The New Nation - Internet Edition

Climate change alert : CSE

This is a monthly alert from Centre for Science and Environment/ Down To Earth on recent developments on climate change issues in India. We track what is happening in policy circles and the actions being taken by different sectors-industry, government and civil society.

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1. Latest developments: India's action plan on climate change released

This week, the Prime Minister released India's action plan to address climate change. The plan identifies eight focus missions - ranging from solar and energy efficiency to climate research. The plan also chalks out an institutional structure for future action overseen by the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change. You can download the action plan from http://pmindia.nic.in/Pg01-52.pdf

Sunita Narain's comment on the plan and other developments:

The mean world of climate

The prime minister this week released India's national action plan on climate change. For most of us, engaged in the business of environment and climate, it may seem that the plan has nothing new or radical to offer. But as I see it, firstly, it asserts that India can grow differently, because "it is in an early stage of development." In other words, it can leapfrog to a low carbon economy, using high end and emerging technologies and by doing things differently. Secondly, it prioritizes national action by setting our eight missions - ranging from solar to climate research - which will be detailed and then monitored by the prime minister's council for climate change. These are the good part of the action plan.

But it is weak on how India sees the rest of the world in this extraordinary crisis. Let us be clear, climate change is a global challenge. This is a problem we did not create and even till date, we contribute little to global emissions. We are in fact climate-victims as it is vast parts of our lands and our people who will be worst affected by what science is predicting as the outcome of increasing temperatures - from extreme weather events to melting of glaciers in the Himalayas.

Let us also be clear that international negotiations on climate change, to put it politely, stink. The mood is downright mean, belligerent and selfish. The club of rich countries who in the past may have agreed to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (meaning that countries would act based on their responsibility to creating the problem) are learning the hard lessons of climate change. In the past 15 years, their greenhouse gas emissions have increased and not decreased, in spite of their commitment to do otherwise. Now, they want to find any which way to please their green constituency but also to balance their economic growth imperatives and ensure competitiveness of their industry.

Their strategy has many parts and players. Firstly, it lets the most climate-renegade nation, US, finger-point at China, India and other emerging countries saying that if they do not take action, it will not. Even if this means ignoring that US emissions, already one-fourth of the global total, are on the increase - 20 per cent increase in the past 15 years. And accepting that the US says its emissions will peak after 2025 - meaning 10 years after what scientists say is the least risky target for global emissions to peak and then decline. Secondly, it lets the guru of energy efficiency, Japan provide an alternative road-map, which will be a win-win solution for its industry. Thirdly, it let the green-czar, the European Union (EU) be tough in words, but give in at strategic moments, saying there is a need for pragmatism in global action.

The stage is now set for the last act of this deadly climate-play. Lets do a replay to catch up with current events.

Last year July at the G-8 summit in Germany, leaders of the rich world agreed to 'seriously consider a goal to halve world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050'. In December, Bali, Indonesia the EU went huffing and puffing to the conference of parties with a proposal to cut industrialised country emissions by 25-40 per cent over 1990 levels by 2020. At this meeting there was a complete turnaround, as targets disappeared and what emerged in its place was a twin-track approach, which would allow rich countries to set voluntary targets or just reduction objectives. Then, in February, Japan - the current G-8 president-came out with its proposal to set targets for 2050, not for total emissions but for emission intensity cuts in different sectors. This proposal provides for technology benchmarking of 'polluting sectors' by all 'major emitters' and the 'transfer' of high quality technology to reduce emissions in these industries. It includes countries like India in taking on commitments; it then identifies sector-specific best technologies and practices, which are naturally held in countries like Japan so it becomes a big business opportunity. It then goes on to demand tariff reductions on these environmentally sound technologies. Now its pain can become its gain and it can sell expensive stuff to the poor polluting sods. Brilliant.

During this period, the US has fast-tracked its own climate attack. It had already scored a coup bringing all major emitters-China and India included - into one group, which blurred if not removed the difference between rich countries legally required to take action and others. It is said to have cajoled countries like India by offering amnesty - join my club and I will protect you from taking commitments. But with the domestic mood changing, the US government has also changed tack. Instead of no commitments, it wants China and India, to take on voluntary targets - called 'aspirational' in its language. This way it brings them in but ends up protecting itself, as the targets for action are set, not for the interim - 2020 but for 2050. Long enough for it to agree to do nothing and for it to increase its emissions and grow its economy. Climate-murder. But who cares.

Japan, US (and all rich countries hiding behind their petticoats) are also bent on sweetening the deal further. They have proposed the change in base-year from when change in emissions will be measured. Currently, rich countries have to reduce over what they emitted in 1990, but that is tough for countries, which in this period have increased emissions; US by 20 per cent; Japan by 7 per cent; Australia by over 35 per cent. Even the EU has increased in most individual countries. So, Japan has proposed that the base-year should be 'shifted' to 2008 so that its growth is 'forgiven'. How convenient.

Last week, negotiators met in the city of Seoul confronted this agenda:

US and Japan resisted interim targets for 2020 and made China and India the scapegoats. Next week at the Hokkaido Toyako G-8+ 5 meet, our prime minister will be given the same treatment. It is tough world there, not just because of the threat of climate change. It is time we suggested the way ahead - not just for us, but for the world.

Reef-building corals face extinction

A third of reef-building corals around the world are threatened with extinction, according to the first-ever comprehensive global assessment to determine their conservation status. The study findings were published today by Science Express.

Leading coral experts joined forces with the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) - a joint initiative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Conservation International (CI) - to apply the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria to this important group of marine species.

"The results of this study are very disconcerting," stated Kent Carpenter, lead author of the Science article, GMSA Director, IUCN Species Programme. "When corals die off, so do the other plants and animals that depend on coral reefs for food and shelter, and this can lead to the collapse of entire ecosystems."

Built over millions of years, coral reefs are home to more than 25 percent of marine species, making them the most biologically diverse of marine ecosystems. Corals produce reefs in shallow tropical and sub-tropical seas and have been shown to be highly sensitive to changes in their environment.

The 39 scientists who co-authored the study identified the main threats to corals as climate change and localized stresses resulting from destructive fishing, declining water quality from pollution, and the degradation of coastal habitats. Climate change causes rising water temperatures and more intense solar radiation, which lead to coral bleaching and disease often resulting in mass coral mortality.

"Reef-building corals are more at risk of extinction than all terrestrial groups, apart from amphibians, and are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change," says CI's Roger McManus. "The loss of the corals will have profound implications for millions of people who depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods."

Coral reefs harbor fish stocks and other marine resources upon which coastal communities depend.

They also help protect coastal towns and other near-shore habitats from severe erosion and flooding caused by tropical storms.

The study emphasizes the widespread plight of coral reefs and the urgent need to enact conservation measures. "We either reduce our CO2 emission now or many corals will be lost forever," says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General.

"Improving water quality, global education and the adequate funding of local conservation practices also are essential to protect the foundation of beautiful and valuable coral reef ecosystems."

(Source: IUCN)

Can Bangladesh trap silt?

Mostafa Kamal Majumder

Recently in Dhaka, Dutch ambassador Bea Ten Tusscher suggested that Bangladesh, decidedly to be worst-hit by global-warming-induced sea level rise, could outpace this disaster by trapping the silt three great rivers carry through it to the sea. It is a fascinating idea from the ambassador of a nation actively associated with the development of Bangladesh's water sector since the 1950s.

Lush green Bangladesh sits on 5-15 km thick deltaic alluvial deposits brought down from the mountains by the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna, over millennia. According to experts, they carry an estimated one billion tonnes of silt that is deposited in the sea.

Land elevation in 75 per cent of the delta ranges from one metre to less than three metres above the mean sea level. In a normal rainy season, floods inundate one third of the country; big floods submerge two-thirds. Either way, crops are damaged, injuring the economy. What will sea level rise, then, unleash?

As it is, with about 150 million people on 1,47,570 sq km of land, the population density of 904 persons per sq km is the highest in the world. Consequently, in addition to hordes of Bangladeshis seeking livelihoods outside the country, there is a clear trend of in-country migration from the less developed and economically deprived zones to cities and towns. Anticipated here at 32 cm by 2050 and 88 cm by 2100, plus another 10-20 cm local rise due to land subsidence, sea level rise will multiply this injury. About 16 per cent of the current land area might go under water, damaging croplands, causing habitat loss and forcing people to migrate.

Outpace it, the Dutch ambassador suggests; adverse impacts would also not exist.

Emaduddin Ahmed, executive director of the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), thinks raising the level of land threatened with inundation due to sea level rise is theoretically not impossible. The silt is huge. Yet, not all of the land that will go under is located near the rivers. Thus, transferring silt would be very costly, also in terms of ecosystemic re-engineering.

As precedence, the IWM chief draws attention to the reclamation of around 10,000 ha of land in the coastal area of greater Noakhali in the southern part of Bangladesh, since the 1960s till the 1980s, by constructing cross dams. These reclaimed lands are now fertile; farmers grow rice and other crops. Yet, the reclamation caused problems; in the adjacent mainland, drainage canals that took water south, into the sea, got clogged. An alternative arrangement had to be made to drain rain- and river-water towards the west, into the Meghna

Also, there has been little net land accretion in the Bay of Bengal, irrespective of the huge silt load. Ahmed says there is a shallow expanse of the continental shelf in the Bay of Bengal. Sometimes during low tide, tips of small islets are noticed; then they disappear. Coastal erosion also devours land from time to time.

Another way of raising land levels along the coast could be to trap sediment brought in from the sea by the tide. But would people accept their land being degraded by saline sediment?

Monowar Hossain, an expert on the sediment load of the major rivers of Bangladesh, says the idea merits experimentation. Some of the sediment the rivers carry naturally balance out the land subsidence the delta experiences. About raising the land level of the inundation-prone areas, he believes that apart from dredging to transfer silt from riverbeds, diversion of silt might also be possible. But this calls for a careful study and experiment.

Water expert Ainun Nishat, now country representative, Bangladesh of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is more sceptical. He underlines an adaptive strategy, the need to strengthen coastal erosion measures-coastal dykes, embankments, and more cyclone shelters (about 2,000 are already constructed). Cyclone forecasting should improve, he believes, and warning and capacity enhancement for disaster management.

Comments eminent geographer and water expert Maniruzzaman Miah, "It is beyond my comprehension as to how much silt may be needed to build what extent of land over how long a period and that too with the swatch of no-land, the depth of which has never been known." The Dutch, however, know how to reclaim land from the sea.

This writer thinks Bangladesh may request the Dutch government to prepare a feasibility study. "Why not?" says Miah, a former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University.

(Courtesy: CSE/DTE Features)

Tapping energy or sapping the Himalayas?

Chandi Prasad Bhatt

A series of dams are being planned on the Ganga between the Gangotri glacier and Uttarkashi to generate hydropower. The government has an economic agenda that requires huge amount energy. Well, it can go ahead, but only after it has satisfied me on seven counts.

There should be a detailed, in-depth study of the geology and the structures, by a team of scientists whose credential is proven and who should be inducted from reputed research organizations.

There should be an inventory of both active and old landslide deposits at the project sites. Sediments going to be flushed into rivers that are already sediment-laden must be estimated. This inventory will help assess the threat of inundation downstream.

For a long time now, I have been requesting a specific kind of study. The area the projects are coming up in has experienced two major earthquakes in the last decade. But, till today, except for some work related to an increase in landslides, it is still not known how these quakes changed the terrain.

Thus, there should be a study that give us an insight into the nature and distribution of fractures and fissures prior to the earthquakes, and after. This is essential: we must avoid incidents like Bhenti and Varnawart, deadly landslides where entire villages were swept away.

Just to remind you, the area the projects are being planned in, called the main central thrust (MCT) of the higher Himalaya, is known to be very sensitive in terms of landform stability. A majority of landslides, flash floods and termors occur in the vicinity of the MCT. If one travels from river Kali to river Tons, one can see both active and stabilized landslides distributed on the southern slope of the MCT zone. We are still grappling in the dark as to exactly when the fractures will lead to threshold perturbation. We all know our engineers can make stable structures, using state-of-the-art technology. But how can they strengthen rocks that have been pulverized and are prone to small perturbation? Think of Chain village, near the Vishnuprayag project tunnel, which is showing signs of subsidence. Can engineers ensure the up-coming projects will not do the same to other villages?

I am told that the fragile reservoir rim area around Tehri dam has already become unstable. As a result, much sediment is getting into the reservoir from the slopes. What if something similar happens in the new proposed projects? Water discharge data are simply too scanty. I request our planners to remember the frightening experience with the Vishnuprayag project, where planners failed to anticipate the decrease in water discharge during the winter. Considering that the new projects are located in the higher Himalaya, where water discharge is largely modulated by seasonality, this aspect should be taken seriously. More so, mounting evidence suggests that Himalaya glaciers are receding at an alarming rate. If that happens, the future of these projects is going to be seriously affected. Have we thought about this?

We must realise that in spite of the rugged terrain, people living in the region still depend on agriculture. With the rise in population, individual landholding has significantly reduced over the years. In addition, expansion of urban areas, road building activity and hydroelectricity projects have further marginalized the individual landholding in Uttarakhand. In the last few years, there has been a significant increase in the number of proposed hydroelectricity projects in various river basins. A majority of these projects are run-of-the-river schemes, implying no major submergence is involved. But as we know, a sizeable number of productive agricultural fields is located proximal to the river beds which are irrigated through traditional canal system. Many such productive fields will be submerged forever.

Have we estimated the consequences of depriving locals of their productive agricultural fields? One more caveat. The impounding of water behind barrages is certainly going to change the micro-environment of the basin (at local scale). Down-stream, too, there will be reduced flow. We have no idea how these changes are going to affect the micro-biological and ecological environment. Do we know what we are doing to the Himalaya?

(Source: CSE/DTE feature Chandi Prasad Bhatt is an eminent activist and environmentalist)

Scientists discover new reefs teeming in Brazil

Scientists announced today the discovery of reef structures they believe doubles the size of the Southern Atlantic Ocean's largest and richest reef system, the Abrolhos Bank, off the southern coast of Brazil's Bahia state. The newly discovered area is also far more abundant in marine life than the previously known Abrolhos reef system, one of the world's most unique and important reefs.

Researchers from Conservation International (CI), Federal University of Espírito Santo and Federal University of Bahia announced their discovery in a paper presented today at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale. "We had some clues from local fishermen that other reefs existed, but not at the scale of what we discovered," says Rodrigo de Moura, Conservation International Brazil marine specialist and co-author of the paper. "It is very exciting and highly unusual to discover a reef structure this large and harboring such an abundance of fish," he adds.

The Abrolhos Bank is considered one of the world's most important reefs because it harbors a high number of marine species found only in Brazil including species of soft corals, mollusks and fish found only in the Abrolhos shelf.

The Mussismilia coral genus, a relic group remnant of an ancient coral fauna dating back to the Tertiary period that went extinct long ago elsewhere in the Atlantic, is the dominant coral of the Abrolhos reef, which is structured in unique mushroom-like shapes.

Researchers mapped the new reef structures in areas ranging from nine to 124 miles (15 to 200 km) off the coast and in depths ranging from 60 to 220 feet (20 to 73 meters) using a side scan sonar which produces a three-dimensional map of the marine seabed.

"Due to their relative inaccessibility and depth, the newly discovered reefs are teeming with life, in some places harboring 30 times the density of marine life than the known, shallower reefs," says Guilherme Dutra, Conservation International's director of marine programs in Brazil. "That's the good news. The bad news is that only a small percentage of marine habitats in the Abrolhos are protected, despite mounting localized and global threats."

Localized threats include over-fishing, coastal development and large scale land conversion to agriculture, shrimp farms, pollution, oil drilling and sedimentation. Global threats include climate change and ocean acidification.

Researchers acknowledged the conservation effectiveness of the present network of Marine Protected Areas in the Abrolhos. But it is very limited and not nearly enough vis-à-vis the mounting threats, they added.

The next phase of the Abrolhos project will be to study the marine life in the new reef structures.

"These studies reveal the complexity and connectivity of the reefs in the Abrolhos region and will support conservation planning," states Guilherme Dutra.

The studies are part of the Marine Management Area Science Program coordinated by CI with the participation of research institutions around the world, and supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and individual donors.

(Source: International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft Lauderdale: Presentation on the new reef structures entitled "Mapping marine habitats in the largest reef area of the southern Atlantic" )