Would world leaders' presence at the climate summit be enough to limit the damage from climate change already evident across an Earth ravaged by increasing heat waves, flooding, droughts, landslides and crop failures, from California to Australia to India?
The 20 previous collapses at Silkyara, where miners were rescued after 41 days being trapped under a tunnel collapse, indicate that the fragile Himalayan area faces existential decline. The process of its decline constitutes clear and present danger to those who live and work there and to its irreplaceable biodiversity and species.
Image: Sajjad Hussain / AFP
On November 30, following the opening of the world’s most important annual Climate Summit, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties 28 (CoP28) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on X "Landed in Dubai to take part in the COP28 Summit. Looking forward to the proceedings of the Summit, which are aimed at creating a better planet.”
Modi was joined in the UAE by other world leaders including United Nations Chief Antonio Guterres, possibly the world’s most outspoken figure on the climate crisis; John Kerry, special climate envoy to the US President and signatory to the Paris Agreement on behalf of the United States of America; King Charles III of the United Kingdom, a passionate and lifelong advocate for protecting the environment; and others.