Comment

Environment and Climate Change

The right to life is being denied to Indians without due process of law. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are rising and are now over 400 parts per million, having been below 280 parts per million at the beginning of the industrial revolution. This is the highest level for nearly one million years.

Climate change is now in a run away condition and could mean temperature rises of 6 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Every 50 lakh crore increase in GDP adds between a half and one part per million of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The energy plan in the Approach to the 12th Plan and the guestimates on so-called demand profiles for fossil fuel energy in the Integrated Energy Policy as well as the economic development path proposed in the Interim Report of the Expert Group on Low Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth suggest that India will contribute 10 to 20 parts per million of carbon di-oxide to the atmosphere by 2030. Ironically, Qatar being a major gas producing nation was the host of Doha Climate Talks. Qatar has the highest per capita carbon footprint in the world, and offers all its citizens free energy. Just about the time of Doha conference, 'Typhoon Bopha' swept across the island of Mindanao (the Philippines) with wind gusts of 130 mph, toppling trees, blowing away houses, and cutting of power supply entirely in two provinces. 200,000 had been made homeless. Some climate negotiatiors at Doha, including those from the Philippines, reportedly attributed the typhoons to climate change.

In reality, Indians, who are already one of the most vulnerable people to climate change on earth, may see the monsoon become intermittent, or it may even stop all together according to some reports. Indians are already suffering droughts, floods, extreme weather patterns and soil erosion due to land use changes caused directly and indirectly by the use of fossil fuels. This cannot go on. What is needed is an immediate new direction for India and a set of urgently implemented new policies of decentralisation, localisation and sustainability in line with the precautionary principle. India must now begin to plan on the basis not of economic growth and global competitiveness, but on the basis of reducing the vulnerability of Indians to man-made catastrophes via the atmosphere. If anything, fossil fuel use must only be used to the extent that their emissions of greenhouse gases can be sequestered by existing forests. Today only 6% of the carbon is absorbed by forests. This needs be 110% by 2020. The work to increase the sequestration capacity of forests is also work that suits the training and skills of the majority of Indians, who do agricultural work, engage in sustainable forestry and use and maintain grassland and water bodies.

Indian imports 90% of its petroleum products and is negotiating for uranium imports from Australia and these imports are paid for by the exploitation of women and girls in rural areas - India is now the largest exporter of rice in the world—and the rice is produced by people who themselves do not have enough to eat.

Some NGOs rightly want a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the issues of standards, duties and enforcement for reducing vulnerability to climate change: only two forms of money in the country are needed: one: the universal wage for all adults over 16; and two, loans for companies wishing to exploit fossil fuels (uranium to be outlawed all together), which must be restricted in quantity to within a level set by permits to extract such fuels.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 26, Jan 6-12, 2013

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