradigm shift the way we look at climate change. We can enumerate number of steps that have been taken to either give access to or restrict access to funds, and this is where the buck stops. Everything else is lip service. The moment we are able to correlate our SDG plans with the availability of funds. This is where we'll be able to make giant strides."