Hurricane Titanic

Climate change will have severe consequences for India and the world, but the flipside is we can decisively shift the global debate

Cleo Paskal Ontario

With the recent climate talks in Nairobi and the release of the UK government’s massive Stern Review on the economic impacts of climate change, global warming is front and centre on the international agenda. At least in the West. In countries like India and China, addressing the problem is lower down the priority ladder, in part because there are suspicions that some of the policies proposed are, at best, hypocritical, and, at worst, designed to unfairly hobble developing economies. It’s a complicated and potentially dangerous situation, made worse by a long history of problematic relations between the West and the developing world. Understanding the best way forward, from an Indian point of view, requires breaking the issue down into its component parts.

Does climate change exist? There is now no scientific doubt that the climate is changing. Globally, 20 of the 21 hottest years since 1860 were in the past 25 years. In 2005 alone, England, France, Spain and Portugal received less than half their normal rainfall. Severe drought in southern Brazil ravaged corn and soybean crops. A series of rainstorms in China killed 170 people and affected about 21 million more. The Atlantic hurricane season featured a record breaking 26 tropical storms, 14 of them hurricanes (the average is 10 named storms and six hurricanes).

Typhoon Nabi dumped an unprecedented 1,321 mm of rain on Japan, causing extensive damage. Tropical cyclone Ingrid achieved a first by being the only cyclone so far to reach intensity Category 5 off three different Australian states. In Canada, 2005 was the wettest year on record, and heavy flooding in southern Alberta proved to be the most expensive natural disaster in the province’s history. And in India, the monsoon dumped a record amount of rain in the west and south, killing over 1,800 people and affecting 20 million more. Mumbai alone was hit with 944 mm in a single day, the most on record.

Are these disasters man-made? The climate is constantly shifting and, historically, there have been large temperature shifts unrelated to human activity (the vast majority took place before there were humans); but, this time, it seems we are at least partially at fault. Dr RK Pachauri, from Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), in Delhi, is the chairman of a major UN study comprising thousands of scientific papers on climate change, coordinated by over 2,000 specialists from around the world. Pachauri has stated there is “new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities”.

According to the studies, the changes are the results of the build-up of greenhouse gases (that is, from car exhaust and industries) in the atmosphere. There is a clear link between the amount of greenhouse gases and the severity of climate shift. Says Pachauri, “The severity of the adverse impacts will be larger for greater cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases and changes in climate”.

Is climate change a problem for India? Climate change is predicted to have very severe consequences for the Indian economy and national security. According to one major study, between 1995 and 2004, India lost an average of $1.3 billion a year in weather-related events. And that doesn’t factor in the long-term costs to society—when drought or flooding pushes desperate families from the countryside to urban centres that are ill-equipped to welcome them.

There are already problems with environmental refugees coming in from Bangladesh, and disputes with both Pakistan and, increasingly, China, over water sharing. Hydro will become less reliable with unpredictable rainfall. And agriculture is being badly hit. The failure of the 2002 monsoon alone caused a shortfall of three per cent in India’s GDP. And, as the rest of the planet suffers similar disruptions, it is going to get more expensive for India to import to make up for shortfalls in agricultural output.

What is being done internationally to lower emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change? The two main and inter-related international initiatives are the Kyoto Protocol, essentially a pledge on the part of signatory countries to lower their emissions and the setting up of a way to buy and sell the right to produce emissions.

So, for example, at the end of the Soviet era, the USSR and its hugely polluting industries were producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases. Baselines are taken from around that period, so now that much of their industrial base has collapsed, their emissions have gone down and they can sell their surplus to countries that haven’t met their targets. This injects a profit motive into the debate, making it easier for the international financial community to get their head (and heart) around finding a solution.

The only two developed countries not to sign on are the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases—the US, and the world’s largest per capita producer of greenhouses gases, Australia. They cite two reasons: it would damage their economies, and countries like India and China don’t have to meet similar targets under the current protocol. Let’s look at those objections — one at a time.

Yes, adjusting to a lower-emission economy would cost the US, but, according to the Stern Report and other studies, that cost would be significantly smaller than the immediate cost of climate change-related damage, let alone future costs (and the longer we wait the more it will cost). On an average, the US has lost over $20 billion a year to weather damage from 1995 to 2004 and that doesn’t include the massive infrastructure destruction caused in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.

Cutting at least a little wouldn’t be hard. The US is an incredibly energy inefficient nation. Aside from hummers, poor public transport, office buildings that leave the lights on all night, people who leave the tap on as they brush their teeth, etc., the US agriculture industry is heavily dependent on nitrogen fertiliser, oil-based pesticides, refrigeration, large-scale transportation systems, etc. Without the cost of transportation, it takes the equivalent of 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of food. There is a lot of fat in their system and the system needs trimming.

The second objection is that India and China don’t have the same sort of emission limiters (and China is on track to overtake the US as the largest emitter in the next few years). Obviously, from the perspective of India, this is a bit like the captain of the Titanic stepping off from the sinking ship onto his well-stocked private yacht, while the boys, who had been working hard in the engine room, are left with scanty provisions in a dinghy. And the Africans are left in the water, without a lifejacket.

There are clearly a lot of problems with this stand. But the fact is, even if the US and Australia are using it as an excuse to keep business as usual, a cumulative increase in emissions is going to hurt India. So something has to be done.

What can India do? One option is an international system, in which countries get allocated emissions on a per capita basis. If done properly, calculations would include realities like the fact that raising cattle produces lot of emissions, so a country with a high proportion of vegetarians has an advantage. One drawback to this plan is that one very effective way to cut emission over the long term is population reduction. Had China not instituted its one-child policy, there would have been around 300 million more Chinese now, with all the attendant emissions.

So, again, perhaps baselines could be instituted and quotas could be developed from there, making sure not to punish nations in which the people decide to favour family planning. Another option is that China, India and others can decide to put their own carbon tax on imports from non-signatories, like Australia, reflecting their true economic cost. And, always a motivator, there is potentially a lot of money to be made in alternative energy research and development.

Given the fact that fossil fuels are a limited resource, we will have to switch to something else eventually, and the ones that come up with the alternatives now will have an advantage. There are a lot of good ideas out there, and a centralised research facility that works with scientists, policy makers, urban planners and others to figure out which ideas are right for India would go a long way towards helping India take control of the runaway train, that is climate change. It just takes political will and leadership.

Could nuclear power solve the problem? The West—the US and Australia in particular— is using climate change as a way to justify the massive reintroduction of nuclear power, which is considered ‘clean energy’ (in spite of the fact that it results in radioactive waste, which takes thousands of years to become safe). While there may be legitimate national security reasons to have some nuclear power plants, they are, by and large, an extremely bad deal. They are disproportionately expensive for the power they produce. They are also exceedingly vulnerable, and if something goes wrong, it will really go wrong.

Just because some countries are playing games doesn’t mean that India shouldn’t get on with saving itself. Currently, the debate over an international regime is being held up by the US, Australia and, under its new government, Canada. Internationally, India could take the lead in devising new, more equitable, international models that, if backed by action by countries like China or NAM partners, could reshape the debate. This is a chance to show global leadership on one of the most critical issues facing the world today. And tomorrow.

The writer is Associate Fellow, Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The views expressed here are hers alone