Questions over awards given by world's top climate scientist

The research institute run by the head of the UN’s climate body has handed out a series of environmental awards to companies that have given it financial support, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
By Robert Mendick and Amrit Dhillon, in Delhi
The Telegraph
Feb. 13, 2010

The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), of which Dr Rajendra Pachauri is the director-general, has given corporate awards to companies such as Pepsi and Honda, as well as Indian businesses.

Those same companies have given financial backing to Teri through grants or paid-for consultancy work.

According to Teri’s own website, Dr Pachauri and his wife are on the jury panel for the 2010 awards. Dr Pachauri has been on the jury panel for the awards in previous years.

The disclosure will lead to further questions over possible conflict of interest against Dr Pachauri, whose position as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is already under threat over errors in its reports.

The Department for International Development (DfID) has pledged to give Teri up to Ł10 million in grants over five years but will subject the institute to an “institutional assessment”, expected to take at least five months, before handing over any of the money.

Among the companies that have received Teri corporate awards is Hero Honda, a joint venture between the Japanese car company and an Indian firm that manufactures millions of motorbikes every year.

It is described on the institute’s website as a major sponsor and was joint second in Teri’s Environmental Excellence Award in 2008.

Another major sponsor, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, won the Corporate Social Responsibility Award in 2004.

PepsiCo India, which received first prize in 2009 for its business response to Aids, pays Teri for a project studying water quality in a local community.

It has also emerged that Teri’s biggest single sponsor, BP India, which has provided Ł6 million, paid for dinner and drinks at an event publicising Dr Pachauri’s debut novel. A BP spokesman said it was entirely legitimate to fund the dinner, the company having enjoyed a “long association with Dr Pachauri”.

He confirmed that the firm gave Teri $9.5 million (Ł6.1 million) between 2006 and 2009 for planting 8,000 hectares of jatropha, a type of bush, as part of a bio-diesel research project.

Dr Pachauri has repeatedly denied any conflict of interest between his work for the IPCC and his work for Teri. In a recent letter to The Sunday Telegraph, he said there was “no question” of either himself, the IPCC or Teri being influenced by associations with organisations.

Supporters of Dr Pachauri point to a series of projects that have had huge benefits across India. Coca-Cola, another Teri sponsor, was praised in 2008 when it agreed to close its bottling plant in Rajasthan after Teri informed the company that its operation was reducing groundwater levels at an alarming rate.

A former employee who spent two years at Teri said Dr Pachauri was continually concerned about funding.

“At every single meeting I attended in two years, the only topic was funding,” she said.

The ex-employee gave a fascinating insight into the workings of the institute. When Dr Pachauri, who is described on his personal website as “an international statesman promoting climate change awareness”, marked his birthday a few years ago, the staff were shown a homemade video of their boss’s life story.

“I was appalled when they showed a 10-minute film on Pachauri,” said the

ex-employee. “It showed Pachauri as an infant, Pachauri as a toddler, Pachauri at school, Pachauri playing cricket, Pachauri getting married. It was all about ‘Pachauri the Great’ and his achievements.”

There was a large cake and a birthday card “as big as a wall” dutifully signed by

Teri-ers, as staff at the institute call themselves.

The man who effectively shapes world policy on climate change was born in 1940 in a hill station in northern India.

Dr Pachauri’s father studied for a doctorate in educational psychology at the University of London while his mother, according to Dr Pachauri’s home page, “educated and provided her son with the high standards that have enabled him to cope with his ever-increasing workload”.

He went to La Martiniere, a boarding school for the Indian upper middle classes. Cricket is an obsession and his website devotes a whole section to his achievements, detailing such landmarks as his 300th wicket.

The website declares: “Apart from being a professional medium pace bowler, Dr Pachauri is also a good top-order batsman and a fielder with a sharp catching arm.

“Batsmanship comes naturally to Dr Pachauri, who can be compared to the very best as a natural striker of the ball.”

Dr Pachauri graduated as a mechanical engineer and was chief engineer with the Diesel Locomotive Works before studying engineering and then economics in the US.

Returning in India in the late 1970s, he became director of the Tata Energy Research Institute.

Later, Dr Pachauri would unilaterally drop Tata from the title and now, according to sources, Tata, one of India’s largest conglomerates, wants little to do with him.

Teri brought him to worldwide attention and he was a lead author with the IPCC before becoming chairman in 2002.

Since his election and subsequent re-election, Dr Pachauri has opened himself up to accusations of hypocrisy, urging the population to follow in his footsteps and become vegetarians to cut down on methane while at the same time travelling the world, clocking up environmentally unfriendly air miles.

Last Monday he first gave an interview to The Economist where he declared he had no idea the size of his salary but later that day he told The Guardian he earned Ł30,000 a year. He lives in an inherited house reported to be worth millions in Delhi’s most expensive neighbourhood.

A DfID spokesman described Teri as a “globally respected institution”.

“Their accounts are externally audited and annually submitted to the government of India,” he said.

“As is routine, DfID is undertaking a full institutional assessment of Teri as part of our due diligence process.”

Teri did not respond to inquiries by The Sunday Telegraph.