India a new hub for climate change research

India has emerged as a hub for climate change research in Asia with UK emerging as a key partner.

While the Chief Scientific Advisor to UK David King has been on a lecture tour of India exhorting scientists to move fast on climate change, the government on its part is moving fast.

It is all set to announce the first research institute for climate change to be set up in the Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology in Pune.

The proposal, which awaits Cabinet approval, is expected to boost studies into climate predictions and impacts.

This apart, the UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKERI) formed in 2005 is backing joint research activities with top institutions in the country, while the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), another arm of the British High Commission, is engaging in research with the ministry of environment and forests.

This week the UKERI launched its first ever climate change projects worth Pounds 1.5 million which are expected to help take forward work being done in IIT Delhi, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology Pune on climate predictions and also impacts of climate change.

Prakash Rao researcher on climate change for World Wildlife Fund attributes the rush of interest in India to the presence of a good number of credible research institutes in India.

The fact that R K Pachauri, an Indian, heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2001 may also have added to the attraction to India, he said.

According to Matthew Coyne, who works in the climate change impacts and adaptation division of DEFRA, India's large rural population and dependence of economy on climate makes it very vulnerable unlike a country like Mexico.

The DEFRA project with MoEF is yet to identify a research institute in India and the bidding process is to start now, Coyne added. However some green groups in India look at this rush for climate change research in India as a ruse to promote technologies like genetic engineering.

Devinder Sharma of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security in New Delhi says the hype over climate change veils industrial designs to push technologies over unsuspecting people. It can be compared with the hype over HIV/AIDS.

Everyone wants to project the picture of an agriculture sector which is about to collapse. That will open windows for genetically modified crops, he said.

Coyne agrees with this concern and says that his own project would look at the direct effect of heat on agriculture and at options for adaptation which will include genetically modified crops too.

Climate change adaptation projects are also being funded by USAID and UNDP whose latest human development report is on the theme of climate change.

TERI, the NGO headed by R K Pachauri the chairman of the IPCC, is involved in most of the research projects backed by UK, the most key one being the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation funded by DFID and Natural Environment Research Council of UK .

NERC head Alan Thorpe said that the project funded by DFID will cover China, Brazil and Africa too and involves a funds of 30 million pounds altogether. The project has TERI as the main partner along with the IIT Delhi and University of Liverpool and is looking at strategies to cope with climate change.

Thorpe agrees that research will open windows to business which will lead to greener processes like carbon trade. He, however, denies that his project will have anything to do with GM crops. K Srinivas climate campaigner in Greenpeace says that all research on heat resistant crop need not be genetically engineered variety.

But there is definitely opportunity for industry of all type. And if GM crops are promoted in the guise of climate change, that will be a problem for us and we will oppose it.