Paying lip-service

Yet another report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released last week has warned of the precarious situation on the climate change front.

Data collated from several sources shows that global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have reached unprecedented levels in the past one decade despite a number of policy initiatives taken by different governments.

Stabilising levels of greenhouse gas emissions would require cutting down emissions in a range of sectors — energy production and use, buildings, transport and so on.

While the issue of setting targets for cutting down emissions for different countries is contentious one and is subject to outcome of protracted international negotiations, it is in the interest of individual countries to act on their own at national level.

In this backdrop it is critical to examine if policy makers, governments and politicians in India are alive to this issue at all.

The ongoing campaign for the Lok Sabha elections provides an opportunity to do so.

For the first time, several national and regional parties have touched upon the subject of climate change in their manifestoes.

Most parties are promising to focus on renewable energy generation – solar, wind, biomass, wave energy etc through special programmes and missions, but have refrained from elaborating their energy policies.

The Congress has proposed to set up national missions on wind energy and energy efficiency, while the BJP says it will make renewable sources of energy an important part of India’s energy mix.

Both parties have promised continued thrust on solar energy. Political parties making right noises on climate change is a welcome development.

However, this is certainly not sufficient if past experience is any indication.

India was one of the earliest to have shown political commitment to renewable sources of energy and set up a separate government department to promote them three decades back.

But unfortunately, renewable sources of energy were never taken seriously by energy policy planners till it became necessary to do so in the context of climate change.

Renewable energy development was one of the action points in the National Action Plan on Climate Change which was formulated in 2008 with an eye to gain brownie points in international climate change talks.

The slow progress on implementation of various missions under this plan indicates lack of government interest.

For instance, financial approval for the National Mission on Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem — one of the eight missions under the action plan — was given just a couple of months ago.

The National Solar Mission has been implemented but it has been marred by allegations of land scams and crony capitalism.

Action plans

In addition to the national action plan, all states were supposed to formulate state-level climate action plans and implement them.

In five years, only nine states (Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim) have submitted their state climate action plans, according to information made available online by the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

State plans are important because they are supposed to assess vulnerability of each state to climate change and suggest specific measures that need to be initiated.

The case of Maharashtra best illustrates lackadaisical attitude of states towards climate change.

In the past few years, the state has been experiencing unusual weather trends — floods, droughts and more recently severe hailstorms.

These are all likely indicators of climate change which have directly affected livelihood of farmers and other population groups in the state.

 Yet, the state government has been sleeping over the state’s climate action plan. An exercise to prepare the action plan was initiated way back in August 2009, but the first meeting of the state advisory committee on climate change took place only in 2013.

The plan is not ready even in April 2014, as revealed by an RTI query recently.

Ironically, the contract for preparing the state action plan was given to none other than The Energy and Resources Institute headed by IPCC chief.

Though the two principal political parties talk about addressing climate change in their manifestoes, their action does not match their talk.

The way environmental regulation has been cited as a hindrance to so-called development projects by both these parties shows that they only believe in paying lip service to environment.

Jayanthi Natarajan’s dismissal from the environment ministry for upholding existing green laws and subsequent decisions taken by her successor are proof of the ruling coalition’s ambivalence on ecological issues.

On the other hand, the support of patently climate-unfriendly projects like inter-linking of rivers by BJP-ruled states and the talk of reviving inter-linking project at the national level by the BJP leadership do not augur well for climate change preparedness.

Climate change is not only a challenge but also an opportunity for a country like India.

It is a challenge because we will have to increase our energy production and consumption because millions of Indians still live in darkness. We need to grow in manufacturing, transport and housing sectors. Yet, we need to do all this in a sustainable way.

Linking thousands of villages through conventional grids may not be the best and cost-effective way to do this.

We have seen how rural electrification has been reduced to a farce.

Can rural areas be connected via renewable energy and that too in a decentralised, off-grid manner?

Can energy efficiency rid our cities of load-shedding? How can millions of farmers in Maharashtra and other state be equipped to face vagaries of changing climate?

In what ways people living in coastal areas or in the hills prepare themselves to face natural calamities whose frequency and intensity are supposed to go up in future?

There are many such questions waiting to be answered. It is time to act on the ground and not just through words.