The issues discussed and questions raised at COP26 at Glasgow prove that she was right. So, what does that say about our response to the most serious threat facing the mankind?
Twenty years before the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro and close to 50 years before the just-concluded COP26 at Glasgow, Indian Prime Minister late Indira Gandhi, in a path-breaking speech, set the climate agenda for the world. Speaking at the plenary session of the United Nations Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm on June 14, 1972, she made it clear that the developing world will not let it be made a climate change scapegoat. Her speech was criticised in some quarters for sowing the seeds of division in the battle against climate change. But the very fact that the rich and the poor countries are still not on the same page on how to battle the biggest crisis facing our planet proves that Gandhi was right in highlighting the imbalance and backing the growing cry of “one earth” , “one environment”, “one humanity”.