Global effort to reduce emission impact on ozone layer in atmosphere is causing faster climate change, a United Nations report had found.
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The report released on World Ozone Day said emissions of powerful greenhouse gases such as HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) and HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) has increased.
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HCFC is a replacement for ozone depleting gas CFCs (cholorofluorocarbons) and HFC is a by-product of HFCFs production. A tonne of HFC emitted is equal to 14,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a report to be released in 2011, had said that total emissions of HCFC are currently faster than four years ago. “The use of HCFC-22, increased more than 50 per cent faster in 2007-2008 than in 2003-2004,” it said.
Developing nations such as India and China got financial incentives to replace CFCs, used in refrigerators, with HCFCs under the Montreal Protocol, signed by 196 nations to reduce ozone depleting substances.
While the entire world, including India, has phased out CFCs, its replacement with HCFCs has caused a climate change problem. The HCFCs are to be phased out by 2030 under the Montreal Protocol whereas HFCs emission is to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol. “We are heading to achieve the new target under the Montreal Protocol,” Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday.
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What has worried experts is that the emissions of HFCs was rising eight per cent a year even though incentives have been provided to the developing countries to reduce them.
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What has worried experts is that the emissions of HFCs was rising eight per cent a year even though incentives have been provided to the developing countries to reduce them.
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“This represents a further potential area for action within the overall climate change challenge,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director.
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.
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