UK economist links growth to climate change

Adverse impact of climate change will result in more loss than gains from growing economy in terms of GDP, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 6, 2006, 24:23:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India's biggest challenge is to match environment concerns in poverty alleviation and development programmes to reduce impact of climate change, said Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank and head of UK government economic service.

In his recent review, Economics of Climate Change, Stern had said adverse impact of climate change would result in more loss than gains from growing economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The review calculated that dangers of unabated climate change would be equivalent to five per cent of GDP.

Stern, who has been coming to India for the past 30 years, said impact of climate change is already visible with more dry spell and higher concentration of rainfall during monsoons. The glaciers are retreating and crops in northern India are maturing at a faster pace. "The trend is expected to intensity in future if carbon emissions are not reduced," he cautioned, during an interaction with reporters on Tuesday.

In India, to precisely caution industry and policy-makers on this, Stern said, "you will have to prepare for future with implications on irrigation facilities and increase in wind intensity in coastal areas". It will cost a bit, he said, but a way out is 'mitigation by adoption' of cleaner technologies.

Development should not come in the way of mitigation; he said and added, "in fact, it would help". "I don't think there is a contest between environment and poverty, there is a close relation.

Both can be promoted while working on good economics for environment," he felt. On environment being secondary to vote politics in India, he said, information with good analysis on its consequences by the policy makers can help in framing the right decision. "Then, this is the biggest challenge for developing economies like India and China," he pointed out.

Stern, who is expected to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday, termed the power sector in India as not very "efficient" while emphasising that India realises the benefits of being energy efficient. "It is a long way for India and China as they have to move towards a low carbon economy," he said, a day after his meeting with officials of the ministry of Power and Environment and Forest.

Stern was also in full agreement with the Indian government that the richer countries will have to share the financial burden of reducing carbon emissions. "I think they (rich countries) will respond. Or else, everyone will suffer," he said. As of now, it is just a beginning. "Emission trading has just started last year. I think carbon market will build stronger in the coming years," he said. But, instead of project based approach on carbon trading, he suggested to work on a sector-wise approach for better and faster results.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

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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