Pune International Centre holds online discussions to address economic downturn and climate policies
Pune, June 7, 2020: With an aim to address the economic downturn and environmental concerns, the Pune International Centre (PIC) held an online discussion on the topic- How to align post-COVID Economic aspirations with climate change concerns to find win-win solutions- on the occasion of the World Environment Day 2020.
Dignitaries including Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar, president, PIC, Dr Vijay Kelkar, Vice-President, PIC, Prof. Amitav Mallik, Founder Member and Trustee, PIC and Convenor- Climate Economics Dialogue, Dr. Nitin Desai, Former Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations and Dr. Dipak Dasgupta, Distinguished Fellow, TERI and Lead Author for IPCC (2022) Report among others took part in the discussions.
Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar said, “The government’s commitment to recover the economy post-COVID will be challenging. For post-COVID strategy, huge liquidity crunch and return of capital is important. The crisis situation involving COVID-19 pandemic should be treated as the right time to launch ‘Invent in India’ and for that we must focus on decentralization, de-carbonization and digitalization.”
Speaking on environmental policies and concerns, Dr. Nitin Desai said, “We have to look at various initiatives to address climate concerns and find ways to recover the economy as more fundamental policies are needed rather than just statements. One way to reduce carbon use is via higher prices and carbon tax as the better policy response and it must be introduced. A carbon tax increases the price that consumers pay for energy and it can be an important part of any mitigation strategy.”
“Building a new future post covid-19 will be a challenge for India and the world. The path which we’ll take after the crisis will be important. The pandemic showed that our most vulnerable and with least resources face highest cost, which include migrants, urban poor, farmers and youth. We have to scale up social funds, manage the treasury well by managing funds in households, NGOs or Temple trusts with proper accounting and not in the hands of government where accountability is poor,” said Dr. Dipak Dasgupta.
Dr Vijay Kelkar said, “To bring economic and ecological reform, we have to incentivize people and make youth participate in decision making policies and empower them to stand for elections. Also to achieve economic progress we have to start measuring our performance correctly.”
Prof. Amitav Mallik stated, “Climate crisis is an invisible threat and in the next 50 years we’ll see larger changes. Presently, the foundation of economic prosperity is fragile due to the COVID pandemic and any delay in the action toward climate change will pose challenges in the economy. Now environment and economics are two sides of the same coin.”
