Young parliamentarians maintain that no clear roadmaps have evolved on the question of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies on the ground. Speaking at a workshop organised by the UNDP and the department of economic affairs, parliamentarian Jay Panda expressed regret that renewable energy alternatives that he had attempted to implement in the constituency of Kendrapad (from where he had been elected) in Orissa had met with little success.
“The results from solar energy were mixed. This could be a management issue at the village level and also because the solar energy was not being fed into the grid,” said Mr Panda.
But his viewpoint was shared by young turk Sandeep Dixit who pointed out that “everyone knows that climate change is happening but nothing very concrete is happening at the level of strategy.”
Both MPs spoke out against the tremendous pressure of development that they faced. While Mr Dixit, who has been elected from the urbane East Delhi constituency, expressed his lack of success with (renewable) technologies when he was running an NGO in Bhopal. “Neither the solar panels nor the solar lanterns worked,” he said. Mr Dixit maintained the most important thrust should be to make habitats more sustainable and that could only be brought about by introducing laws “that made sense to the common man.”
“In my own constituency, from the 197 registered housing societies, 180 societies practice rainwater harvesting,” he said.
Orissa with its 500-km long coastline was facing a major problem of coastline erosion due to rising sea levels resulting in several coastal villages having to be relocated he added.
Orissa, according to the road map prepared by the state, required `17,000 crores to tackle the impact of climate change but that sum, Mr Panda pointed out, “amounted to the annual budget for Orissa.”