PARIS CLIMATE DEAL 2015 : AN AGENDA THAT IS URGENT

Ramakant Tiwari

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”

Statement taken from introduction to the IPCC V Assessment Report (AR-5) for policymakers, highlights challenges that international community encounters in arresting detrimental effects of global climate worsening. With increasing degree of confidence expressed by IPCC in every subsequent report, complex negotiations on climate change had largely languished irrespective of the scale of problems. Fortunately, recognition within G-20 countries that climate change is no more possible to be ignored, it has been deliberated over at every G-20 summit since their first assembly in Washington in the year 2008. Quite ironically, members of the forum happen to be the worst climate-offenders offering lamentable platitudes in their communiqués, then cold-storaged with all the conceivable predictability of a sunset after every sunrise !! Hence, if G-20 are to obtain then retain credibility on climate scenario for a global governance forum to function enjoying public trust, it must be determined to do a concrete contribution to the global crisis. Then the world leaders were called upon to commit their presence to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 21st Conference of Parties hereinafter UNFCCC COP-21 held in Paris in the year 2015. Their presence ensured augmented momentum around COP-21, an important signal to non G-20 members that G-20 was not to supersede UNFCCC process. How best to mobilise billions of dollars required to mitigate climate change and it’s adaptation was a prominent issue at Copenhagen, also subject of Report-2010 from UN Secretary General’s Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing.  To set the ball rolling on the issue was more valuable than any commitment to an arbitrary deadline or quantum of financing.

Climate history of earth may yield an accurate assessment of climate sensitivity while inaccurate knowledge of glacial to inter-glacial global temperature change is an obstacle to an accurate assessment of climate sensitivity, a sensitivity that immediately affects humanity. Distributive issues are at the core of negotiating an effective climate change treaty as huge costs are involved in potential climate changes or their prevention. How should benefits accrued from use of resources now believed to be sources of global warming be redistributed? Negotiations were conducted under UNFCCC towards a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions defining newer contours of property rights. Equity considerations implicit in the mandate, go far beyond direct costs and benefits of climate change to invoke broader issues of past and future access to resources and quality of global environment. While managing the unmanageable, countries must also manage the unavoidable. Unless the world immediately reduces greenhouse emissions significantly, global annual average temperature will rise by about 2.5 to 7 degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end of current century. Temperature rise in the order of 4 degrees shall cause irreversible, potentially catastrophic impact such as extinction of half of species worldwide, inundation of at least 30 percent of coastal wetland and rise in malnutrition, diarrhoeal and cardio-respiratory diseases. According to UNFAO, population of hungry / malnourished has been steadily rising and India slipped to 80^th rank in 2015 from 55^th in 2014 as reflected in Global Hunger Index Report that maps hunger levels in 104 countries. Food security is also threatened in several countries as detailed in IUCN Report. Even considerable public intervention may not succeed in mitigating disastrous consequences. If global annual average temperature is maintained at 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2050,  such a world shall experience heavy rainfall, intense droughts, floods, heat waves and other extreme weather spikes. Households, communities and planners need initiatives to “reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual and expected climate change effects” according to IPCC-2007. Expected key outcome was an agreement to set a goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. The Deal mandates zero net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to be reached during the second half of 21st century. In the adopted version of Paris Agreement, member countries shall “pursue efforts to” limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees which means zero emissions sometime between 2030 and 2050. In absence of these adaptations, development and survival shall be threatened, may be even reversed.

G-20 member countries agreed in recently held Hangzhou conclave to complete their domestic legal formalities for the ratification of PARIS CLIMATE DEAL soon as their “national procedures allow”, a move that pressurises India to expedite the Deal soon. “We reiterate our commitment to sustainable development, strong and effective support and actions to address climate change. We commit to complete our respective domestic procedures in order to join the Paris Agreement as soon as our national procedures allow,” so declared the joint communiqué issued after conclusion of G-20 Summit. Now that China and USA, collectively accounting for almost 40% of world’s Carbon emissions, have ratified the Deal ahead of G-20 summit and handed over their instruments of joining the Deal to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, India has to discover soon what the most balanced course of action would be. Other G-20 members agreed to complete their domestic legal formalities for the ratification of Paris Climate Deal earliest possible, a move that may allow India leverage of time to craft own strategy in harmony with national developmental goals.

India is desparately developing indigenous industry maintaining over 7% growth rate, presently highest in the world intending to transform into a  manufacturing hub of reckoning. After a decade of almost negative growth, this level of frenetic manufacturing activity has been attained after painstaking efforts of Prime Minister Modi and his team. Such a hard earned momentum of growth India can ill-afford to fritter away on any count whatsoever. “We reaffirm the importance of the support provided by the Green Climate Fund. We welcome the G20 Climate Finance Study Group Report on promoting efficient and transparent provision and mobilisation of climate finance to enhance ambition of mitigation and adaptation actions.” declared the joint communique. “We look forward to successful outcomes in related multilateral fora, including the Montreal Protocol and the International Civil Organisation,” it said. India has so far resisted persistent pressure to commit 2016 as the deadline for ratification of the Deal. Dy. Chairman of National Institution for Transforming India i.e. NITI Aayog Aravind Panagariya, also our Sherpa at the Summit, declared that India and several other countries cannot ratify the Deal owing to legal hurdles. On fossil fuels, Panagariya said many other countries including India did not agree on specific date for withdrawal of fossil fuel subsidies. In his intervention on the Summit’s concluding day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged, climate change was one of the foremost challenges with the Paris Deal showing the way forward however, “Focus should not just be on early ratification, but full success.”

Climate change rather worsening, has a cultural aspect too, in addition to scientific, environmental, socio-political and economic aspects. Cultural aspect is in fact, foundational aspect, primary to all other aspects. Our Sanatana  ethos educates us highest eco-friendly virtue of Samyama  i.e. pursuit of asceticism while consuming bounties of nature. It prohibits us from excessive indulgence i.e. of glut and surfeit as we believe, Mother Nature is meant for all and must be allowed to tend to all lives irrespective of body shapes, sizes. Our indulgence with Mother Nature ought to be restricted to minimum levels, barely enough to live in dignity leaving the rest to grow for others. So, another aspect of the sacrosanct virtue of Samyama  emerges that we, all creatures are co-inhabitants in the lap of Mother Nature wherein, Nature too, happens to be one of the co-inhabitants. Third dimension of the cultural aspect as expounded by Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya, one of the greatest ideologues born in contemporary era, is that Sanatana Darsana  holds our existence to be circular in nature while western philosophers regard that linear in structure. Circular nature entails re-birth after one’s demise and that may be repeated innumerable times depending upon one’s Karmic  involvement with the world. In such a cosmic situation, we cannot afford to destroy nature even a bit as we have to revert soon, pick up threads left behind and move on ahead for the next cosmic cycle of life and death. On the contrary, as linear configuration of existence does not accept life after demise, encourages and validates excessive indulgence so much so that it must not be missed out even in extreme moments of crisis because life at the moment is the first and last one to reckon with.

Only if the world had correctly understood, contemplated over and practised holy virtue of Samyama  before onset of climate crisis, nobody might have heard of climate crisis or Paris Climate Deal at all.