Responding to climate change

India needs institutions to address concerns

Given the rapid changes in climate and the inability of adaptation strategies to keep pace with them, it seems imperative to devise exclusively India-focused institutions to monitor these developments, forewarn about their ramifications, and moot pre-emptive remedial actions. At present, the country relies largely on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other foreign agencies for these tasks. Though the IPCC’s reports are usually well-researched, and often seek to offer region- and country-specific perspectives as well, yet they do not fully serve the needs of a country like India, which has highly diverse ecosystems. Putting in place an indigenous institutionalised mechanism for this purpose should, indeed, not be a problem, considering that the country already possesses the qualified manpower and, to some extent, the infrastructure needed for it. Many of the scientists working for the IPCC for collecting data, its analysis, and, more importantly, penning down the reports based on this information, are Indians. A local body, doing India-specific climate change-related work, would certainly prove more useful for the country.

This is borne out by the subtle manner in which the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has managed to capture the changes in the performance of the monsoon over the past several decades. Its latest report, released on April 14, has revealed that between 1901 and 2020, the southwest monsoon rainfall underwent a relatively dry epoch till 1921 and a subsequent sustained 50-year wet spell till 1971. Since then, it has once again entered a low-rainfall phase, which continues till today, necessitating a lowering of the benchmark for normal rainfall. Another recent report prepared by the Centre for Climate Change Research of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, has brought out the impact of human-induced changes on the monsoon and climate of the Indian sub-continent, particularly the region between the Indian Ocean and the Himalayas. These and other events, such as the unseasonal shedding of leaves by trees, early ripening of crops resulting in grain malformation, and escalation in the incidence of forest fires, can best be captured by local institutions.

In fact, India’s weakness lies not so much in formulating good policies to combat climate change as in implementing them effectively to deliver the desired outcomes. This is reflected clearly in the way the country put together an elaborate National Action Plan on Climate Change way back in 2008, envisaging eight sub-missions aimed broadly at slashing the economy’s carbon footprint. Over 30 states and Union Territories have also come up with their own climate action plans. But these initiatives have not been able to make much headway for want of institutions to ensure their efficient and coordinated implementation. Interestingly, a special post of the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Climate Change was created to ensure coordination between policies and actions and to represent the country at international forums, but this was abolished for inexplicable reasons after a couple of years. The paucity of the needed institutions is reflected also in the knee-jerk responses to emerging climate change-related contingencies which serve only a limited purpose. The need truly is to have sustainable indigenous institutions to address the climate change-related concerns sector-wise as also for the economy as a whole. Otherwise, India’s battle against climate change would remain on a weak footing despite the best intentions backed by sound policies.