Rajendra K Pachauri speaks to Leanne Marle about shedding light on climate change and giving light to humanity

Rajendra K. Pachauri is the current chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi.

What do you think have been the key achievements of the IPCC during your time as chairman?

I think the IPCC as a whole has been an extremely significant success story. What I think we have done rather well with the Fourth Assessment Report [an IPCC report on climate change] is to have closed a number of gaps in knowledge. We've produced some very clear statements, largely because the scientific basis is now much more robust. This includes a firm statement saying that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that there's a high probability that during the last five decades or so, the warming that has taken place is a result of human actions. An extremely significant step that we have been able to take is with respect to disseminating the results of this particular report. 

Since I took over as chairman of the IPCC, I've been focussed on disseminating the results of the report, because unless we do that, we are limiting the effectiveness of the messages in the report. 

What key areas will the IPCC focus on in the future? 

We're actually in the midst of a detailed dialogue within the IPCC in defining what our role and focus should be in the future. The IPCC has decided to continue with the five or six year cycles of comprehensive assessment reports and the fifth assessment report will come out by 2014. This will require some new efforts in terms of developing scenarios of what's going to happen in the future and running climate models to come up with some of the answers that will form the basis of the next report. In addition, we will carry out work on special reports, which would be in response to a need for focussed and very specific information on subjects of relevance. We're already working on the production of a special report on renewable energy. So I think essentially we are going to build on what we have achieved so far and try to address demands as they come from our audience from all over the world and ensure that the IPCC plays the role that the world expects it to. 

Two things I believe that have sunk in as part of the consciousness of the panel, too, are the benefits of major outreach activities and information dissemination - those I think we will do in a much bigger way in the future.

You are also Director General for The Energy and Resources Institute. What research are they currently involved in?

This is an institute that I have been with for over a quarter of a century. When I started, all I had was a part time secretary and one room. We are now a fairly large institution with over 750 people and a presence in different parts of the world including the UK, the US, Japan and more recently Africa, the Middle East and Malaysia. We have emerged not merely as an institution that focuses on India or other developing countries in the region but globally. Apart from the work on energy, climate change and environmental issues, we are also involved in substantial scientific activities, for instance biotechnology research.  We do a substantial amount of work at the grass roots level, too - the one thing that I'm now focusing on, and which I think will be my mission for the next 10 years, is what I call 'lighting a billion lives'. What's extremely tragic is the fact that 1.6 billion people in the world still don't have access to electricity or modern forms of energy - that's a quarter of humanity. If you wait for all these places to be connected to the grid to get electricity, it will take a long, long time, if at all. We have developed a set of solar lanterns and torches, which are really attractive to people in villages in several parts of the world. If we can mobilise the resources for making these available, it can create market based solutions in these villages. 

What are your thoughts on the new RSC journal Energy & Environmental Science?

I think that any such medium by which knowledge can be created and provided to people is an excellent initiative. I think the focus that you have, which embraces all aspects of chemistry, chemical engineering and so on, will be of great value as it will be a major contribution to the creation of knowledge and the production of an area of literature where we still need an enormous amount of expansion and improvement. So I'm delighted to get this opportunity to say something through the medium of this journal.

You have recently been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia. What advice would you give to young scientists graduating today?

Well, I would only say that this is a period of great excitement. We really have to start thinking outside the box. When we have this privilege of getting higher education, we should ensure that we do so because I really believe the world needs to change on a massive scale. That has to be carried out by the people who have the benefit of higher education and the exuberance of youth. So I would tell students that are in the university system right now to just look at the horizons beyond and also look at the world in its entirety. As I said in the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, we have a Hindu saying, which is Vasudhaiva kutumbakam, which means 'the universe is a family'. We have to keep that in focus whatever we learn and whatever we do.

What are the major challenges facing the scientific community with respect to climate change mitigation?

Well, I think for the scientific community, the challenges relate to how we might be able to disseminate the messages that have come out, for instance from the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, because the work that the IPCC does is essentially policy relevant, not policy prescriptive. However, to establish or enhance our relevance, we have to make sure that whatever we have produced gets to policy makers. Sometimes, the information has to get to policy makers indirectly, essentially by informing the public. In democracies in particular, that's an extremely important part of the whole system. On the scientific side, there's a substantial amount of research that's taking place around the world. We have to make sure that gaps in knowledge are filled by carrying out a major research programme. I would say that there is a great deal to be done in terms of obtaining data, carrying out observations on variables relating to climate change in some parts of the world and analysing and modelling the information. I consider that as an extremely important challenge for the scientific community, but scientists can only function if governments and other stake holders provide them with the support that they need.

What trends in the scientific community are you pleased about and what needs to be improved?

Well, what's extremely heartening is the fact that a larger number of scientists are getting involved in research on climate change. Where I'd like to see a lot more being done would be in respect to the social sciences. While climate change has been researched in a great deal of depth, we need to find out more about the impacts and mitigation options in different parts of the world. 

You said that 'The world has reached an unprecedented level of awareness of the science behind climate change.' Why do you think this has been so successful?

I think there has been a progression of trends and developments that have led to this massive awareness. Certainly Mr Al Gore's movie [An Inconvenient Truth, 2006] has had an impact and I think that the work of the IPCC has laid the foundation for creating this high level of awareness. As a result of perhaps a number of events that have taken place related to the weather and the climate, the public have perhaps linked some of these events with the underlying reasons related to global climate change. I think the public are now willing to listen to the scientific message. In some sense, they feel there's living proof in respect of all the freak events that have been taking place, such as hurricane Katrina, the recent floods in the Mississippi River, the heat wave that took place in 2003 in Europe and the unexpected floods in the UK last year. So I think with all that's happening, the public are now quite concerned that those changes in climate are happening in our lifetime, not for the next generation or the one after that, and we need to do something about it. When the fourth assessment came out, we made sure that its messages were disseminated on a large scale. I think that the public were ready to receive those messages and that's clearly created an unprecedented level of awareness all around.

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