The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Assessing impact of climate change in economic terms

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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Assessing impact of climate change in economic terms

Priscilla Jebaraj

Centre for Climate Change Adaptation and Research to come up with estimates

CHENNAI: How much will Tamil Nadu lose in economic terms if climate change is not halted? That is the question that the Centre for Climate Change Adaptation and Research at Anna University is attempting to answer for the first time.

In one of its first research projects since inception last year, the Centre is attempting to assess the impact of climate change on land use patterns, especially along the vulnerable coastal belt of the State. By April 2010, the Centre’s director A.Ramachandran expects to be able to put a figure on the estimated economic losses that the State is already facing and can expect to face in the future. The Centre is using satellite data of the last forty years to study salinity and agricultural changes in order to make the estimates.

Money talks, when the 2006 Stern Review said that climate change could drag global GDP down by 20 per cent unless immediate action was taken, people sat up and took notice. Bringing out the economic consequences of unmitigated climate change could do the same for Tamil Nadu, hopes Dr.Ramachandran.

However, his focus is not so much on mitigation as the need for adaptation to the losses and changes that are already taking place.

Two other ongoing research projects are studying the impact on urban wetlands and on biodiversity conservation in the Eastern Ghats. The focus is on how communities can be taught to adapt to the changes. Both projects are scheduled to be completed by 2011.

“We must bring the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report down to a regional level. There is no point in talking about the global impact alone… We must know how it will affect us here [in Tamil Nadu], how much it will cost, before we can do anything about it,” says Dr.Ramachandran.

Apart from its six junior research fellows, the Centre is now trying to recruit three scientists with some experience in the fields of atmospheric science, agronomy and biodiversity.

The Centre has also tied up with the British Met Office, which will train the Indian scientists in reading, evaluating and projecting weather data.

At least seven other new projects are in the pipeline, and funding proposals worth about Rs.9 crore have been sent to the Union Government. The Centre wants to begin projects to evaluate the costs of climate change in the Nilgiri biosphere, develop eco-informatics, and create ecological databases to evolve future strategies.

“There needs to be a long-term perspective. We are collecting data for future generations,” said Dr.Ramachandran. He feels that this calls for the government to make an immediate investment in vulnerability assessment research, so that there is adequate data to calculate the costs of climate change.

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