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Climate Change –should India change?

Speaking at the mid-November release of the Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was reflecting the consensus view of the 2000-plus scientists who had contributed to the report when he asserted that climate change effects “have become so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do.” In fact, urgent action is probably an understatement; action on a war footing is the need of the hour, as George Monbiot points out in his book, Heat.

Just consider this. Scientists believe that keeping to an atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (the most important of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming) of 400 parts per million (ppm) will give us a much reduced risk of exceeding 2ºC warming above pre-industrial temperature. This is a temperature limit that is accepted as the Lakshman Rekha the earth should not breach to avoid a total catastrophe, such as triggering a rise in sea levels by 80 feet.

Against this, we have already burnt so much coal and oil to produce electricity and run motor vehicles that we have crossed 380 ppm and are adding 2 ppm every year. This level of carbon dioxide is something this planet has not witnessed for at least 650,000 years and we are heading soon towards a heating up that this earth has not experienced for more than two million years, according to the IPCC.

The World Health Organisation estimated that 150,000 additional deaths took place and 5.5 million life years were lost in 2003 owing to the health impact of climate change. The proportion of the world’s population affected by weather disasters has doubled between 1975 and 2001. But the real disasters are the ones yet to happen if we go on the same path of increasing our greenhouse gas emissions year by year.

We would hit two times the tipping point limit — 4 ºC — and the Amazon rainforest could turn into a desert and a quarter of the life forms on earth could get lost before the end of this century. Not to speak of the horrendous loss of lives and livelihoods, mostly in developing countries. A Pentagon-generated report has warned the U.S. government of disruption and conflict becoming endemic features of life worldwide as a result of climate change effects.

A consensus has now developed that a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is called for, although there is divergence on how much and how soon. If one goes by unalloyed climate models, the world as a whole should peak its emissions in about five years and then start on a downward slope at the rate of 6 per cent a year to reach less than 20 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050. (Against this, the G8 countries have set a target of only 50 per cent to be aimed at.) All countries of the world are meeting this week in Bali for the thirteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 13) to take a view on this and on the principles based on which different nations will share the burden of this magnitude of emission reductions. They face this in the context of the rich nations of the world, with 20 per cent of world population, having already occupied three quarters of atmospheric space.

How will the world grapple with this issue in the context that developing country emissions are growing much faster — the emissions of India and China are growing three times as fast as that of the world — and they alone will breach the world’s safe emission limit within 20 years, if uncontrolled? How will Bali handle this when the window available for charting the future course is only two years and for actions to start impacting emissions only five years?

There is a growing realisation that no solution not based on equity — on the principle that the atmospheric dumping space for greenhouse gases is common property that belongs to all equitably — will have any traction. Following from this is the unavoidable ‘Polluter Pays’ axiom: those who have occupied other people’s atmospheric space must clean up and pay reparations.

Call this the Ecological Debt or the Carbon Debt, if you like. Christian Aid dramatised this in its 2000 report, where it pointed out that the rich countries owed the poorest countries a carbon debt of $ 600 billion a year, three times the conventional debt the latter owed the former. Oxfam has pointed out in its May 2007 report that the developing countries need, even now, $50 billion a year to adapt to the impacts of climate change; and that it is the responsibility of a few rich countries to cough up 95 per cent of this, based on an index that combines per capita emissions (responsibility) and UNDP’s Human Development Index (capability).

The Global Commons Institute, U.K., has for long been campaigning for the Contraction and Convergence model by which the poor countries will be permitted to increase their per capita emissions while the rich reduce theirs, till an agreed date — say, year 2030 — and thereafter, all together will walk down the slope. EcoEquity and Christian Aid think this does not give enough developmental space for the poor.

Instead they recommend a framework of Greenhouse Development Rights, where an innovative formula fixes responsibility on the basis of past emissions and capacity on the basis of per capita income, and takes into account the income disparity within countries as well — using the Gini coefficient — to allocate the mitigation burden to countries based on the proportion of well-off segments they have. There could be many such formulae. The reality, however, is that in international discussions even raising the subject of per capita emissions is taboo to rich countries.

In these circumstances, and in the face of very limited time for action, India has its job cut out at Bali. It can no longer afford to maintain its present laid-back attitude: ‘We are not responsible for this environmental crisis. Our per capita emissions are very small. Development is our priority. We cannot commit to any emission reductions. You take the lead and tackle this problem.’

This policy needs to change. Climate catastrophe looms ahead of us. A sixth of the world’s population cannot be left to face the effects of climate change with their government not taking proactive steps to prevent the looming disaster. Besides, the country cannot afford to get caught up in path dependence — the more coal power plants you set up today, the costlier it becomes to switch to low carbon technologies tomorrow, as we must.

India should lead the G77 countries and demand emergency measures to arrest climate change progress and to adapt to unavoidable damage from it. It should demand action all over the world to cut down emissions based on equal rights and should demand carbon debt from the rich countries to finance such action in developing countries. There is no time to lose.

More importantly, India should not allow market mechanisms like the Clean Development Mechanism to take the upper hand in directing finance flows. “Climate Change is the greatest market failure the world has witnessed,” observed Sir Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist of the World Bank. Markets are controlled and twisted by large business interests and technology choices made by them are unlikely to suit the real needs of the poor in developing countries.

One can choose to further develop decentralised renewable energy technologies that are on the threshold of economic viability or go for exotic and risky ventures like capturing carbon dioxide to bury deep in the bowels of the earth or spraying the sky with particles that will reflect the sunlight away.

The people of India have the right to determine what sustainable low-carbon path they want to take. The government has a responsibility to initiate wide public consultation on technologies as well as on social choices needed to address energy consumption. It is a no-brainer that public transport needs to be vastly improved and private transport deterred.

Even more important, the government and civil society should work together to create a greater degree of awareness among the people of this country on the many issues involved in this complex problem. Even as we speak of per capita emissions and the carbon debt owed by high consuming countries, what about emission and consumption disparities within India?

What carbon debt does the burgeoning middle class — the Germany within India — owe to the rural poor and how will it discharge it? Even if we are tempted to point a finger at wealthy Texans who turn up their air conditioners so they can enjoy the warmth of their log fire better, should the finger also not wobble towards their Indian counterparts who more than match their wasteful consumption in every respect? What level of consumption is enough?

The government has its job cut out at Bali — and back home.

(The writer, an engineer by training, is Programme Coordinator for the Centre for Ecology and Rural Development, Puducherry.)

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