Rajendra Kumar Pachauri who chairs the Nobel Peace Prize winner United Nation’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) has said that the award highlights the importance of climate change and the need for action to meet future challenges.

“I am only symbolic. The award is a recognition for the work by scientists and authors who had contributed to IPCC reports. My job is only to chair the meeting,” he told reporters here on Friday.

Asked to explain the rationale behind awarding the Nobel peace prize to IPCC, he said climate change could have a negative impact on agriculture besides leading to water scarcity and flooding in stressed regions.

“All these issues have the potential to impact peace,” said Dr Pachauri who was originally trained as an economist. 

The IPCC chairman said he was not disappointed with the Nobel committee’s decision for not naming him unlike his two immediate previous recipients Muhammad Yunus (Grameen Bank) and Mohamed ElBaradei (IAEA). “The award truly belongs to the IPCC,” he observed.

The chief of Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) said while pursuing their economic growth targets, emerging economies like India should not follow the path already traversed by the developed world.

“Between 1995 and 2005, radiative forcing (difference between the incoming radiation energy and the outgoing radiation energy in a climate system) due to increased emission of carbon dioxide  has gone up by 20 per cent, which shows that the developed world have not cut down their emissions,” he said.

The fourth IPCC report – expected to be released next month – brings out the inevitability of bringing about reduction in emission if the global climate is to stabilise.

“The world can at best allow emissions to increase up to 2015 beyond which they must decline.

The developed countries have to take an ambitious reduction target and enormous intellectual efforts from India, China and Brazil are required for guiding the developing world not to follow the polluted path,” he said.