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Climate Change

IPCC Head Pachauri Addresses RF Board, Staff
November 29, 2007

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- who along with Vice President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize -- visited the Rockefeller Foundation headquarters in New York today and spoke with both the Board of Trustees and the staff about global climate change.

R.K. Pachauri's Power point Presentation

The World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme established the IPCC as a scientific body in 1988 to provide policy makers around the world with an objective source of information about the causes of climate change, its potential consequences and options to respond to it.

Dr. Pachauri has been involved in the work of the IPCC since 1995 and was elected chairman in 2002. He also serves as the director general of the Tata Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, India and has participated in a number of Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored conferences. The IPCC and Gore were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize 'for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.'

‘I can’t understate the importance of the IPCC’s work – and that of its leader Dr Pachauri – in the continuing, critical challenge posed to us all by climate change,’ said RF Vice President of research and evaluation David Jhirad. ‘We applaud and endorse the progress they have made in spreading the word and sounding the alarm among governments, the private sector and individuals around the world.’

In response to his presentation, RF Associate Vice President & Managing Director Maria Blair said, ‘I was particularly impressed by Dr. Pachauri’s infectious optimism in presenting information about a subject that more often generates fear than enthusiasm. I think our Climate Change Initiative can benefit greatly by emulating the lucidity of his presentation of complex scientific issues in combination with the sense of opportunity and possibility that he communicates.’

An except from Dr. Pachauri's Nobel Prize address:

Honouring the IPCC through the grant of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 in essence can be seen as a clarion call for the protection of the earth as it faces the widespread impacts of climate change. The choice of the Panel for this signal honour is, in our view, an acknowledgement of three important realities, which can be summed up as:

1. The power and promise of collective scientific endeavour, which, as demonstrated by the IPCC, can reach across national boundaries and political differences in the pursuit of objectives defining the larger good of human society.
2. The importance of the role of knowledge in shaping public policy and guiding global affairs for the sustainable development of human society.
3. An acknowledgement of the threats to stability and human security inherent in the impacts of a changing climate and, therefore, the need for developing an effective rationale for timely and adequate action to avoid such threats in the future.

These three realities encircle an important truth that must guide global action involving the entire human race in the future. Coming as I do from India, a land which gave birth to civilization in ancient times and where much of the earlier tradition and wisdom guides actions even in modern times, the philosophy of "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam", which means the whole universe is one family, must dominate global efforts to protect the global commons. This principle is crucial to the maintenance of peace and order today as it would be increasingly in the years ahead...

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