Kicking off to a warm start, the first few months of >2016 were close to 1.5° Celsius higher than average global temperatures for at least 10,000 years prior to the 19th century. At the >Paris Conference of Parties (COP-21) last December, world leaders agreed to limit global warming to well below 2°C while still making an effort to keep the average rise to below 1.5°C. According to estimates by Climate Central, a science and news organisation, long-term average global temperatures are expected to cross the 1.5°C threshold in about 10 to 15 years, much too soon for countries across the world which are still struggling to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of rising temperatures. Many scientists and analysts actually consider staying within a long-term rise of 1.5°C to be an impossible goal unless some far-fetched method of sucking carbon out of the air or burying it forever becomes viable.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its fifth integrated review of the science, impacts, mitigation and adaptation assessment in 2014, with the next such round of reports expected in 2022. The emphasis of these reports, which use available peer-reviewed science, has for the most part been on potential temperature rises higher than 1.5°C. Therefore, at a meeting in Nairobi in April this year, the IPCC decided to commission special reviews that would examine the effect that 1.5°C would have on land use, ecosystems, oceans and glaciers. In this bleak setting, what should India begin to consider doing?
Options for India In 2007, the Indian government established the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, out of which emerged the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC). Each of the States then developed State-level climate action plans, which are currently being implemented. The NAPCC also rolled out a fair number of programmes and strategies under its eight missions. The State-level studies and plans have also in effect alerted the States to begin the task of incorporating climate change into their planning.
The NAPCC essentially announced to the world that India was willing to act on its global responsibility to limit GHG emissions. This was despite the fact that the country has low per capita emissions (less than 2 tonnes per capita, which is lower than the world average) and has historically often taken the lead in calling for equity in international climate policy and the allocation of a fair carbon budget.
At COP-21, >India proposed that it would reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP (GHG emissions per unit of GDP) by about a third compared with its 2005 levels, and has committed itself to depending on non-fossil fuel sources for 40 per cent of its generation capacity by 2030. Adaptation was also mentioned in India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) along with several details in different sectors. The Paris Agreement calls for comprehensive reviews, regular “global stocktaking” and ratcheting up of targets periodically.
Given these pressures and commitments that have been made, India now needs to reimagine and develop a new approach, or national strategy — a set of policies that lay out its action plans for reaching its targets, and not just for reducing emissions. With the close monitoring that is expected of the announced NDC targets, there is a lot that India needs to be prepared with. The country’s overall strategies would have to include a number of different aspects such as an integration of mitigation, adaptation and inclusive low-carbon development, and considerations and clarity on implementation, along with an understanding of which programmes would be undertaken by the Central government, which ones by the States, and how these would all add up to fulfilling our commitments.
Each State faces a distinctive set of challenges regarding the impact of warming, but also offers its own set of opportunities for reducing emissions depending on its natural resources. For example, coastal States need to take action to protect their shores from sea level rise, districts that are drier need to prepare for variable monsoon precipitation, Himalayan regions have their own unique challenges, and selected parts of peninsular India and offshore areas offer great opportunities for harnessing wind power. These various aspects need to be considered in fulfilling the Paris Agreement now, but also for developing clear and sustainable goals for the future.
Although ratification of the Paris Agreement is already being considered, the deliverables on adaptation are far from clear. In fact, there are no agreed-upon adaptation goals at the global level. It would therefore be interesting and useful for India to formulate adaptation strategies at State levels and demonstrate if and how these could be meaningful for the country as a whole.
Response to the effects of warming We know that India will experience severe effects of global warming. The recent floods in Jammu and Kashmir and Tamil Nadu, and severe drought in many districts, are probably just an indication of the harsh implications for the future.
Decisions on development, for example large-scale infrastructure investments, have implications for GHG emissions now and in the future. Infrastructure and institutional mechanisms that have implications for the long term are referred to as “lock-ins”. This implies that countries need to think in terms of targets well beyond 2030 for emissions and adaptation. Thus, fundamental decisions on growth and development need to go well beyond the goals for a high GDP and consider surviving extreme events, living in a warmer world, and inclusivity, especially with hundreds of millions who are poor, which is fundamental to countries like India. The linkages among development trajectories, GHG emissions reduction targets and adaptation strategies perhaps need to be made more explicit by researchers and scientists, so that decision makers can understand the medium- and long-term implications of virtually all their choices.
With the challenges that India faces and the need to provide human services in a sustainable manner to its vast underserved population, the country requires social and economic transformation at a scale that has not been attempted before. An acknowledgement that these kinds of changes need to happen would be a good beginning followed by perhaps a wide and open national conversation on what such transformational processes would look like and what the policies and associated social changes would be.
Sujatha Byravan is Principal Research Scientist at the Center for Study of Science Technology and Policy, Bengaluru.
