- India described as global innovation hub
- Urgent climate crisis action emphasized
- Grassroots insurance model cited as example
- Climate linked to health and inequality
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while underlining India’s role at the opening session of Mumbai Climate Week, said that concrete steps must be taken now to deal with the climate crisis. She described India as a major center of global innovation and made it clear that waiting for political conditions to change in any country will only make the problem more serious.
During the fireside conversation, Clinton said that in many parts of the world, including the United States, policy-making can take time, but climate-related challenges do not wait. According to her, “There is a need to prepare models and start experiments wherever there is capacity and willingness.”
Talking about grassroots innovation
Clinton gave the example of an insurance model that is linked to nearly five lakh women who earlier did not have any kind of insurance facility available to them. She said that this initiative is not limited only to social security, but it also creates a sustainable economic framework that opens new market opportunities.
According to her, climate solutions will be effective only when governments, the private sector, and philanthropic institutions work in partnership. In this context, she mentioned the role of the Clinton Global Initiative and said that this platform brings together partners from different sectors to move forward difficult but long-term impact initiatives.
Climate is not just an environmental issue
Clinton said that climate change should not be seen only as an environmental issue and linked it with health and economic inequalities. She said that pollution caused by fossil fuels is directly affecting the health of children in cities like Delhi and Beijing. In her words, discussion on climate is actually also a discussion on public health. She also said that the world is currently going through a phase of large-scale intergenerational wealth transfer. In such a situation, philanthropy should not remain limited to relief work, but should move in the direction of removing those structural inequalities that deepen the climate crisis.
