ABOUT MR RITURAJ PHUKAN

 He is an environmental writer, adventurer, and climate change mentor based out of Assam. He has been on expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic region (thrice) for the first-hand experience of the impacts of climate change. Raj was personally trained as a Climate Reality Leader by Al Gore and was featured in the former US Vice-President’s 2017 book ‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power’. He serves the Climate Reality Project India as the National Coordinator for Biodiversity.

EXCERPTS OF HIS SPEECH

 He talked about the Indian water crisis. Water has emerged as major problem in respect of climate change. Water table is falling very quickly.

 Half the population are now water stressed. Farmers are committed suicide in large numbers.

 Talking about the blue marble in the sky that is earth, he said that human being are adding as much as 110 million tons of pollutants into the thin shell of upper atmosphere every 24 hours .Energy released by manmade action leading to the global warming pollution is now equivalent to exploding 500000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days a year.

 In India people started dying in hundreds because of the extreme rise in temperature during summer. He highlighted the fact that India is suffering worst water crisis in history as per Niti Aayog. Currently 600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress. In North Gujarat water tables are falling 20 feet per year. 95% in Tamilnadu wells have already dried up. India faces severe ground water crisis and 16.6 million acres of land have been lost to salination. Thousands of farmers have committed suicide across the country the situation is worst in Maharashtra.54% of India faces extremely high water stress .Glaciers on the Tibetan plateau play a key role in supplying perennial water for many countries but there is a growing concern about the impact of glaciers melting on the Tibetan plateau and the availability of water in the region.

 More than a third the glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain range will vanish by the end of the century even if global warming is contained at 1.5 degrees centigrade in the best-case scenario. Two billion people are going face major water catastrophe in coming years.

 He imported importance on the fact that India is deeply vulnerable to climate change because of three critical risk factors they are high agricultural dependence, long coastline and high fossil-fuel independence. India is already facing the initial effect on climate.

 Solution suggested by him arranging from rain water harvesting and Community water centre. Water is the local issue of global climate change for people and for biodiversity.

 Huge number of animals all fighting against each others for water. It has been already reported that significant number of elephants have died of water shortage in Zimbabwe. Wildlife experts are saying large-scale migration of animals from nearby wildlife parks to the sanctuary in search of water. Because of the low adaptive capability of Asian elephants rate of death of elephants and other animals are increasing which is a major concern.

 He also highlighted the facts that huge change in vegetation will also affect the climate.

 Even in South Pole the Penguins cannot stay in current location and in one documentary it was already shown that this species has receded to southwards.

 It is reported in 2018 that population sizes of wildlife decreased by 60% globally between 1970 and 2014.

 Reindeers are dying because of hot ice phenomenon cause of unusual rain which they are unable to penetrate.

 90% of the extra heat trapped by man-made global warming pollution goes into the ocean.

 This is causing many deoxygenated zones in the ocean and turned out to be the killing fields of marine animals.

 Oxygen levels in some tropical regions and dropped by a staggering 40% in last 50 years because of ocean heating.

 Climate change already poses serious problems because of Ocean acidification. But deoxygenation is the most pressing issue facing sea animals today.

 A multitude of marine species from bottom dwellers like fish and octopuses are Gasping for oxygen. Significant portions of aquatic creatures are being increasingly deprived of oxygen.

 It is estimated that populations of marine vertebrates decline 49% on average from 1972 to 2012.

 Sex cycle and sex ratios in married animal especially sea turtles are determined by temperature. The world's oceans are now 30% more acidic on average than they were before the industrial revolution. This has got the extremely bad impact for marine snails that are unable to grow their shells that provide food for pink Salmon mackerel and herring.

 If the water is hot, corals will expel the algae in their tissue causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching.

 In Great Barrier Reef over 90% of the Great Barrier Reef was wiped out by coral bleaching caused by abnormally warm water.

 Decrease in population of pollinating birds is a major concern for the future of the world.

 It is vitally important for the health of the planet there are more than 30000 bee species around the world. Climate change is affecting the pollinators by disrupting the synchronised timing of flower blooming and the timing at which these pollinated flowers are blooming earlier in the growing season due to rising temperature. Fertility of most flowering plants including nearly all fruits and vegetables depends on animal mediated pollination. There has been a 98?cline in insect mass over 35 years in the forest of Puerto Rico and 86?crease in monarch butterfly numbers in California.

 Deceasing insect number threaten the collapse of nature. World's food supply under severe threat from loss of biodiversity leading to food production in steep decline. The world's capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity.

 Avoiding dangerous levels of climate change is still just about possible, but will require unprecedented effort and coordination from governments, businesses, citizens and scientists. Scientists have been warning that time is fast running out to stave off the worst effects of warming, and some milestones may have slipped out of reach.