A team from Ramjas College beat the rest of the competition, which included participants from Pakistan and Singapore, on the final day of the 6th Premchand Memorial International Invitational Parliamentary Debate on climate change, held from December 1 to 4 at the Hindu College.Two teams, both from Ramjas, debated on the motion: “The Government of India will invest in Mitigation over Adaptation” during the final round held on Thursday. Mitigation is when technology is advanced to cut carbon emissions, while adap- tation means adapting oneself to the challenges of climate change so that the effects are reduced. The runners up, Pradyumna Jairam and Siddhartha Tyagarajan, spoke for the motion and said that while adaptation meant increased pollution, mitigation would lead to a reduction. The winning team of Prithvi Rohan Kapur and Vishwajoy Mukherjee said that for a country like India, mitigation would mean incurring huge expenses for a long period, while adaptation meant the necessary changes without the huge expenses.Oxfam, which sponsored the event, will send inputs from the debate to its delegation present at the ongoing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poland. “It will be interesting to present what the youth of the country are thinking in terms of climate change,” Aditi Kapoor, Lead Specialist (Economic Justice) of Oxfam, said.She said video clippings, photographs and notes from the event will be sent to the convention, which ends on December 12. “I am very impressed with the range of topics covered and the students’ knowledge,” Kapoor said.
