Indian government officials and academics mapped out their visions for their country’s climate change policies and Lord Nicholas Stern called for urgent global action to mitigate climate change at the Atria Hotel in Bangalore today.

The Round Table on Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change: Karnataka Agenda, was sponsored by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) and HSBC along with the Environment and Good Governance Trust, the London School of Economics (LSE), and Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC).

Not just a day to passively listen to experts, many of the around one hundred attendees participated in lively discussions on the four themes: agriculture, transport, energy and water. The event culminated with a public lecture by Lord Stern on Climate Change, Economic Development and the Global Deal.

The day was kicked off by Professor BK Chandrashekar of the Environment and Good Governance Trust and an MLA of Karnataka, who urged participants to work towards developing a climate change agenda for Karnataka.

Planning Commission Member Dr. Kirit Parikh said that the rich countries over consumption has caused climate change, noting that India is responsible for a relatively small portion of global emissions. But India is vulnerable to climate change, he said, as it would, among other impacts, reduce agricultural productivity and hit the poor particularly hard.

Lord Nicholas Stern, professor at LSE and author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, emphasized the need to take a long view on the two great challenges for the next century: fighting poverty and managing climate change. These two problems are intertwined and if the world fails on one of them, it will fail on the other, he said.

Water will be the area most disrupted by climate change, Stern said. Temperatures could go up by four or five degrees Celsius by the end of the century, which would raise water levels and increase the incidence of droughts and floods. In India the heating would lead to disruptions of river flows off the Himalayas and make monsoons more frequent, Stern said.

Speaking on agriculture, Dr. Ravindranath of the Indian Institute of Science said that Indian farming has already been altered. Citing an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study, he said that crop production would decline even if temperatures drop by only one or two degrees and South Asia crop yields could decrease by thirty percent by 2050.

The best way to mitigate the effects of climate change in the transportation sector is to shift to public transportation, argued Dr. T.V. Somanathan of the Chennai Metro. State and local governments should learn from India’s positive examples, notably the Delhi Metro, and should also look to improve their traditional bus system or develop bus rapid transit.

Dr. Uma Rajarathnan also presented on transportation, citing a study done with the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board estimating greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector in Bangalore.

Dr. Eswaran Subrahmanian of CSTEP argued that India should not wait for technology transfer from advanced countries but should innovate and spread new technology to both developing and developed countries.

Dr. Raje Gowda of University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) provided an overview of challenges in the water sector.

The public session closed with concluding remarks by Dr. Deshpande of ISEC and D.H. Shankarmurthy, Vice Chairman of the State Planning Board of the Government of Karnataka.