Pachauri is 'Nature' newsmaker of year

New Delhi, Dec 20 - International climate change campaigner R.K. Pachauri of India figures on the cover page of 'Nature', and the highly regarded science magazine has named him as its 'Newsmaker of the Year'.

The magazine, published from Britain, in its latest issue said: 'Nature is pleased to name Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian engineer and economist, and chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as our inaugural Newsmaker of the Year.'

In its editorial, the magazine wrote that science, like history, is forged by individuals - even though both are forged on the back of a past whose inhabitants may have faded into anonymity.

'But the contribution of this year's winner to scientific affairs can be celebrated without reservation. Rajendra Pachauri's great strength is in building and organizing institutions in the fields he understands best - engineering and economics as they apply to issues of development.

'In that area, he has enjoyed a success that reflects his calm, yet fiercely driven personality. Over two decades he has built TERI, the Delhi-based energy and resources institute that he runs, into an organization with offices around the world and several hundred staff. And in the past five years, he has chaired the great collaboration that is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),' the authoritative science magazine of the world elaborated.

The weekly science magazine underlined the successful stint of Pachauri as IPCC chief and thus giving IPCC a best reward - Nobel Peace Prize of the year.

The magazine said protecting the vulnerable from the threat of climate change is about changing what we all do, and that requires political action as well as changes in personal behaviour.

'But collective action has a positive and uplifting side, too. The IPCC is a case in point. Its members have sacrificed time that they would rather have spent on new research to do something for the world at large. Their endless meetings and discussions, their intellectual clashes and warm mutual understandings, have produced an unparalleled catalogue of reliable knowledge - and authoritative assessments of remaining ignorance - on a scientific matter of utmost public concern.

'To produce something that the hundreds of authors can be proud of, and in which the nations of the world have all, to some extent, invested their trust, is no mean thing. The IPCC's collective efforts span decades. But the person sitting in the chair at its hour of greatest achievement so far is Rajendra Pachauri, and we salute him,' it declared.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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