The Hindu Business Line : Many challenges and much expectations

The 14th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-14) is meeting at UN Headquarters in New York till May 12. CSD is an inter-governmental body whose members are elected by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) from amongst the UN members and its specialised agencies. CSD-14 will review progress in the following areas: Energy for sustainable development; industrial development; air pollution/atmosphere; and climate change.

GLOBAL WARMING

The Inter-governmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), in its Third Assessment Report, concluded that atmospheric warming observed over the last fifty years was attributable to human activities. Greenhouse gases (GHG), like methane, and burning of fossil fuels being the main culprits. But, according to a section of scientists, there is limited scientific evidence to explain any cause and effect relationship on a complex issue like global warming.

To a military strategist of the last century, `weather' was a potential weapon. In the 21st century, when the role of the nation-states is being redefined, the strategic importance of weather has changed. In this new century, transnational corporations (TNCs) play a more important role than the sovereign nation-states in developing rules and regulations of different multilateral treaties pertaining to such important issues as climate change, intellectual property rights, etc. The power of the nation-states is fast eroding.

TNCs, with the help of mainstream global media on which they seem to have almost total control, could systematically establish or suppress any `scientific' view. Under this changed power structure, old strategies and tactics are bound to change. `Weather' which had a strategic importance as `weapon' to a nation state during Cold War period, is likely to have a strategic importance of different type (as `economic good') to a TNC-dominated world order of this century. Now, the emphasis is more on economics than politics. The paradigm shift is very clear and distinct.

PARCELLING OUT POLLUTION

In an integrated global economy, where TNCs have developed alliances with their local partners for further consolidation of their power, an international alliance of consumer and civil societies to safeguard common citizens' interest across the globe is essential. In the absence of such a coordinated effort, Southern countries, as before, will remain at the receiving end. They will be treated as dump-yards for North's wastes and pollutants. By shifting environmentally hazardous activities to the fund-starved poorer countries, pollution will be `parcelled out' to the Southern states. The responsibility of reducing the `Greenhouse Gas' has been shifted already to the less polluting developing countries by promising a few extra dollars. The Kyoto Protocol basically has done this through its much-hyped `clean development mechanism'.

The ninth session of CSD in 2001 decided to consider energy as the central driving force towards achieving the goals of sustainable development. The Commission identified the following key issues on energy and sustainable development. i) Accessibility of energy, ii) energy efficiency, iii) renewable energy, iv) advanced fossil fuel technologies, v) nuclear energy technologies, vi) rural energy, and vii) energy and transport.

It also identified few overarching issues such as research and development; capacity building; technology transfer; information sharing and dissemination; mobilisation of financial resources; making market work effectively for sustainable development; multi-stakeholder approach and public participation. All these issues will be discussed at various forums during CSD-14.

`HOT' BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

The steep rise in the price of crude oil and the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, which has opened up a new business opportunity of trillions of dollar through trading of `hot air' and `clean technology' suitable for `clean development mechanism' (CDM), have generated tremendous interest among policy-makers and civil societies across the world. The global warming issue has offered an opportunity to the nuclear lobby to push for nuclear energy as a substitute of fossil fuel arguing that the impact of nuclear pollution remains `local' compared to burning of fossil fuel whose adverse impacts are felt `globally'.

The same logic has been extended in arguing for India's energy security through massive nuclear power programme. All these issues have definitely increased the importance of the 14th Session of UNCSD. In the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, anti-nuke groups will certainly try to use this platform to voice their concerns. Renewable energy sources, by their very nature, demand proliferation of small-scale mass production units. Retaining centralised control on such technology becomes difficult. Unless ultimate control on the product is fully assured, large corporate houses would not be interested to invest in those projects.

In this endeavour for renewable energy, support from mega corporations at this stage is very unlikely. Major initiatives should come from below, at the lowest level — where the consumer is really the king. In addition to political organisations operating at grassroots, only civil societies can organise such a mass movement to save the global climate from the clutches of corporate power brokers.

A global network of small civil societies, which are not nudged into line with grants and assistance from `foundations' managed by mega corporations, can bring in qualitative change in the management of the production and consumption of different energy sources to achieve the goal of sustainable development. CSD-14 will hopefully lead to an alliance of such groups.

(The author is Faculty Member, ICFAI Business School, Kolkata. He can be reached at dip_dey@hotmail.com. The views are personal.