London: Renowned Indian writer Amitav Ghosh has been awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to “imagining the unimaginable” around the climate change crisis. The award will be presented to him at a grand ceremony at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam on Tuesday. Ghosh is the first person from South Asia to be given this award. Ghosh was born in Kolkata. He said he was “extremely honoured” to be chosen for an award that has been presented over the decades to great figures in a wide range of fields, from artists like Charlie Chaplin and Igmar Bergman to Trevor Noah.
'Premium Erasmianum Foundation' has selected Ghosh for this award. “I don't believe much in this whole dichotomy between optimism and pessimism or optimism and pessimism,” Ghosh said ahead of the awards ceremony in the Netherlands next week. I think coming from an Indian background, I think about these things in terms of karma and dharma.'' He said, ''I think no matter what the circumstances are, it is our dharma to do whatever we want. Can, do it. It is our duty to do everything we can to try and prevent the terrible disruptions that we are going to face in the future.”
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The author of the book 'The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable' said that the way parties are currently working together under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to deal with issues related to climate change is Not very effective. He said, “What we are seeing is that efforts are not being made to bring about any kind of reduction or to deal with it by seeing it as a collective problem.” As a writer of historical fiction and non-fiction Ghosh views these problems as “historically rooted in a long history of colonialism, inequality, and global disparities.”
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