Carnegie Corporation of New York denies funding Teri

The Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of America’s leading and oldest charities, on Wednesday refused to be dragged into the ‘Glaciergate’ scandal.

The charity denied British media reports suggesting it had funded
Rajendra Pachauri’s The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) in New Delhi directly or indirectly, through the Global Centre in Iceland, which was supposedly working with Teri on the crisis presented by vanishing glaciers.

Times Online reported that bogus claims about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 helped Teri get £310,000 from Carnegie. It said the money was initially given to the centre, which channelled it, with Carnegie’s involvement, to Teri.

The Telegraph said bogus claims — now disowned by Pachauri — helped Teri win a substantial share of a $500,000 (Rs2.3 crore) grant from Carnegie along with a share in a 3million euro research study funded by the European Union.

Susan King, vice president for public affairs, at the corporation, told DNA Carnegie had not paid any grant to the centre or Teri. 

“In September 2008, we approved a $500,000 grant to the Iceland-based Global Centre towards research on water-related security and humanitarian challenges to South Asia posed by the melting Himalayan glaciers. It was a one-time grant,” King said in New York on Tuesday.

“No funds have been paid to the centre as the grantee (the centre) told us not to send it because of political and economic challenges facing Iceland,” King said.

Clearly, the US charity’s money hasn’t been squandered on a Himalayan blunder. King declined to comment, or get dragged into the climate row, but did the centre and Carnegie smell a rat? The grant never happened despite being approved in September 2008.

It’s terribly odd for a receiver of a grant to turn down generous funding unless, of course, the centre felt the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was far-fetched.

Last week, IPCC, of which Pachauri is chairman, retracted that claim and corrected its report.  DNA was unable to get a confirmation from the centre that it had declined the grant.