The Delhi Sustainable Development Summit brought the crisis of climate change sharply into focus The threat held out by climate change is eliciting enough concern worldwide to have drawn some 700 stakeholders from India and overseas to a three-day conference in New Delhi last fortnight. Organised by The Energy and Resources Institute (teri), the ninth annual edition of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (dsds 2009) was inaugurated by external affairs minister and acting Prime Minister Pranab Mukherjee. It saw the participation of un Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, several heads of state and government, ministers, Nobel laureates, international ceos, researchers, academics, diplomats and representatives of multilateral and bilateral development organisations. Themed 'Towards Copenhagen: an equitable and ethical approach', the deliberations at dsds 2009 were formatted to prepare the ground for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 7 to 18 December 2009. Ministers and officials from 192 participating countries will be tasked with establishing an ambitious global climate agreement for the period from 2012. Though there was much scepticism at dsds about any consensus emerging in Copenhagen, teri director general, R.K. Pachauri, who also chairs the Nobel Peace Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), thought otherwise. "I have no reason to be sceptical, as I believe public awareness about climate change is very high all over the world and, in some sense, the public is ahead of the leadership," he said. "I also have every reason to hope that US President Barack Obama will make a difference, and will be able to live up to his commitments." He expects the Copenhagen meeting to produce an agreement as per the roadmap delineated at the un change conference in Bali in December 2007. Cause and effect teri chairman Arcot Ramachandran feels the influence of the powerful oil and automobile lobbies on Washington has flagged of late, as they are surviving on government bailouts. But Obama will be hard-pressed to heed the coal cartel, with his home state, Illinois, being the largest bituminous coal resource of any state in the US. Pachauri is convinced climate change has occurred not only due to failure of governance, but also on account of prolonged market failure. "We have not been able to internalise the enormous impact of industrialisation and so-called progress in our pricing system and therefore, markets have misallocated resources," he said. Due to the surging world population, global energy consumption is projected to soar from 348.4 quadrillion (million billion) btu in 1990 to 622.9 quadrillion btu in 2025, half of it by industrialised countries. Carbon dioxide emissions that totalled 21.6 billion tonnes in 1990 will rise to 37.12 billion tonnes in 2025. Global population is set to spiral from 6.8 billion at present to 8.04 billion in 2025. Ban Ki-moon cautioned that a failure to tackle the crisis of food security and climate change will increase poverty and inequality. "A leadership commitment from across the globe is required, as climate change is a domestic as well as an international priority," he noted. But he was confident that the world can, and will, rise to this global challenge. Mukherjee felt sustainable development needs to be viewed from a third world perspective as well. Seeking a strategic shift from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels and alternative sources of energy to enhance sustain-ability, he noted that for India, sustainable development cannot exclude people's need for affordable health, nutrition, education and housing. The divide between developed and developing countries was manifest, with representatives of the latter declaring that the former should acknowledge their responsibilities. They urged industrialised countries to heed the dangers confronting the most vulnerable societies on earth, which are in no way responsible for causing this transnational problem. For instance, the Amazon rainforest is being decimated largely to raise cattle - not so much for local consumption, but for fast food chains in America. Nonetheless, there was agreement that evidence regarding climate change was compelling, and inaction would lead to reduced welfare. "Such evidence has to be placed within a strong and logical framework, which we hope leaders and their negotiators are able to devise, such that ethics and equity determine any agreement we arrive at," Pachauri said.