The Hindu Business Line : Hokkaido Toyako G8 Summit

This year’s G8 summit is to be held from July 7-9 in the picturesque Japanese resort town of Toyako, on the island of Hokkaido, under the chairmanship of the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Yasuo Fukuda. Already, as has become the pattern at venues of all such gatherings since the WTO meeting at Seattle in 1999, thousands of young activists have started assembling to protest against the “arbitrary meeting of governments dominating the global financial market” and forcing on developing nations agreements which are detrimental to their interest.

The dominant theme of the summit is climate change leading to global warming. It is not one of those topics whose disastrous effects can be easily be brought home to the intelligentsia and even government officials, leave alone average citizens. Try engaging anyone whom you next meet on the street with the following:

Greenhouse gases have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) some 200 years ago to 380 ppm now and are continuing to increase by 1.9 ppm per year since 2000, touching anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm at the end of the 21st century;

Global surface temperatures have gone up by 0.74 degrees C (plus or minus 0.18 degrees C) since the 19th century and by 0.13 degrees C per decade in the last 50 years;

The mean sea level has been rising at an average rate of 1.7mm (plus or minus 0.5 mm) over the past 100 years and without putting a check on the greenhouse gases, it can go up to anywhere between 0.18 and 0.59 metres due to thermal expansion and melting of alpine glaciers (without calculating the potential increase from melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica);

The effects of climate change range from erratic rainfall to increased salinity of the soil; 500 million in South Asia are likely to be affected by the lack of availability of water caused by a reduction in the mass balance of glaciers, and hundreds of thousands more in densely populated coastal areas will have to flee before rising sea levels.

His answer is most likely to be, “Oh yeah, so what?” He cannot be blamed. Even among the scientific community, there are some who look askance at (what to them looks like so much) breast-beating over (in their opinion) yet to be conclusively proved findings, and who decry the cataclysmic prophecies of ‘calamitarians”!

Chamber of horrors

However, of late, climate change has come to the centre stage since a number of high-profile international conferences and conventions beginning from Kyoto Protocol (which got a lot of publicity thanks to the refusal of the US President, Mr George W. Bush, to let the US sign it) had been turning the spotlight on it.

From all the evidence gathered so far, there can be no doubt that reducing the quantum of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is imperative in its own right, regardless of whether the chamber of horrors scenario will come to pass in the precise manner and within the time horizons mentioned.

The fact that the G8 consider it important enough to devote the better part of their time to it would serve to raise further the level of awareness worldwide and impart a sense of urgency and earnestness in drawing up contingency plans to head off the crisis.

This is the time for G8 to demonstrate its commitment and leadership. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and another is to be in place by the end of 2008. The new protocol should, besides laying down targets for reducing emissions, also allocate adequate funds to achieve them. It should also have sufficient powers to monitor and enforce its provisions.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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