People & Their Problems

New Delhi, 13 November 2007     

Check Global Warming

INDIA AWARE OF COMMITMENT

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

Weather the world over is going crazy. If Los Angeles on the US’s West Coast last month witnessed unheard of bush fires leading to massive human evacuation, and its East Coast is periodically ravaged by hurricanes, can India be far behind? Delhi is experiencing its coldest November in recent years, Bihar was ravaged by unprecedented floods till two months ago and it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict where the summer season ends and the monsoon sets in what to say of winter? While scientists blame it on the El Nino affect and environmentalist warn of dire consequences of untold  misery awaiting mankind and Governments the world over grapple with various ways to reduce environmental man-made disasters thanks to the unabated plundering of natural resources ---- water, land soil erosion green house gases pollution et al .  

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has aptly been awarded to the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the former American vice president, Al Gore, which clearly signaled the importance of stabilizing the earth’s climate and controlling global warming. Incidentally the IPCC is now headed by Dr. R. P. Pachauri, the TERI chief, who also deserves credit for his achievement in releasing three volumes of the assessment report while the fourth one, The Synthesis Report, is expected to be ready in November this year.

This announcement of the prize comes close on the heels after the G-8 conference which deliberated on the subject of climate change and merely agreed to “seriously consider” halving of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The rigid stand of the USA may have softened a bit but its overall position that the emerging economies, specially India and China, have to adhere to some restrictions did not possibly change.

The per capita emissions are today the highest in the world. as per figures of 1999. The US topped the list with 5.60 tonnes of emission per person, Russia followed with 2.72, the European Union and Japan both 2.40, China 0.53 and India close to 0.25 tonnes per person.  Thos has increased considerably in subsequent years, specially by the developed world though emissions by China and India have also shown a marked rise because of the steady pace on industrialization in these countries.

Keeping in view international pressures and also the need to check curb emissions, India has been seriously considering the problem. Recently the Prime Minister set up a high level group of senior ministers and non-government experts on climate change to help fashion a response to global warming and demands that India take on commitments to cut greenhouse emissions. The group includes ministers of finance, external affairs, environment and also the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and advisers on science and technology. The non-governmental side is represented by Dr. R. K. Pachauri, chairperson of TERI, Pradipto Ghosh, former environment secretary, Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science & Environment and Ratan Tata, chairman of the Investment Commission.           

Though this Committee would formulate guidelines for controlling emissions and other related issues, already certain steps have been taken in this regard. There is serious attempt by the Central and state governments to control air pollution in the metropolises and in most places the stringent rules of controlling vehicular emissions are being followed. This has become all the more necessary because for an overpopulated country like ours because lakhs of people live in slums and squatter settlements who are greatly affected because of air pollution.

Moreover the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has been trying to enforce through the state boards control of emissions from industry and power plants. Another important aspect in the country is to explore the various forms of non-renewable sources of energy apart from the emphasis on exploiting hydel energy, wherever it is possible. The country’s per capita consumption of electricity is around 440 units (compared to Brazil’s 1980 and China’s 1380 units) and the country may have to add 3880 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2030 to sustain the present rate of growth. The thrust is on nuclear and hydel power though around 70 per cent of the electricity may come from thermal plants.

It is well known that India has vast reserves of thorium and this could be used for our nuclear power programmes, even if the Indo-US deal does not materialize because of the reported objections by the Left parties and also some technical differences raised by a section of scientists. Scientists in the country have for quite some time been seriously experimenting how thorium (and not uranium) could be effectively used for reactors. It may be pointed out here that High Temperature Reactor Technology has already been proved in Germany and is now being taken up in China and South Africa. And this is based on thorium and much safer than contemporary reactors.

The cry the world over to stabilize greenhouse gases would no doubt affect India in the long run. According to a report by Lehman Brothers India, India’s GDP would dip by 5 per cent for every two degrees temperature rise and for the next 6 degrees, the effect would be 15-16 per cent. The report titled The Business of Climate Change II, a sequel to its earlier report on climate change, Lehman Brothers has said that the US, the European Union, are estimated to have accounted Russia, Japan for nearly 70 per cent of the build-up of fossil fuel CO₂ between 1850 and 2004.

Meanwhile at a recent conference organized by TERI, Dr. Prodipto Ghosh, an expert on the subject, estimated that it would cost the government & 2.53 trillion in investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 9.7 per cent by 2036 if 1990 emission levels are taken as the baseline.

Based on computations at TERI, the cost of demanding high levels of efficiency from the manufacturing sector could hit the country’s economic growth beyond a limit. The calculations show that India could achieve 3 per cent efficiency in its total energy consumption methods without hitting growth but a further push for 9 per cent efficiency could mean exploitatively high cost. This data was presented to the international community at Vienna recently at an international meeting in preparation for the IPCC’s Bali conference in December. 

By 2030 India is expected to reach the current levels of US carbon emissions with all its negative implications for global warming. This has been a cause for concern for scientists and planners in the country and more stringent emissions measures are likely to be taken in the coming years. Though India and other developing countries have been arguing that developed countries grew rich through a fossil-fuel burning economic growth model and that it would be inequitable to seek to prevent them from following a similar path, there has been pressures for the country to check emissions.  

It is thus quite clear that the argument of Nicholas Stern of UK that taking action to reduce climate change would not hurt the growing economies of countries such as India is not quite prudent. Even then the pressure is on China and India to agree to some kind of emission cuts. In fact, the EU has been saying that it is the only way to convince the USA and Australia to undertake commitments in the new phase of Kyoto Protocol.

The IPCC has estimated that in South Asia 500 million0 people would be affected by reduced river flows in the northern part of the subcontinent and about 250 million in China. It is further estimated that the range of people exposed to increased water stress by 2050 would include 120 million to 1.2 billion in Asia, 75 to 250 million in Africa and 12 to 81 million in Latin America. Thus climate change affects us all. Therefore it is imperative that a global effort has to be initiated at this juncture and countries such as China, India and South Africa would have to play a crucial role in the coming years. However, it remains to be seen whether the US and the EU would make some sacrifices and set aside 10 per cent of their defence budget for another form of security expenditure – one that protects mankind from possible extinction.---INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)