Climate change: a serious threat

Climate change represents a serious threat to every part of the globe, and it would be ridiculous to believe that this is just another issue being pushed by the West down the throats of the developing world. If this was not the case then we would have had a very different Framework Convention on Climate Change which was agreed to at the Rio Summit of 1992. In fact, the very first draft of this Convention was tabled by the Indian delegation. The draft, of course, underwent several changes on the basis of discussions and negotiations between the parties involved. The Convention was based, therefore, not only on substantive inputs provided by India but also by several other developing countries. Similarly, the Kyoto Protocol, which gives practical form to the Framework Convention was arrived at on the basis of intensive, and at times acrimonious, discussions. The fact that the world has still not ratified the Protocol clearly indicates that it is not the product of any conspiracy hatched by the rich nations against the poor. India as a major developing country must support the Kyoto Protocol by arranging to ratify it as early as possible. This becomes even more important for symbolic and practical reasons because India would be hosting the eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention in October-November this year. The growing concern about climate change is based on very convincing scientific analysis. Mention must be made in this context of the outstanding work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, a body established in 1988 jointly by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. The IPCC, which functions with a very lean Secretariat based in Geneva, has been able to mobilize the world?s leading scientists and experts drawn from all over to come up with a series of three successive assessment reports on the whole range of questions related to climate change, as well as a set of special reports on very specialized subjects in this field. The work of the IPCC, which forms the basis of our current knowledge on the prospects of climate change, its likely impacts, and methods to mitigate it, has been widely acclaimed as rigorous, objective and policy relevant (but not policy prescriptive). It is, therefore, devoid of politics and subjective bias, which is assured by a painstaking review process in which all member nations participate, the largest number of which come from the developing nations. There are no doubt uncertainties in the prediction of future climatic changes by virtue of the very complexity of the system that we are dealing with. But, these uncertainties are narrowing as more and more research is undertaken on various aspects of climate change. However, there are some areas on which further work is required urgently, such as on the impacts of climate change in different parts of the world. On current evidence, the impacts on countries of the tropics would be far worse than on countries in the temperate zones. For this reason alone much greater research in this field should be carried out by Indian scientists, a matter that government in this country should facilitate and fund to a greater degree. There are six gases identified in the Kyoto Protocol, the cumulative emissions of which have led to the threat of climate change. Of these, CO2 is the largest, the major source of which is the combustion of fossil fuels. Mitigation of emissions of CO2 would require not only increased efficiency in the use of fossil fuels but a major shift to low carbon or non-carbon fuels such as solar, wind and sustainable use of biomass. Certainly, such a shift can occur if in the price of energy the externality of global environmental effects is internalized. Free market solutions will not work, and regulatory systems such as embodied in the Kyoto Protocol are inescapable. This may not be the most perfect solution, but in the immediate future it is the only answer, given the difficult journey it has undergone to reach a stage of likely ratification. India must, therefore, ratify the Protocol urgently, as a major developing country.