Climate builds bridges across Asia

Navin Singh Khadka, BBC News 16 Jul 08;

Amidst growing criticism from industrialised countries for not committing to greenhouse gas reduction targets, India has indicated it would initiate regional efforts to deal with climate change.

Some experts believe the regional approach could be aimed at resisting pressure from major western economies, while others say the South Asian country has no other way to face the global challenge.

In its recently launched climate change national action plan, for example, India has stressed working with other nations in South Asia.

"We will need to exchange information with the South Asian countries and countries sharing the Himalayan ecology," the plan reads.

"Co-operation with neighbouring countries will be sought to make a comprehensive network for observation and monitoring of the Himalayan environment, to assess fresh water resources and the health of the ecosystem."

Sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem that India shares with most other South Asian countries is one of eight national missions in the action plan.

Another mission, for national water, also talks about "customising climate change models for regional water basins".

The Ganges, Meghna, Brahmaputra and Indus rivers forming the regional water basins are lifelines to hundreds of millions of people, nearly half of them poor.

Experts have warned that the people hardest hit by climate change will be the poor.

They have also said that most of the river basins in South Asia will see less and less water as Himalayan glaciers that feed them recede due to rising temperatures.

Current troubles

But even before it all becomes that bad, India is already water-troubled.

"Many parts of the country are water stressed today," the climate change action plan says.

"India is likely to be water scarce by 2050, and the problem is likely to worsen due to climate change impacts."

Environmentalists say it is the threats of such impacts that could bring the region together.

"Unless we understand the climate change problem and work on it together as a region, we will never be able to deal with it," says Sunita Narain, director of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

"In the action plan, we have seen for the first time that India has recognised that South Asian region must work together as a voice."

A recent meeting of environment ministers from the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc) also stressed the importance of having one voice for the region.

Participants said there has been a seven-point agreement to work towards that end.

Atiq Rahman, one of the delegates to that meeting and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said it was the commonality of the problem that led to the agreement.

"While countries like Bangladesh and Maldives in the region are threatened by rising sea levels, others including Bhutan, Nepal, India and Pakistan face increasing risks from glacial lake outburst flood and extreme weather.

"Common problems like these made it easier to have one voice."

Looking outwards

Experts however also believe that the unanimous regional voice is not just about climate change related problems from inside the region, but also from outside.

Says Dr Rahman, an environment expert from Bangladesh: "They are seeing the enemy, as it were; the opposite side, which is outside the South Asian system.

"It is about the primary emitters that are the industrialised countries."

Ajay Dixit, who is researching climate change research lapses in Asia, also sees what some say is regional posturing against western economies.

"In the global debate on climate change, a divide already exists between western economies and the developing world," says the water expert from Nepal.

"The latest moves (of India) appear to focus on the negotiations with the west."

Growing pains

India has been arguing that industrialised countries must take most responsibility for global warming, and that its own emissions would never exceed those of western economies.

As an emerging economy, India's emissions are on a rapid rise, triggering calls from industrialised countries to commit to cuts.

"If we persist in our current growth paradigm, our carbon emissions will go up by 500% in the next 25 years," writes India 's National Security Advisory Board member Sudha Mahalingam, arguing that the climate change national action plan does not adequately address challenges from the transport sector.

Defending as it does its right to development and economic growth, even if that entails increased emissions, India could well play the regional card while dealing with the west.

But to make that bid effective, it will first have to gain the confidence of countries in the region.

Saarc has a poor track record. It has shrivelled into a namesake alliance over the last two decades.

Forget big things; the region has not even been able to handle perennial issues, like forecasting the floods that wreak havoc and claims hundreds of lives every monsoon.

"Saarc may not have succeeded because there have been major political and economic issues which are very difficult as a region," says Ms Narain.

"But climate change binds the region together because it is the victim and not the culprit."

Other experts believe it might be too early to believe India has gone regional on climate change, from its usual bilateral approach on almost all issues.

"But since it has started talking about making the Himalayan ecosystem sustainable, it cannot do so without joining hands with other countries that share the same ecology in the region," notes Ajay Dixit.