Paris deal ignored issues of climate justice, historical

The Paris agreement on climate change has moved away from earlier conventions and issues like climate justice and historical responsibilities have been ignored, writer Amitav Ghosh today said.
Speaking at the launch of his book 'The Great Derangement -- Climate Change and the Unthinkable', Ghosh said the agreement denies all historical responsibility of Western nations and any possibility of restitution.
In conversation with CSE DG Sunita Narain, Ghosh said that climate change poses a powerful challenge to the idea of freedom.
"The whole issue of climate justice which was recognised in the earlier conventions, people don't recognise how much Paris agreement moves away from the earlier conventions. Essentially what it does is that the whole climate justice issue is...Reduced to almost something which is laughable.

"The agreement also completely denies all historical responsibilities, all possibility of any kind of restitution," Ghosh said during the launch of his book.
Noting that Western voices have become amplified during the negotiations on climate change that it becomes impossible for a non-Western voice to be heard, Ghosh also recalled his conversation with one of the persons who were present during the Paris climate negotiations in which prominent voices from Malaysia, Philippines and Latin America were "silenced".

"We are seeing systematic silencing of these voices. That silencing now is a reality. The Paris agreement is a reality, it's upon us. I think one of most important things we have to do is to remove this conversation from the purview solely of experts and bureaucrats.

"That is actually the reason nothing has happened. Because experts have created a fiefdom. One aspect of Paris agreement is certainly a business friendly approach. It is not an accident that these corporations were involved in drawing of the agreement and the billionaires who made their presence felt there," he said.
Ghosh's book is a comment on the history and politics of climate change. Living in a time when impacts of climate change are being experienced more than ever before, Ghosh has used the book to give a call for immediate action.
Narain, meanwhile, noted that the world has already started witnessing extreme weather events and the poor in the world are very badly hit.

"Climate change is about sharing economic growth within and between nations. The weather is becoming more unpredictable, more extreme and we are all at risk. Worse, the world is failing to negotiate how it will share economic growth that is intricately linked to CO2 emissions," she said.