Global warming again

Reports on the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content having ascended to a record high, after increasing at an accelerated pace in the past year, should make everyone (and not just environmentalists) sit up and take notice.

For, this is only one indication of unabated environmental degradation. Global temperatures are estimated to have risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius in the 20th century. The year 2003 was the warmest in over a century.

As a result, the frequency of droughts and floods has increased the world over. Many areas, notably in Europe, are now menaced with unprecedented heat waves and even calamities like floods. Several African countries have been experiencing unusually prolonged rainless spells.

India, too, has faced several such calamities, including two severe droughts close to each other in 2000 and 2002. The present spell of an abnormally warm March in the northern states may also be linked to this phenomenon.

This is not an environmental issue alone and should not be treated as such. There are far-reaching economic implications, making the problem's resolution all the more difficult. The available environment-friendly technologies are inherently costly and someone has to bear the cost of cleaning the environment.

Unfortunately, the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which seeks to address this issue through targeted reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, linking it with economic consequences, is still in limbo for want of ratification by Russia.

The only silver lining is that many of the major environment polluting countries, including the US, Europe and others, now seem keen to act. Even some developing and transition economies like India, though not obliged to cut emissions under the Kyoto protocol, are doing their bit to move towards cleaner technologies.

What is urgently needed is to give a push to the economy-linked clean development mechanism (CDM), as envisaged in the Kyoto accord. This will involve the creation of a global market where carbon dioxide and its carbon equivalents (greenhouse gases like methane) can be traded by companies and countries.

Those factories, power houses or even countries who are unable to cut their own emissions to the required extent right away can buy reduction points from others, encouraging in the process the deployment of clean technology in the developing countries. Such trading has begun in the US and Europe and is bound to expand after overcoming teething troubles.

This, therefore, is a big economic opportunity for countries like India to gainfully exploit. A glimpse of its potential was on display in New Delhi when the climate technology bazaar, organised jointly by several national and international bodies last November, resulted in CDM deals worth $ 325 million.

Indeed, the total annual global market for carbon trading is expected to grow to a whopping $ 2 trillion in about a decade. Thus, there is a clear need to find a way for enforcing the Kyoto protocol, regardless of the Russian ratification issue.