We can lose battles but not lessons

Paris-based Rajendra Shende has been leading the global battle to protect the ozone layer as director in the United Nations Environment Programme. He was Coordinating Lead Author of IPCC-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. The top notch Indian in UNEP has won several awards around the world. He was awarded USA’s prestigious Climate Protection award in 2009. His OzonAction Programme in 2005 became the first ever programme in the UN to win a USA award. In an interview, Shende outlines how the world, which is struggling to reach an agreement on climate change, can learn valuable lessons from the Montreal Protocol, a remarkable success story in whose implementation Shende has played a key role.