Fishing in troubled waters

New Delhi: India’s Minister of State for Environment and Forest Jairam Ramesh’s announcement in Parliament on December 3 that the country intended to cut its carbon emission intensity by 20-25% by 2020 over 2005 levels has stirred up a hornet’s nest amongst opposition parties and environmentalists alike.

Came as it did not so long after China had announced its intention to cut carbon intensity by 40-45% over the same period, it was but expected that India would feel the heat about following the suit.

The press release issued by the White House on December 4 further fuelled the speculation of the perceived US pressure. The statement read: “China and India have for the first time set targets to reduce their carbon intensity.”

While the opposition parties are baying for his blood – accusing the government to have succumbed to pressures of the United States, calling it a significant departure from the country’s traditional position [as if it was flawless] on the issue of climate change – the environmental groups and activists feel that “it will be used by rich nations to change the terms of the global climate agreement.”

“India will not accept a legally binding emission reduction cut…[we] will not accept under any circumstances an agreement which stipulates a peaking year for India,” said the minister underlining the points which were non-negotiable for the country at Copenhagen.

Fear is being expressed that in Copenhagen, the industrialised countries will try to hide behind these individual country targets [US, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa have announced emission cuts in past few weeks] to refrain from going for any agreement that calls for “globally agreed legally binding targets”.

Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment, who is also the member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Climate Change, said: “This will be disastrous for the world’s climate change efforts to cut emissions. It will be disastrous for us, as global emissions will rise and put millions of Indians at risk.”

Too little too late

Nagraj Adve of Delhi Platform, a Delhi-based organisation that works on issues of climate change, describes this cut by India “as too little too late”. He, however, maintained that the real problem lied with unsustainable economic development and inequitable growth based on an economy dependent on the use of fossil-fuels and extractive industries.

India needs to adopt and push for equity internally on a per capita emissions basis, the same principle it is arguing for in international negotiations, he argues.

There are many like him who feel that India’s policy on climate change is fraught with serious problems that reflect not just the lack of vision but outright attempt to protect the interests of Indian industry and multinational companies.

All this it does, of course, riding on the back of the poor! It argues that to remove poverty it needs growth. Truth is that ever since India has embarked on its neoliberal policies, the income gaps have only worsened.

Agricultural sector is in a shambles. The sheer number of suicides by farmers in last one decade or so tells the gory tale of the tough time our bread givers are undergoing. A study last year had put the figure of 182,936 suicides by farmers in the country since 1997.

Report after reports have shown that levels of poverty in India are shamelessly high. The most striking of them all was the Arjun Sen Gupta report of 2007 that estimated that a whopping 836 million Indians were living on Rs 20 a day (less than half a dollar).

In his speech in Lok Sabha, Jairam Ramesh was unequivocal in admitting insofar as India’s vulnerability to climate change was concerned. “[T]he most vulnerable country in the world to climate change is India – not Maldives, not Bangladesh, and not America…”

Mapping India

He then went on to describe how erratic monsoons were already affecting the livelihoods of every two out of three Indians; how glaciers were receding; how the climate impact in Western Ghats would determine the future of not just Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Kerala but “indeed of the entire country”; how the forest cover of the northeast [that has 25% of the total forest cover in the country] would get affected; and, of course, the Andamans and the Lakshadweep islands.

Thus we see he has mapped the entire India. It was curious to note that he mentioned the need for producing more coal, more iron-ore, more bauxite and for that he was willing to “give up” more forests.

A recent report of the Ministry of Rural Development has warned the manner in which government and the companies like Tata and Essar are taking over lands is going to go down the history as “the biggest grab of tribal lands after Columbus.”

The report also notes that the first financiers of now much-maligned Salwa Judum, a private militia in Chattisgarh, raised to counter the Maoists, were Tata and Essar.

We also know that the government of India has launched a war against its own people in heartland India, where they are resisting attempts of land grab, displacement from forests, privatisation of water resources and attack on their sources of livelihood.

This is being done in the name of fighting Naxalites or the left wing extremists, although the resistance to neoliberal policies is coming from various quarters, many of whom do not believe in armed struggle and yet they are facing, and are going to face, the wrath of the state. This is not to suggest that even armed struggles need to be quelled by force.

Human rights groups assert that because of this collective resistance of the people, more than 100 secret Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs), signed by the state governments with plethora of Indian and multinational corporations in states such as Chattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand etc. – have fallen into abeyance.

They also blame the government for fighting a war with its own people at the instance of and to protect the interests of corporate groups.

It is strange that the democratically elected government is willing to sacrifice the interests of its people for few corporate groups – both national and foreign, who have shown scant regard either for the law of the land or the environment. The manner in which Vedanta is going about in destroying Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa is a case in point. And it is just one of many such instances.

Obfuscating issues

The speech of the minister, it appears, was also meant to obfuscate issues. There appears to be a deliberate attempt to confuse matters and hide behind insufficient scientific data and studies about the real impact of climate change in the country.

For instance, he talked about the receding of glaciers and yet remained unsure of its causes. It’s a different matter though that IPCC chairman Dr R.K. Pachauri had already lambasted the minister for not linking the melting of glaciers with global warming.

Adve argues that the government’s claim that it was spending up to 2.5% of GDP on adaptation is an “accounting sleight of hand”. He explains: “The latest budget documents reveal that much of the increase in expenditure for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is being accounted for as Adaptation Funds.”

“The crucial areas for adaptation such as mangrove conservation, wetlands conservation, protection of rivers and other groundwater recharging systems, afforestation, methods of cultivation such as the system of rice intensification and organic farming and the biodiversity conservation programme have received scant attention and meagre allocations.”

Millions want climate justice within

In a memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister, more than 200 organisations, representing millions of people, and individuals have urged the government to bring justice and equity to the centre-stage of both the international climate talks and, more importantly, domestic policy making.

Medha Patkar, representing the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and one of the signatories to the memorandum, said that it was a sad irony that the government was on a renewed push for big hydropower dams as a possible solution to mitigating climate change.

“The hundreds of hydropower dams being planned and constructed across the Himalayan and other ecosystems, the northeast region and elsewhere are ecologically disastrous, undermine the will of the local communities, and deny decentralised micro energy projects that would be more appropriate,” she added.

There is another area of concern. This is about India’s position of ‘compensated conservation’ as part of the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Adve argues that this will encourage and promote the privatisation and commodification of forests and their resources. It will limit the access of forest people to their primary source of life and livelihood, who are already facing massive forced displacement in the name of ‘development’.

With inputs from Subrata Kundu.