Climate Change in India: food for thought

In India, that usually holds buffer stocks of food supplies for the last two decades, after intermittent periods of shortages of food items and importing food items to meet the shortfalls before, has become self-reliant by implementing aggressive agricultural policies and modern agricultural methods. But the worst droughts that hit India in 2009, and followed by unexpected rains after the usual monsoon periods, which the climatologists claim is due to severe climate changes due to global warming, have brought down food production drastically.

Prices of food items in India have gone up by 19 per cent from the prices a year ago, as per government sources and other economic indexes, stung by supply crunch in staple items following one of the worst droughts in the last 40 years. The wholesale price index-based inflation figure has jumped 19.05 per cent for the week ended November 28 from the figures a year ago. The real implication is that the retail prices at which the households purchase food items tend to be much higher, adding the middlemen’s profits, retailers’ profits and other incidentals till the food stocks reach from the wholesaler to the retailers. Add to this the artificial shortages and subsequent price hikes due to hoarding and black marketing by unscrupulous traders at various levels, extending up to the retailers at the times of shortages, a usual practice to cash in on the common man’s woes.

Significantly, prices of staples such as potatoes have more than doubled from the prices a year ago, while the prices of pulses have gone up over 42 per cent hitting hundreds of millions of people. The rise in price of potatoes has gone up over 102 per cent, vegetables 31 per cent, onions 23 per cent, cereals 12.8 per cent, wheat 12.6 percent, fruits 12.5 per cent, and milk by 12 per cent. Against a demand of 18 million tons of pulses, the production was only 14.8 million tons. Against a demand of 23 million tons, the production of sugar was only 16 million tons. And the story is no better in the case of most other key items of food items from the agricultural sector.

As a knee-jerk reaction to the increase in prices, the government may be forced to import food supplies such as pulses and sugar to control prices. A natural fallout of the fluctuations in the food items market is that it has a tendency to pull down the prices of manufactured products because wages and input prices go up and excessive spending to pay for food at very high prices make little money left with consumers of low and middle income households to buy manufactured items. It will have a long-term effect in the cases of industrial sector, especially automobiles and most consumer durables that have registered exceptional growth in 2009, despite the global recession.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which is the central bank of India studying statistical trends and suggesting regulatory measures for the central government, has forecast that by the end of the year the inflation will accelerate to 6.5 percent by the end of the fiscal year in March 2010.

India has been experiencing unusual climate conditions for the past several years, especially either very low precipitations in the months of the sowing of crops and sometimes by floods or unwelcome rainfalls at the time of harvesting. The result is a two-fold loss to the farmers; crops cannot be planted due to very dry climates and whatever is planted cannot grow healthy due to adverse climate and whatever crops are ready are destroyed by untimely rains and floods.

Farmers who suffer heavy losses depend on the weather gods for their farming, as most of them depend on natural conditions, with a very small percentage depending on irrigation from dams and other organized irrigation systems. In addition, the ever-worsening groundwater depletion over the years has made tube well irrigation too inefficient. The drying up of rivers in the Gangetic plains, which were perennially fed by the Himalayan glaciers are a cause of big concern as the glaciers have receded several kilometers away from the sources of the rivers that traditionally used to irrigate the northern plains that used to be the major food-producing region of India.

Hope for the best from Copenhagen

The climate change summit at Copenhagen, COP15, on December 7, 2009, is the biggest meeting of global leaders after the last meeting at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 1992 where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global policy guidelines on climate change was adopted.

About 100 leaders of from 192 nations and about 1500 delegates will deliberate at Copenhagen on how to tackle the climate change issues. On December 18, the last day of the conference, the summit is expected to announce an agreement, possibly, to reduce carbon emissions by 25-40 per cent relative to 1990 levels and scaling up to 80 per cent cuts by 2050. With this, the summit seeks to ensure that the global temperatures do not rise more than two degrees Celsius by 2050.

The Danish government’s proposal to replace the Kyoto protocol that expires in 2012 with a new protocol found acceptance from the US, Europe and Australia. India and China are of the view that they agree to the proposals, provided no mandatory emission cuts are imposed on developing countries, no mandatory peaking years for emissions are prescribed, and clear financial commitments are made by rich countries for the developing world to change to clean technologies.

Though USA, India and China were reluctant to announce any commitments initially, the United States has announced to cut emissions by 17 percent, China by 40-45 percent and India by 20-25 per on their 2005 levels by 2020. Europe has announced 20-30 per cent reduction on 1990 levels by 2020. Brazil announced a cut of its carbon emissions by 36-38 per cent of the projected levels by 2020. Japan would be reducing carbon emissions by 15-20 per cent on 1990 levels and Indonesia has announced a reduction of 26 per cent by reducing deforestation by 2020. South Africa too will be making reductions, it is reported, possibly, if financial support is made available.

As a financial support for the developing countries, the US committed to provide US$10 billion every year to fight climate change after 2012, while European Union promised US$100 billion every year.

According to UNFCCC Executive Secretary and the chief negotiator of the UN on climate change Yvo De Boer, who has been lobbying with the world leaders for a couple of years to arrive at a pragmatic consensus, the possibility of an agreement has emerged brighter. Rich countries should reduce emissions, developing countries should limit the growth of emissions, developing countries should be helped to fight climate change and funds must be made available for climate mitigation and adaptation.

As per reports, a petition signed by 10 million signatories calling for a fair, ambitious and binding action at Copenhagen would be delivered to the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo De Boer on Monday. There are reports of demonstrations by climate change activists in London, and other cities of UK and Europe. There will be demonstrations by activists in Copenhagen and other places worldwide on December 12, 2009 to draw attention to the urgent need for cutting carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases.

Negotiations at different levels of governments and participating delegates and hard bargaining are expected in the coming days before the summit comes to a final decision on climate change on December 18, the last day of the conference. The figures and commitments as mentioned above may change by then, hopefully for the better, and more countries may be committing to positive measures to reduce emissions. Let us hope, the world leaders come to a more realistic understanding of the enormous threats climate change, melting glaciers, rising temperatures and sea levels pose to human existence, and they take more effective measures before it is too late.

Copenhagen Summit: Will it be a turning point in carbon reductions?

As a result of intense lobbying around the world with leaders of nations including the political and government leaders of major countries emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, industry leaders, scientists and others, it is reported, the UN's chief climate negotiator Yvo de Boer and UN’s IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri are hopeful that some landmark commitments will be made at the Copenhagen Summit on climate change. We can have some hopes, as they say, because the United States, China and India have announced their readiness to cut emissions, though initially they were reluctant for any commitment. The latest to join in for a committed reduction in greenhouse gases is South Africa, making its first quantifiable target on emissions.

Earlier, USA was the topmost emitter of greenhouse gases that has come down to the second position as the Peoples Republic of China is now on top of the table, but the US still continues on top of a list as the top per capita carbon emitter. Russia is third on the list followed by India, as the fourth largest carbon emitter. The newly emerging fast growing economies like India and China depend largely on coal and fossil fuels for all their energy needs including electricity, clean sources like nuclear power stations, hydro-electric projects, wind energy, solar energy and other clean technologies accounting for a very minor percentage of their total energy production. The worst emitters are their coal-fired thermal power plants that depend on low-grade coal that emits more harmful gases, soot and suspended particles. Many of these power plants are very old and rely on old technologies that produce less energy and more pollutants. If this is the case with China and India which are economically well of compared to other developing countries, the lesser developed countries are still far worse technologically and they together emit the major bulk of the harmful emissions.

Practical, technological and financial constraints make it difficult for developing countries to reduce carbon emissions unless they want to shut down their power plants, factories, and stop running their transport systems including automobiles which are all depending on technologies and machinery that are many decades old when no one seriously talked about greenhouse gases or climate change. If they shut down such sources of gas emissions, their entire populations will suffer economically and in many other ways. In fact these countries started development projects in the last few decades, and their total emissions of harmful pollutants may work out to less than 10 percent of the total atmospheric greenhouse gases, because, most countries including European countries and USA were burning fossil fuels right from the times of the industrial revolution, adding most of the atmospheric pollutants present in the atmosphere now.

Everyone talking about climate change knows this, they also know that it is difficult to reduce emissions immediately and if immediate action is not taken the world will become incapable of sustaining life in the next few decades. Even the deadlines they talk about and the target they fix like for 2020 and 2050 will be too late as already many countries are suffering from severe droughts, floods, untimely rainy seasons, hurricanes and typhoons, and rising sea levels.

Even in the Copenhagen summit, not much is going to happen, as no country is ready to commit to legally binding agreements. Though UN's Yvo de Boer told reporters on the eve of the summit that offers of finance for clean technology for poor countries were also coming through and talks were progressing on a long term vision of massive carbon cuts by 2050, it may be clearly understood that no country has made any firm and binding commitment to help poor countries, excepting the promise by USA to provide US$10 billion and the European Union US$100 billion, every year after 2012. Considering the enormity of the work to be done and the cost of building new projects, this offer of financial help, to be spread over all developing countries in the world, is not even enough to construct one plant each in each country. Only talks are going on and 2050 is when nobody will be around to talk any climate change or offer help to anyone because, global warming does not wait for anyone and it is accelerating right at this moment, and worsening day by day.

The main points the Copenhagen summit will discuss include targets to control greenhouse gas emissions particularly by developed countries, financial support for adapting measures to reduce emissions by developing countries and a ‘carbon trading scheme aimed at ending the destruction of the world's forests by 2030’, as the UN representatives and other organizers of the summit point out.

Delegates from 192 countries are meeting in Copenhagen, with some 100 world leaders and 15,000 delegates taking part in the discussions. The leaders who promised to attend include US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and the head of the UN's panel of climate experts Rajendra Pachauri will be addressing the opening session.

In a survey by Globescan, 64% of people surveyed were of the opinion that global warming a very serious problem, up by 20% from a decade ago. It is a positive indication that more people are concerned now. Also, there are reports that 56 newspapers in 45 countries will be publishing in 20 languages a jointly written same editorial on Monday warning that climate change will ‘ravage our planet’ unless action is agreed upon at Copenhagen. "At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world," the editorial says. Also, many thousands of environmental activists marched in London, and other cities of UK and European countries on Saturday and protests are planned in Copenhagen, and around the world, on 12 December to encourage delegates to reach the strongest possible deal for cutting emissions. These underline the importance of agreements will be made at Copenhagen because it will replace the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 on climate change as the targets set at Kyoto will be running out in 2012.

The fast rate at which the glaciers in Antarctica, the north pole and nearby areas, like Iceland and Greenland, and the Himalayan glaciers melt, as many recent surveys and researches conclude, will submerge many small island countries and even big cities on seashores. The indications are already there in many places as flooding at the time of high tides and receding coastlines in countries like India, for example, many villages in coastal Orissa have vanished under the advancing sea.

H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, originally uploaded by Don ibero.

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Makhtoum at Global Agenda 2009

Summit on the Global Agenda, originally uploaded by World Economic Forum.

DUBAI, 20 Nov 2009: H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Makhtoum, VP and Prime Minister of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai (in white dress) attends the opening plenary session at the World Economic Forum's Summit on the Global Agenda 2009, held in Dubai from 20 to 22 November 2009.

Copyright: (cc-by-sa) © World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org), photo by Sandeep Naik, uploaded by World Economic Forum on 20 Nov 09, 6.20AM PST.