By Brototi Roy:
The 14th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit was inaugurated today with the theme “Attaining Energy, Water and Food Security for All”. The three day summit organised by TERI, which is being held at the Taj Palace hotel is being attended by many national and international delegates from all over the world.
The keynote address yesterday was delivered by Mr. Kofi Annan, Nobel laureate and former Secretary General of United Nations. Mr. Kofi Annan discussed about the need for policy coherence globally by keeping sustainability at the heart of the development framework to tackle environmental degradation and unemployment. Mr Farooq Abdullah and Mr Salman Khurshid also addressed the gathering and stressed on the need for international cooperation and understanding.
The inaugural session was followed by a panel on demographic challenges. Many eminent speakers including Lord John Prescott, former deputy Prime Minister of UK and H.E. Ms Tarja Halonen, former President of Finland were present. All the speakers stressed on the need of education and general equality to overcome demographic challenges.
Mr Takehiko Nakao, President of Asian Development Bank gave a keynote address on “The role of water management in addressing water-food-energy nexus”. He proclaimed that food, water and energy scarcity are closely interlinked and proposed major steps to improve water management. He said that more cooperation between different sectors in terms of water management was paramount. A lot of problems can be solved if work on the lack of coordination. He also suggested improved river basin planning and appropriate pricing of resources to generate incentives for water conservation.
The other main panels of the day included “Re-thinking Development” and “How business can help attain energy, water and food security”.
The three day summit will consist of 12 such thematic panels and other keynote addresses with topics specific to the theme, in order to find solutions to the global problem of energy, water and food scarcity, though discussions and collaboration amongst international leaders in the field, and sustainable development.