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Leveraging climate change concerns

Sudha Mahalingam

The time has come for developing countries to lobby for access to clean energy technologies available with the developed world.

CLIMATE CHANGE no longer seems an abstract and remote concept. In the last few years, its manifestations have been many and varied, so much so, they are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Unseasonal rains, debilitating drought, excessive floods, devastating cyclones and storms, all these are warning signals that a distressed Gaia is sending out to humankind. Climatologists and scientists, for their part, have been studying symptoms of climate change such as receding arctic ice caps and disappearing wildlife habitats that are not readily apparent to the rest of us. They are coming up with convincing proof that our climate is indeed changing in ways that differ from its usual cyclical behaviour. And now comes the Fourth Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, which conclusively links high concentrations of anthropogenic emissions to human activity.

When a somewhat similar threat — also caused by human activity — surfaced nearly three decades ago, the global community reacted with alacrity to cobble together a cohesive and co-ordinated response. Three scientists working independently linked the `hole in the ozone layer' to CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) from refrigeration, air-conditioning, sprays, and foams. The scientists could show that the relationship between the hole in the ozone layer and the resultant ultraviolet radiation could lead to exponential increase in skin cancer. Alarm bells rang around the world, loudly enough to persuade countries to think and act collectively. As many as 150 countries came together to sign and ratify the Montreal Protocol, which effectively caps and arrests CFC release into the atmosphere. So effective was this effort that already there are signs that the ozone hole is mending. The ozone hole over the Antarctic had already shrunk by 20 per cent by 2004. Scientists are hopeful that the ozone layer will return to its original form in 50 years, thanks to timely intervention by humanity.

Yet, the response of the world community to global warming has been disappointing, at least so far. The Kyoto Protocol is, at best, a feeble mechanism to combat climate change. All it asks of the developed world is a modest reduction in six key greenhouse gases by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. While it is a well-meaning gesture by the 40-odd developed countries, it is nevertheless too modest to make any significant impact on global warming. According to scientists, even if the current Kyoto targets are met, global temperatures will rise at least by a few degrees with the attendant devastating consequences for vulnerable communities living along the coasts. This is not only because big polluters such as the United States and Australia have resolutely remained outside the Kyoto mechanism continuing to add substantially to the global carbon burden. Large and rapidly developing countries such as Brazil, China, and India are adding their own considerable trail of carbon to what Australian climatologist Tim Flannery calls the aerial ocean, accelerating global warming.

What accounts for this divergence in the responses to threats that are somewhat similar in scope and reach, even if dissimilar in their impact? Why does the world community find it difficult to act swiftly enough to achieve any meaningful reduction in global carbon emissions? The measures being considered are tentative, half-hearted, inadequate, and indecisive, and elude universal consensus.

For one, making a swift transition from CFC to other more benign chemicals to cool homes and offices has been somewhat simpler because the scale of the operation required was much smaller. The Montreal Protocol targeted one specific industry that used CFCs and, with appropriate incentives, this industry could be induced to make the transition.

But in the case of global warming, the scale of transition required is massive. After all, energy pervades our lives. Humankind has become overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuel consumption not just for development but for its very survival. Towns and cities, which now house 46 per cent of the global population, require commercial energy not only to run their factories, cars, trains, buses, planes, and ships, but also to pump up water to their high-rise offices and homes. Multi-trillion-dollar global businesses have been built around fossil fuels and industries that consume them. Millions of jobs depend on commercial energy — its production and its consumption in various sectors of the global economy. In rural areas too, energy is critical to irrigate our fields and light up rural homes, and, indeed, to our food security. Energy is indeed the driver of the global economy.

Effects of globalisation

But the scale and size of the problem are only partially to blame. The juggernaut of globalisation has trampled upon whatever little hope we might have had of making a quick transition to a less energy-intensive world. Globalisation and its attendant reliance on mobility — of goods and persons — has now become ineluctably entrenched and has created an interdependent world. We would need universal consensus to turn the tide.

It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible or infeasible, to go back to a Gandhian vision of local self-sufficiency. Satellite television that bombards images of how the other half lives — and flaunts — has raised aspirations that are difficult to contain. We now live in a world that will have to sink or swim together. For the billions of people who live in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, gaining access to a modicum of commercial energy is indeed the key to survival with human dignity. Yet they are faced with the hapless dilemma of environment versus development. It is facile and perhaps irresponsible for us to argue that developing countries should be allowed to pollute until they reach a certain level of development. Instead, we need to find ways and means to ensure that developing countries move to a clean growth paradigm.

And this is where globalisation has set up roadblocks. Mitigating climate change and achieving stabilisation of greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations — the objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — will require deep reductions in global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. This is possible only if developing countries have unrestricted access to clean energy technologies. While, on the one hand, the forces of globalisation have dismantled trade barriers between nations, they have also erected new barriers in the form of intellectual property rights and patents, which effectively block developing countries' access to clean energy technologies. It is a well-established fact that emissions over the years from today's developed world is the main culprit behind rising global temperatures. Yet the richer nations of the world do not consider it their duty to make available clean technologies to the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to enable them to move to a cleaner growth path.

At present, developed countries do possess considerable clean energy technologies that are commercially viable. Germany, for instance, is the world leader in solar technologies. A handful of multinationals — Areva, Westinghouse, and GE — hold the key to contemporary nuclear reactor technologies. A Canadian company has commercialised a turbine that generates electricity from ocean currents — one of the largest untapped renewable energy resource in the world with an estimated potential of 450,000 megawatts. There are many such examples of other renewable energy resources as well.

Of all clean energy technologies, those that burn coal in a clean manner are the ones most relevant to countries such as India and China both endowed with relatively abundant quantities of this fuel, which, unfortunately, has also the highest carbon content among fossil fuels. Coal-fuelled electricity generation accounts for half of all carbon emissions in the world and in India, it accounts for over two thirds of all our electricity generation capacity. In conventional coal-fuelled plants, the fuel is burnt inefficiently so much so that less than a third of its energy content gets converted into electricity. By increasing the efficiency of coal use and simultaneously sequestering carbon from coal, India and China can transit to a clean growth trajectory. There is a range of commercially tested technologies that can help burn coal more efficiently and sequester carbon safely. These are available with multinationals, but they are neither accessible nor affordable to developing countries struggling to resolve the tension between development and environment.

The time has come for us in the developing countries to lobby for access to these technologies. Even as our Prime Minister pushes for clean coal and nuclear energy to be labelled `green' at the upcoming G8 summit in Germany, we, in partnership with other developing countries, need to lobby for exempting clean coal technologies from patent protection. The rich countries of the world owe it as much to themselves, as to us. Global warming, after all, is a great leveller.

(The author is Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi.)

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