The Hindu Business Line : Climate change and the ostrich syndrome

When the wiser course would be to presume the worst effects of climate change and prepare for it, the country seems to be burying its head in the sand hoping that the storm will pass.

"Keep your faith in God, My son! and keep your powder dry," used to be the advice to youth facing an imminent danger. The dangers of climate change are very real. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned the world as early as in 2001 of,

Higher maximum temperatures; hotter days and heat waves over nearly all the landmass, that could increase heat-related deaths, particularly among older adults and urban poor; heat stress in livestock and wildlife; and damage threat to some crops;

More intense precipitation over many areas resulting in increased floods, landslides, avalanches and mud slide damage, extensive soil erosion, flood run-off; and

Increase in tropical cyclones, tornadoes, hurricanes over some areas raising the risk to human life, epidemics, coastal erosion; and damage to coastal buildings, and infrastructure and ecosystems.

The matter is serious enough to be taken on the agenda of the Security Council, which usually deals with more serious threats such as armed conflicts and warfare. This alone should be sufficient warning signal of a possible impending disaster.

Human knowledge is not advanced enough to spell out definitively what is coming over the long-term cycle, or the beginning of a linear trend that could only result in catastrophe. The wiser course in such cases would be to presume the worst and prepare for it rather than adopt an ostrich-like approach of burying the head in the sand hoping that the storm will pass.

Food or Fuel?

At the fifth Congress of the World Agricultural Forum held in St.Louis, US (May 8-10), the subject of climate change figured prominently. In the discussions at one panel discussion, attention centred on the back-to-the-wall firefighting with the objective of reducing the greenhouse gases by cutting down on the use of fossil fuels and replacing them by bio-fuels.

Yet another panel examined the consequences of the increased production of bio-fuel plants on the production of the foodgrains and pulses in a scenario where increase in the production of foodgrains by about 50 per cent is required to meet the food demands of a rising population.

Interestingly, a third panel went into the ethical and even cosmological aspects of the global warming. A question was raised if the damage to the global environment was at all reversible? A participant posed the question: If everybody stopped using automobiles and refrigerators as of today can Earth be restored to its pristine wholesomeness? A large number of the participants at the Congress appeared to feel that it was too late and that while the fight-back should not be given up, the other avenues of saving human civilisation should be contemplated as serious alternatives.

The hypothesis that Earth is like an orange which has been eaten up by the human pests would suggest that there is some scope for beginning to plan an operation "Skywards Ho!" The reigning paradigm that man was made for the earth, to lord over it will need to be given up and replaced by a worldview of a cosmic nomadic human race continuously in pursuit of greater freedom through networking. The only alternative course — reducing the population by about 90 per cent and inhabiting the world with ascetics — is far more improbable than the prospect of sci-fi migration to some other habitable planet.

Unconcerned in India?

Back in India, it is a different scenario altogether. Here, nothing unusual or astonishing is seen about the changes in the climate observed in recent times. They are seen as sufficiently explainable by local conditions quite unrelated to any global phenomenon. A senior Meteorological Department official has specifically denied any linkage with any global phenomenon. The annual general body meeting of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), on May 11, hardly had any discussion of the matter apart from a casual reference in the inaugural speech of the Minister for Agriculture. One of the members did suggest the need:

To develop crop varieties more resilient to extremes of temperature, salinity, acidity and humidity;

To develop a comprehensive plan for the replacement of the cross-breed varieties of livestock such as Jersey and Holstein Friesian that are extremely vulnerable to higher temperatures, by upgraded varieties of buffaloes and sheep;

To develop new technologies and systems of food processing that would not be dependent on the availability of cold storage and refrigeration which are likely to be frowned upon as major culprits for generation of green-house gases, by the global community in coming years. Apart from an informal promise by the ICAR Director-General that his organisation was quite capable of developing programmes that would meet the threat of climate change, no concrete decision was made by the general body.

The Minister for Agriculture spoke of the substantial degradation of land in recent years. He, however, did not mention the possibility of further acceleration in the process because of the extremes of temperatures, frequent storms and skewed precipitation. He also mentioned with some concern the fall in the production of foodgrains and pulses. However, he did not spell out any measure, apart from massive imports, that he proposed to meet the foodgrains demand of a rising population in a situation where a tropical country like India could cease to be capable of producing any foodgrains at all.

Hopefully, the climate change we are experiencing may not be a part of an indefinitely continuing process. Maybe, this will all blow over and man can continue with this blithe ways, harming the environment. The fact remains that the ostrich will perish with the neck buried in the sand whether the climate change turns out to be a global linear phenomenon or a transient local one.

(The author, a Rajya Sabha, is Founder of the Shetkari Sanghatana. He can be contacted at sharad.mah@nic.in.)

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