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PM Modi at the Climate Action Summit

September 24, 2019 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

From the Prime Minister’s Office, this is the text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address (the original in Hindi) on 23 September 2019, at the Climate Action Summit 2019 during the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, USA:

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi addressing at the (United Nations) Climate Action Summit- 2019, in New York, USA on September 23, 2019.

I thank UN Secretary General for organising the Global climate summit.
After having received the Champion of the Earth award last year, this is my first opportunity to address the United Nations. I am pleased that my first meeting during my visit to New York is on the subject of Climate.
Excellencies, various efforts are being made by different countries to fight climate change. We must accept that if we have to overcome a serious challenge like climate change, then what we are doing at the moment is just not enough.
What is needed today, is a comprehensive approach which covers everything from education to values, and from lifestyle to developmental philosophy. What we need is a global people’s movement to bring about behavioral change.
The respect for nature, the judicious use of resources, reducing our needs and living within our means have all been important aspects of both our traditions and present day efforts. Need not Greed has been our guiding principle.
And therefore India today has come not just to talk about the seriousness of this issue, but to present a practical approach and a roadmap. We believe that an ounce of practice is worth more than a ton of preaching.
In India, we are going to increase the share of non fossil fuel, and by 2022 we plan to increase our renewable energy capacity to much beyond 175 GW, and later till 450 GW. In India we have made plans to make our transport sector green through e mobility. India is also working to considerably increase the proportion of the biofuel blend in petrol and diesel.
We have provided clean cooking gas to 150 million families. We have launched the Jal Jeevan mission for water conservation, rainwater harvesting and for the development of water resources. India is going to spend approximately 50 billion dollars on this in the next few years.
On the International forum, almost 80 countries have joined our International Solar Alliance campaign. India and Sweden together with other partners are launching the Leadership group within the Industry transition track. This initiative will provide a platform for governments and the private sector with opportunities for cooperation in the area of Technology innovation. This will help to develop low carbon pathways for industry.
In order to make our infrastructure disaster resilient, India is launching a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. I invite Member states to join this coalition.
This year on the occasion of India’s Independence day on 15th August, we called for a peoples movement to end the use of single use plastic. I hope that this will create an awareness at a global level about the harmful effects of single use plastic.
Excellencies, I am happy to announce that tomorrow we are going to inaugurate solar panels on the roof of the UN building, funded by India at a cost of 1 million dollars.
The time for talking is over; the world needs to act now. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Source: Press Information Bureau, Government of India

Between contemplation and climate

June 8, 2017 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Whether or not the USA, Europe, the Western world, the industrialised Eastern world (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), adhere to or not their paltry promises about being more responsible concerning the factors that lead to climate change, is of very little concern to us. We have never set any store by international agreements on climate change.

This year will see the twenty-third conference of parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and for 23 years the world and India have listened to lofty tales about simple science. In these 23 years, neither has reckless consumption been halted nor has the economic model that encourages such reckless consumption been questioned by the conference of parties. As long as they do not, inter-governmental agreements are useless.

That is why we find unnecessary and pointless the hand-wringing that has taken place about the decision of the government of the USA to exit what is called the ‘Paris Agreement’, the December 2015 document agreed to and signed by practically every country which has some fuzzy paragraphs about low-carbon economy, innovation, technology, energy and finance – all of which have very much to do with the hold of the finance capitalists and the global technocrats over the international systems of our time.

President number 45 of the USA is neither wiser than nor baser than the wisest of basest of any of his predecessors: the American political system has to do entirely with the desire to dominate other countries. Number 45’s manner may be irksome, but through him speaks the American finance capital, its bloatsome defence industry and its insensate technology industry.

We do not expect the chiefs of the Western countries, the so-called major powers of the European Union, and their allies such as Japan and Australia to do any less. They are no different. We do not think any of them, their armies of bland advisers, their bankers and the brigades of industrialists great and petty who crowd their corridors of governance have read, much less reflected, on the lambent wisdom of our civilisation.

Many centuries ago, in the section of the Digha Nikaya, or Collection of Long Discourses, called Samannaphala Sutta, or the Fruits of the Contemplative Life, it was written that there are those who are addicted to debates and shout: “You understand this doctrine and discipline? I’m the one who understands this doctrine and discipline. How could you understand this doctrine and discipline? You’re practicing wrongly. I’m practicing rightly. I’m being consistent. You’re not. What should be said first you said last. What should be said last you said first. What you took so long to think out has been refuted. Your doctrine has been overthrown. You’re defeated. Go and try to salvage your doctrine; extricate yourself if you can!”

And this is how we view what are called climate negotiations, between the experts of countries. We care not for the arguments of number 45 of the USA, for what many in the world in the last week have protested as being absurd – it undermines economy, it takes away jobs, it is unfair, it is disadvantageous to us, and so on – is what they cheer and support their own countries for in areas where they stand to gain, such as trade (to sell cheap and useless goods), technology (to enslave and control), finance (to spin webs of debt), processes of modernisation (to homogenise cultures so that ever more ‘markets’ come into being).

We in India need no such instruction. But we must guard against our philosophies being swept away by these agreements, these grand comities of nations, the barrage of numerics and scientifics that are invented to display to us what a threat we are should we not emulate the West and its ways. We must guard against our own who prefer the baubles of post-industrial society to the intellectual and spiritual riches of our civilisation, and who seek to infest India with the same technological and ‘modern’ wares that so entranced the West and doomed its folk. This has very little to do with climate and its change and very much more to do with our Indic sciences and their worth, our conduct and our duty to Punyabhoomi Bharat.

– Rahul Goswami

The Pope confronts climate change

May 5, 2015 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The Vatican has put its considerable weight behind a very clear call for dealing sensibly and sensitively to climate change. The call has come from a summit organised and hosted by two of its own institutions, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Both have as visiting or contributing academicians a panoply of academic heft – amongst them are Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of field atmospheric sciences, Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, professor of astronomy, Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar (MGK) Menon, professor of physics, Chintamani N R Rao, professor of chemical science, and Govind Swarup, professor of astrophysics.

The summit was held on 28 April 2015 at the Vatican and was titled ‘Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development’. The meeting was intended, said the Vatican’s press office, to help strengthen “the global consensus” on the issue of climate change. The 28 April meeting is part of the Vatican’s increasing efforts to influence the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which meets in Paris in December 2015 with the goal of getting countries to establish legally-binding protocols to protect the climate.

“Global climate change adversely affects every aspect of our civilisation and thus should be a matter of serious concern across all world religions,” said the Vatican statement on the meeting. “Their effect on the poor is even more severe. We wish to elevate the importance of the moral dimensions of protecting the environment in advance of the Papal encyclical and to build a global movement to deal with climate change and sustainable development throughout 2015 and beyond.”

Pope Francis is reported to have prepared a major encyclical – or moral guide for Catholics – which when released (probably in July) will stress the imperative of addressing human-caused global warming. In November 2013 Francis rocked the Catholic world with his apostolic exhortation in which he held forth convincingly on the economy of exclusion, the new idolatry of money, a financial system which rules rather than serves and the inequality which spawns violence.

This meeting ended with a joint statement on the moral and religious imperative of dealing with climate change in the context of sustainable development, and it is possible that the substantive points of the ‘Moral Dimensions’ meeting will find their way into the Pope’s encyclical on climate change and sustainable development (as it is likely to be popularly known as, shorn of the florid Latin).

With an opening address by Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, and with a statement by Jeffrey Sachs (economist and director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network), the meeting included a panel on ‘Evidence on social exclusion and climate science’ with Peter Raven, Partha Dasgupta, John Schellnhuber, Martin Rees, V Ramanathan, Y.T. Lee and Paul Crutzen.

The point of view of the Vatican, and presumably of Pope Francis, was provided by Cardinal Peter K A Turkson (who in October 2014 said to the WTO that trade is “unbalanced and unjust when it adds to the landscape of social exclusion”). Explaining the subject Turkson said that “the current economic-developmental model is out of balance” and emphasised that “we must move away from this mode of behaviour, and instead become more protective”. Turkson said that we need innovative and sustainable technological and economic solutions, and “shift away from an unthinking infatuation with GDP and a single-minded zeal for accumulation”.

Pope Francis is turning a just idea of development and climate change into recurring themes of his papacy. He talked about these subjects during his inaugural mass in 2013, and told a crowd in Rome last May that mistreating the environment is a sin. Last year, the Vatican also held a five-day summit on sustainability, calling together microbiologists, economists, legal scholars, and other experts to discuss ways to address climate change. [Photo: Photographic Service L’Osservatore Romano]

– Rahul Goswami

No American chop suey, thank you

November 13, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama address a joint press conference following their talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Photo: Xinhua / Liu Weibing

Trade and manufacturing, geo-strategic ambitions and power jockeying, these are the objectives behind the so-called ‘deal’ between China and USA on ‘cutting’ carbon emissions and pollution. The ‘deal’ was announced at the conclusion of the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Summit, held in Beijing, China, and therefore partly reflected the agendas of Asian trade within the region and with the USA.

The ‘deal’ on climate between President of China Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama indicates in the first place the internal compulsions faced by the governing leaderships that they represent in both countries. This balancing however is commonplace at economic and trade summits, where new agreements and pacts are presented as being good for the international order, but whose details reveal the truth. [Read the special India Climate Watch bulletin here.]

So it is with the Xi-Obama ‘deal’ on climate change and emissions, but with added aspects that are disturbing for the shape that the post-Kyoto framework on climate action is taking. According to media reports (mainly from the USA), representatives of the two governments have been negotiating for several months so that this ‘deal’ could be announced now.

If true, this tells us that equality of representation at international climate negotiations, and that a multi-lateral approach itself, are being ignored by the world’s biggest polluting country (China) and the world’s biggest economy (the USA, measured in current US dollars only). In preparing for such a ‘deal’ therefore, the political leaderships of both countries have signalled that their international responsibilities towards climate justice matter less than bolstering a trading system which rests on globalised production, deployment of capital and homogenous consumption.

The IPCC’s advice on reaching resilience during an era of changing climate. Quite ignored by the leadership of the two biggest polluting countries. Image: IPCC

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, issued a statement welcoming this ‘deal’. In it Ban has welcomed “the joint announcement” by the two leaders “of their post-2020 action on climate change, as an important contribution to the new climate agreement to be reached in Paris next year”. The UN must perforce look for some positive element in any such ‘deal’, but calling it an important contribution to COP 21 (conference of parties) to be held in Paris in 2015 is misleading.

Ban’s own statement has mentioned the need for “a meaningful, universal agreement in 2015” however the Beijing announcement signals that the opposite will ensue – economic and trading blocs will continue to advance their separate agendas and so subordain the responses required to climate change.

Ban has also welcomed “the commitment expressed by both leaders to increase their level of ambition over time as well as the framing of their actions in recognition of the goal of keeping global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius”.

This too is not so. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (maintained by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre) has said that the required reduction in the increase in global CO2 emissions can be achieved provided: (a) China achieves its own target of a maximum level of energy consumption by 2015 and its shift to gas with a natural gas share of 10% by 2020; (b) the USA continues a shift its energy mix towards more gas and renewable energy; and (c) European Union member states agree on restoring the effectiveness of the EU Emissions Trading System to further reduce actual emissions. The actions thus outlined for the USA and China will under the new ‘deal’ either not take place or be loosely and ineffectually interpreted.

The view of China’s political establishment is visible in the treatment of the climate ‘deal’ by its official media. In its commentary on the Xi-Obama meeting, Xinhua, the state news agency, explained that President Xi Jinping “outlined six priorities in building a new type of major-country relationship with the United States”. The language and manner indicate that what is being presented in the media as a ‘landmark deal’ between the two countries on climate change is in fact part of a continuing re-negotiation of the roles of both countries in today’s world.

Special bulletin of the India Climate Watch on the China-USA climate ‘deal’.

The six priorities (this label follows the typical political construction of policy China – for years the ‘three represents’ of the Chinese Communist Party had guided state thinking) are: communication between high-level officials, mutual respect, cooperation in all aspects, management of disputes, collaboration in the Asia-Pacific and joint actions on global challenges. The response to climate change is part of the sixth priority, joint actions on global challenges (which also includes counter-terrorism and epidemic control). In its official statement on the ‘deal’, China has pointed out that in 2013 bilateral trade between the USA and the People’s Republic soared to US$ 520 billion while two-way investment stood at US$ 100 billion. This volume and flow is what will be protected to the extents possible by both governments.

The staged euphoria over this ‘deal’ does not obscure its non-binding nature. According to commentary from the People’s Republic, 2030 would be set as the peak year for its soaring greenhouse gas emissions, while the USA said it would cut emissions by more than a quarter from 2005 levels by 2025.

Data from the International Energy Agency show that for the USA, total final oil products consumption in 2012 was 717 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe; in 2007 the quantity was 829 mtoe) while the totals for all energy sources were 1,432 mtoe in 2012 which was a reduction from 1,572 mtoe in 2007). In China, total final oil products consumption in 2012 was 421 mtoe (in 2007 it was 308 mtoe) while the use of coal continued to rise – 558 mtoe in 2012 whereas it was 480 mtoe in 2007. In China the totals for all energy sources was 1,703 mtoe in 2012 which is 28% above what it was (1,326 mtoe) five years earlier.

A rapid analysis carried out by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) indicates that: (1) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the USA in 2025 will be 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent; from 1990 levels, the USA will reduce its emissions by just 15-17% by 2025; to meet the 2C target, US emissions should be at least 50-60% per cent below 1990 levels considering its historical responsibility of causing climate change, and (2) China’s emissions will peak at 17-20 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030 and its per capita emissions in 2030 will be 12-13 tons; these are not in line with the 2C emissions pathways put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC has, less than a fortnight ago, presented the need for what it bluntly calls “zero net emissions” by 2100 – and that means changing economies and trade and the trend of globalisation now – to avert the worst. But the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has called the China-US climate ‘deal’ “a heartening development, a good beginning and I hope the global community follows this lead and maybe builds on it”. This is certainly not the lead to follow, for it ignores the IPCC’s stark warning, and instead signals that global and regional powers can bully their way to gaining sanction for furthering their short-term economic agendas even while climate science demands that they do otherwise.

– Rahul Goswami

The IPCC’s India voice?

November 4, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The three working groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report have occupied, for months on end, 837 of what the IPCC method calls ‘authors’. Most are scientists, with considerable experience in the areas of atmospheric, cryospheric, oceanographic or bio-geochemical sciences, but they are also social scientists and economists, administrators and statisticians.

Insofar as the ‘inter-governmental’ aspect of the IPCC is concerned, they have been drawn from a number of countries, and have usually classified themselves by country of residence and work (though some are classified by institution too, especially when that institution is directly or indirectly a United Nations institute). All have contributed – as coordinating lead author, lead author, review editor, or for a technical summary – to the many voluminous chapters that have taken shape as the Fifth Assessment Report.

Amongst this corps is India’s contribution to the effort, with 33 authors. This is not a small group, for there are 43 from China and 31 from Japan (these groups exclude those of Indian or Asian origin who are authors but who have identified themselves under other countries and institutions). Compared with the contingents from western Europe, the USA and the OECD countries (as a bloc), Asia may be seen to be under-represented (and Africa very much more so) in the IPCC evidence examining and report writing process but that is a separate matter.

What is germane to us is: has the IPCC process and method an Indian outlook that will be of as much utility at home as it has been to the inter-governmental effort? A short answer will be ‘no’ to the first query (because it is about science, evidence and international consensus and not about national priorities) and ‘don’t know’ to the second. There is no reason why a ‘don’t know’ should persist, as the Fifth Assessment process comes to a close, for the size of India’s population and economy, and the likely effects climate change has and is forecast to have on our 35 states and union territories ought to have turned climate change into common currency wherever planning is carried out and implemented.

But that is not so, despite 33 Indian authors having contributed to the IPCC Fifth Assessment. They represent a far greater number who are, in one or more ways, concerned with the impacts of climate change in India and with our responses to those changes. What has seemed to have stood in the way of an Indian and a Bharatiya view of climate change is the predilection by academicians (particularly from those used to working in inter-governmental and UN circles) to propagate at home the language of international climate negotiation rather than direct statements and questions that have to do with conditions on the ground in Madhya Maharashtra or Assam or Jharkhand.

Consider one amongst the several quotes lent to our media following the release of the Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report: “The IPCC synthesis report suggests a way of thinking about climate change that is deeply relevant to India. There is a complex two way relationship between sustainable development and climate change: climate policies should support not undermine sustainable development; but limiting the effects of climate change is necessary to achieve sustainable development. The report clearly states there are limits to adaptation. For India the message is that while adaptation is critical, keeping the pressure on for global mitigation is also key.”

Unfortunately for any administrator (such as a district collector or a watershed mapper or the superintendent of a regional referral hospital) such a statement says very little. It neither draws out any interest in further understanding the effects of climate change in the districts and towns of Bharat, nor does it help provide a personal context to what is unquestionably a reporting process of vital importance to us all.

Part of the problem is the UN/inter-governmental language of negotiation that has become the norm when speaking about (or writing about, for several of these 33 contribute articles to the media regularly) climate change. As busy people, they may expect the media to interpret into popular idiom, simplify and amplify, and otherwise lend local colour to their prose. If so, they are plain wrong, for the responsibility to do so is theirs, not the media’s.

Is there a demand for explanation that is true to context? There is practically none, and that is why this group (the 33 Indian contributors to the Fifth Assessment report) must be called upon to translate the IPCC method for local administrations. This is important as there are several worlds which do not intersect. That of the IPCC and the sophisticated cohort of institutions which have contributed to the Fifth Assessment report on the one hand, whereas everyday workaday life in Bharat’s 7,935 towns, cities and metropolises proceeds for many tens of millions with or without the magisterial pronouncements of the IPCC’s working groups. There will always be a gulf between these worlds, but there must also be bridges, and currently there are far too few.

Who can be called upon? Here is the current roll call. There are: Krishna Mirle Achutarao, Indian Institute of Technology; Pramod Aggarwal, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security; Govindasamy Bala, Indian Institute of Science; Suruchi Bhadwal, The Energy and Resources Institute; Abha Chhabra, Indian Space Research Organisation; Pradeep Kumar Dadhich, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd.; Purnamita Dasgupta, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi Enclave; Navroz Dubash, Centre for Policy Research; Varun Dutt, Indian Institute of Technology; Amit Garg, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Prashant Goswami, CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation; Anil Kumar Gupta, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology; Shreekant Gupta, University of Delhi; Sujata Gupta, Asian Development Bank (ADB); and Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

Furthermore, there are: Arun Kansal, TERI University; Surender Kumar, University of Delhi; Ritu Mathur, The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI); Harini Nagendra, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE); Kirit S Parikh, Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe); Jyoti Parikh, Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe); Himanshu Pathak, Indian Agricultural Research Institute; Anand Patwardhan, Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay; Rengaswamy Ramesh, Physical Research Laboratory; Nijavalli H. Ravindranath, Indian Institute of Science; Aromar Revi, Indian Institute for Human Settlements; Joyashree Roy, Jadavpur University; Ambuj Sagar, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi; S. K. Satheesh, Indian Institute of Science; Priyadarshi R. Shukla, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Eswaran Somanathan, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi; Geetam Tiwari, Indian Institute of Technology; and Alakkat Unnikrishnan, National Institute of Oceanography. Who amongst these will stand up in the talukas and in the melee of our class II towns for Bharat?

– Rahul Goswami

Warm streets, cold summits

September 25, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

A part of the people’s march against climate change in New York, USA. Photo: Reuters / Eduardo Munoz

The United Nations Climate Summit 2014, held on 23 September, can be considered as a study in two contrasts. On the one hand was the People’s Climate March – an enormous gathering of concerned citizens in New York, USA, which may have seen a combined total of some 400,000 people. The marchers through their diversity and energy delivered one message in many creative ways. That message was: we citizens can and will rid the planet of fossil fuels and nuclear power, that such action will be demanding and difficult but we will do it at the grassroots and make a difference there.

On the other hand was the Climate Summit. This, said the UN, would serve as a public platform for leaders at the highest level, by which is meant all UN Member States, as well as finance, business, civil society and local leaders from public and private sectors. The gathering, said the UN, would “catalyse ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience and mobilise political will for an ambitious global agreement by 2015 that limits the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature”.

Did it succeed? No and yes. If there has been a gain from the events of 23 September it is to strengthen their individual and community resolve to act locally in an effort to tackle both the effects and the causes of climate change.

Where the Summit itself is concerned, against the background of 22 years of negotiations and conferences on climate change (the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came about in 1992) it proved to be atypical. There were a number of promises and resolutions made to add to the mountain of such promises and resolutions but this summit – like every single other summit before it – brought no significant response from the political establishment.

Unsurprisingly, this is not how the UN sees the outcome of its recent work, for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon summed up the Summit as “a great day, a historic day. Never before have so many leaders gathered to commit to action on climate change”. Ban said that the Summit he called “delivered” because the many leaders attending “reaffirmed determination to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius by cutting emissions”.

Such announcements underline the contrast between the desire on the street and the cold comfort of summit announcements (now in their 22nd year). On 23 September the UN tip-toed around the large global and regional corporations (and their financier special interests) whose business practices have deepened environmental and socio-economic emergencies all over the world, and which are responsible for worsening – much less alleviating – the vulnerabilities of populations exposed to the risk of climate change.

The UN has regrettably turned into a recurring practice this avoiding of issues central to climate change (see the summary document, pdf, 243kb). But, at the same time, the UN together with a host of organisations that have more or less to do with climate change (private, academic, industry fora and so on) repeated once more a worn roster of promises.

These are:
* “Strong support” for the Green Climate Fund, with one more total being pledged (precious little has been actually transferred) and still more being “committed” (these are all commitments with renewable expiry dates).

* “A new coalition of governments, business, finance, multilateral development banks and civil society leaders” (what happened to all the other coalitions announced grandly at every other summit?) which once again was quick to commit to providing US$ 200 billion “for financing low-carbon and climate-resilient development”, including banks which want a ‘Green Bonds’ market.

* That carbon pricing continues to be “one of the most powerful tools available for reducing emissions and generating sustainable development and growth”, which in the end is a promise to continue the commodification and financialisation of emissions, an extremely troublesome industry whose regulation has proved difficult.

Instead of such expensive jamborees whose recycled announcements do little more than provide a false sense of security to citizens, the UN should emulate the example of the marchers and encourage small, local and meaningful action.

After the sound-and-light show of the Climate Summit 2014 we advocate just as strongly as before that it is local development – of, by, and for the people – which finds and leverages appropriate technology, encourages open source collaboration, and focuses on pragmatic, technical solutions to our problems, that will make the difference. Such action alone will reduce our impact on the environment and hedge households and communities against natural disasters made worse by a ritual of inaction.

We need more than summits and marches to deal with climate change

September 22, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Ban Ki-moon with marchers. "There is no 'Plan B' because we do not have 'Planet B'." Photo: UN Photo / Mark Garten

Who is the man in the blue cap and why is he on the street? Ban Ki-moon with marchers. “There is no ‘Plan B’ because we do not have ‘Planet B’.” Photo: UN Photo / Mark Garten

On September 20 and 21, the gathering of what has been called ‘climate marchers’, including many youth, expresses a growing popular concern over the impact of global warming on the world’s environment. During the march in New York, USA, the largest of the several marches held in several cities and countries, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, joined the marchers. On 23 September, the Climate Summit he has called is expected to draw more than 120 heads of government to, as the UN puts it, “galvanise action on climate change”.

Ban said he hoped the peoples’ voices will be “truly reflected to the leaders” when they meet. “Climate change is a defining issue of our time,” he added. “There is no time to lose. If we do not take action now we will have to pay much more.” There is widespread expectation that government delegations to the summit will have “concrete initiatives and that it will provide significant momentum for a global agreement on tackling climate change”.

All this has likely been of interest to the youth, but the expectation of a new push towards a global agreement on dealing with climate change needs to be balanced by even the most cursory examination of the last 20 years of climate negotiations, under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC), and particularly the last four years of an ever larger number of meetings all of which have singly and together contributed nothing to any hoped-for global agreement.

Nonetheless, climate change continues, the science gathers experience and the evidence accumulates. Moreover, it has become clear that a climate treaty (if and when it is signed) will not be about a single issue. Climate change is one amongst an inter-connected web of subjects related to development, sustainability, habitats and settlements, equity and justice, trade, public and social institutions, technology, investments and finance, innovation and national priorities. In many ways, the responses to climate change are directly influenced by thinking and practice in all these areas.

In a short new collection of working ideas, ‘The Way Forward in International Climate Policy: Key Issues and New Ideas 2014’, published and distributed by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, the thesis that is advanced is: “research suggests that economic and ecological aims can co-exist, and even reinforce each other”. This may be partly true but is also contestable. As the CDKN collection also has pointed out, political tensions persist between economic growth and development on the one hand (but these should more correctly be called business and industry interests), and environmental sustainability on the other.

The term ‘sustainable development’ has engaged policy-makers and academics for 40 years now, and remains central to a set of goals (and large numbers of ‘targets’ and indicators) which will be finalised by the UN this year. Much more swiftly, ‘green growth’ has come forward as a competing idea, because ‘growth’ sounds more powerful to industry and investors, whereas ‘sustainability’ seems to imply conservation and status quo.

Historical contributions to greenhouse gases and the socio-political Southern view.

The marchers in New York may harbour some ideas about fairness, equity and the ethical issues surrounding climate change and those it affects. These concepts have indeed been highlighted by the IPCC climate change mitigation and adaptation reports. Although necessary, these concepts may be interpreted and implemented within the framework of national priorities and goals, yet the connections – between the concepts around equity, between what happens on the ground, and between the thickets of negotiating text – must be made.

Fairness between countries also underlies the idea of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ which many of the so-called ‘developing’ and the so-called ‘less developed’ countries invoke during climate negotiations. It is a concept seen as being one of the key principles of the UNFCCC and a central element of fairness and equity discussions. But it has lead to intractable arguments that pit South versus North. Who should bear the burden of investments towards adaptation and mitigation and who should benefit? Without internationally agreed climate action costs continue to mount: how should these be dealt with? Unfortunately, these questions are debated in the UN and at international negotiations not by those affected but by the financial institutions and their technology providers.

The 23 September UN Climate Summit has already focused on public spectacle and visual stylistics in the days before the meeting, rather than outline the substantial and very delayed points of discussion. The UN headquarters has been lit up with what is described as “a spectacular 30-storey architectural projection show aimed to inspire global citizens to take climate action” which is to provide a “visual reminder of what is at stake”. This is wasteful and distracting – those who have been affected by climate change in its many forms have no need to be reminded by expensive spectacle half a world away.

That is why, 22 years after countries joined the UNFCCC, there remains a clear contrast between the urgency of the situation and the absence of any significant response from the political establishment. The urgency is:

(1) The hottest March-May period in the global record which has pushed numerous record spikes in the global measures this summer. By August, according to NASA, the global average had again climbed to new high levels. NASA showed that the Global Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Index had climbed to 0.70 degrees Celsius above the mid 20th century average and about 0.95 degrees Celsius above the 1880s average. The previous record high for the period was set in 2011 at 0.69 degrees C above the global 1951 to 1980 average.

(2) For the first time, monthly concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million (ppm) in April 2014 throughout the northern hemisphere. “This threshold is of symbolic and scientific significance and reinforces evidence that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are responsible for the continuing increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases warming our planet.” All the northern hemisphere monitoring stations forming the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch network reported record atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the seasonal maximum. This occurs early in the northern hemisphere spring before vegetation growth absorbs CO2.

The contrast between urgency and the response of the world’s political leaders has occurred, in large part, due to the contradiction which climate negotiations carefully steer around – it is not possible to resolve climate change and other major environmental problems within the framework of a macro-economic system based on GDP growth and monetary expansion. For this reason, the perspective on which the People’s Climate March was organised offers no way forward and will contribute little to a lasting and fair climate treaty.

Five months ago the secretary general of the World Meteorlogical Organisation warned that “time is running out” when the 400 ppm was crossed. “This should serve as yet another wakeup call about the constantly rising levels of greenhouse gases which are driving climate change. If we are to preserve our planet for future generations, we need urgent action to curb new emissions of these heat trapping gases.” he said. Growth and consumption – green or sustainable or otherwise – is not the answer. And a recognition of that essential condition must be the starting point at the UN Climate Summit on 23 September 2014.

– Rahul Goswami

India’s giant megawatt trap

September 10, 2014 by Climate portal editor 1 Comment

A panel of charts that show India’s energy consumption, imports, and dependence on fossil fuel.

Electricity as fundamental right and energy convenience as the basis of ‘development’ in Bharat and in India. If this is what Piyush Goyal means when he says his government is “is committed to ensure affordable 24×7 power” then it will come as yet another commitment that supports energy provision and consumption as the basis for determining the well-being of Bharat-vaasis and Indians (the UPA’s Bharat Nirman was the predecessor). But the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy cannot, using such a promise, ignore the very serious questions about the kind of ‘development’ being pursued by the NDA-BJP government and its environmental and social ramifications.

Goyal has said, via press conferences and meetings with the media, that the NDA government is committed to ensuring affordable power at all times (’24 x 7′ is the expression he used, which must be banished from use as being a violent idea – like nature our lives follow cycles of work and rest and ’24 x 7′ violently destroys that cycle). Goyal has promised, pending the taking of a series of steps his ministry has outlined, that such a round the clock provision of electric power will be extended to “all homes, industrial and commercial establishments” and that there will be “adequate power for farms within five years”.

The summary of India’s power generation capacity, by type and by region. Source for data: Central Electricity Authority

Some of the very serious questions we raise immediately pertain to what Goyal – with the help of senior ministry officials and advisers – has said. The NDA-BJP government will spend Rs 75,600 crore to (1) supply electricity through separate feeders for agricultural and rural domestic consumption, said Goyal, which will be used to provide round the clock power to rural households; and (2) on an “integrated power development initiative” which involves strengthening sub-transmission and distribution systems in urban areas. This is part of the “transformative change” the ministry has assured us is for the better. Goyal and his officials see as a sign of positive transformation that coal-based electricity generation from June to August 2014 grew by nearly 21 per cent (compared with the same months in 2013), that coal production is 9% higher in August 2014 compared with August 2013, and that Coal India (the largest coal producer company in the world which digs out 8 of every 10 tons of coal mined in India) is going to buy 250 more goods rakes (they will cost Rs 5,000 crore) so that more coal can be moved to our coal-burning power plants.

We must question the profligacy that the Goyal team is advancing in the name of round the clock, reliable and affordable electricity to all. To do so is akin to electoral promises that are populist in nature – and which appeal to the desire in rural and urban residents alike for better living conditions – and which are entirely blind to the environmental, health, financial and behavioural aspects attached to going ahead with such actions. In less than a fortnight, prime minister Narendra Modi (accompanied by a few others) will attend the United Nations Climate Summit 2014. Whether or not this summit, like many before it, forces governments to stop talking and instead act at home on tackling anthropogenic climate change is not the point. What is of concern to us is what India’s representatives will say about their commitment to reduce the cumulative impact of India’s ‘development’, with climate change being a part of that commitment.

At the UN Climate Summit 2014, it will be heard (in as many languages as there are translators available for them) that energy demand is growing along with expanding global wealth (but the UN will not say how unequally that extra wealth has been distributed). There will be grave references made to growing populations with a large number still without the round the clock electricity that Goyal has promised. Many speakers (eminent experts, as the UN system calls them) will be mobilised to remind the gathering that a shift toward renewable sources of energy (such as solar, wind and geothermal) is needed, that greater energy efficiency in appliances, buildings, lighting and vehicles are needed, and that this is so because it is essential to use the world’s resources sustainably, to diversify economies and successfully address the challenge of climate changes. It will sound suitably solemn and uplifting at the UN headquarters in New York, but the story at home in Bharat and India is solemn and deeply worrisome.

Where India’s coal-burning power plants are. Map courtesy Global Energy Observatory.

Some of the tale is of very short-term inconvenience, such as when Mumbai went without electricity for a few hours on 02 September. The business and financial media reported that “back-up generators at banks and brokerages ensured that financial business was largely unaffected” and then circulated the familiar complain that India does not generate enough electricity to meet rapidly rising demand, that a severe shortage of coal (half our 150-odd coal burning plants are reported as having no more than a week’s supply of coal) has raised fears of more widespread blackouts.

Dire tweets from a leading industrialist, Anand Mahindra, were also reported: “Dark office in Mumbai. Lights out in the whole area. The coal crisis is beginning to literally show its dark side. A threat to the India story.” This senior member of the clutch of companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange ‘A’ List underlining a threat to the ‘India story’ led the business and financial media to quickly exert psychological duress on the NDA-BJP – “any grid collapse would cast doubt on the crisis management skills of the new government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

Electricity as fundamental right and energy convenience is moreover essential in the view of Indian industry to reaching the 8% per year GDP growth threshold, which this section appears to consider the single goal of the Republic of India. Hence where energy and the generation and provision of electricity is concerned, Goyal and his team have listed eight steps their ministry will undertake: (1) to rationalise coal supplies (by which is meant, as far as I can make out, move coal fewer kilometres to nearer power plants instead of distant ones); (2) create a statutory coal regulator; (3) civil nuclear cooperation agreement (Australia mentioned for uranium); (4) surveillance at major coal mines to control coal theft; (5) hydro-electric power generation in Jammu and Kashmir (“fast track” they say); (6) environmental clearances (“government will speed up environment and forest clearances to projects”); (7) bring more generation capacity at gas-based power online; (8) clear the solar ultra mega power plant at Sambhar near Jaipur, Rajasthan (the area is a site for migratory birds and an ecological refuge).

Had we an environment regulatory system and a project appraisal and clearances mechanism that protected environment, biodiversity, natural resources and our natural heritage, points 3, 5, 6 and 8 could under no circumstance have appeared on the Ministry of Power list. But the NDA-BJP government has in its first three months taken swift steps to eases clearances for industrial and infrastructure projects. Goyal’s colleague in the cabinet, Prakash Javadekar (minister of state for environment, forests and climate change), has worked to get the MoEF&CC to loosen the norms for expansion of coal mining projects producing up to 8 million tonnes of coal a year, and to adopt a ‘cluster approach’ in clearing smaller mines in the coal-rich belts of India. The environment ministry is also – as the Rajya Sabha was told – “streamlining environmental clearance process by delegating more powers to the State level Environment Impact Assessment Authorities (SEIAAs) for granting” such clearances, and neither house of Parliament has inquired critically as to whether the states so favoured have in place the evaluating expertise and capacities of sufficient authority and independence to not clear those projects which will harm environment, biodiversity, natural resources and our natural heritage.

Poor ambient air quality in our cities is hazardous to health, and emissions from coal-burning power plants are an important contributor to urban air pollution. This chart of a New Delhi region is courtesy Asia Air Pollution Real-time Air Quality Index (AQI).

While industry and a growing urban middle class expect ‘development’ and convenience, represented mainly by uninterruptible kilowatts, and exert a disproportionate amount of pressure on the state to fulfil these desires, there is a short list of steps very different from Goyal’s which must be recognised by the NDA-BJP government and state governments. This is:

(1) There is 172,986 MW of thermal power capacity (149,178 coal, 22,608 gas and 1,200 diesel), 40,798 MW of hydro-electric, 31,692 MW of renewables and 4,780 MW of nuclear, for a total of 250,257 MW. That’s on paper, whereas the actual power generation every average day (in 2014, according to the Central Electricity Authority, which is the apex power sector planning body) has been around 135,000 MW. From every power plant to every grid and to every distribution network, the aggregate transmission and commercial losses are estimated to be 26%. Judging from the trend of 2000 onwards, India’s coal consumption would have been 710 million tons in 2013 – almost twice the consumption in 2000 (359 mt) and more than three times the consumption in 1990 (224 mt).

To have allowed 26% of the generated electricity in 2013 to be ‘lost’ amounts to wasting the coal that was burned to generate it, and this is a gigantic sum, an amount equal to the 189 mt that India consumed in 1986. Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha, Additional Secretaries R N Choubey and Devendra Chaudhry, Joint Secretaries Mukesh Jain, B N Sharma, Pradeep Kumar, Satish Kumar and Jyoti Arora, and Economic Adviser Raj Pal must practice thrift and saving instead of entertaining industry’s demands for more power plants.

(2) India has for the last year consumed crude oil at the rate of about 3.5 million barrels a day and of this astounding amount 2.5 million barrels are imported. For 2013-14 (until 31 March) India’s appetite for crude oil cost US$ 143 billion (which represented 32% of India’s total imports for the financial year, according to the Ministry of Commerce). The standard oil barrel contains 159 litres of crude oil and, according to the Society of Petroleum Engineers, a barrel of crude oil represents about 1,700 kWh of electricity. Judging from the power consumption trend from 2000, our per capita average annual electricity consumption in 2014 will be 750-760 kWh, which is about 62 or 63 units a month.

A simple schematic for a 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant that shows the inputs and pollutants. Diagram courtesy Indian Power Sector.Com

Thus a single barrel of imported (or domestically produced) crude oil contains energy enough to supply two persons for a year, at current annual averages. Such a comparison between fuels is useful to illustrate what the country’s automobile addiction costs in terms of what it takes to furnish households with electricity. About 47% of the oil is used (after refining and being turned into various petroleum products) for transport, supporting an automobile industry that has placed 17.56 million cars, 2.01 million taxis, 3.9 million jeeps, 4.24 million light motor vehicles, 1.29 million buses, 7.37 million goods carriers, 9.42 million other vehicles (tractors, three-wheelers and so on), and 115.41 million two-wheelers, on our roads to congest our towns and cities into paralysis.

The oil import bill is Rs 872,300 crore, a number that defies the citizen’s attempts to size it (it is more than ten times the wages paid through MGNREGA (about Rs 78,106 crore) for the last three years for which 235.5 million people were provided wage employment). Goyal and his officials are therefore better advised to pay attention (together with cabinet colleague Nitin Gadkari, the minister of road transport and highways) to the 119,209 state transport buses in Bharat and India in which we travelled (economically and fairly reliably, round the clock too) some 552 million passenger kilometres.

(3) This NDA-BJP government in its first three months has blundered just as much as its predecessor government did on matters that concern every citizen: the environment, energy, the provisioning of agriculture and food, and human development. At every turn Goyal’s cabinet colleagues, and in particular Arun Jaitley, minister of finance and defence, have chanted out the tiresome refrain that India will grow, must grow, must build, must consume, must produce and so on. Their obduracy in the face of evidence to the opposite – evidence that has been available in Bharat and internationally from the time they were students, certainly – is just as tiresome. Gathering ever more citizens into the club of the urban middle class will only lead to a financial and technological trap from which there is no escape.

Coal India’s share price for the last two years.

One example amongst many illustrates why, quite starkly. Since 2004, the sale of room air-conditioners has grown at about 15% per year, and the industry reported sales of over 3.5 million air-conditioners in 2013. Concerned by the demand for electricity from homes and offices fitted, over the last three years, with new air-conditioners, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (a statutory body under the Ministry of Power) set out to estimate what effect millions of new air-conditioners would have on peak electricity demand. The answer was provided by an ‘expert group on low carbon strategies for inclusive growth’ for the Planning Commission and independent analysis conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (of the USA). This study found that peak electricity demand would rise by 75,000 MW to reach 150,000 MW by 2030. That is, in 15 years the peak electricity demand alone will be 60% of today’s total power generation capacity in India!

There is no financial fix and there is no technological fix for such a trend. There is no further excuse for the NDA-BJP government and for ministers like Goyal, Jaitley, Javadekar, Gadkari (and prime minister Modi) to continue to ignore the obvious. Goyal and Jaitley both need an immediate refresher in revisiting the reasons why the marginal cost curve of any action they have announced in the last three months will rise steeply. That rise will be due to a combination of activities, and the natural consequences, which will ruinously amplify the impacts of a changing climate. Bharat cannot continue to shirk the duty – of government and of citizen – of caring first for our ‘prakruti’ (what the west has recently begun to call ecological services) and instead pursuing the ‘maya’ of continuous growth.

– Rahul Goswami

What the middle class must unlearn

July 1, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are currently dominating debates on development policy worldwide. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) has published a policy paper that recommends the inclusion of a comprehensive environmental goal entitled “safeguarding Earth system services” in the catalogue of new sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The aim of this goal is to bring development paths in line with ecological boundaries, so that human progress can be ensured. In order to operationalise this goal, the WBGU has recommended integrating six targets to protect the climate, the soils and biological diversity. The WGBU points out that compliance with ecological boundaries in the form of “planetary guard rails” is a prerequisite for poverty eradication and development. Taking them into account does not imply restrictions on the future development of the poorest 2 billion people. Rather, in the long term development will only be possible within these planetary guard rails.

“Consumption decisions and lifestyles of the middle and upper classes are causing the greatest threat to the natural life-support systems,” the policy paper has said, because of their high level of resource consumption or high per-capita CO2 emissions. Policy-makers therefore have a responsibility to create the necessary requirements for sustainable production and consumption patterns.