Indigenus

A paper in Science that crowns 'nitrous oxide' as the king of ozone depleting substance (ODSs) caught my attention this week. A. R. Ravishankara and colleagues from the Earth System Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado, USA, contend that N2O accounts for the the single most important ODS emission currently and would remain so throughout the 21st century. [Nature News story]

There's nothing in the Montreal Protocol to regulate N2O. If N2O emissions are contained, it would be something to rejoice for scientists predicting that the depleted ozone layer might be able to heal itself faster. On a happy flip-side, it would also reduce humankind's contribution to climate change -- something the authors of the paper aptly describe as a ‘win-win’ for both ozone and climate.

Takes me back to 2006, when scientists from the small Bengal town of Serampore had challenged the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols. The low profile scientists had published their findings way back in 2000 in the Indian Journal of Physics claiming, in essence, the same thing as the Science paper -- that chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) is not the biggest demon, nitrous oxide is.The IPCC mentioned N2O only in the list of greenhouse gases relevant to radiative forcing and not in the list of ozone-depleting gases.

The lead author S. K. Midya of the department of physics at Serampore College in Hooghly district of West Bengal sent me a copy of the paper by post (the journal wasn't online then and even now doesn't seem to have online archives prior to 2001). He and his colleagues had analysed data from the Antarctic Survey Station Mc Murdo to show that 61.67 per cent to the depletion of the ozone layer was due to N2O, 27% due to carbon dioxide and 7% due to CFCs. The findings were questioned by several environment scientists at the time. Their contention was that scientists from Mc Murdo would have certainly reported these figures in a paper if this was the case.

The point of this post is: the questions being asked are the same all these years. But the answers remain as elusive as ever. Hope the Copenhagen meet in December takes some policy stand on this alongside all the other landmark discussions it is expected to witness.

Posted by Subhra Priyadarshini on September 01, 2009
Categories: Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new report and a book this week presented two sides of the climate change coin.

While the report unveiled at the Bonn UN climate change meeting sounded alarm bells for many Asian countries, including India, predicting large scale migrations due to glacial thaw, the book was a guide for erring cities across Asia, Africa and Latin America – cajoling them into becoming ‘good boys’.

Reports of the report flooded the Indian media since a lot is at stake for the country. The climate gurus have warned that the ongoing melting of alpine glaciers in the Himalayas will devastate the heavily irrigated farmlands of Asia by increasing floods and decreasing long-term water supplies. The glacier-fed basins of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers support over 1.4 billion people.
The report ‘In search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration’ also predicted breakdown of ecosystem-based economies including subsistence herding, farming and fishing.

And while we were still coming to terms with the crisis looking us in the face, the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) sent us word that they have quite a few pointers for the Indian city of Mumbai along with its Asian metro counterparts in their new book ‘Adapting Cities to Climate Change: understanding and addressing the development challenges’.

The book, they say, should be of interest to policy makers, practitioners and academics, who face the challenge of addressing climate change vulnerability and adaptation in urban centres throughout the ‘global South’. It describes how the first priority for adapting cities to climate change is to remedy deficits in infrastructure and services. For most urban centres in these regions at least half of the population lacks piped water, sewers, drains, health care or emergency services. Also included are chapters discussing where adaptation can overlap with reducing greenhouse gas emissions (for Indian cities) and a critique of the very limited international funding available to support adaptation.

The UN-Columbia University-CARE International report also makes a few policy recommendations that include prioritising the world’s most vulnerable populations and including migration in adaptation strategies.

Takes me back to the gloom I experienced while doing an investigation some time back in the Sunderban islands of the Bay of Bengal. The story of the vanishing islands has been quoted widely (and even got a BBC award). But the migrants from these sinking islands have not yet been recognised as vulnerable , neither has there been any serious rehabilitation effort to save these environment refugees. Just the other day, a young environmentalist who had revisited the Sunderban delta, reported at a seminar on climate change that she hadn’t seen any perceptible change in the plight of the people despite the international press writing about them.

Makes one cynically wonder, what do reports, books and investigations finally boil down to? I would love to be shaken out of this cynicism: do tell me of the last book, report or press coverage that helped significantly alter the lives of such vulnerable populations in India.

Posted by Subhra Priyadarshini on June 11, 2009
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