The Hindu Business Line : Nobel for a cause

The country’s policymakers need to partner with other developing nations to get their voice heard in the December talks to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The recognition that the Peace Nobel has brought to efforts at highlighting the human role in hastening climate change has not come a day too soon. Sharing the limelight with the former US Vice-President, Al Gore, is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its Chairman, Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri. It is to be hoped that this ‘Nobel Indian’ would provoke a badly needed awareness locally about the cause that he has been espousing. More so when Indi a and the fraternity of underdeveloped and developing nations have been ‘more sinned against than sinning’ in being attributed with ‘emissions and commissions’ driving climate change.

Consider these facts: Eleven of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years since 1850, globally. During the last 50 years, cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent. What gives? It is likely that future tropical cyclones will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and heavier precipitation. As per trends from data collected by the India Meteorological Department, monsoon rainfall has shown some regional patterns of both increase and decrease. Although increase in CO{-2} is likely to be beneficial to several crops, associated increase in temperatures and a surfeit of rainfall may impact food production considerably. There is preliminary evidence to indicate that decrease in rice yields in the recent past in the Indo-Gangetic Plains was associated with a slight rise in minimum temperatures. Wheat is most sensitive to even a small increase in temperature. Rice has greater tolerance to increase in temperature, relatively speaking. Again, in Himachal Pradesh, the apple belt is shifting upwards (higher elevation) seeking cooler climes. Increasing climatic variability could thus result in considerable seasonal/annual fluctuations in food production. All agricultural commodities are sensitive to such variability with implications for supply and, in turn, inflation expectations.

The country’s policymakers need to get their priorities right and preferably in partnership with other developing nations, get their voice heard in the December talks that will seek to extend or replace the 10-year-old Kyoto Protocol. The agreement, the only global accord to set specific targets for reducing emissions, required the developed world to cut its output of six greenhouse gases by about five percentage points from their 1990 levels by 2012. Mitigation and adaptation strategies need to be pursued by dovetailing them with fair burden-sharing and sustainable patterns of consumption and production, without compromising the larger developmental goal. The country may have initiated some laudable moves in this direction as Dr Pachauri himself would acknowledge, but can do better than lose focus.