UN official lauds efforts to check climate change
VARANASI: United Nations Information Centre for India and Bhutan director Derk Segaar on Saturday lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for being, what he said, the driving force to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) and combat climate change, poverty and many other global issues and those in India as well.
In an exclusive chat with HT, Segaar said, “Modi was a driving force behind adoption of SDGs in 2015. Under his guidance, India devised a plan to achieve the SDGs through its national programmes. It has already started working on agenda to eradicate poverty and keeping an effective check on child mortality.”
“India is working seriously to combat climate change, a global issue. Modi formulated plans to deal with challenges that concern India as well as the world,” Segaar said adding that locals’ participation and contribution was must for successful implementation of agenda 2030 of sustainable development.
Segaar was in Varanasi to inaugurate Model United Nations (MUN) at IIT-BHU wherein engineering students discussed major global issues—climate change, gender inequality, poverty, malnutrition, hunger and child mortality. “Students at IIT-BHU are very bright. They are very talented. I interacted with them under the MUN and encouraged them to think big and find out technological solutions to global challenges,” Segaar added.
Indian researchers and scientists need to revolutionize researches to come out with affordable technological solutions to global challenges, he said. If 2030 agenda for sustainable development didn’t succeed in India, it will not be achieved in rest of the world as 50 percent of the global challenges were to be reached in India in terms of poverty, gender inequality and climate change, he said.