INDIA CLIMATE WATCH – FEBRUARY 2010 (Issue11)

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE

From the Editor’s desk
Budget 2010- how climate friendly was it?
Shyam Saran resigns as PM’s special envoy
Yvo resigns, India proposes Sharma as UNFCCC chief
India to get panel on climate change
Per capita approach to be revisited?
Climate skeptics get platform in Delhi
Maldives seeks India’s help
Green Commonwealth Games?
Indian states get active on climate change
Delhi Sustainable Development Summit
Indo-UK study looks at water cycle changes
Climate events round-up

Editor:
Malini Mehra

Research & Reporting
Kaavya Nag, Somya Bhatt, Pranav Sinha, Malini Mehra

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From the Editor’s desk

What a month. From high-profile resignations to Union Budget announcements, there has scarcely been a day without climate in the news. While the much-maligned but also fulsomely-supported IPCC chair and TERI supremo, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has managed to hold onto his post for another month, February saw the announced departure of both Shyam Saran and Yvo de Boer. Neither was a surprise.

In Saran’s case, there has been a war of attrition with the Minister of State for Environment & Forests, Jairam Ramesh, since it became apparent that the Minister had a mind of his own when it came to Indian climate policy and politics. Since he took office in May 2009, the Minister and the Prime Minister’s special envoy have been at loggerheads with the former a reformist and the latter in the traditional mould of a defender of the faith. (The faith being the per-capita based climate orthodoxy followed by Indian governments since year dot.)

Not unsurprisingly, the Minister has had a tough time of it battling the ranked masses of supporters of the orthodoxy in both his Ministry as well as the press. But his sheer bloody-mindedness in getting things done has had an impact. Week on week and month on month, one has seen the needle rise with ever more initiatives on the multi-headed Hydra that is climate change. The Minister has made his ministry rise to the tempo and consolidated his grip on environment and climate policy across the government.

In the battle of wills with Saran, the Minister has won. But in the battle for the heart and soul of India’s climate policy, the Minister is not yet done – he has barely just begun. This is not a short-game. It is a long-game of changing risk-averse and change-averse institutions and demonstrating the economic and political benefit of action on climate change. This requires a powerful new narrative and it is not clear whether the Minister has found his compelling story on this as yet. One that will connect with both the titans of industry and the tillers in the field.

The fact that he is not quite there yet was revealed by yet another Union Budget that failed to make provisions for the much-vaunted eight Missions of the National Action Plan on Climate Change. Two years on and still no clear allocation as to how these expressions of intent are to be funded and implemented. With the riveting exception of the National Solar Mission, the flagship mission of the Government, one is at a loss as to explain how the Government has placed climate change at the heart of its policy-making. It seems very much like an ad-hoc affair still.

At the sub-national level, though, one can see the impact that a little bit of energy on climate change can unleash. State after state – though still not in the double digits – appears to be moving on climate change and expressing a new-found ambition to be ‘carbon neutral’ or the greenest state in the country. Much finer ambitions than merely to have the highest state-level GDP growth rate in the country. Especially if that growth is green and sustainable, not carbon-based and cancerous. If the national politics on growth and climate changes as a result, we could well be in very different territory come the next elections.

Budget 2010- how climate friendly was it?

India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, announced the Union Budget for 2010-2011 in Delhi on 26 February 2010. With global attention on climate change and India having announced its own voluntary commitment to reduce emissions intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020, the question many were asking was: is the government going to put its money where its mouth is? The Minister’s speech signaled the government’s intention to transform India’s energy mix and meet the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. The Budget 2010 did contain some important announcements and initiatives – perhaps the most significant of which was the National Clean Energy Fund and the energy cess on coal (domestic and imported).

Here’s a look at some of the key measures:

Direct Funding

1. To establish a National Clean Energy Fund for funding research and innovative projects in clean energy technologies and harnessing renewable energy sources to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
2. A doubling of the budget for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) – largely to fund the Government’s flagship Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. (The Solar Mission has an ambitious target of reaching 20,000 MW of solar power by the year 2022, effectively making India a leading player in solar energy in years to come.)  MNRE’s budget rose by 61 percent – from Rs 620 crore in 2009-10 to Rs.1000 crore in 2010-11.
3. An allocation of Rs 200 crore for launching the Climate Resilient Agriculture Initiative. This seeks to sustain gains made in the green revolution but strengthen conservation farming, which involves soil health, water conservation and biodiversity preservation.

Tax Proposals

1. Clean energy cess on coal produced in India at a rate of Rs.50 per tonne. The cess will also apply to imported coal to build the corpus of the National Clean Energy Fund.
2. Concessional customs duty of 5 per cent on machinery, instruments, equipment and appliances etc. required for the initial setting up of photovoltaic and solar thermal power generating units and also exempt from Central Excise duty. Ground source heat pumps used to tap geothermal energy would be exempt from basic customs duty and special additional duty.
3. Exempt a few more specified inputs (some were already exempt in last year’s budget) required for the manufacture of rotor blades for wind energy generators from Central Excise duty.
4. Halve Central Excise duty on LED lights from 8 per cent to 4 per cent. This now places LEDs on par with Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs).
5. Provide concessional excise duty of 4 per cent to CSIR-developed ‘Soleckshaw’ – the solar version of a hand-pulled cycle rickshaw which runs on solar-powered batteries. The Soleckshaw’s key parts and components would also be exempt from customs duty.

National Clean Energy Fund and cess on coal

The National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF), a provisional title for this initiative, and the cess on coal are arguably the most interesting innovations in the budget. The former is intended to provide a source of investment for entrepreneurial ventures and research into clean energy technologies. The bulk of the funds for the NCEF are to be raised through a clean energy cess on coal produced in India as well as imported coal at a rate of Rs 50 per tonne. This cess on coal is not the first such ‘green tax’ to be applied in the India. The water cess has been levied and collected by the State Pollution Control Boards for prevention and control of water pollution for some time.

How large is the fund likely to be? The estimated demand for coal in India in the Budget period is likely to be 440 million tonnes (2010-11) and 518 million tonnes (2011-12) respectively. An extrapolation from this suggests that the size of the NCEF could be anything in the range of INR 22,000 million to INR 25,900 million respectively for FY 2010-11 and 2011-12. This will increase as India’s appetite for coal increases, but the revenues generated could build a core funding base for the Missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

By making the tax environment less friendly for fossil fuel firms and by providing fiscal relief for companies in the renewable energy sector, the government has provided a helping hand. This is to be welcomed but will need to be built on aggressively if the scale of the ‘greening India’ challenge is to be met effectively. For now, though there is at least something for those in the renewable energy industry to capitalise on.

Looking across the Budget, it can be seen that energy security concerns and environment have been further embedded with some fiscal incentives and budgetary support for green measures. An allocation has been made for the Solar Mission but the remaining seven Missions of the NAPCC are still left stranded, and the mitigation and adaptation challenge faced by the country has been inadequately addressed. The Government has not made good on its promises to put budgets next to programmes.

For example, the National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE) was supposed to be one of the two priority Missions in the NAPCC. The NMEEE is supposed to be implemented from April 1 2010. The Government says that it is aiming at building a market worth Rs 74,000 crore for energy efficient products and accrue avoided capacity addition of over 19,000 MW, however, no budget has been announced for this. One can only surmise that as the Ministry of Power will be overseeing the MNEEE, and as the Ministry of Power’s budget allocation has more than doubled from Rs 2,230 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 5,130 crore in 2010- 11, that we will see baseline funds for the MNEEE. But in the absence of clarity from the Government, this remains speculation. 

More worryingly, the status of the six other missions of the NAPCC continues to be in limbo. The table below provides an update of where things are presently at. (Budgetary updates 2010-11 have been indicated in square brackets.)

Status of NAPCC Eight Missions (February 2010)

1. Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission – Approved by Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change (PMCCC); to be coordinated by M/o New & Renewable Energy. [Funds approved in Budget 2010-11]
2. National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency – Approved by PMCCC and to be implemented from 1 April 2010; to be coordinated by M/o Power.
3. National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem – Draft dated 26 October 2009 approved by PMCCC in principle.
4. National Mission on Strategic Knowledge on Climate Change – Final draft (15 October 2009) considered by PMCCC but decision unknown.
5. National Mission on Sustainable Habitat – Final Draft Mission document prepared by M/o Urban Development, under consideration by PMCCC.
6. National Water Mission – Mission document prepared by M/o Water Resources, under consideration by PMCCC.
7. National Mission for Green India – Mission document prepared by M/o Environment & Forests, under consideration by PMCCC.
8. National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture – Mission document prepared by M/o Agriculture, under consideration by PMCCC.

Shyam Saran resigns as PM’s special envoy

On 20 February 2010, the Prime Minister’s Office released a simple line, “The Special Envoy to the Prime Minister on Climate Change has been permitted to demit office from Friday, March 14”, indicating that Shyam Saran would no longer continue in post. His sudden resignation from office, at a time when he was due to chair a key strategy meeting for India’s post-Copenhagen plans, clearly indicates changes are afoot in the Government’s climate configurations.

India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh, the relative newbie to climate change who has barely been in office for nine months, has been pushing the envelope on the way India approaches international climate negotiations. He may well have had the highest level of backing for many of his statements and they now leave little room for doubt that India is serious about carving out a new space in international climate politics. Ramesh’s outspokenness had long raised the hackles of Saran and the old guard who saw the Minister has stepping on their turf and contravening accepted shibboleths of India’s climate change policy, particularly at the UNFCCC.

The differences of opinion between Shyam Saran on the one hand – a retired senior diplomat who drafted the controversial Indo-US nuclear deal – and the Minister of State (without a cabinet seat) for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, on the other had been evident ever since the Minister took office in May 2009. Differences were first seen when Ramesh expressed his disappointment at Saran’s handling of statements about the Major Economies Forum (MEF) Summit at La Aquila, Italy. In the run-up to Copenhagen, however, Saran and his allies seem to have got their own back when a letter from Ramesh to the Prime Minister was leaked. The letter allegedly asked for a review of India’s position and led to threats of resignation by senior negotiators. These officials effectively held the government to ransom with a no-show on the first day of talks at the Copenhagen climate conference in December. It was only when the Prime Minister intervened and called for Ramesh and Saran to sit together and formulate a ‘joint statement’ on India’s approach for Copenhagen that peace broke out in Team India.

Even after Copenhagen, the differences were evident with Saran reportedly in favour of India rejecting the Copenhagen Accord, while Ramesh was in favour of it. A Member of Parliament even commented that internal politics were harming peoples’ understanding of Indian climate politics, and that a coordinated effort was needed.

While Shyam Saran maintains that his decision to quit was for personal reasons, in a leaked letter to the Prime Minister last year, he clearly indicated his misgivings regarding the Minister’s attempts to change India’s negotiating stance. While Jairam Ramesh initially refused to comment on Saran’s resignation, he later said that bureaucrats cannot dictate policies as they are consultants. He pointedly noted that it is the job of the Ministry to decide policy as the Ministry is accountable to Parliament.

Saran’s resignation comes at a time when Ramesh has commissioned a study on the various approaches that India could take to international burden sharing on climate change other than its long-standing per-capita approach. This also comes at a time when the climate negotiating team is expected to be re-cast as India prepares its climate change strategy, and when budgetary allocations for key programmes such as the Solar Mission are only just being put in place. In sum, it seems that for the present, the Minister of State is firmly in charge.

Yvo resigns, India proposes Sharma as UNFCCC chief
 
In another spectacular resignation, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, announced that he would be stepping down with effect from 1 July 2010. After four years in the post- and momentous ones at that – the former Dutch civil servant said he was leaving to enable the UN Secretary General to appoint a suitable candidate in time for the important COP16 talks in Mexico in November.

Although his term officially ends in September, few doubted that the job had taken its toll on the straight-talking Dutchman whose dry wit and emotional commitment – few would remember his tears of frustration at Bali – had endeared him to many involved in the climate negotiations.

Expecting to steer the world to a successful conclusion at Copenhagen, the eventual collapse of the talks was partly attributable to the failure of de Boer and the Danish Presidency to find a timely and adequate point of political convergence. Although herding cats would have been easier than trying to create consensus from parties with such widely divergent interests.

Yvo himself has characterized Copenhagen as “an absolute disaster” and has now freed himself to speak his mind in a non-political role as advisor to global services firm, KPMG, on climate change. With his departure, the field has now opened up for candidates – in particular from developing countries –to fill the post of UNFCCC head.

India was swift off the block to propose its own candidate, Vijai Sharma, Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF). Sharma has been leading the Indian delegation at the climate negotiations and is seen as a competent if dull bureaucrat in the traditional Indian mould.

In proposing his candidacy, Jairam Ramesh, Minister of MoEF, said that Sharma would be a candidate from the BASIC grouping and already enjoyed backing from the Chinese. While India and China enjoy a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours relationship on climate change, it is not self-evident that Brazil and South Africa will wish to support India’s candidate.

The field is expected to widen and it may well be that a candidate from a less politically spiky country – such as Indonesia’s foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda – could emerge as a frontrunner; or even one of the many seasoned diplomats from the AOSIS countries who were in evidence in the final chaotic hours of Copenhagen.

One thing is for sure: with so many eyes watching the process and with the UNFCCC’s legitimacy at stake, the result had better not be a stitch-up.

India to get panel on climate change

On 4 February 2010, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that India would be establishing its own answer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dubbed the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment (INCCA), the network was established in October last year at the initiative of the Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, but has taken on an enhanced role in the wake of criticism of the IPCC and a recognition of the weakness of Indian climate science.

The INCCA is made up of 200 scientists from 120 institutions across the country and will focus on the “three M’s” – measuring, modeling and monitoring. It will expected to issue its first report by November 2010 and will contribute formally to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report due to be released in 2014.

Minister Ramesh said the intention of forming the INCCA was not to snub the IPCC but to provide a regional response as “India as a large and diverse country cannot depend only on IPCC reports” to formulate its climate action strategies. Foreign experts and scientists from surrounding countries including Nepal are also expected to be engaged in INCCA.

Per capita approach to be revisited?

In another recent development, Minister Jairam Ramesh announced in February that he has commissioned US-based Indian economist Arvind Subramaniam to evaluate the per capita approach that has long been the bedrock for India’s climate negotiations. While Indian newspapers were full of speculation that Ramesh intends to junk the per capita approach, the case Subramaniam appears to have made in the past is an argument for the per-capita approach.

Leading Indian negotiator Ambassador Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, in a column in the Indian newspaper Telegraph, wrote that the Minister had commissioned Subramaniam to prepare a “paper on alternative options”. Dasgupta seemed perturbed at the prospect of the paper being commissioned, possibly fearing it being implemented on the “whim” of a single person (Ramesh) as opposed to the supposed consensus of the entire nation.

However, previous research by Arvind Subramaniam and his colleagues (May 2009) – and the likely reason that the Minister commissioned the study – calls for a “new per capita approach”. Subramanian et al’s approach takes into account the gravity of the climate crisis and seeks to show India as a responsible emerging power attempting to secure its growth.

In their approach, per capita emissions are broken down into emissions that disentangle pure energy consumption (for welfare), from the efficiency of CO2 emissions generated by production and consumption. This breaking up of emission “sources” highlights the high levels of inefficiency in production in developing countries, as opposed to the very high levels of energy consumption in developed countries. Their argument is that while countries such as India will strive towards emissions intensity that reflects today’s technological frontiers (1990-2005) in terms of welfare emissions, there will be no compromise on the country’s future development trajectory.

Old wine in new bottles? It remains to be seen just how different the Subramaniam study will be to the orthodoxy followed in India for more than a decade.

Climate skeptics get platform in Delhi

The Liberty Institute and the India International Centre teamed up to organise a tub-thumbing anti-climate science seminar on 23 February in New Delhi. Called Challenging Climate Post Copenhagen India, the seminar featured two professional climate deniers, Dr. Fred Singer (founder director, Science and Environment Policy project) and Dr Benny Peiser (Director, Global Warming Policy Foundation) from the UK.

A reprise of a similar event organized by the Liberty Institute in May 2008, this year’s event failed to attract the official participation the former event had. While the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, himself had keynoted the Liberty Institute’s former event, this year the official representation was thin. One of the star turns promised – Dr Prodipto Ghosh, former Principal Secretary, Ministry of Environment & Forests, and redoubtable climate negotiator and member of the PM’s Advisory Council on Climate Change – failed to show up, being warned away no doubt.

Undeterred, the foreign visitors laid out their wares and made a hard sell to attract as many senior Indian scientists, foreign policy elites and opinion shapers to their cause. Evidently the idea behind the event was to create a critical mass and build a solid grouping of authoritative commentators who could deter the public from listening to pro-climate voices in India.

The primary arguments to doubt the ‘conventional wisdom’ on climate change presented by Drs Singer and Peiser are worth laying out in some detail as an illustration of the methods used:

1. Do we know enough that global warming is caused by humans?
2. The biggest problem facing the humanity is not climate change but the political messaging of creating fear, and the control of cheap and plentiful energy use which is important for poverty alleviation and development.
3. Climate Change is cause by neutral and natural forces not human beings
4. The IPCC exaggerated impacts. Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate and many more errors illustrate this. The IPCC misused and misinterpreted data. It misused and manipulated the peer review process – opting for selective data sets based on human influence and ignoring other factors
5. The last 10 years of data show no correlation between CO2 and global warming. Need to differentiate surface and atmospheric temperature.
6. Solar activity and cosmic rays released have an indirect impact on climate. Water vapour is a more potent GHG gas than CO2 but has been totally ignored and is not under control of human beings.
7. For another 20-30 years, we will not know who is wrong or who is right (who has better evidence – climate skeptics or climate pros?)
8. The climate negotiations are totally political and do not depend on science.
9. The European Union’s climate policy is in serious crisis as the Copenhagen Accord was reached without the EU’s participation
10. In Britain, energy intensive companies (although few) are slowly becoming less competitive due to enormous carbon and green taxes
11. Citizens in Britain pay more than 10% of their income for electricity – leading to energy / fuel poverty
12. There is a backlash of people in the EU and North America against climate policy
13. Solar will never be competitive in another few years as it did not happen in last 30 years
14. The EU has three options post Copenhagen;Carbon tax on all imports if other countries don’t take carbon reduction targets;Targets are conditional based on other countries – especially on Indian and Chinese commitments; Close eyes and pretend that nothing has changed. In Mexico, we will solve the problem.
15. In the US one sees serious opposition within Obama’s own party
16. The political climate has changed drastically in last two years

Relying on a devious combination of outright falsehood, innuendo and plausible political commentary, the duo set out to cast doubt in the minds of those present on the veracity of climate science and the merit of a country like India taking (costly) action on climate change. A false dichotomy was set up between development and taking action on climate change. Little mention was made of a precautionary or risk management approach to the issue, especially for a country as highly vulnerable to climatic variability such as India.

The Indian discussants present chimed in to support the main speakers, however.

Dr. Dev Raj Sikka, former director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology agreed that the IPCC is biased and charged that social scientists were kept away from the Panel’s work. He stated that the medieval warm period of 1300-1600 was warmer than now with fewer numbers of droughts. He noted that glaciers are indeed melting but this is a period of deglaciation, and such melting is part of the natural cycle. He admitted that models show that temperature and climate will change but said the extent of the change is still debatable. In sum, he argued that the Indian scientific community needs to be aware of “both sides of the story”.

In his remarks, Prof. Deepak Lal from the University of California, laid the problem at the door of population and said that ecologists and greens had always been against population growth. He argued that all multilateral environmental organizations such as the IPCC, the 1992 Rio Conference (Earth Summit) and the UN Environment Programme were tainted political organizations.

In the discussion that followed, the IPCC and Dr Pachauri came in for much criticism and few pulled their punches in expressing their views.

Clearly there is a role in the debate for contrarian views, but Messrs Singer and Peiser are so far off the curve that it makes one wonder what the India International Centre is doing giving them a platform. Or is the country’s most prestigious foreign policy centre a haven for closet climate skeptics? Perhaps the IIC could redress the balance by hosting an event with CSM next …
 
Maldives seeks India’s help

The Maldives hit international prominence last year with the efforts of the media-savvy President Nasheed to highlight the country’s acute vulnerability to climate change. One of the most low-lying countries in the world, the Maldives has now sought India’s cooperation to access new technologies particularly renewable energy, and data gathering to tackle climate change.

Vice president Mohammed Waheed Hassan said that Asian countries should pool their resources and create a fund without waiting for help from developed countries.

Green Commonwealth Games?

India took its first steps towards hosting the world’s first “Green” Commonwealth Games (CWG), when New Delhi’s chief minister Sheila Dixit and Suresh Kalmadi, Chairman of the XIXth CWG, released an Ecological Code on 17 February. The ecological code aims to minimise the impact of the Games on energy and water consumption, air quality and on the release of carbon dioxide emissions. The Ecological Code is promoted jointly by the CWG Committee and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the organizers say it will be pushed out strongly in the eight months remaining until the start of the CWG.

UNEP has been advising the CWG to ensure that international best practice is adopted to green this event ever since it signed a MOU with the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee (CWOC) in 2007. (UNEP was also the key advisor for the Beijing Olympics, as well as the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament.)

Among the measures adopted by Delhi in its efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the Games, has been the closure of one of the city’s coal-fired power plants. The CWOC is also reportedly looking at recycling waste generated during the games and offsetting emissions through a plantation drive. The city’s Thyagraj Stadium has incorporated rain water harvesting and used recycled bricks and rooftop solar panels in its construction – making it one of the greenest stadia in the country.

With one of the largest CNG-run bus fleets in the world and a metro in the process of enlargement, Delhi is inching its way towards a more sustainable transport infrastructure. Can more be done in the coming eight months given the controversy that has dogged the Games? If the CWOC is to be believed, more must be done to live up to the carbon neutral claims made by the organizers. If so, it will surely go down as the greenest sporting event in India of recent times.

Indian states get active on climate change

Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh is already ahead of most of India’s 25 states when it comes to taking green initiatives and is on its way to becoming the country’s first carbon neutral state by increasing its forest cover and earning carbon credits.  The state also notched another ‘first’ when it sent its Chief Minister to visit another country to gain exposure on best practice on climate action.

In 2008, Himachal announced its Environment Master Plan. Some of the initiatives under this Master Plan include the complete banning of felling and plastics, as well as a ban on setting up highly polluting industrial units in the state. The state also levies an innovative voluntary ‘green tax’ on vehicles to generate funds for climate change initiatives. Furthermore, all government buildings have been given a mandate to undertake environmental auditing.

The latest initiative was Chief Minister Dhumal’s visit to Costa Rica (9-17 February, 2010), to learn about how that renowned Central American state managed to increase its forest cover so successfully. Costa Rica’s lessons are apparently to be incorporated in HP’s Master Plan to increase the green cover in the state.

During his overseas visit, the Chief Minister also announced the establishment of a climate research centre for the state which would help it in tackling natural disasters such as earthquakes, landslides, glaciers outbursts and flash floods, and devise suitable adaptive and mitigation strategies.

He also met the heads of various NRI (Non-resident Indian) organisations in the United States and invited them to invest in the eco-friendly industrial development of the state.

In related action, the World Bank has agreed to give a Programmatic Development Policy Loan of $450 million to Himachal Pradesh for sustainable environmental growth, as well as a loan for watershed management – to be sanctioned once WB officials visit the state in March 2010.

Orissa

The Eastern state of Orissa has faced as many as eight cyclones – including one super cyclone – seventeen droughts and twenty floods in four decades (1965-2006). With these impacts uppermost in their minds, the Orissa government is in the process of finalising a State Action Plan on Climate Change with the support of DFID and the World Bank. Several rounds of meetings between state officials and representatives from both DFID and World Bank have been held in this regard. The Orissa government is planning to set up nine sectoral committees which would focus on nine impact areas of climate change including health and social vulnerability, energy, transport, agriculture, urban development, water resources, coastal and disaster, mining and forests. These committees would be headed by the secretaries of the respective state government departments, and the government is in the process of nominating nodal officers for each of the nine committees. After final rounds of meetings in March, the SAP (State Action Plan) on Climate Change is expected to be finalised by April 2010.

Gujarat

Gujarat’s canny state government has taken a lead in combating the effects of climate change in the state, as the commercial benefits thereof become evident. The government plans to invest a total of Rs. 3,600 crore over the next few years on climate change initiatives and Chief Minister Narendra Modi has allocated Rs. 100 crore to the state government’s Climate Change Department for its work. The main focus of action will be reducing the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions and thereby earning carbon credits.

The Climate Change Department – only the fourth such in the world – will work on a wide range of projects including research, development and commercialisation of green technology; research on impacts of climate change on agriculture and health; awareness and advocacy on climate change issues; and launching the Green credit movement. The state government is also in the process of finalising a State Action Plan on climate change which will include separate plans for each district bearing in mind regional environmental concerns.

Madhya Pradesh

Following in the footsteps of Himachal and Gujarat, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh announced the establishment of a climate research centre for the state recently. This would focus on collecting data on climate change impacts on the state and thus help in formulating effective mitigation strategies. However, no timeline or date by which this centre will be established and fully functional has been announced by the Chief Minister.

Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2010

Post-Copenhagen Delhi witnessed the first major gathering of a large number of present and former heads of states, several ministers, representatives from various research and developmental organisation, non-governmental organisations, academia, professionals, corporate sector and media, from around the world – at TERI’s tenth Delhi Sustainable Development Summit on 5 February 2010 in the capital city.

The three-day summit, called ‘Beyond Copenhagen: new pathways to sustainable development,’ included sessions addressing everything from accelerating socio-economic development as a key to adaptation, to building institutions for effective climate governance, and financing opportunities.

Coming at a time when both the IPCC and its Chair – and DSDS host – Dr Rajendra Pachauri, had come under sustained assault in the press, both featured heavily in speeches and discussions at the Summit. In his inaugural address, the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said he fully supported the IPCC and its leadership. He also highlighted the efforts India has taken on climate change and referred to the country’s leadership at Copenhagen, especially in securing the Copenhagen Accord which the government welcomed. However, he maintained that India will forward a catalogue of voluntary commitments to the UNFCCC and not commit to a set of negotiated legal obligations.

Other keynote speakers included Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh; Prime Minister’s special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran; former Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer; and Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.

When he took to the stage, Jairam Ramesh, in a show of solidarity gave a hug to the IPCC Chair and TERI head, Dr Pachauri, seeking to dispel rumours of bad blood between the two men.

In his address, Yvo de Boer said that Post-Copenhagen, the UNFCCC had received indications in the form of targets and commitments from 56 nations accounting for 80 percent of GHG emissions but there is was still need for further effort. He listed the main challenges needing to be tackled as: unsustainable lifestyles globally; an ever-increasing population and rising demand; lack of good economics on why the present development model was unsustainable; and very few countries willing to undertake initiatives.

Despite the attacks on climate science of late and on the credibility of the IPCC in particular, there was unanimous agreement from speakers at the Summit on the problems associated with climate change, and consensus that serious impacts were in store if substantial efforts to cut GHG emissions were not undertaken swiftly.

Indo-UK study looks at water cycle changes

India and the UK signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on research co-operation to study changing water cycles on 17 February in New Delhi. The MoU was signed between Ministry of Science and Technology, Prithviraj Chavan, and UK Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills, Pat McFadden, as part of bilateral efforts to promote scientific exchange. The collaborating partners under the MoU would be the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).

Changes in the global water cycle as a result of climate change pose a serious threat to society and currently there is insufficient data to accurately predict its implications for monsoon patterns in India. Since most of India’s agriculture depends on monsoon rainfall it is all the more important to study changes in the water cycle such that crop patterns can be adjusted accordingly and help mitigate the effects of climate change on agriculture.

Under this collaboration scientists from both the UK and India will jointly study changing rainfall patterns, with the improved information exchange resulting in better flood and drought mapping and predictions for both India and the UK. This is intended to help increase the preparedness of different states to natural calamities and address the issues of food security, loss of livelihood and loss of property.

At present UK and Indian scientists are already working to improve the prediction of floods and drought in India and NERC has committed £10 million towards this as part of its Changing Water Cycle Programme.

Events Round-up for February 2010

1. Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, 5-7 February 2010, New Delhi: Organised by TERI with the central theme, Beyond Copenhagen: new pathways to sustainable development.
2. CII-The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy Conference, 8 February 2010, New Delhi: Organised by CII the conference gave a common platform to senior government officials, global investors and leading Indian entrepreneurs to discuss the promotion of the exciting potential of renewable energy to millions of people across India. Delegates discussed how renewable technologies could be scaled up at the national level, and the role business could play in improving livelihoods, health and education opportunities whilst tackling climate change.
3. Environment Partnership Summit 2010, 11-13 February 2010, Kolkata: This summit was organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce for preparing a road map for global competitiveness and brought together multiple stakeholders discussing on a wide range of focus areas including carbon oriented economy, current clean technologies, water and waste water management in an industrial setup, environment management and environment health and safety.
4. Global Warming and CC: The Copenhagen Summit Talks, 13 February 2010, Jadavpur: Organised by Dr. Sugata Hazra this summit witnessed some distinguished speakers reflecting on climate change, and achievements and failures post Copenhagen summit.