Awareness of climate change must go mainstream
Ali Raza Rizvi, Asia head of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) regional climate change and resilience programme observed that although climate related natural disasters are increseangly frequent and deadly in the area, average people know very little about climate change and extreme weather events.
"We need to bring climate change into the mainstream; it is still looked at (by most people) as a subject that only scientists are talking about," he told IPS. Other experts say that the approaching Rio+20 Earth Summit would be an ideal venue to focus mass attention on the issue.