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An ice cream a day
By Murli Manohar Joshi
The formalisation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1995 was the beginning of the negotiation process for managing climate change. The Conference of Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC is the highest body which negotiates climate related issues and commitments of nations to deal with them.
New Delhi will be host to the COP-8 where leaders and interest groups from all over the world will descend to present their views and try to steer the course of negotiations towards their perceived notions.
The agenda for all the COPs was set long ago when we adopted the path of rapacious exploitation of nature to satisfy human greed and followed an unsustainable techno-economic dream. The models of techno-economic growth thrown up by the fragmented approach to science and technology ignored the unbroken wholeness between man and the eco-system, the eco-system and planet earth, and earth and the universe.
The disturbing manifestation of the fact that our present models of techno-economic growth are creating an imbalance in the relationship between man and his eco-system is in the phenomenon of climate-change. The findings of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that the earth's climate-system had changed on both global and regional scales since the pre-industrial era. Some of these changes are attributable to human influence.
Emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols due to human activity continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate. An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other adverse changes. It has been concluded that most of this is perhaps due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. The globally averaged surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.80 Celsius over the next 200 years - about two to 10 times higher than the central value of observed warming during the last 100 years.
The adverse effects of these changes are numerous. There is evidence to show that recent regional climate changes, particularly temperature rise, have affected physical and biological systems in many parts of the world. These include the shrinking of glaciers, thawing of permafrost, late freezing and early break-up of ice on rivers and lakes, lengthening of mid-to-high latitude climate season, decline of some plant and animal populations, earlier flowering of trees and emergence of insects. Many natural systems, especially glaciers, coral reefs, mangroves, tropical forests, polar and alpine eco-systems, wetlands and native grasslands are at great risk.
A sharp decrease in agricultural productivity will diminish food security, lower incomes of a vulnerable population and increase the number of starving people. Sea level rise and an increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones would displace tens of millions of people in low-lying coastal areas of temperate and tropical Asia, while significant extinction of plant and animal species is projected for Africa which will impact on rural livelihoods, tourism and genetic resources.
The IPCC report has concluded that the projected climate changes can lead to irreversible changes in the earth systems. These dramatically illustrate the consequences of human actions on nature and the socio-economic environment and the urgency of acting before it is too late.
The recent world summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg has called for a plan of action by which the population living below the poverty line - on $ 1 per day - will be reduced to half by 2015, particularly sections having no access to sanitation and potable drinking water. The conference has underlined the need for additional funds to be provided by the developed countries. While the developing countries have not cared to even contribute the internationally agreed share of 0.7 per cent of their GDPs, the conference merely requested them to make efforts towards the target. This was a flagrant violation of the Monterrey accord.
One of the astonishing features of the Johannesburg summit was the absence of the word 'environment'. Most of the time was spent in discussing poverty, hunger, sanitation, drought and floods. The attitude towards the burning problems of climate change can be judged from the fact that the US president was absent and the US under-secretary of state for global affairs made a shocking statement that the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases was not fair or affordable, and that the US has a national plan which "we believe balances environmental goals and objectives with economic goals".
The contrast between the consumption levels of the developed and developing countries is highlighted by the fact that if industrial countries could set apart just one penny from every $ 10, it would generate a $ 25 billion fund - sufficient to save 8 to 10 million lives a year. According to the UNDP's Human Development Report, the EU spends $ 11 billion a year on ice cream which can partially be used to fund the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (WASH) programme. The refusal of the US to discuss climate change and sign the treaty had an extremely deleterious effect on the conference.
This treaty, if implemented with US participation, can prevent the damage caused by excessive use of energy. The US has a $ 10 trillion economy. If it refuses to change its high energy consumption levels, then along with other emissions and effluents, this is likely to endanger life on this planet.
As for climate change, it's not sufficient to say that increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible and that if these emissions are capped, controlled and reduced, we may be able to adapt. This is the current thrust of international protocols, but even this limited effort has failed to achieve uniform consensus. We are aware of the current status of the Kyoto protocol and the sharp differences that exist not only between the developed and developing countries but also within the developed countries. The problem is that caught within the current techno-economistic worldview, we look at a problem in parts without looking at the whole and assume that a part by part solution of the whole is possible. This is fundamentally flawed and scientifically indefensible.
In a situation where unbridled consumer choice is unquestionably accepted as a value, it's impossible to go beyond technocratic and economic approaches to sustainability. Globalisation must be transformed by the values that are inherent in the concept of 'sustainability' - both in production and consumption. Or else, we will be threatened by a devastating erosion of our ecological, social, economic, cultural and moral resources. For this we need to take action at many levels.
Within the COP, the importance of bringing about a technological paradigm shift towards sustainable consumption patterns needs to be underlined. During its earlier negotiations, COP decided to establish a framework for capacity building. In 2003, COP-9 will review this framework. Another framework has been established for technology transfer since all parties agreed to create an enabling environment on various uses, including technology transfer by expert credit agencies. This COP framework should give a new direction to science so as to promote technologies which lead to sustainable consumption.
The writer is the Union HRD Minister.
Courtesy http://www.hindustantimes.com
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