India fight rich nations on mercury emissions

Just not carbon emissions, India is fighting to protect its economy from new salvo of rich nations to bring down mercury emissions from thermal plants and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs).

Updated on: Nov 22, 2011, 19:18:40 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Just not carbon emissions, India is fighting to protect its economy from new salvo of rich nations to bring down mercury emissions from thermal plants and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs).

Most of the mercury emissions are coal fired thermal stations and from use of mercury in products such as thermometers and CFLs. Annual mercury emissions are estimated to be between 4,400 to 5,700 metric tonnes with 53 % being from Asian countries.

China is the biggest mercury emitter followed by India and United States. Emissions of China are more than double of India and US combined.

High exposure to mercury could lead to cancer and recent study by non-government organization Toxic Link has found that Indian CFLs don't confirm to international standards on mercury.

Impact of mercury emissions has caught imagination of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which wants an international protocol to reduce mercury emissions by 2013.

The negotiations for the new protocol have become another warring zone, other than climate change, between the developing and the developed world. Rich nations want developing countries to reduce emissions seen as another attempt by the developed world to check economic growth of the developing world.

India has refused to accept any emission cuts or phasing out of mercury from its products until the rich countries are willing to provide money for it. "We want the Montreal Protocol type arrangement where the rich nations paid for phasing out ozone depleting substances," an environment ministry official said.

Montreal protocol is described as one of the most successful international environmental agreements where the target to phase out chemicals termed bad for ozone layer have almost been phased out. It happened because rich countries provided finance or incentives for it.

The new mercury protocol is being seen as a direct assault on growing economic power of two biggest mercury emitters India and China highly dependant on thermal power. "The cost of phasing out mercury emissions would double generation cost," the official said.

Another area of concern for India is absence of proven technologies on trapping mercury emissions from thermal plants. India also believes that phasing out of mercury from thermometers and reducing mercury in CFLs will not be possible unless finances are provided for the same.

The Indian negotiators are at recent negotiations made country's position clear that they cannot agree for any protocol unless international funding is provided and action on emission should be voluntary in nature.

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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