Gloomy forecast for poor

India’s poor would be among the world’s 40 million poor people to be adversely hit if the 10-year window for initiating major programmes on climate change mitigation and adaptation are missed.

Updated on: Nov 27, 2007, 23:23:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s poor would be among the world’s 40 million poor people to be adversely hit if the 10-year window for initiating major programmes on climate change mitigation and adaptation are missed, a United Nations report on fighting climate change has said.

Released simultaneously in India and Brazil on Tuesday, the UNDP report, Fighting Climate Change : Human Solidarity in Divided World, says the impact of climate change on the poor is “significantly underestimated”.

“The world is drifting towards a tipping point that could lock the poorest countries in a downward spiral, leaving hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats and loss of livelihood,” said Maxine Olson, UNDP’s resident representative in India.

In India, the report says, changing rainfall patterns may result in a drop in agricultural productivity, directly affecting 60 per cent of the population.

People living in the Gangetic plains have been cited as the most vulnerable to climate change with a fall in water availability, resulting in an adverse impact on agriculture. In 2007 alone, 17 million people had borne the brunt of floods.

The continued retreat of Himalayan glaciers could increase water scarcity, affecting 500 million people in South Asia. Bangladesh has witnessed the worst floods in the last 100 years this year, the report says, predicting a higher frequency of such floods in India and Bangladesh.

The report says India’s carbon emissions have increased by 97 per cent since 1990, one of the highest rates in the world. Still, India’s per capita emission is one-tenth of the US and less than half China’s average.

It adds that 50 per cent of India’s population does not have access to electricity. Areas with power connectivity have unreliable supplies, with the all-India average of power shortage being 12 per cent. To sustain economic growth of 8-9 per cent till 2030, India will have to increase its energy generation by five times, leading to carbon emissions of more than 200 per cent.

A quote from Mahatma Gandhi asking how many planets would be required if India was to follow Britian’s model of industrialisation has been used to demonstrate that only clean technologies can lead to sustainable growth in the future. Quoting a Planning Commission study, the report says India can produce the same amount of power without one-third of the fuel if the efficiency of power plants is improved.

Calling for quick adaptation and mitigation measures on eve of Bali conference in December, the report has urged the global leaders to create a Climate Change Mitigation Facility to finance incremental low-carbon energy investment in developing countries.

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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