Global warming could cast chill on India’s growth story: UK report
NEW DELHI,
Global warming and climate change could affect India’s growth story unless a range of steps are taken to address the effects of increased surface temperature and its effect on monsoon pattern and river flows.
This is according to a report released in London today commissioned by UK Chancellor Gordon Brown and authored by Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank. In his 700-page report, Stern calls for an urgent shift to a low-carbon economy in countries like India which could translate into huge business opportunities for the developed world.
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair called the report the “final word’’ on why the world must act now. “The case for action is the final piece of the jigsaw to convince every single political leader, including those in America, China and India, that this must be top of their agenda,” he said.
There is a wealth of evidence quantifying the economic costs of climate change in India. Experts from the University of Reading have estimated that mean summer rainfall in India will increase by 10% — along with rainfall intensity — and this will be accompanied by more regional variations. This is likely to affect agriculture and, therefore, GDP growth.
The review identifies three elements of policy required for an effective response: carbon pricing, through tax, trading or regulation, so that people pay the full social cost of their actions; policy to support innovation and deployment of low-carbon technologies and removal of barriers to energy efficiency and measures to inform, educate and persuade.
Some of the key predictions, according to the Stern report, of changes over the next 100 years:
• Regional climate models suggest 2.5-5 degrees Celsius rise in mean surface temperature. Regionally within India, northern India will be warmer.
• 20% rise in summer monsoon rainfall. Extreme temperatures and precipitations are expected to increase.
• All states will have increased rainfall except Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu where it will decrease. Extreme precipitation will increase, particularly along the western coast and west central India.
• Hydrological cycle is likely to be altered. Drought and flood intensity will increase. Krishna, Narmada, Cauvery, Tapi river basins will experience severe water stress and drought condition and Mahanadi, Godavari, Brahmani will experience enhanced flood.
• Crop yield decrease with temperature and rise with precipitation. Prediction of loss of wheat is more. Rabi crops will be worse hit which threatens food security.
• Economic loss due to temperature rise estimated between 9-25%. GDP loss may be to the tune of 0.67%. Coastal agriculture suffers most (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka), Punjab, Haryana, Western UP will face reduction in yield; West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh will gain marginally.
• 100-cm sea level rise can lead to welfare loss of $1259 million in India equivalent to 0.36% of GNP.
• Frequencies and intensities of tropical cyclones in Bay of Bengal will increase particularly in the post-monsoon period and flooding will increase in low-lying coastal areas.
• Malaria will continue to be endemic in current malaria-prone states (Orissa, West Bengal and southern parts of Assam north of West Bengal). It may shift from the central Indian region to the south-western coastal states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala. New regions (Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram) will become malaria prone and transmission duration window will widen in northern and western states and shorten in southern states.
2 comments:
great job of finding ot the important impacts of climate change.
more importantly a source of frther information would be the paper written by Joyashree roy from where stern drws mch of the india and soth asia impacts. i cold give it to yo if yo want.
somo
energy campaigner
greenpeace india
somyabrata.rahut@gmail.com
Well said! Growth stories are thrilling, but blind ECONOMIC GROWTHISM -- a mindless pursuit of growth by consumers, investors, industrialists and administrators -- is proving to be the death of the planet!
While one feels great about the India Growth Story, there is a hidden downside, a simultaneous "India Death Story" in progress. Indian society and the land, water and air of India are being rapidly degraded by industrial activity.
There is an important social principle currently being violated by many manufacturing activities: While engaged in a profit-making activity, one must not leave a mess behind for the rest of society to clean up.
This principle can easily be understood as common decency. If I come to your house as a salesman in order to market something, I must clean up any mess that I make while selling my product.
But this principle is continually breached by manufacturers and marketers on a large scale in our country, and nobody even thinks of objecting!
Have you ever pondered how mineral water and soft-drink manufacturers who sell their product to you in a PET bottle take no further responsibility what happens to their non-biodegradable bottle? Most often, it ends up as litter in the environment, because the consumer simply does not know what to do with the bottle, other than tossing it away.
This is not how it should be. At the time of conceptualizing and designing the product, the manufacturer has the responsibility of thinking what will happen to the discarded packaging, or, in the case of non-consumables, to the product itself after its use. He must take the responsibility to create a safe avenue for its disposal or recycling.
This requires a mechanism to collect the empty container or used product. So he must set up that mechanism. For instance, the grocery shopkeeper may incentivate the consumer to return PET bopttles to him by initially charging a coupl;e of rupees as deposit for the bottle, which he returns when the consumer returns the bottle to him. These bottles can then be sent back to the company's recycling facility. (This is how soft-drink bottles made of glass were returned to manufacturers until very recently, remember? We, the consumers, were OK with this system. So why the sudden urge to package everything in discardable materials?)
We should mobilize citizens to demand legislation that every manufacturer must repurchase/collect and recycle as many tonnes of raw material as he uses on a week-by-week basis. For example, if a mineral-water manufacturer uses ten tonnes of plastics per week to manufacture bottles, he MUST buy back ten tonnes of plastic scrap and safely recycle it.
Now think for a moment about used automobiles. Used cars and scooters in India are sold as second-hand vehicles, and then third-hand, fourth-hand. A second-hand vehicle may go from a metropolis to a small town or village. It keeps going further and further into the interiors as it ages, as its condition deteriorates and its market price dwindles. And then?
And then it is sometimes sold to a garage at a throwaway price, and this garage may salvage spare parts from it. ut what remains of this vehicle, including worn-out tyres, may lie around rusting and gathering dust for years and years on some deserted road. The tyres, when they are often burnt in winter for warmth, releasing black, acrid smoke and carcinogenic chemicals into the atmosphere.
Or it lies as a rusting eyesore in some building compound for many years as the last owner loses all motivation to either repair it or sell it.
Thus, every automobile manufacturer sells a product that turns into many hundred tonnes of junk -- assorted metal, plastic, glass and rubber junk -- after 6-8 years. They end up littering the beautiful countryside with this junk. Is this socially acceptable behaviour?
If one looks for solutions, they are not difficult to find. Legislation and regulations are the answer.
Automobile manufacturers must be required by law to buy back that many tonnes of metals, plastics, glass etc every week, and find ways to recycle them. The cost may be met by raising the market price of their product... but the responsibility to make the recycling activity happen MUST be fixed on the manufacturer of every product.
The same applies to tyres, batteries, plastic goods, newspapers, textiles, chemicals, auto-lubricant oils, etc. The list is long.
It is possible that this will make some manufacturing and marketing processes unviable. If so, this would mean that these economic activities were unviable in the first place, and were sustainable only by passing on hidden costs to the environment, to society and to consumers! Such activities must necessarily come to an end.
Many industrial activities are environmentally and socially subsidized to keep them economically profitable. Let us lobby governments to knock off that subsidy and see how many activities remain sustainable!
I propose peaceful demonstrations to compel industries to self-regulate, and legislators to pass laws:
Small groups of citizens shall collect the branded packaging material of various manufacturers from the environment, and delivering them in large bundles every week to their corporate offices. It belongs to them, right? So let them have it back!
A peaceful demonstration like this, sustained over some weeks, would make a powerful statement. I think this will make a powerful media impact as well... and thereby, an impact on the consciousness of people.
This would be the first step to making changes happen. Citizens, industry and government must first be made to acknowledge that there is a problem; then viable solutions will begin to emerge.
What say, fellow-citizens? I would appreciate your detailed responses to this idea.
Those who wish to join me in peaceful social action (as described) are urged to email me at friendlyghost.kk@gmail.com
Warmly,
Krish
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com
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