Policy Wise

Despite some disagreements among scientists, there is little doubt that climate change is an ongoing process and represents a monumental challenge. With rapid development of India and China–the latter has recently replaced United States as the world’s biggest carbon emitter, the situation can only get worse.

In an op-ed in the Hindustan times, Praful Bidwai argues that India should be prepared to offer unilateral concessions without demanding monetary compensation from the West.

India’s position on this is especially deplorable. It says “growth … prospects in the developing world” must in no circumstances be “constrained”; higher GDP growth “is the best way for developing countries to address … the issue of … protecting the climate.”

Bidwai offers no proof why this position is particularly deplorable. This is despite the fact that he explicitly acknowledges that the North has been historically responsible for global warming. What India and China are currently engaged in can be termed as the greatest poverty rescue effort in the world–to discount its importance and to entirely dismiss economic growth as tool to mitigate global warming is wrong

North’s development happened in an era unconcerned with environmental degradation. Surely, it is only fair that it compensates countries which are finally seeing the fruits of development.

Bidwai further writes,

However, it’s also imperative that rapidly growing Southern countries, including India, undertake obligations to cut their ballooning emissions. India’s overall emissions are growing almost four times faster than the global average. They are expected to rise two-and-a-half times by 2030. Vehicular emissions are projected to rise about six-fold.

Even if the North reduces its emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, developing countries, including India, will still need to cut theirs by about 60 per cent. This must immediately translate into quantified stage-by-stage emission cuts

This is a big ”if”. America has consistently refused to sign the Kyoto agreement which is set to expire in 2012. If the world’s biggest polluter is not willing to sacrifice economic growth at the altar of global warming, why should India do so especially when ”an average Indian contributes only 1/20th to global warming as an average American”?

Also, Bidwai figures fails to take into account the fact that both India and China have started from an extremely low base–the per capita consumption of electricity in India is 1/40th that of America. Compared to America’s over 170 million vehicles, India doesn’t have even 1/10th the number.

It’s pernicious to cite per capita emissions as the sole ethical criterion for defining global responsibility. Per capita numbers mean little in India’s highly unequal, stratified society, with some of the world’s highest rich-poor inequalities. Nor do they take into account India’s low per capita access to “natural sinks”, like oceans and forests. It is not India’s poor, the bulk of whom survive at subsistence level, whose emissions are rising. It is the 80 to 100-million-strong rich and middle-classes, who are on a consumption binge — as if there were no tomorrow.

Bidwai dismisses 80-100 million people as if they are completely inconsequential. Suffice to note that this number constitutes roughly 1/3rd of the populations of America and Europe.

Bidwai’s two India theory, while consistent with his ideological leanings, flies in the face of facts. India’s Ginni coefficient of 32.5 ranks favorably with that of United States and other developed countries. Irrespective of that, Bidwai is missing the entire point. India’s growth has propelled millions of people into middle class–after all, what was the size of India’s middle class before the economic reforms of 1991? Declining poverty levels continue to increase this already substantial number.

Bidwai himself argues that 700 million people in India continue to lack the basic necessities of life. Is that the existence he wishes for them? India’s growth is absolutely essential for hundreds of millions living in degrading poverty.

Amusingly enough, Bidwai is not so dismissive of the elite when it helps him advance his own agenda. In the beginning of his op-ed he cites a survey done in 14 countries which showed that people were deeply concerned about global warming? Who were the survey recipients? Were they not the same elite whom Bidwai despises?

To demand that people unilaterally give up development and go back to the pre-industrialization era is not only Utopian but immoral. People in India and China have every right to enjoy the same comforts of life which their counterparts in the industrialized world have enjoyed for centuries. Bidwai perception of electricity and air-conditioners as ”wasteful” would find no resonances in circles outside his own.

Bidwai is dismissive of initiatives like CNG bus system in Delhi and even the Delhi metro, and argues that there is no evidence that they have led to a cut in pollution levels. Delhi metro’s entire network consists of 58 km (New York’s system is over 700 miles), and yet–it is already showing a positive effect on pollution in Delhi. A study by Murty et al of the University of Delhi’s institute of economic growth has shown that by 2005-06, metro has caused a substantial reduction in the demand for private vehicles (over 300,000). This is exactly why city governments all over the world have build public transport systems! With the proposed metro system in other mega-cities like Bombay and Bangalore, the effect on pollution would be substantial.

Bidwai further writes,

India admits there is a universal obligation to mitigate climate change. A universal objective is worth pursuing; it is intrinsically a global good. No conditions should be attached to it — e.g. extraneous benefits such as free technology, or a Marshall Plan-II, which subsidies the South.

Bidwai’s argument is reminiscent of an era when India demanded de-nuclearization of the Indian ocean in the name of world peace. Not only would such unilateral concessions make little effect on global warming–especially if the developed world continues to play truant, it would have a deleterious effect on India’s growth. Is this a price worth paying for such empty moral victories? Did India’s ”moral” agenda during the cold war days had any effect on its dynamics?

Much like the conflict during the cold era, global warming is a new global struggle where homilies like morality serve as a thinly disguised weapon to advance strategic interests. Nations will not give up their own advancement in the name of ”moral duty”–one can plainly see it in the struggle for energy resources. India has no choice but to play this game.

This is not to argue that India shouldn’t participate in the global warming debate. However, actively participating in the debate, the government must not offer any unilateral concessions. It must also ensure that India’s growth doesn’t suffer, and any financial repercussions are commensurate with India’s contribution to global warming. In the interim, (and here I agree with Bidwai), the Indian industry and the government must attempt to become more energy efficient. Considering India’s chronic power shortage, it is only in their interest to do so.