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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

For a binding climate target by TK Arun


India must resist developed country pressure to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, goes the cry. Such a position helps only the rich, in a tearing hurry to grow richer, the environment be damned. It is in the interest of India’s poor for the country to adopt a stringent policy regime to control emissions domestically and thus contribute to a binding deal to cut emissions globally.

Climate change has been identified as the new battleground, as an elaborate conspiracy by the developed world to throttle growth in the developing countries. India should, according to this logic, refuse to accept any binding commitments on cutting emissions. So strong is this pressure that minister for environment Jairam Ramesh has committed to Parliament that India would not accept any binding emission reductions at the forthcoming Copenhagen climate change summit. Instead, India will join China in offering voluntary cuts in emission intensity.

India is about 17% of humanity, but accounts for less than 5% of total greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, the average quantity of greenhouse gas emissions per head for the world is 3.4 times the per head emissions in India. American emission levels are some 18 times India’s. When the Indian economy grows fast, India’s emission levels will grow. Any attempt to cap India’s emissions will mean restricting India’s ability to grow and that is not acceptable.

Further, the developed countries have done the bulk of the damage to the environment over the last couple of centuries, raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to global warming, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, change in weather patterns, and the rest of it. Therefore, the bulk of the responsibility for arresting, reversing and mitigating the damage must also fall on them. On these, there can be little dispute.

But India cannot base its entire climate change negotiating strategy just on this claim that India does not need to do anything. As the second fastest growing large economy, one whose additions to global greenhouse gas emissions would be significant as it continues to grow, India has to offer the world something more than its historical good conduct.

Especially when other developing countries such as China, Brazil and Indonesia have announced their own measures to combat climate change. Accepting this logic, minister Jairam Ramesh has told Parliament that India can safely undertake to reduce the emission intensity of growth by 20%-25% by 2020.

Emission intensity refers to the amount of emissions required to generate one unit of output. In other words, what India proposes is that the amount of emissions required to produce one unit of GDP in 2020 would be a quarter less than the amount of emissions that was required to produce one unit of GDP in 2005. This, of course, provides for significant rise in absolute levels of emissions.

The way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to raise energy efficiency, raise the efficiency of converting heat generated by burning fuels into electricity (thermal efficiency), substitution of fuels that generate more greenhouse gases with fuels that generate less, improve logistics, design buildings and towns to function with less energy. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be reduced by growing more trees and plants, which absorb the gas to make food.

High greenhouse gas emissions essentially means high levels of pollution, aside from their contribution to climate change. The section of society most vulnerable to the ill-effects of pollution are the poor. They already are malnourished, have reduced immunity, are more exposed to noxious gases and particulate matter in the air and can afford healthcare the least, when pollution makes them fall ill.

The impact of climate change also hits the poor the worst, whether it is drought or floods, rising sea levels or reduced crop yields. So attempts to fight climate change help the poor the best. A call to proceed with business as usual is a call to allow the rich to grow richer while heaping additional misery on the poor.
This, of course, is simplistic. The poor also have a stake in growth — that is their ticket out of poverty, and if climate change mitigation hinders growth, that hurts the poor. too.

But why should climate change mitigation hurt growth of the poor? There are any number of no-regrets options available in policy and technology choice that would allow the economy to both resist climate change and accelerate growth. Jairam Ramesh told Parliament about our plan to have 22,000 MW of solar energy by 2022, the policy to have clean coal technologies for power generation, fuel efficiency norms for all vehicles, green building codes. All these make sense.

What would additionally make sense is for India to accept a binding target for emission intensity, in return for, one, a deal that commits the US and Europe to steep cuts in their absolute levels of emissions, and, two, technology and funds that would help India lower its emission intensity further. Binding, please note, is not a four-letter word.