Ask Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to act now on climate change

 

The Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change is mandated to develop a National Climate Action Plan (NCAP) to understand the issue, and map out what India needs to do. Whether this Council will be able to deal with this vital task, however, is not clear at the time of writing because little is known about the Plan. The Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology are all working on a version of the NCAP. The budget proposal of the Finance Ministry to create an ‘institutionalised response’ to climate change is still pending and there is little coordination between various bodies. There has been no open discussion or debate to devise a strategy that will be truly beneficial to the poorest of India’s poor. So what will be India’s position before the world community? Will it continue to refuse to take hard decisions saying it is entitled to economic progress? Or will it realise that in the larger canvas, though the U.S. and industrial North are largely responsible for global warming, it is countries such as India that will be the primary victims? Or will it show global leadership by doing the right things by the country and the planet?

If we do not take timely action, climate change will eventually result in falling crop yields, a significant decrease in water supplies, damage from rising seas, destruction of coral reefs, storms, forest fires, floods and heat waves. Our financial interests would be far better served if we were to move away from our carbon dependence by investing in efficiency, alternate energy, organic agriculture and ecosystem protection and conservation.

Write to the Prime Minister asking for sensible climate change action. Suggest that he include the following on India’s agenda:

1. India should intervene aggressively in the global debate on the developmental response to climate change. Currently, India’s per capita carbon footprint is extremely low compared to the industrial West. The government must leverage this advantage to negotiate substantially lower global per capita greenhouse gas emissions, instead of sticking to the stand that India’s per capita carbon emissions will be pegged “lower than the global average.”
   
2. India must immediately clamp down on deforestation and the degradation of natural ecosystems, which alone account for
   21 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions. Forests, wetlands, coasts, estuaries and grasslands help moderate climate and sequester and store carbon. The government should negotiate with industrial nations to set aside and then transfer to us global funds for carbon that we are able to sequester through assisted natural regeneration of forests. We must also ask to be paid to store carbon in Protected Areas such as sanctuaries, national parks and reserved forests, which will be degraded if there is no incentive to keep them the way they are. This money should go to the communities living around forests to give them an incentive to protect wildernesses.
   
3. The government must strongly encourage investment in energy efficiency to squeeze more power from existing plants. Investments in improved generation and distribution, clean technologies and pollution control must be encouraged. We should complete
   half-finished power projects, retrofit turbines, re-line leaking canals and restore health to catchments so that they feed more water into existing dam reservoirs.
   
4. The government should start the shift away from carbon dependence by investing significantly in alternate energy options such as wind, solar and tidal power, and by tweaking national policies – fiscal, regulatory, environmental – to create powerful incentives for industry to join the fight against climate change. These offer greater and almost instant returns, as against a waiting period of over a decade for nuclear or large hydro-power projects.
   
5. The government must initiate large-scale sophisticated scientific projects that can enable us to assess the real impact of climate change. Such data will immeasurably
   help determine the potential extent and intensity of the threat and thus, help evolve
   region-specific solutions. The government must direct the vast pool of our scientists to provide decision-makers with realistic options based on hard climate data, models and projections based on good science.
   
6. The government should not keep the reality of climate change a secret from the people. The Prime Minister must go public to address the nation on the climate risks we face. 
   
7. The government should immediately withdraw from high-risk projects such as large dams in the Himalaya and the Northeast, which are touted as solutions to our energy problems, but are themselves going to be the first victims of climate change.
   
8. Lastly, the government should shun the developmental policies based on ‘old economics’. GDP growth ‘for the sake of growth’ cannot guarantee food, water, health, economic or ecological security.  Its ‘New Economics’ must take into account the value of ecosystem services such as the supply of water from forests and their role in soil conservation, flood and drought control, soil fertility and protection from sea surges and cyclones.