Front lines of fight against climate change are right here: Hillary Clinton

Mumbai: India and other countries of the Global South are on the front lines of climate change and must lead the world in developing solutions, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at Mumbai Climate Week on Wednesday, while criticising US President Donald Trump for denying climate science.

The US under Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement on climate and rolled back dozens of environmental regulations, including limits on power plant emissions.



"We have a [US] president who denies climate change... denies facts," Clinton said on Wednesday, adding, "We cannot wait for political change that I know will come to United States because that is a few years off, we have to do the innovation and build the models here."

"I have confidence in India as an innovator," she told a packed hall of business leaders, govt officials, and NGOs at the Jio Convention Centre in Mumbai. "I want to be a cheerleader for India's efforts."

Clinton, who is in India for her foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, suggested that the three-day forum could be part of efforts to shift the focus of climate solutions to the global south. "Power, information, and innovation has to move from the north to the south," she said.

Clinton urged the govt, businesses and NGOs to come together to find remedies to the climate crisis. "It's not only the good thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. It's a new market," she said.

She also encouraged young climate activists to continue their work despite pushbacks, and find ways to connect with funding. She acknowledged that a lot of global climate finance does not reach grassroots innovators. "Now is the time to get creative, focused and determined," she said.

In India, CGI with women's empowerment group SEWA as well as Humanity Insured has started an insurance programme to help women workers get compensated when they cannot work due to extreme heat, she said. "If they can only work half a day because of extreme heat, they don't have enough money to feed their children," Clinton said. The insurance model seeks to cover more than 500,000 women.

Asked about the perils of artificial intelligence (AI), Clinton called for greater regulation. While AI promises many advances, especially in health, "it would be naive not to recognise the threats," she said, noting the potential impact on jobs, water, and energy. "If the people creating the technology don't know the impact on humanity, we have an obligation to say ‘Let's slow down and manage this."

Comparing AI with social media, she pointed out that people learned "too late" about the negative impacts of social media, especially on young people. Recently, after New York schools barred kids from bringing phones to school, their attention spans increased, she said. "It took a decade to learn that lesson," she said, adding that societies shouldn't wait for the negative impacts to play out with AI. "Let's try and shape [AI] rather than be shaped it."

Clinton was in conversation with Shloka Nath, CEO of India Climate Collaborative.