Sunil K R, a sensitive artist, has been photographing Kerala’s coastline, especially houses of coastal communities, for some time now. The photographs he recently shared reveal a frightening scenario, where the sea has swallowed large areas of the coast leaving behind skeletons of houses. These are homes of people engaged in occupations such as fishing. What is lost to sea erosion is not just habitats and livelihoods, but memories preserved for ages, knowledge inherited from previous generations, the collective life the people have led, and their ancestral land, says Sunil. The sea ingress, a fallout of global warming and worsening every season, is predicted to sink not just fishing villages but even the city of Kochi. Clearly, the Arabian Sea has turned restive and cyclones are visiting the Kerala shores with alarming frequency. The monsoon rains are now unpredictable and the downpours regularly cause landslides and flooding. These events are said to be the outcome of climate change, though, of course, poor management of resources and mindless development projects have worsened their impact. What Sunil has documented points to a scary future which, unfortunately, is not exceptional to Kerala: It is also the story of Bangladesh, of the many small island nations. It could sooner than later be every nation’s story.
It is in this backdrop that COP26 began in Glasgow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the tone of the conference by scaling up India’s commitment to tackling climate change. He pledged that India will hit net-zero emissions by 2070, promised to raise the country’s clean energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030 with solar, wind and other renewables expected to take care of 50 per cent of India’s electricity needs, and announced to cut the “carbon intensity” of its economy — the amount of emissions per unit of economic activity — by 45 per cent by 2030 against a 2005 baseline.
An article by Aaran Patel and Siddarth Shrikanth, MPP candidate at Harvard and MPA/ MBA candidate at Harvard and Stanford, (‘Walking the Glasgow talk’, November 4), explained what India needs to do to achieve these goals. Patel and Shrikanth wrote: “First, India must combine emissions reductions with climate adaptation, embedding environmental justice for people and nature. Justice will involve strengthening a suite of social protection programmes, especially for those facing growing rural distress, and investing in disaster preparedness as extreme weather becomes more common. Inspired by civic movements of the 20th century, India can build climate vocabularies and actions for citizens so they can be agents of change, and protect those who speak up for environmental justice”.
“Nature can be an ally in all of this. India’s remarkable range of habitats, from the snowline to the coastline, play varied roles, including capturing carbon from the atmosphere, reducing vulnerability to climate-induced disasters, and providing livelihoods. Unfortunately, unfettered development is accentuating climate vulnerabilities, especially in eco-sensitive areas. When considering biodiversity collapse and the climate crisis as mutually reinforcing issues, India must reverse the trend of diluting environmental laws and the rights of those who depend on nature, and instead rapidly build regulatory and enforcement capacity...
“Second, corporate India has a vital role to play in complementing government policy. Much like how the independence movement galvanised home-grown industry around a shared vision, India Inc’s 21st century objective must be to foster innovative, inclusive green development. Swadeshi practices weren’t limited to the big players alone — today, MSMEs must accelerate their decarbonisation trajectories, too. Indian business houses must emulate global corporations in making science-based net zero pledges and reporting their progress transparently. Every sector has a crucial part to play, from transportation to manufacturing, cement, and steel.”
Our editorial (‘A cleaner roadmap’, November 3) spoke about the significance of the prime minister’s announcements in Glasgow — “because it marks the rarest-of-rare occasion of a COP beginning with a carbon budget cut announcement by a major player”. It suggests a “roadmap (that) continues a nearly decade-long approach of placing renewable energy (RE) as the lynchpin of the country’s decarbonisation drive”. The editorial also outlined the challenges the country may need to confront as it sets out on this path to combat climate change. It ranges from acquisition of appropriate technologies to changing the technological and administrative architecture of electricity production and management, including renewables.
In another editorial (‘Methane Promise’, November 4), this newspaper outlined the significance of the pledge by more than 80 nations to cut methane emissions. In this context, India, which is among the top three emitters of this gas globally, needs to plan its economic future carefully since the policies to reduce emissions will have a bearing on the country’s economy and farm livelihoods. The editorial said: “It’s heartening, therefore, that agriculture research institutes in the country have started work on farmer-friendly technologies to reduce emissions from the livestock sector. Conversations have also begun on ways to change paddy cultivation practices to make them climate-friendly. These technologies must reach the farmers at the earliest.”
The thrust of the conversations on climate change is mostly technology centric with discussions about the economic models and development agendas that have brought the world to this impasse pushed to the margins. The prime minister has repeatedly voiced concerns about climate change on a global stage, but back home national progress is set to be achieved by encouraging conspicuous consumption through mindless exploitation of mountains, forests, rivers and seas. The “development” juggernaut has not spared even the Himalaya and the Ganga, venerated in the official narrative, of course. The search for renewables, hopefully, would not culminate in proposals to build even more big dams in the landslide prone Himalayas or promote ecological disasters such as river interlinking.
Climate change is a far too serious issue to be left to states and its leaders. It calls for localised awareness, engagement and solutions. The series of Climate Cafes that local groups have been holding in Kerala point to a promising model of decentralised engagement, where concerned citizens sit together to take stock of the crisis, local as well as on a global scale, unfolding before them. Many such community-centric engagements across the world also may be necessary to flag concerns and hold governments to their promises.
Thank you,
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