CEnter for Science and Environment Director Sunita Narain, known more for taking on the world’s cola giants, feels that climate change is a serious issue that must be tackled with a sense of urgency. Invited by the French Government to the meeting of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she finds the picture in the latest IPCC report on climate change “scary”.
In an interview to The Sunday Tribune, she describes the Government of India’s response to the IPCC meet as “shocking”. “We need to take hard action and fast”, she says.
Excerpts:
Q: How would you react to the IPCC report?
A: The picture, as I see it, is definitely scary and I am scared. The IPCC is an inter-governmental body, comprising senior scientists across the world. It is still a conservative picture. The scientists have been warning of such a scenario for some time now but we have not been taking it seriously. I fully agree with the report that reasons behind the future catastrophe are largely human-made.
Q: Is India preparing a road map to tackle climate change?
A: The Indian Government appears to be disinterested in the issue. Its attitude can be judged from the degree of importance it gave to the Paris meet. I do not know what the government is thinking. But there is still time to mitigate the impact and for that we have to move very fast.
Q: Is it possible for us to reduce emissions without compromising on development and poverty alleviation?
A: India must have a two-pronged strategy — our own norms to cut emissions and we need to pressurise the US to cut emissions. The US has never accepted the need to build a fair and cooperative agreement to combat climate change. The US, still the world’s single largest contributor to climate change and whose emissions continue to grow, says it will not join an agreement which does not involve India and China. The result has been a weak and compromised agreement called Kyoto, which allows renegade polluters like the US and Australia to opt out.
Climate change will have devastating effect on the developing world, according to a British government study. It would cost the world much less if it invested today in mitigating emissions. The report authored by economist Nicholas Stern is a warning in a world run by them. For long it has been argued that climate change is too uncertain and there was no reason to take high-cost action today. It is better to wait and see, if necessary adapt. It was assumed that since climate change would happen in the far future, technological innovation and transition will happen.
Q: Is the issue lost in politico-economic equations across the world?
A: Global warming is possibly the biggest and most difficult economic and political issue the world has ever needed to confront. This is because emissions of carbon dioxide are directly linked to economic growth. Therefore, growth is on the line. We will have to reinvent what we do and how we do it. There will be costs. But as Stern says, the cost will be a fraction of what we will need to spend in the future.
Moreover, the issue is about sharing that growth between nations and people. Clearly, global economic wealth is highly skewed. In climate terms, this means that global emissions are also highly skewed. The question now is whether the world will share the right to emit and pollute or will it freeze inequities...if the rich world, which has accumulated a huge natural debt overdrawing on its share of the global commons will repay it so that the poorer world can grow using the same ecological space?
Q: Between such complexities what is the way out?
A: Climate change is about international cooperation. It teaches us that the world is one if the rich world pumped in excessive quantities of carbon dioxide yesterday, the emerging rich world will do so today. The only way is to build controls to ensure fairness and equity, so that this biggest cooperative enterprise is possible. We need to go beyond the weak commitments of Kyoto Protocol to even stabilise carbon dioxide emissions at 550 parts a million. This level is considered by many to be extremely dangerous because it accepts doubling of pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
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