The climate for change

National action plan must be seriously implemented

With the inability of the Cancun climate summit to move towards a new and binding treaty on climate change that would replace the Kyoto Protocol, the world is left with only an agenda for mitigation and adaptation as safeguards against global warming. The troubling prospect of things getting much worse before they can get any better looms large. The United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC) had earlier cautioned that carbon emissions will peak by 2015. Maybe it is time to revisit that forecast, given that the world risks a weakening of commitment to action and the immediate prospect that commitments already made under the Kyoto Protocol may not be kept as the world awaits the death of the Kyoto accord in 2012. The writing on the wall, therefore, is clear. Climate extremes and natural disasters like intense heat and cold waves, droughts and floods are set to become more frequent. New and unpredictable hazards may emerge, posing new challenges. Even the global map may need to be redrawn given the anticipated rise in sea level, submerging coastal areas and drowning small island nations. The worst-hit, as invariably happens, will be the resource-poor developing countries which, unlike the industrialised nations, lack the capacity to withstand the economic backwash effects of such hazards.

A fallback option for all would then be to develop climate change mitigation and adaptation capacities to reduce vulnerability. As a poor developing economy that is desperately seeking to accelerate the pace of industrial growth and economic development, India cannot afford to be a bystander. India’s vulnerabilities are well known and, therefore, the urgency of action is obvious. India’s energy needs are still met largely from the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal, which are the major contributors to carbon emissions. Attempts to develop clean energy sources, like hydro and nuclear, have been stymied by various vested interests, domestic and foreign lobbies and an ill-informed citizenry. India’s agrarian economy and agro-based industrial sector is vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Global warming would impact on India’s water security, with the melting of glaciers, exhaustion of water bodies and such like. India’s rain-fed agriculture, covering over 60 per cent of total farmland, will be adversely impacted due to unstable monsoons.

Equally worrisome, from an Indian standpoint, is the warning from a recently published Indian report that the country’s mean temperatures may rise by 2º Celsius by 2030, instead of 2050 as predicted earlier by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report also draws attention to new health hazards posed by climate change. India has so far done well to recognise climate change as a serious national security and developmental challenge and to pro-actively draw up a National Action Plan on Climate Change. However, given that the country has now agreed, albeit for as yet inexplicable reasons, to international verification of its domestic environment programme, a business-as-usual approach would no longer be enough. The eight technology missions set up under the action plan have to be actively pursued, monitored and implemented. A national-level monitoring system should be put in place so that India voluntarily and at the national level regularly verifies its own performance, and a domestic climate for change in policies and technologies is first created before being subject to external scrutiny.