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| Kirit S Parikh: Surrender or success? | | India should welcome the intent to restrict global warming |
| Kirit S Parikh / Aug 14, 2009, 00:40 IST |
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India’s agreeing to the declaration on global warming at the major economies forum (MEF) in Italy has been criticised in and out of Parliament. India agreed with other countries to work to restrict the increase of the earth’s temperature to 2° Celsius. Is this outcry justified? Was this a surrender by India or a success of its diplomacy?
Climate change negotiations generate much passion — as they should, for they profoundly affect many lives. So it is essential to understand the pros and cons of any stand one takes.
The starting point of any negotiation is an agreement on how much temperature increase is acceptable. That determines the global carbon budget. The next step is to allocate this global carbon budget to different countries, the total amount of carbon that mankind can collectively release into the atmosphere annually, and then to work out who should do what and who should pay for it.
To determine what level of warming is acceptable we should consider the impact of different levels of warming. The impact would vary from country to country, and even within a country, from region to region. Obviously substantial disagreement can be expected on what is an acceptable level of warming. However, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), agreed to at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, has laid down some principles that can help.
The UNFCCC objective states that greenhouse gas concentrations should be stabilised at levels where food production is not threatened. By examining the impact on agriculture of different climate change scenarios, one can get an idea of what is tolerable.
In a detailed study of India, Kavi Kumar and Jyoti Parikh examined the impact on agricultural yields, output, income and prices. They found that yield losses (without considering the carbon fertilisation effect) for rice vary between 15 and 42 per cent and between 25 and 55 per cent for wheat for temperature increases of 2.5°C to 4.9°C. Correspondingly, GDP would drop by 1.8 to 3.4 per cent and agricultural, relative to non-agricultural, prices would increase by 7 to 18 per cent.
Of course, farmers can adapt by changing cropping patterns and input levels to reduce the losses. But even with such adaptation, farmers’ losses would remain significant; with a temperature change of +2°C and an accompanying precipitation change of +7 per cent, farm-level total net-revenue would fall by 9 per cent, whereas with a temperature increase of +3.5°C and precipitation change of +15 per cent, the fall in farm level total net-revenue would be nearly 25 per cent — upto a quarter of the crop output could be lost.
For India, these are very large changes, which could cause much human misery. From India’s point of view, a 2°C increase would be clearly intolerable. Other developing countries may be even more vulnerable.
Apart from the impact on agriculture, the increased occurrence of extreme events due to climate change will also affect the poor most. A cyclone can cause a significant number of deaths in India and huge property loss. Cyclones of similar intensity in advanced countries like the US may not lead to any deaths, if at all. The poor have little capacity to adapt.
In addition, large-scale out-migration from coastal zones is expected due to sea level rise. Intrusion of sea water into ground water, as well as changes in temperature, can reduce agricultural incomes. This could create a large number of environmental refugees, especially from low-lying delta regions such as in Bengal and Bangladesh. Countries dependent on agricultural production, like India, are likely to be severely affected.
Thus from India’s point of view there is much merit in limiting global warming to 2° Celsius. Getting the rich countries to agree to this limit should be a matter of some satisfaction for India.
A 2° Celsius warming limit would require industrialised countries to have deep cuts and soon. Our Prime Minister’s statement that we are determined that our per capita emissions would not exceed the per capita emissions of industrialised countries would thus require India to restrict its emissions also in the future. If the industrialised countries are able to cut their emissions they would have technologies that facilitate it. We should be able to use these technologies to restrict our emissions as well. The extent to which this would restrict our growth rate would depend on the cost of these technologies.
Nevertheless, there is considerable apprehension in India that such a limit would require India to limit its energy use in a way that would slow down our growth rate and adversely affect the poor. Of course the trajectory of India’s emissions would be affected by the warming level that is accepted. And yes, this can indeed reduce our growth rate. Yet one needs to balance the adverse impact of slower growth against the adverse impacts described above.
India can make a strong case that the level of mitigation action required by India, if any, should be very little as we are one of the lowest emitters in per capita terms. With energy efficiency and many economically attractive low-carbon alternatives we could restrict our emissions without adversely affecting growth. In fact, we need to do this in any case for our energy security. And if more action is demanded of India, we would be in our right to ask for compensation and finance so that it should not affect our growth rate.
India should welcome the intent to restrict global warming to 2° Celsius.
The author, a former member of the Planning Commission, is Chairman of Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe).
Email: kirit.parikh@nic.in
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