Catherine Wong Mei Ling, For The Straits Times 25 Feb 10;
THE terms climate change, carbon emissions and environmental sustainability have become almost synonymous. But China's recent census on pollution reminds us that environmental sustainability is much bigger than just carbon emissions and climate change.
Have we allowed climate change to obscure the wider problem of pollution? And in focusing on nature's impact on humans through climate change, have we lost sight of the human impact on nature?
China's recent pollution census reveals that while the country's industry has polluted the atmosphere, its farmers have been choking up its waters. But water pollution has been relegated to the sidelines in the climate change debate because it does not lead to global warming or rising sea levels. There is also no mechanism to encourage companies to avoid dumping effluent into rivers, unlike in the case of carbon emissions.
But the effects of water pollution on humans, marine life and biodiversity are immense. About 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diarrhoea, partly due to contaminated water, and close to half of all the people in developing countries suffer from health problems caused by water and sanitation deficits.
Because of climate change, the inefficient use of water and the shift to biofuel crop cultivation, water problems are becoming increasingly severe. Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation, according to the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report.
We also need to segment industries by their contribution to climate change. Failure to do so tends to shield some polluters from the debate. For example, the livestock sector produces more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent than transport, according to a 2006 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, and yet is more or less ignored in the climate change debate.
Furthermore, livestock accounts for 35-40 per cent of global emissions of methane, which is about 21 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.
The damage does not end there: 65 per cent of global nitrous oxide emissions - the most lethal of the three greenhouse gases and 296 times more effective than carbon dioxide in trapping heat - comes from livestock.
Clearing land and forests for pasture or feed crops is also a major source of land and water degradation. Yet according to statistics from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the bulk of the attention and money is going to the energy industries, which form about 60 per cent of registered CDM projects, compared with 4.9 per cent for agriculture.
The problems of betting too heavily on renewable sources of energy are already evident. The rush to cash in on biofuel crops was partly to blame for the 2008 food crisis when the price of corn more than doubled and the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 per cent.
Studies have shown that biofuels have adverse environmental effects. According to a 2008 Princeton study, clearing untouched land to grow biofuel crops releases long-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. Research by Nobel chemistry laureate P.J. Crutzen shows that nitrous oxide released from agro-biofuel production can cause climate warming.
The expansion of farmland for biofuels could also result in farmers and households competing for water, according to a study by The Nature Conservancy. Other critics say that some biofuels exacerbate water scarcity as they require a significant amount of water to produce energy. Plug-in hybrid cars would also increase water consumption because they need electricity and most types of power plants use water as a coolant.
But businesses and governments are throwing their weight behind the electric car. China not only aims to be a leading producer of hybrid and electric vehicles by 2013, but is also giving large subsidies to buyers of electric cars. Singapore, too, is considering sizeable tax breaks for those who opt for plug-in hybrids. While all these would help curb carbon emissions, governments must bear in mind the risks that carbon-reducing technologies pose.
Taking a pill to suppress the symptoms of an illness does not cure the disease. Perhaps we not only have to rethink climate change but also capitalism as a whole. It may be that we need to organise capitalism and human life so they fit nature, rather than the other way around.
The writer is a research associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
