DNA

New Delhi, Oct 13: The announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize has given India reason to celebrate.

This year, the coveted honour has come to the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), headed by Indian scientist and TERI director RK Pachauri.

The panel shares the prize with former US vice-president Al Gore.

Brushing aside the praise being heaped on him, Pachauri said, “I am only a symbol. The award is actually for a large organisation and all the persons who have done such good work.”

He said it was an honour to share the prize with someone of the stature of Al Gore who had done tremendous work to address the issue of climate change.

Sixty-seven-year-old Rajendra Pachauri is chairman of the IPCC which was set up by the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environmental Programme in 1988. 

The group has about 2,500 scientists whose mandate is to assess “scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change”.

The Nobel Committee said the award was given to Al Gore and the IPCC for “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.

Stating that indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, the Nobel panel said extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of mankind.