Climate and contradictions

While 85 per cent of all man-made GHG emissions are made by the developed countries, the developing world needs to increase its emission levels to achieve economic growth and reduce poverty. This fact is at the core of the global divide on climate change.

C.E. KARUNAKARAN

"FIRST things first, our strategy must make sure working people in America aren't going out of work," said United States President George W. Bush. "My job is to represent my country, and I'm going to do so in a way that keeps in mind the ability of people to find work and for our nation to be prosperous." He made these remarks last June, before proceeding to Genoa to attend a G-8 meeting, in response to protesters who, shocked by his abrupt repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change last March, called him Global Warming Bush.

The Europeans reacted pretty strongly; French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet called Bush's unilateral decision "a scandal" and his behaviour "entirely provocative and irresponsible". The Europeans have reason to be worried. Climate change is the most serious and most difficult environmental challenge that faces humanity today, and the U.S., with just 4 per cent of the world's population, is responsible for 25 per cent of the major pollutant that causes this problem - carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere. As the single largest polluter, the U.S. emits twice as much as the quantity released by the next largest polluter. Its average per capita emission is close to twice as much as that of Europe, the continent that stands to lose more than the U.S. as the earth continues to warm up at an unprecedented rate.

It was around the middle of the 20th century that scientists began to take note of the human-action-induced warming of the earth. But the warning bells began to be sounded only from the 1980s, when the process of warming accelerated and more evidence surfaced linking this to human action, mostly the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

It was the Industrial Revolution that disturbed the carbon balance between the earth and the atmosphere when mankind - primarily the industrialised countries - started to dig deep into the bowels of the earth to bring up the carbon stored there for millions of years as fossil fuels and burn them to produce materials such as steel and cement, to generate electricity and to run automobiles. (The quantum of CO2 released annually into the atmosphere by the U.S. through such burning has increased three hundred-fold since 1850.) Owing to this human activity, at its most pronounced in the past 30 years, CO2 has been released into the atmosphere at a rate higher than the rate at which the earth can absorb it. As a result, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased at a rapid rate to 370 ppm (parts per million) today and continues to rise. This level of concentration was never reached in the past 420,000 years or, maybe, in the past 20 million years.

Adding to the GHGs (greenhouse gases) means trapping more heat on the earth and a consequent increase in its temperature. The steady state of the earth's temperature is now disturbed and it has gone up by 0.6C in the last century. The rate of increase accelerated towards the end of the century. Since the practice of measuring the temperature started 140 years ago, the ten warmest years occurred since 1983, nine of them since 1990. The year 2001 was the second warmest one on record and the 23rd consecutive year in which the temperature was above the 1961-90 average. This rate of increase does not give the plant and life systems on the earth the time needed to adjust themselves to the change.

Worse is yet to come. A five-yearly assessment carried out by 3,000 scientists from 150 countries under the auspices of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a more rapid increase - in fact, an alarming increase of between 1.4C and 5.8C by 2100. (This wide range is because of the varied assumptions made for the growth of population, the growth of national economies, and so on.) The panel's assessment report also details the impact that this rise in temperature would have on ecology.

The most serious impact is on sea level. The level has increased by 15 centimetres, or 6 inches, in the past few decades and is going up by at least 3 millimetres every year. This level goes up because of the thermal expansion of water when it gets heated up and the melting of ice caps on mountains. The Alps mountain system has lost over half its ice in the last century, and 100 glaciers have disappeared. Similar is the case with the Andes and the Himalayas. The ice thickness in the Arctic in summer has gone down by 42 per cent over the past four decades and Greenland is melting at a rate equal to the annual flow of water in the Nile. A recent study finds that the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning, having lost 31 cubic kilometres of ice since 1992.

Ice sheet models show that if local warming takes place in a sustained manner at a rate higher than 3C for 1000 years, the Greenland ice sheet will melt completely, increasing sea level by 7 metres; the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet would increase sea level by another 3 metres during that period.

The IPCC's finding is that the sea level will continue to rise and will be up by 0.1 m to 0.9 m by 2100; the best guess puts it at 0.5 m, or 1.5 feet. Such an increase will play havoc with coastal settlements around the world - increased flooding, accelerated erosion, loss of wetlands and mangroves and intrusion of sea water into fresh water sources - and with small island nations. When the sea rises by 0.5 m, the number of people affected by storm surges would double from the present 46 million. Three-quarters of the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh, the world's largest mangrove forest, could be inundated by such a rise and the Bengal tiger would face extinction. But then, the Bengal tiger would live longer than the polar bear, which is expected to become extinct by 2020. The populations of polar bear and seal have already halved.

If the rise in sea level reaches the upper limit predicted by the IPCC, 18 per cent of Bangladesh, including half of its farmland, 6 per cent of the Netherlands and 80 per cent of the Maldives and Marshall Islands will be lost to the sea. At a recent conference on climate, the representative of Trinidad and Tobago joked that his country will not be represented in the conference in the next century, that is, it will no longer exist. Two islets in Kiribati have already disappeared.

The increase in sea temperature is expected to wipe out coral reefs in most regions in 30 to 50 years and take a great toll of many species. Coral reefs are second only to forests as biological wealth.

Note: Median among many projections made by the IPCC of increase in average global temperature owing to GHG emissions, based on differing assumptions of economic growth, population growth and technological development.

Another impact of the change in climate would be an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts and cyclones. Increased temperature accelerates the evaporation of surface water and consequent rainfall. Dry areas would become drier and monsoons would lead to more severe flooding and landslips. During cyclones wind velocities would increase and high-velocity winds would become more frequent, claiming a large number of human lives and causing material damage.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies points out that the number of floods, storms, landslips and droughts, which averaged around 200 a year before 1996, rose steadily to 392 in 2000. The annual World Disasters Report of the Federation says: "Recurrent disasters from floods in Asia to drought in the Horn of Africa, to windstorms in Latin America, are sweeping away development gains and calling into question the possibility of recovery."

Forests and agriculture would be affected. In particular, tropical agriculture would decline, placing in peril the food security of the poor in the tropics, while agricultural productivity could increase in countries such as the U.S. and New Zealand.

Climate change will also have an impact on health. The incidence and geographic spread of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue and water-borne diseases such as cholera would increase. Heat stress would claim many more lives, especially among the elderly and the poor.

The impact will not be evenly felt among the countries. The tropics, where most poor countries lie, will be affected more than other parts of the world. In addition, the adaptive capacity will be less for the poor. Says the IPCC: "The ability of human systems to adapt to and cope with the climate change depends on such factors as wealth, technology, education, information, skills, infrastructure, access to resources and management capabilities... The developing countries, particularly the least developed countries, are generally poorest in this regard. As a result, they have lesser capacity to adapt and are more vulnerable to climate change damages." Giving an estimate of the economic costs of climate change, it says: "Increases in global mean temperatures would produce net economic losses in many developing countries for all magnitudes studied and losses would be greater in magnitude the higher the level of warming. In contrast, an increase in global mean temperature of up to a few degrees C would produce a mixture of economic gains and losses in developed countries... The projected distribution of economic impacts is such that it would increase the disparity in well-being between developed countries and developing countries."

The Red Cross points out that 88 per cent of those affected and two-thirds of those killed in worsening natural disasters in the past 10 years are from the least developed countries. All but four of the 20 coastal megacities (such as Mumbai and New York) that would suffer heavy damage because of the rise in sea level and the severity of weather are in the developing world.

One important feature of the phenomenon of global warming is its poor reversibility. It cannot be set right easily, as compared to the ozone hole problem, which can be checked within a period of 10 to 15 years after stopping further release of ozone-depleting gases into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and other GHGs have atmospheric lives of hundred years or more and it will take several decades for the process of global warming to stabilise even if the carbon dioxide concentration levels off. The oceans will take an even longer period to stabilise because of their thermal inertia. Thus, even if the world cuts back on its emission levels in order to stabilise the atmospheric GHGs at a particular level, the earth will continue to warm up for some decades, the sea will continue to expand for some centuries and the ice sheets will continue to adjust for thousands of years.

There is also a spectre hanging over the earth - the possibility of "positive feedback" mechanisms that could unleash a series of effects pushing up surface temperatures to unpredictable levels. For example, as the earth warms up, vegetation will become increasingly desiccated and the ability of forests to absorb CO2 could get diminished, fuelling further warming. Melting of the northern permafrost could have the devastating effect of releasing the carbon frozen in the soils, equal to one-third of the carbon in the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that there is a 5 per cent probability of the West Antarctic ice sheet disintegrating within 100 years and thus increasing the sea level by 1 m.

All these factors have prompted scientists the world over to insist that it is time for action as time is running out for the earth. The action needed is to cut down GHG emissions by about 60 per cent to 80 per cent. In other words, the world should move towards a path of growth that is based on non-carbon energy as quickly as possible. This, of course, is easier said than done in a world that has invested so heavily in carbonaceous growth and where national governments have a vested interest in chasing short-term goals. It is instructive to see how politicians and governments have reacted to the messages from the scientific community.

The greenhouse effect was first discerned by a French scientist in the 1820s. In the 1890s a Swedish scientist and an American scientist independently warned of possible warming because of fossil fuel burning, though they were unaware that the process had already begun. Since then scientists have tracked the earth's temperature and tried to understand the underlying causes. In the 1950s, a U.S. oceanographer warned that humanity was conducting "a large-scale geo-physical experiment" on the planet by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. His colleague who measured the CO2 level in the atmosphere found that there was continuous increase, year on year, in its concentration. Thereafter, scientists around the world started making local studies and creating awareness among the public. The lead was taken, ironically, by the Department of Energy of the U.S, whose President is now casting doubts on the validity of the scientific findings.

Though evidence was piling up, political recognition of the seriousness of the problem was slow in coming. The U.N. Conference on Human Environment at Stockholm in 1972 did not pick up this issue at all.

The 1980s became a watershed as it turned out to be the warmest decade so far, with seven of the eight warmest years recorded till then; even the coldest year of the decade was warmer than the warmest year of the 1880s. Politicians and heads of government sat up and took notice. An international conference in Austria in 1985 acknowledged that GHGs could cause global mean temperature to rise to levels "greater than any in man's history". In 1988, the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly set up the IPCC, which marked the significant international action on climate change. (India's R.K. Pachauri has taken over the leadership of the IPCC now.) Global warming hit the headlines that year when scientists deposing in a congressional hearing in the U.S. linked it to a major local drought.

The IPCC brought out its First Assessment Report in 1990, which pointed out that the earth had already warmed by an unprecedented 0.5C during the century. The historic Earth Summit - the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) - took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, attended by 8,300 delegates from 178 countries. A parallel alternative conference was attended by 17,000 activists from non-governmental organisations.

Global warming could no longer be ignored and the world system had a taste of the complex issues involved in dealing with the problem in an unequal world. The conference saw the emergence of the big climate change divide that continues to bedevil discussions to this day - while 85 per cent of all man-made GHG emissions have been made by the developed countries to reach their present state of development, the developing world needs to increase its emissions to achieve economic growth and reduce poverty. This developmental gap between the developed and developing countries could not be closed without the latter riding on the back of the carbon economy.

After a heated debate, the conference decided that the developed countries, including those of the former Soviet bloc in eastern Europe, "should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof" by "aiming" to return to the 1990 levels of GHG emissions by 2000. (It was decided that this had to be voluntary - despite pressure from many developing countries and environmental activists - as George Bush Senior, the U.S. President then, refused to come to Rio de Janeiro if he were to be pushed to make binding commitments on climate change and biodiversity). The developing countries did not have this responsibility but were asked to start tracking the quantity of GHGs they were emitting.

These decisions were enshrined in the final document, the celebrated U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Convention, signed and later ratified by 186 countries, created a legal instrument called the Conference of the Parties (COP) which had the objective of stabilising "greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner".

All countries thus subscribed to the principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" for the developed and developing countries, including the U.S., in 1992 itself even though the principle is challenged again and again.

The first full meeting of the COP, which took place in 1995, admitted that voluntary action was not working and adopted the Berlin Mandate under which industrialised countries agreed to the principle of mandated savings. It was decided that by the end of 1997 a suitable agreement should be put in place. The second full meeting of the COP saw the U.S. finally agreeing to legally binding emission targets in principle and siding with the IPCC against "sceptical" scientists. By this time it had become clear that most industrialised countries would not meet the Earth Summit target of keeping to 1990 emission levels in year 2000. The U.S. was well on its way to reaching a 15 per cent increase. The stage was thus set for the historic Kyoto accord.

C.E. Karunakaran is an engineer who has studied and worked on issues relating to carbon credit trading.