Show us the money, say states

At a time when India has sought global funds to adopt low-carbon technologies, the domestic global warming rhetoric has also got hotter with state governments asking the Centre to foot their green bills, reports Chetan Chauhan. State of the nation: The race to win carbon credits

Updated on: Oct 28, 2009, 01:53:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

At a time when India has sought global funds to adopt low-carbon technologies, the domestic global warming rhetoric has also got hotter with state governments asking the Centre to foot their green bills.

The demand will be communicated to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, who will participate in a meeting of the chief ministers of Himalayan states starting in Shimla on Thursday.

Climate change is the effect of global warming, which is a series of increases in atmospheric temperatures.

Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and some north-eastern states, where melting of glaciers will cause enormous ecological damage, are seeking Central compensation for their forests, which act as carbon sinks for emissions.

The environment ministry estimated in August that India’s forests, which cover 23 per cent of the country’s geographical area, can absorb up to 11 per cent of India’s carbon emissions.

India spends 2.6 per cent of its gross domestic product of Rs 48 lakh crore on negating the impact of environmental damage.

In the plains, Punjab, Haryana and Bihar have sought funds to develop crop varieties that can cope with temperature rise, shorter winters and inconsistent monsoon—the offshoots of climate change.

Himachal Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal recently said at a conference of state chief ministers : “If the country thinks that Himalayan forests are India’s natural resource, we need to be compensated for preserving them.”

Ramesh said the XIIIth Finance Commission is considering awarding “green bonuses’’ to hill states .

Uttarakhand wants restrictions on the entry of people into bio-diversity hotspots Nanda Devi National Park, the Valley of Flowers and the Gangotri glacier.

“We won’t allow more than two annual visits by locals into these areas. For foreigners and Indians from other states, it will be once a year,” Chief Minister Ramesh Nishank said.

Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio has sought a policy to reduce pressure on the state’s ecology without compromising the rights of the indigenous people to natural resources.

His Mizo counterpart Lal Thanhawla said the state needed money to conserve Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspots. “Mizoram showed the way by going organic a decade ago.”

Punjab is facing reduced wheat productivity due to rising temperatures.

Climate change would lead to a 30 per cent decline in agricultural output by 2030, said the Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

Till Central funds arrive, meeting the global warming challenge could be tough for the states.

— Inputs from Rahul Karmakar in Guwahati and Archana Phull in Shimla

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.