Floundering on climate change

It is a matter of deep regret that India's showing on climate change at the G-8 summit in Germany was embarrassingly poor. India was called upon to demonstrate initiative and leadership at the summit, which focussed sharply on global warming and the need to formulate urgently needed mitigation measures after the pitifully inadequate Kyoto Protocol runs out of force in 2012. All that India did was to stall and block attempts to put greenhouse emission reductions on the agenda: developing countries would brook no quantified targets for reducing emissions; the primary onus lies on the developed world.

India's arguments did not measure up to its responsibilities as the world's fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, with its emissions increasing nearly four times faster than the global average. Even less do they behove the nation that pioneered the global debate on environment and development, at Stockholm in 1972, and which has a strong tradition that abhors profligacy and emphasises the prudent use of resources.

India's failure to adopt a credible posture on climate change was partly masked by two factors. The other "Outreach" countries (China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa) did not do much better. And the summit itself failed to produce a breakthrough by making a firm commitment to reducing emissions by even a modest 50 per cent by 2050 - when cuts of the order of 80 per cent are needed to prevent crossing the tipping point.

Ultimately, all that was agreed was that future negotiations would take place within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and all concerned would give "serious consideration" to cutting emissions. The United States expressed its "willingness" to discuss a post-Kyoto agreement. But essentially, the G-8 and the Outreach countries reiterated what they had promised to do 15 years ago at the Rio summit.

A finer distinction must be made. Like India, China too refused any caps on its fast-growing emissions.

But just before the summit, China produced a 62-page comprehensive document on climate change, which pledges to improve, before the end of this decade, energy efficiency by 20 per cent over its 2005 level. China also promised to raise the proportion of renewable energy in total energy consumption to 10 per cent. India set itself no targets. Its only pledge was to limit its per capita emissions to levels prevalent in the industrialised states, which India itself regards as unconscionably high. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: "If they reduce their emissions, we will also do so."

The Indian government's stand is based on a narrowly nationalist and parochial viewpoint, as distinct from universal considerations of the global public interest. It consists of four propositions. First, it holds that India is deeply committed to and puts a high priority on poverty eradication, for which high gross domestic product (GDP) growth is indispensable. If this involves raising greenhouse emissions, so be it. India has to put "development" (read, growth) before environmental protection.

Second, India's per capita emissions are about a fifth of the global average and only 4 per cent of the US'. Besides, as Finance Minister P. Chidambaram recently said, "India is not a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and nor will it be so in the foreseeable future." So it is not fair to ask India to sacrifice its "right to development" at this stage.

Third, India is already on a low-emission growth trajectory and has taken a series of measures to improve the efficiency of use of energy, promote renewables, and protect the environment. It need not make any additional commitment. Finally, it is the responsibility of developed countries to transfer "clean energy" technologies to developing nations, including India, without imposing intellectual property rights (IPR) restrictions and by giving financial assistance. This is because industrialised countries are primarily responsible for global warming. They must foot the bill for its mitigation.

Each of these arguments is flawed. Given India's persistent poverty ratios, whose reduction has slowed down recently, it is unconvincing to argue that India is seriously committed to poverty eradication. Its policies do not promote that outcome. At any rate, the assumption that high growth rate is the principal or sole key to poverty reduction is open to question. So is the idea that balanced development necessarily, or inevitably, means higher consumption and hence more emissions. The underlying "trickle-down" idea is utterly discredited.

Per capita emissions cannot be the sole criterion for judging a country's contribution to global warming or its responsibility for its mitigation. Overall emissions are also relevant. Per capita emissions carry little meaning in a highly stratified society, in which the bulk of the recent increase in emissions has come from the luxury consumption of the rich and middle classes. The elite must not hide behind the poor to demand a "right" to pollute the world.

Besides, the notion of per capita emissions has to be qualified by two factors: the equal right of all individuals to the world's environmental resources and the "natural sinks" that each society has, which absorb emissions. This needs a much larger scientific and ethical debate. Merely citing (current) low per capita emissions will not do. The third argument is based on questionable figures: for instance, that India's energy intensity has fallen from 0.30 kilograms of oil equivalent per dollar GDP in purchasing power parity in 1972 to 0.19 (in 2003). Similar declines are observable in many other countries, including the US and much of the global North. The point is that India's economy is highly carbon-inefficient (Frontline, January 12). In absolute terms, India's energy consumption per dollar of GDP is three times higher than that of the US.

Again, it is illogical to claim that low energy intensity per unit of output in certain sectors such as steel, aluminium, fertilizers, paper and cement means that India's total emissions are, or will be, under control. The absolute quantities of production of these goods have been rising more rapidly than the GDP and adding to India's greenhouse emissions. Overall, there has been a runaway increase in the consumption of energy-intensive materials in the past decade, thanks to the elite's insatiable consumerism and hedonism.

Finally, it is not reasonable to demand a reward or seek a price for doing something that is intrinsically worthy. If it is a moral and social imperative to abolish child labour or slavery, one ought to do it without being paid to do so. As for "clean technologies", it is doubtful if even the most affluent and advanced of industrialised countries have them. Besides, the real need is not to develop such technologies while maintaining existing levels of consumption but to acknowledge the need for reduced consumption and emissions in the first place.

The argument about IPRs is not environment-specific but is a generic one. It sounds especially hypocritical when advanced by a government that has caved in to the West's patents agenda and is accepting strict IPRs in a number of fields.

The broader point is that India cannot simultaneously flaunt its high GDP growth rates and plead poverty to beg for money.

There is of course a worthy agenda for proposing the cooperative development of certain mitigation technologies, especially in the public domain. But India's plea is different. It wants to present the world a big fat bill for doing what it should be doing in any case.

There is a larger game at work here. India will probably agree to emission caps but only at a price, such as including larger carbon trading quotas and adopting dubious technologies under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. India is lobbying for the inclusion of hazardous technologies such as nuclear power into the CDM. It also wants to promote plantations on India's forest lands and bring them under the CDM. This will mean selling India's forests to Western corporations, which will thus avoid reducing their own emissions by buying largely fictitious carbon credits (Frontline, January 12). Such an approach represents the degeneration of a potentially worthy ecological effort into a despicable mercenary operation. The benefits of the carbon quotas will go to corporations and elite groups even as their trading actually increases the globe's greenhouse gas burden.