Climate change not as big a problem: report

An int'l civil society report said there is no evidence to show loss of human life directly due to climate change.

Updated on: Apr 1, 2008, 10:11:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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An international civil society report has debunked the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), saying there is no evidence to show loss of human life directly due to climate change.

The report of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, to be released in India on Tuesday, says there is no evidence to suggest climate change has caused an increase in diseases. “If the main causes of diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria are properly addressed, climate change will not increase their incidence,” the report says.

Paul Reiter, an international health expert, says in the report that the complex interaction of these factors makes it difficult to predict the likely impact of long-term climate change on the transmission of malaria. “The rapid increase in the incidence of many diseases worldwide is a major cause of concern but the principal determinants are politics, economics, human ecology and human behaviour,” he says.

The report also allays the fears raised in the IPCC report on the impact of climate change on agricultural production. “With continued technological improvements, the trend of growth in agricultural production will continue till 2100, even if global mean temperature rises by three degree Celsius,” it says.

Analysis of data on deaths due to natural disasters till 2007 show mortality rates have declined by 95 per cent or more since 1920. Therefore, the report castigates climate alarmists to cite individual weather events — cyclones or floods — as evidence of the impact of global warming.

The society does not agree with the IPCC recommendation to cut greenhouse emissions, saying it would undermine the capacity of the poor to address the problems they face. Only economic growth can help them solve their problems. Cutting greenhouse emissions will just retard economic growth, the report says.

Not climate change but lack of wealth and technology is the reason for the death of millions of poor worldwide, the report points out. “These problems have generally been exacerbated — not alleviated — by foreign aid, which has supported unaccountable governments that have oppressed their citizens, denying them the ability to improve their lot,” it adds.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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