Everybody present here and those who are not able to make their presence due to other engagements and distance are most welcome here at Birla Institute Of Technology, (Mesra- 835215, Ranchi) India, Kolkata Campus, Southend Conclave, 1582, Rajdanga Main Road, 4th Floor, Kolkata –700 107. As we all know the occasion is to Observe World Environment Day or “WED”, in tune with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which is celebrated every year on this day, i.e., June 5 to raise global awareness to take positive environmental action to protect nature and the planet Earth.
The 2014 theme for World Environment Day will focus on 'Small Islands and Climate Change', the official slogan for the year 2014 is ‘Raise Your Voice Not The Sea Level’.
In millions of places in the world this day is being celebrated under this theme, with the goal of raising awareness of their unique development challenges and successes regarding a range of environmental problems, including climate change, waste management, unsustainable consumption, degradation of natural resources, and extreme natural disasters.
The slogan ‘Raise Your Voice Not The Sea Level’, is self explanatory enough to focus on the issues of Global Warming, Climate Change and Sea Level Rise. Global warming is the most important science issue of the 21st century, challenging the very structure of our global society. The problem is that global warming is not just a scientific concern, but encompasses economics, sociology, geopolitics, local politics and individual’s choice of lifestyle.
The most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change or IPCC, amounting to nearly 3000 pages of detailed review and analysis of published research states that there is clear evidence for a 0.75 degree centigrade rise in global temperature and 22 centimetre rise in sea level during the 20th Century. The IPCC also predicts that global temperatures could rise further by between 1.1 degree centigrade to 6.4 degree centigrade by 2100 and sea level could rise by between 28 cm to 79 cm, more if the melting of Greenland and Antarctica accelerates. In addition, weather patterns will become less predictable and the occurrence of extreme climate events, such as storms, floods, heat waves and droughts will increase.
Global warming is caused by the massive increase of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour, ozone and chlorofluorocarbons. Though carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, others have also variable impact in increase in global temperature.
The first major source of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels, since four-fifths of global carbon dioxide emissions comes from energy production, industrial processes and transport. These are not evenly distributed around the world because of the unequal distribution of industry and wealth. North America, Europe and Asia emit over 90% of the global industrially produced carbon dioxide. Historically, the developed nations have emitted much more than less developed country.
The second major source, accounting for one-fifth of global carbon dioxide emissions, is as a result of land-use changes. These are emissions come primarily from the cutting down of forests for the purposes of agriculture, urbanization, or roads. When large areas of rainforests are cut down, the land often turns into less productive grassland with considerable reduced capacity for storing carbon dioxide. South America, Asia and Africa are responsible for over 90% of present day land use change emissions.
In terms of the amount of carbon dioxide released, industrial processes still significantly outweigh land use changes. But the golden rule of development will accompany both at the same time in developing world. This golden rule of development is always accompanied by an expansion of the amount of energy used. The cheapest route for development in developing countries are to produce energy using carbon based technologies such as coal, gas and oil. For example China is building a new coal fired power station every four days. This raises important ethical issues because it is difficult to tell these countries to stop deforesting and stop producing energy in cheapest way, when historically this has already occurred in much of North America and Europe before the beginning of the 20th century.
At this point, we can share Professor Mark Maslin, Director of the University College London and executive Director of Carbon Auditors Ltd, a leading climatologist, as he wrote in his book on Global Warming published from Oxford, that there are two major problems facing humanity in the 21st century, Global Poverty and Global Warming. He wrote that “…to deal with global warming , we must deal with developing countries, and thus we must for the first time in humanity’s history tackle the unequal distribution of global wealth. Hence, global warming is making us face the forgotten billions of people on the planet, and we must make the world a fairer place. In the 21st century, we must deal with both global poverty and global warming.”
Many scientists believe that the human-induced, or anthropogenic-enhanced, greenhouse effect will cause climate change in the near future. Even some of the global warming sceptics argue that though global warming may be a minor influence, natural climate change does occur on human timescales. Climate change can manifest itself in a number of ways, like, changes in regional and global temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, expansion and contraction of ice sheets and sea level variations. How this Global Climate System will respond to this change triggered by an internal or external forcing agent? There are four possible responses predicted by experts.
1. Linear and synchronous response
2. Muted or limited response
3. Delayed or non-linear response
4. Threshold response
As we know that climate cannot be the subject of a single projection but requires an assessment of probabilities, because greenhouse gas concentrations at this level are way beyond the range of historical experience. Although we generally talk about global warming and climate change interchangeably, climate scientists and policy makers are increasingly conscious that the issues are not simply limited to a general rise in global temperatures. Some of the most important issues concern the uneven geographical distribution of climate changes and the likely increase in climate instability. While global temperatures may rise on average, some areas may become very much warmer, while others may experience less rise in temperature. Effects on the pattern of rainfall may be large and uneven, with possibly drastic effects on the viability of agriculture in some areas. Above all, there is now recognition that global climate change may involve increased instability in climate patterns and increased frequency and severity of extreme events like cyclone and hurricanes, storm surges, floods, forest fires etc.
There is no doubt that increase in global temperature will be accompanied by sea level rise and coastal zone natural hazards. Coastal areas and inhabited islands are the most vulnerable with respect to the human population. At the same time uninhabited islands and coastal zones are rich in biodiversity which will also be affected by this event. Therefore, island nations around the world are particularly vulnerable to climate change, natural disasters and rising seas. The impact of climate change on small islands states around the world are the central platform to learn a number of environmental problems with only limited resources.
Climate change impacts in India
For their survival and livelihoods, 700 million Indians living in rural areas directly depend on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture, forests and fisheries and natural resources such as water, biodiversity, mangroves, coastal zones, and grasslands. Furthermore, the adaptive capacity of dryland farmers, forest dwellers, fisher folk and nomadic shepherds is very low. Climate change is likely to impact all natural ecosystems as well as socio-economic systems in India.
In addition, poverty is a critical factor that limits the adaptive capacity of rural people in India (GoI 2008). The Indian Government's National Communications (NATCOM) report of 2004 identifies the following as the impacts of climate change most likely to affect India between now and 2100:
• Decreased snow cover will affect snow-fed and glacial systems such as the Ganges and Brahmaputra. 70 % of the summer flow of the Ganges comes from melt water.
• Erratic monsoons will affect India’s rainfed agriculture, peninsular rivers, water and power supply
• Wheat production will drop by 4-5 million tonnes, even with a rise in temperature of only 1 ºC.
• Rising sea levels will cause displacement along one of the most densely populated coastlines in the world, also threatening freshwater sources and mangrove ecosystems.
• Floods will increase in frequency and intensity. This will heighten the vulnerability of people in the country's coastal, arid and semi-arid zones.
• Over 50 % of India’s forests are likely to experience shift in forest types, adversely impacting associated biodiversity, regional climate dynamics and livelihoods based on forest products.
National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC)
Government of India released India’s first National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) outlining existing and future policies and programs addressing climate mitigation and adaptation on June 30, 2008. The plan identifies eight core “national missions” running through 2017 emphasizing the overriding priority of maintaining high economic growth rates to raise living standards, the plan “identifies measures that promote our development objectives while also yielding co-benefits for addressing climate change effectively.” It says these national measures would be more successful with assistance from developed countries, and pledges that India’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions “will at no point exceed that of developed countries even as we pursue our development objectives.”
These National Missions are (1) National Solar Mission (2) National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (3) National Mission on Sustainable Habitat (4) National Water Mission (5) National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (6) National Mission for a “Green India” (7) National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (8) National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change with other programmes.
Accordingly, the state governments also prepared their own climate change adaptation programmes in various states.
As it was mentioned earlier that climate cannot be the subject of a single projection but requires an assessment of probabilities, we should avoid analyses and decision-making procedures, that collapse the wide range of possible developments too quickly into a single ‘best guess’ forecast, on which our attention then focuses. Indeed, scientific uncertainty is one of the key distinguishing features of climate change policy. This uncertainty is not the result of bad science, or inadequate research effort. It is inherent in the fact that we are moving into unknown territory, and can only speculate about the effects on the complex and possibly precarious balance of the earth’s ecosystem using what we know from the past and current experience. Devoting massive additional resources to a scientific research effort of the highest quality would certainly help us learn more about what is likely to happen, but it would not transform the basic situation.
Under this policy and perspective, as an academic institution, BIT proposes here to discuss on the related issues and some decisions to be taken for future action programmes.
No comments:
Post a Comment