J.L.Koul Jalali
With every passing day severity of climate change becomes more and more pronounced even in our day to day life. The ramifications are mostly reflected in abnormal fluctuations in temperature, weather conditions and pollution. At international level recent manifestations of climate change include wide-spread wildfires in Australia, droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa or the Arctic freeze from a winter storm in Texas last month. The reality of climate change is becoming clearer and unambiguous.
Climate crisis has its roots deep in indiscriminate and wanton destruction of forests in the aftermath of industrialisation and development during eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and USA. Consequently huge carbon emissions and accumulations gave rise to global warming leading to pollution,desertification,curtailment of biodiversity,migrations, environmental degradation, droughts and climatic disasters and is now threatening even security of mankind.
Climate crisis has been engaging attention of the world now for decades with serious attempts to limit rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees C. The crisis is no longer concern of one or the other country alone but the whole world has to rise as one to restore climatic health of our planet earth.
In 2015 after change in its attitude towards climate change based on its developmental imperatives,India went whole hog with the Paris Accord about climate change and today it is the only G-20 country which is well on its way to realise its nationally determined commitment to come over the crisis. Rich with its traditions of nurturing nature and environment,India is well on its way to achieve Paris Agreement targets well before target date of 2030. India is a signatory to the Agreement under UN Convention on Climate Change. India`s goals include reduction in the emission intensity of gross domestic product from 2005 level by 33 to 35 per cent by 2030. It also aims at achieving about forty per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030.
These targets were underlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the virtual event CERA Week 2021, an annual energy conference, on Friday. He also received the CERA Week Global Energy and Environment Leadership Award. The Prime Minister also referred to third target of India of creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes through additional forest and tree cover by 2030. Underlining behavioral change as most powerful way to fight climate crisis, Narendra Modi pointed out that during last seven years India`s forest cover has grown significantly. As a result population of lions,tigers, and leopards and number of water falls has grown. Terming these as great indicators of positive behavioral changes,the Prime Minister emphasised that behavioral change is the most powerful way to fight climate change. For India increase in forest cover is all the more important as it also brings India closer to its commitment of achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030. As stated by Prakash Javdekar,Minister of Environment,Forests and Climate Change at fourteenth session of Conference of Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification(COP 14) held in Noida in UP in September last year, increase in forest cover will be a boon for millions of marginal farmers and poor people in India.
This increase in forest cover in India is important internationally also as over seventy five per cent of carbon space available to humanity has been already taken up by current and past emissions of Europe,US and China leaving very little for countries like India with huge developmental imperatives but with very meagre carbon footprints.
Participating in the open debate on climate and security at UN Security Council last month, Climate envoy of USA John Kerry asked seventeen major emitters to scale up targets and reduce coal usage on global basis.To control climate change speedily and to restore it, he called for need to get to zero emissions by 2050. Observations indicating that despite economic slowdown because of Covid-19,it may not be possible to meet Paris commitment of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C, lend some weight to demands for urgent action. While there can be no two opinions about achieving this laudable goal of zero emissions speedily,but the developed countries have also to bear in mind that their actions increased carbon in atmosphere resulting in climate changes. But in turn these changes have endangered low emitters most,generally the poorest countries, which did not cause them.
This leads one to climate justice and the need for developed nations to fulfill their pre-2020 commitments to finance climate restoration actions in developing countries. The glaring inequality in carbon emissions at global level is also highlighted by the fact that while USA emits 16 tons of CO2 per person,Saudi Arabia emits 19 tons per person,but India emits only around 1.8 tons of CO2 per person. The comparison is further underlined by the fact that per capita world average of such emissions is only 5 tons per person. A simple solution could be to give incentives for change from coal based energy sources to renewable energy sources on a fair and equitable basis and guided by commitment of developed nations to developing nations to help them in their climate restoration actions.
Now that USA has officially rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement last month,prospects for concrete results from the Agreement have brightened. India has established better records of result oriented actions to tackle climate change. UK has already invited Prime Minister Modi to next G-7 Summit. Summit meeting between India and European Union countries has also been scheduled and next conference of Parties to UN Convention on climate change is being held in Glasgow in November. All these forums provide an opportunity to India to project its climate actions in a better perspective before the world. India could also consider proposing a credible fair and equitable plan at Glasgow Conference revolving round carbon credits to replace use of coal for energy purposes by renewable sources of energy.
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