ACT NOW: Dr Pachauri is encouraged by the focus on climate change. -- PHOTO: AFP

'What is encouraging about the current situation is the high level of awareness that something needs to be done,' he told The Straits Times in a recent interview after IPCC was declared joint winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore.

Some 180 countries are expected to participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held on the Indonesian resort island next month.

Dr Pachauri said there had been a distinct shift even in the pronouncements of the United States, which over the last six years had been opposed to legally binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

'My view is that there really couldn't be a better set of conditions to ensure some degree of success.'

He said that the purpose of the convention was to explore 'how there might be compromises that could be structured on the basis of the views of different countries'.

Dr Pachauri also said that Asean could take collective steps to deal with natural disasters that have affected the region, achieving more through closer cooperation.

'Asean could do a lot collectively because I believe that you can coordinate your action with your policies across countries. To that extent the policies will be much stronger. There may be some actions that are best taken by a group of countries than a single country.'

However, with regard to Indonesia's problems of deforestation, floods and forest fires, he said these should be largely handled by that country itself, with 'technical assistance' from other nations in the region.

He referred to the potential impact of climate change on rising sea levels, highlighted in the three reports issued by IPCC this year, and called for immediate risk assessment.

'What we really need to do is a risk assessment, location by location, on how sea-level rise is going to threaten both life and property' and come up with measures to deal with this.

He suggested that some areas might have to be evacuated, while in other areas, it would be helpful to have protective infrastructure or zoning restrictions in terms of where houses could be built.

'Those kinds of regulations may have to be revived,' he said and emphasised that such regulations would have to be created if they did not already exist.

He cautioned: 'The earlier the better, because if we delay these actions...the cost of all these adaptation measures will go up.'

The Nobel Prize for IPCC, he said, had 'elevated' climate change to 'a new level' and would act as 'an incentive for people to get involved in research on climate change'.

He added that it would also inspire a whole lot of young people to pursue careers dealing with research on climate change.

'That would enrich our knowledge and the contents of this so-called profession.'

On criticisms that the IPPC is prone to making summary conclusions that are poorly supported by analytical work, Dr Pachauri said: 'We take pride in the process we follow, which is totally transparent, which is peer-reviewed at every stage, and we only use material that has been published and peer reviewed in learned journals.

'The IPCC does not invent any research on its own. We stand by the high quality of our reports and we certainly stand by the objectivity of the way we put the reports together.'

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