Nitin Desai: Climate concerns

Government and industry must recognise that some form of carbon rationing through prices or quotas is inevitable.

Climate concerns are very much in the news these days, what with the recent reports from the UN Panel and the Stern Report. The difficulty is that this flurry of activity has not yet had the effect that one wants in terms of public concern or governmental action. Even in Britain, where the Government and media have been quite vocal, a recent survey showed that a third of the people had not heard of the problem and of those who had, half thought it was a natural process and only a tenth felt that it required some change in their behaviour.

Numbers like the likely temperature rise of 3 degrees centigrade or sea-level increases measured in centimetres mean little to the lay public. Reports of glaciers retreating and permafrost becoming soft leave us unmoved. Projections of species or bio-diversity loss in the long term seem rather far away. We do respond to extreme weather events (heat waves, storms, floods and droughts) which are expected to increase. In fact the ten years from 1997 to 2006, 1990 and 1995 have been the 12 warmest years since 1850.

There is a very human tendency in such cases to wish away such dire prognostications and even to question the underlying science. But the science is now quite firm and reflects an "everybody other than the nut cases" consensus.

Part of the problem is the vagueness of the term climate change. At first the term used was global warming. At a 1988 meeting in the cold of Canada, where warming seemed a good idea, the term climate change was introduced. But climate change is too neutral a term. People need to be told how it will affect them in their country and why they need to worry about it now rather than at some later time.

For India the impact of climate change on the hydrological cycle is perhaps the greatest concern. Himalayan glaciers, which hold back water and release it gradually, are already retreating because of warming. This will increase the high flow in spring and early summer and reduce the dry season flow to a level that could be just 30-50 per cent of present levels in the Ganga system. Drought and flood intensity will increase and the overall run-off will decline.

Crop yields in South Asia will be affected by changes in the hydrological cycle in rivers, by precipitation changes, and by the impact of higher CO2 on yields. In the long run they are expected to be lower by 30 per cent.

Another area of great concern for India is the impact in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, which is listed by the UN Panel as one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change because of high exposure to sea-level rise, storm surge and river flooding. Estimates of the number of people who will be displaced in Bangladesh run into tens of million. These potential environmental refugees will inevitably spill over into Eastern India.

A further concern relates to health. With higher temperatures more areas will become malaria-prone and the incidence of some other vector-borne diseases will also increase. Higher temperatures will also affect pest infestations in agriculture.

All of these changes are predicted on the basis of scenarios that assume some significant containment of GHG emissions. If we continue with business as usual the consequences could be even more drastic. Yet we are building water-resource projects, ports and urban settlements in coastal areas on the basis of historical data on water flows, storm surges and so on.

The IPCC suggests that there are cost-effective ways of mitigating the threat provided we start now. But we need global agreements to do this.

That is where the rub lies. The problem is global and requires cooperative action by all governments. Though we agree on the scale of the problem, we have no agreed criteria of fairness for allocating the burden of adjustment. India, China and the other developing countries argue that the problem has been created by the emissions from the industrial countries, which must bear the burden of reducing carbon emissions and assisting developing countries with money and technology to adapt to the impacts that are unavoidable and to contain the growth in their GHG emissions. Europe has bought this argument and accepted some obligations under the Kyoto protocol. But the US, the largest emitter, has not and argues that much of the future growth will be in developing countries and the larger ones like India and China must accept some obligation also.

How do we find common ground here? One promising idea is to propose a convergence to a uniform per capita emission level, set so as to be consistent with an acceptable level of ambient GHGs. The negotiations then would be about the time frame for reaching this. Each country would then work out its own programme for attaining this level in the agreed time frame.

But we all need to start now. If we agree to live with a 3 degree temperature rise, the peak in global carbon dioxide emissions will have to come sometime in the next twenty years. That is why the world needs to negotiate now rather than leaving it for later. The costs of mitigation will rise with delay in action.

The implicit carbon cost according to the IPCC is in the range $20-80 per tonne of CO2 equivalent for the 3 degree rise scenario. This future price of carbon must be factored into current decisions if we are not to make choices which we will later regret. But the quotas could also be an opportunity as developed countries seek to buy carbon credits from developing countries, a business which has already started. In fact mitigating measures like greater energy efficiency and a shift away from high carbon fuels may have collateral benefits for our health and perhaps even for growth.

Europe has already made climate change its major policy priority and even in George Bush's administration the threats posed by climate change are being projected as a major security concern. In India Government and industry have to recognise that we will be living in a world where some form of carbon rationing through prices or quotas is inevitable. We must be proactive rather than reactive as the global dialogue on this progresses.