‘IPCC has a lot of answering to do’

Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh, the first to challenge the IPCC claim on Himalayan glaciers in November his stand vindicated. He spoke to HT exclusively on the issue.

Updated on: Jan 19, 2010, 24:33:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh, the first to challenge the IPCC claim on Himalayan glaciers in November his stand vindicated. He spoke to HT exclusively on the issue.

What do you say now that the IPCC has been proven wrong on Himalayan glaciers?

I was right on dismissing IPCC’s claim on Himalayan glaciers in November 2009. Then they (IPCC) termed it a voodoo science but now my position has been vindicated. The IPCC claim that glaciers will vanish by 2035 was not based on iota of scientific evidence. IPCC has to do a lot of answering on how it reached the 2035 figure, which created such a scare.

What about the glaciers’ health?

Most glaciers are in a poor state, which is precarious. Some of them are receding but the rate of retreat like that of the Gangotri glacier has slowed down. A few glaciers are also advancing. But saying when all would melt is difficult as glacial science is complex and we need to study it in detail. We have set up a National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology in Dehradun to model, monitor and measure glaciers.

Most studies on the glaciers are from the West. Why?

It is true. Our scientific input on glaciology has eroded in recent years. It is for the second time, western studies have been proven wrong. In 1990, US Environment Protection Agency reported that 39 million tonnes of methane emitted each year was from wet paddy cultivation (mostly from India). We then found that it was actually 2 to 6 million tonnes. It emphasises that we need to improve our scientific capabilities on climate science.

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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