Is India Really A Global Climate Leader?

 

 

Five years ago, on December 12, 2015, world leaders agreed on the Paris Agreement and set themselves three goals to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change: adaptation for addressing and reducing vulnerability to climate change, mitigation for reducing emissions to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2°C up to 1.5°C, and making financial flows consistent with climate goals.

By the end of 2020, we already know what a 1.2°C warmer world feels like – wildfires, floods, cyclones, droughts, melting glaciers, sea-level rise, species extinction, crop failures, the decline of fisheries, and a full-blown global pandemic. We also know that it is going to get worse unless world governments take drastic and bold action.

It may surprise many that India is the only G20 country that is currently on track for the 2°C degree scenario, according to The Climate Transparency Report (CTR), the annual review of G20 countries' climate action. India also figures in the top 10 for the second year in a row in The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2021. The CCPI analyses and compares climate protection across 57 countries (plus the EU as a whole) with the highest emissions. The truth is that the world is not doing anywhere near enough to meet the 1.5°C target.

According to the latest UNEP Emissions Gap report, the world is still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3°C degrees this century.

India ranks high in these reports, merely due to its ambitious renewable energy and energy efficiency targets that include 33-35 percent reduction in the emissions intensity of GDP (compared to 2005 by 2030), at least 40 percent non-fossil-fuel electric power capacity by 2030 and additional (cumulative) carbon sink of 2.5-3 GtCO2e by 2030 through additional forest and tree cover.

These rankings, however, stand in contradiction to the Indian government's overall track record on the environment. It is well known that the current government is on a 'dilution spree' of laws pertaining to India's forests, coasts, wildlife, air, and waste management to favour "ease of doing business" and to lure investments under the guise of development. Its outrageous obsession with coal and ill-conceived infrastructure projects are endangering the last remaining pockets of biodiversity and reserves of natural resources, thereby weakening our resilience to climate change challenges.

At the last count, the Indian government has approved 278 projects in and around India's most protected environments, including biodiversity hotspots and national parks, since July 2014. India incidentally stands 168 (out of 180 countries) on the 2020 Environmental Performance Index.

For a country battered by climate-induced disasters, India must recognize the role of nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change's adverse effects and foster climate resilience.

Already 8 out of the 10 highest-ranking years of heat wave exposure in India have occurred in the past 20 years, with heat-related mortality in people older than 65 years reaching a total of 296,000 deaths in 2018. Cyclone Amphan, which brought destruction to West Bengal in India and Bangladesh in May 2020, was the "costliest tropical cyclone on record for the North Indian Ocean," with India's economic losses from the disaster totalling about $14 billion.

The International Labour Organisation has projected that productivity loss due to heat stress in India will be equivalent to 34 million full-time jobs in another 10 years.

An October 2019 study by the Climate Impact Lab says that by 2100, around 1.5 million more people are likely to die every year in India due to climate change. This rate is as high as the death rate from all infectious diseases in the country in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic not only spiked those numbers but also demonstrated the real cost of rampant forest destruction.

The pandemic-lockdown induced reverse migration of millions of workers to impoverished villages and hinterlands has further exposed India's lackadaisical climate change adaptation efforts. Moreover, missing a significant opportunity for a just and green transition, India's COVID-19 economic recovery spending failed to invest in building climate change resilience in agriculture, water, urban planning, coastal planning, and public health.

Going forward, the Indian government needs to prioritize and incorporate adaptation and mitigation measures into decision making at every level. It has to recognize that a local resource-based approach to infrastructure development can be a significant contributor to assisting its citizens in adapting to climate change while contributing to the economy. Community-based natural resource management programmes for water and land resource management in rural areas, promoting climate-resilient agriculture, and building a climate-proof rural infrastructure will ensure livelihoods and reduce emissions.

But most of all, India must protect its biodiversity fiercely and strengthen its natural systems. To quote Antonio Guterres, "Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere."

First published in MoneyControl on 29 December 2020.

 

Will China lead the global fight against climate change?

 

On September 22, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced to the world that China, responsible for 28 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, would phase out any conventional use of coal, oil, and gas to achieve the goal of “carbon neutrality”, i.e., zero additional carbon emissions into the atmosphere, by 2060.

Under the Paris climate deal reached in 2015, China had pledged that its emissions would peak ‘around 2030’, Xi addressing the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, said that he was moving up that timetable to ‘before 2030’.

If China is able to deliver on the climate neutrality pledge by mid-century, it will lower global warming projections by around 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Celsius, the single-biggest reduction measured since countries signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to an analysis by the Climate Action Tracker, which measures government commitments on climate against the Paris Agreement goals.

Carbon neutrality refers to the elimination of carbon dioxide emissions by stopping emissions altogether or by balancing carbon dioxide emissions with some form of carbon removal. It is important to note that carbon neutrality differs from climate neutrality because it does not consider other greenhouse gases.

More than 60 other countries have pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, a consensus deadline that scientists believe must be met to have a reasonable chance of averting the worst climate catastrophe. Those countries are small compared to China. China’s total emissions are about as much as those produced by the United States, European Union, and India combined.

Sceptics have been quick to point out that Xi’s announcement means China will have to stop burning coal, a tall order in a country that is home to half of the world’s coal power capacity and another 210GW to be added soon. Others have expressed concerns about China exporting emissions, as it is financing a quarter of coal plants under development in other countries through its Belt and Road Initiative, with 102GW capacity.

Then there is the timing of the announcement, before the US presidential elections, which could mean China is trying to get out in front of any US pressure in case Biden is sworn in, or maybe even yielding to bilateral pressure from European Union that has been threatening carbon taxes on imports from China if Beijing did not raise its ambition.

Yet there are reasons to believe that Beijing may have acted unconditionally, given that China outperformed its 2020 carbon emission target, reaching the goal three years ahead of schedule. There are strong indications that China could meet its 2030 carbon intensity peaking targets by 2025.

“China rarely makes announcements unless it is confident that it will move towards achieving them, the new pledge indicates that the government could be moving towards a commitment to phasing out the fossil fuel. ” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics.

According to Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at Action Aid, “The fact is that even as it appears to cling to coal, China has also emerged as a leader in clean energy technologies, including solar panels and wind turbines. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars and buses...”

It is important to note that China’s efforts to cut emissions so far have been more about pragmatism than climate leadership. Pollution and other environmental threats are increasingly seen as threats to the communist party’s standing. “Humankind can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature,” Xi told the General Assembly. That was evident in this summer’s devastating floods on the Yangtze River and its tributaries in central China.

Xi has already pledged to increase government support for new technologies while fighting pollution, protecting natural resources, and expanding the country’s national park networks.

However, if Xi is serious, then the ambitious target of climate neutrality must find space in the Chinese government’s soon-to-be released 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), with detailing of the structural changes in energy production and consumption and long-term decarbonisation road maps that are economically and technically viable.

Whether Xi will save the world from runaway climate change or not remains to be seen, but the pressure is now on India, China’s partner-in-chief at the UNFCCC in resisting calls from the West for firm commitments to decarbonisation, to make a similarly bold climate announcement.

First published on Money Control on October 5, 2020.

No deal in Paris ?

On the cold morning of December 12, 2015, Aurora, a giant animatronic polar bear, stood forlorn and forgotten outside the temporary convention centre set up in the Le Bourget Airport, the venue of the Paris Climate Summit. Inside, it was the last day of the 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP21) of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

As expected, the conference had run into extra time of one entire day. After 21 years of haggling, another 21 hours didn't seem to bother anyone, and red-eyed delegates who had stayed up all night helping their governments negotiate tricky text options were seen huddled around the coffee booths. All of them aware of the burden of the failed Copenhagen Climate Summit that must not be repeated. Climate change had already unleashed runaway disasters in the four years since that last attempt to bring the world together to take action. All hopes of an outcome, good or bad, were now upon Laurent Fabius, the President of COP 21, who was shepherding the world’s governments to finalise a treaty that will have grave impact on the future of the planet as we know it.

For the first time in 21 years of knowing that they had to deal with the phenomenon of global warming, nearly 200 nations were on the verge of “recognising that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet and thus requires the widest possible cooperation by all countries, and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, with a view to accelerating the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions and also recognising that deep reductions in global emissions will be required in order to achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention and emphasising the need for urgency in addressing climate change .”

Finally when Laurent Fabius struck the specially designed green gavel, the most memorable achievement of the Paris agreement was that “it aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.”

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