There is no doubt that India is now a fast emerging economy with a huge burgeoning market, rapid industrial development and a better standard of living. But, alongside this progress, the people of this country are facing a plethora of humanitarian and environmental issues. Climate change is one of the significant issues faced by the whole world and India is no exception. India’s high vulnerability and risk to climate change will slow down its growth. A number of scientific studies have delineated the impact of climate change on health and human development, acting as a hurdle in poverty alleviation, eroding food security and increasing the risks of natural disasters that encumber the achievement of developmental initiatives.
The World Bank report, ‘Turn down the heat: climate extremes, regional impacts, and the case for resilience’, published in June 2013, projects that the scenario of a four degrees centigrade rise in global temperature would result in increased extreme climate events such as heat waves, sea levels rising, more storm surges, droughts and flooding in the South Asian region, including India. The coastal and deltaic regions of India are reported to be particularly vulnerable to the risks of flooding, including the two Indian cities of Mumbai and Kolkata. The Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra are also vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to the melting of glaciers and loss of snow cover, resulting in significant risk of flooding.
Many experts believe that India is likely to be hit hard by the intensity of changing weather patterns. The irregular pattern of rainfall and monsoons, resulting in floods, droughts and cyclones, are a threat to many of its 1.2 billion people, making them vulnerable. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) illuminates the risks of global warming and attempts to make a stronger case for governments to devise policy on adaptation. “This is the most extensive piece of science done on climate adaptation up until now,” says Aromar Revi, one of the lead authors of the report. “The key issue as far as India is concerned is vulnerability and exposure.”
The next landmark on climate negotiations in Paris, in 2015, will be crucial. Many countries, including BASIC partners (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), have launched national consultations to determine what their contributions should be. As the world’s third largest carbon emitter (accounting for eight percent of carbon dioxide emissions), India will be a crucial player in the success or failure of a new global climate treaty. With the world’s two largest emitters, the US and China, showing signs of cooperation towards a 2015 deal, the focus is now likely to fall on India and what role it will take over the coming year.
Last week, the 18th BASIC ministerial meeting on climate change was held in Delhi. This bloc of four countries is quite powerful in terms of thwarting any attempts by rich nations to unreasonably impose their wishes at the cost of developing nations during any negotiations on climate change issues under the UN convention. The four powerhouse economies have agreed to table their respective international targets to the UN climate talks after mutual consultation. Vice Chairman of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission Xie Zhenhua and India’s Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar publicly stated they had exchanged information of the bilateral discussions held with the US on technical collaborations as well as talks on the negotiations.
The positive outcomes in terms of climate change adaptation for future visions are taken with active engagement with the emerging economies and locally as well. Javadekar informed: “India has announced a voluntary 2020 mitigation goal of reducing emissions. By 25 percent of the levels of 2005, which was the assurance given at Copenhagen in 2009, India has formulated its national climate change action plan with eight missions, which is being strengthened.” Another positive initiative is being taken by the newly elected BJP government in budget allocation. A sum of Rs 1 billion has been allocated for the national adaption fund for climate change while Rs 1 billion has been allocated for new, ultra modern coal-based thermal power technology.
As a bold step to showcase their actions at an international forum, Javadekar said, “I will suggest that we make a compendium of what we have done and put up before the forthcoming UN climate summit meeting in September.” The summit on climate change will be hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York on September 23 for generating “political momentum on climate action” ahead of the December climate deal negotiation talks in Lima, Peru.
The ministers of the BASIC countries expressed disappointment over the continued lack of any clear roadmap for the provision of $ 100 billion per year by the developed countries by 2020. They urged the developed countries to honour their obligations to provide new, additional and predictable financial support to developing countries in a measurable, reportable and verifiable manner. They reiterated that public financial sources should be the mainstay of climate finance and that private finances could only be expected to play a supplementary role. India has long been insisting that the Global Climate Fund should also be used to procure intellectual property rights (IPRs) of high cost clean technology that can be given to poor nations free of cost.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeatedly made it clear that climate change is “a subject close to his heart”. The renaming of the environment ministry to include “climate change” (the ministry of environment, forest and climate change) is a clear acknowledgement of the new government’s commitment to addressing this issue. Since he was elected from Banaras, he has promised to clean up the River Ganges for which budget allocation has been made. Also, there is a proposal to link the rivers in northern India to form a grid to prevent floods. This move implies that Modi sees climate change as an issue that is as much domestic as it is international in nature. India needs to deal with several implications of climate change on its soil, while playing a constructive role in international climate change negotiations.
Before elections, the slogan ‘Generate more, use rationally, waste less’, mentioned in the BJP’s election manifesto, signalled the government’s attitude towards energy generation for advancing development while underscoring the need for energy efficiency. It is to be hoped that the newly elected government in India will intensify its efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation, relying more on wind energy and nuclear power plants, and also adopt technologies that produce lesser emissions, in order to meet their commitments by 2020. That would not only save India but the entire South Asian landmass from the threat of climate change.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at [email protected]