21 Carbon sequestration through forestry (CDM-AR, REDD). Climate Change Strategies and Forests in India-III

Climate change mitigation and forests

In our quest to find and apply ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere, forestry and forests are seen as a significant sector. The first consideration is that forests themselves are a great source of GHG emissions:  world-wide, they are supposed to be the second largest source, contributing 12-20% of GHG emissions, which of course poses a threat to world climate. But the more the carbon in the atmosphere, the faster does tree growth occur, so it is also an opportunity for mitigation, because growing trees absorb CO₂ and hence can be a significant low-cost, universally applicable mitigation device.

These principles are well exemplified in our experience with the Afforestation & Reforestation (AR) component of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Afforestation and Reforestation (AR) as a route to carbon mitigation was first introduced in UNFCCC CoP-3 (1997) under the CDM. In 2005, at CoP-11, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (RED) was introduced, and the concept later enhanced by adding forest Degradation (REDD). The basic concept of REDD (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) is simple enough (Dilip Kumar, 2014): reducing the emissions from existing forests would entail controlling the rate of destructive clearing of forest, stopping the practice of burning vegetation to induce grass growth or replace forest with rangeland or agricultural crops; and so on. However, there is also the possibility that a sustainable utilization of wood can actually lead to greater carbon sequestration: the utilizable trees are locked up as structural timber in buildings, furniture, etc., and even more carbon can be fixed; per hectare  by encouraging the growth of a new crop of trees.

This was further expanded to REDD-Plus in the CoP-13 at Bali (2007) by adding elements of forest conservation and sustainable forest management as devices for mitigating carbon emissions, giving rise to the expectation, among developing, tropical countries, that they would be paid for the carbon sequestered in trees and forests that had been set aside in the past by sacrificing short-term benefits.   

The CDM-AR component was at one time touted as the great new mechanism for carbon sequestration, and detailed and laboriously drafted guidelines and rules were put up on the UNFCCC websites (e.g., UNFCCC, 2013). But these guidelines and procedures were so involved (in my view, they constitute some sort of documents from hell!) that very few projects were actually approved: according to an on-line article on the ForestCarbonAsia website (Chokkalingam & Vanniarachchy, 2014), by May 2011, there were only 22 registered CDM-AR projects (and 4 requesting registration), as against some 3000 CDM projects overall, mostly in energy, waste management, manufacturing, emissions, and agriculture. The main issue seems to have been that the process of developing standards and procedures for validating such projects (for instance, that it is an additionality, and will be long-lived) is complex and time consuming (which the authors have cited, rather unconvincingly, as an excusable process of learning that will help the successor scheme to get off the mark that much faster), and the same is bound to be true of the latest incarnation, REDD Plus, which introduces yet more components, like sustainable forest management, to sort out.

Apart from the intractable difficulties in actually proving that a particular afforestation or restoration project is an additionality (over and above something called the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario), and that the forest crop will be sure to last indefinitely with its locked-in carbon (and not liquidated sometime in the near future), there is the fact that the world community has been rather niggardly in providing the funds required to implement the scheme: after a lot of meetings and discussions, some 280 million USD were pledged at the CoP-19 at Warsaw in November 2013 by certain developed countries for a “results-based” REDD programme in 48 partner countries, , a miniscule amount compared to the many billions required to even secure the existing forests, let alone produce enough new trees to sequester the extra CO2 the world is going to emit as per the IPCC scenarios. The Stern review, for instance, estimated that the “opportunity cost of forest protection in 8 countries responsible for 70 per cent of emissions from land use could be around $5 billion per annum initially”, and expected to rise over time (Stern, 2007).

India is in any case probably not going to be a potential recipient of such pay-outs, and the relatively minor amounts being discussed are an obvious indication that much of the money will actually go to technical inputs like training, ‘capacity building’, consultancies, and so on. For India, it is all the more meaningless to look to such sources for its national programmes, as there is already an accumulated Compensatory Afforestation (CAMPA) fund of over 5 billion USD waiting to be utilised.

Another potential problem with relatively stable and institutionally developed states like India is that it will be difficult to find any major additionalities over and above the existing national programmes (the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario). For India in particular, there are already the eight national Climate Missions  devised under the previous government, of which the Green India Mission is one (see Prof. Ravindranath’s presentation at the FAO on-line conference, 2015). It envisages the creation of 5 million hectare (mha) new growth and improvement of 5 mha of existing forest, based on a ‘landscape approach’, over a period of 10 years, which will sequester carbon, along with a number of ‘co-benefits’ in the form of strengthening community participation, biodiversity conservation, and income augmentation. India also has a long-established forest service that administers the forest and wildlife areas (which cover some 65 mha out of the 300 mha of the area reported upon in the country), and many progressively (social environmentalists would say, regressively!) stringent protective laws like the Wildlife Protection Act (1972), Forest Conservation Act (1980), Environmental Protection Act (1986), National Forest Policy (1988), National Environment Policy (2006), Forest Rights Act (2006), etc., along with a strong and active judiciary (and now the National Green Tribunal), which have succeeded in at least stabilizing, and even modestly increasing, the forest cover and wildlife habitats in recent decades (Dilip Kumar, 2014c).

At the same time, there have been strenuous efforts to empower communities by decentralization of political and administrative roles through the Panchayati Raj institutions, and give them legal entitlements on a broad range of issues, to employment, food, education, and of course the individual and community forest rights of traditional forest dwellers (Forest Rights Act, 2006). The forest department itself, although a rule-bound and rather authoritarian force of uniformed officers, that has traditionally seen its main role as protecting the forests from the people living around it, has developed mechanisms to work with the communities through the Joint Forest management Committees (JFMCs). These measures appear to have gone a long way in meeting the global objectives agreed at the UN Forum of Forests (UNFF), 2006, such as reversing loss of forest cover, enhancing economic, social and environmental benefits, and increasing the area under protection and sustainable forest management (SFM).

 

Any REDD scheme in India would therefore be but a minor augmentation over and above these targets and instruments, and is likely to be nothing more than a token gesture of support to the international community and perhaps a display piece for the private sector. Indeed, according to the Second National Communication (NATCOM) of the environment ministry (Government of India, 2012), there would seem to be little scope for REDD-type interventions in India, because forests are reported to be contributing very little to GHGs: just as an illustration, for 2007, of the total country levels of CO2 emissions (14,76,357 Gg, or million tonnes) and removals (2,75,358 Gg), forest contributed only 87,840 Gg to emissions and 67,800 Gg to removals, leaving a minuscule net addition, nowhere near the 20% contribution worldwide of GHG from forest degradation which is the basic assumption of the REDD strategy.

In any case, as already suggested by this author (Dilip Kumar, 2014), it does not appear that India is being viewed as a major destination for aid in the sphere of REDD or REDD Plus; indeed, as a major contributor to the carbon emissions as well as a major player in the climate mitigation and adaptation sphere (including afforestation and landscape restoration), India may have to get used to thinking and acting as a provider, rather than a recipient, of aid.

Sustainable development as a self-imposed precaution

Even though we may not agree to curb our carbon emissions at present levels at the urging of the developed countries, it is still to be recognized that each developing country should undertake conservation and sustainable utilisation of its natural resources as a matter of common sense and abundant precaution in its own long term interests, and not necessarily because it feels under pressure in the world climate conferences.

In the short term, as already suggested, we should secure and sequester those natural habitats and biodiversity centres that are still left intact, notwithstanding the criticism of our over-sensitive ecologists to the fact that these constitute ‘islands’ of biodiversity (the complaint made by Gadgil in his report on the Western Ghats, see Dilip Kumar, 2014b). In the longer term, we need to have a clear pathway to higher income (GDP, growth) and improved quality of life of the mass of people (distribution, development). In our own interest, quite apart from the interests of controlling global GHG emissions, we need to become steadily more carbon-efficient, fuel-efficient, and careful about how we use (or abuse) the environment and natural resources.

The philosopher Pascal is supposed to have said that even if we didn’t believe there was a God, just in case we were mistaken it wouldn’t hurt to act as if He existed. In a similar spirit, whether one is an environmental warrior (like the IPCC), or a reformed skeptic (like Lomborg), we will have to probably agree with the IPCC finding that “Warming of the climate system is unequivoval, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen” (IPCC, 2014c, SPM 1.1, p.2, emphasis in original). Accordingly, it is advisable that we anticipate the possible climate change effects of the future, and start building up resilience in critical sectors. Indeed, we need not even go so far into the future of the climate change scenario: we just have to build up resilience to the current environmental factors and intermittent disasters, e.g. by proper water and soil (nutrients) management, regulating land use, controlling pollution, building defences against floods, droughts, and other climate-related hazards, diversifying rural occupations, increasing mobility, improving skills, minimizing losses, developing processing and storage facilities, developing different sectors of the economy, benefiting from the global trade and information network, moving increasingly to renewable energy and so on.

While gross carbon use (and GHG emissions) will inevitably be increasing many-fold given the growth targets of energy, fuels, infrastructure, and other sectors, the country would have to take up these sustainability measures in any case to be viable even in the current situation. These measures would automatically contribute to better carbon management in the long term, and as our people move to slightly higher levels of income, reduced uncertainty and environmental hazards, lower levels of poverty, lower birth rates, it is expected that better management of the environment and natural resources would follow.  In doing this, we need to ensure that there is a more equitable sharing of the benefits of development with the presently less well-off, especially identifiable disempowered minority groups (the socially and economically less endowed), and regional pockets of low performance. In order to make wise choices that do not result in more poverty in the name of development, we may have to devise and apply more sensible measures of well-being, rather than blindly following the high-consumption paths of the developed world; therein lies the governance challenge.

(This article series is based on my paper prepared for the “International Conference on Climate Change and Social-Ecological-Economic Interface-Building”, May 20-21, 2015, organized by the Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources (CEENR), Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru-560072, India. Uploaded at: www.academia.edu/13402458/...)

(On REDD-Plus and forestry in climate change mitigation, see my paper in the EPW May 24, 2014, p.22-25, available at: www.academia.edu/11102870/...)

PDF of the whole paper is here: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxl6YxiiQzcSbnZHR2duUDBkUjA/view?usp=sharing

Keywords

Climate change, green-house gases, development strategy, natural resources, forest, carbon sequestration, IPCC, REDD

References

Balasubramanian, M. and P. J. Dilip Kumar. 2014. Climate Change, Uttarakhand, and the World Bank’s Message. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol.XLIX No.1, January 4, 2014, p.65-68.

Chokkalingam, Unna and S.Anuradha Vanniarachchy, 2014. CDM AR did not fail and is not dead. ForestCarbon Asia. June 7, 2014. (At www.forestcarbonasia.org/articles/cdm-ar-did-not-fail-and-is-not-dead/, accessed 25 May 2015).

de Vries, Bert, Johannes Bollen, Lex Bouwman, Michel den Elzen, Marco Janssen and Eric Kreilman. 2000.  Greenhouse Gas Emissions in an Equity-, Environment- and Service-Oriented World: An IMAGE-Based Scenario for the 21^st Century. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 63:137-74. (Quoted by Lomborg, 2001, p.317).

Dilip Kumar, P.J. 1991. Between common property and state monopoly: the institutional context of wasteland management in India. In “Managing the Village Commons”, Proceedings of national workshop 15-16 December, 1991, Bhubaneswar, Orissa. IIFM, Bhopal. www.academia.edu/11176952/...

Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2013. Village Communities and Their Common Property Forests. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLVIII, No.35, August 31, 2013, p.33-36. www.academia.edu/9234774/...

Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2014. Climate Change, Forest Carbon Sequestration and REDD-Plus. The Context of India. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLIX, No.22, May 24, 2014, p.22-25. www.academia.edu/11102870/...

Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2014b. Western Ghats Conservation: Experts’ Reports and a View from the Ground. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLIX, No.22, July 19, 2014, p.224-229. www.academia.edu/9234863/...

Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2014c. Forestry Challenges in India-I. Strengths, achievements. www.forestmatters.blogspot.com/2014/12/02-challenges-facing-forestry-in-india.html

Government of India. 2012. India. Second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. New Delhi.

Hardin, G. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162, p.1243-1248.

IPCC. 2014. Summary for Policymakers. In:  Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC  AR5). [Field, C.B. et al.]. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom and New York, USA, pp.1-32]. (https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf, accessed on 25 May 2015).

IPCC. 2014b. Summary for Policymakers. In:  Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC  AR5). [Edenhofer,O., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom and New York, USA, pp.1-32]. (report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf, accessed on 25 May 2015).

IPCC. 2014c. Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. IPCC, Geneva. 

Lomborg, Bjørn. (1998) 2001. The Skeptical Environmentalist. Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press, UK and New York.

Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (USA).

Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge Universities Press, Cambridge.

Ravindranath, N.H. 2015. Costs and benefits of the Green India Mission for mitigation. In: Economics of climate change mitigation options in the forest sector. Session: Afforestation and reforestation, Friday 6^th February 2015. FAO, Rome. (www.fao.org/forestry/cc-mitigation-economics/88445/en/)

Stern, Nicholas. 2007. The Economics of Climate Change. The Stern review. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK) and New York. www.webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100407172811//www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/stern_review_report.htm

UNFCCC. 2013. Afforestation and Reforestation Projects under the Clean development Mechanism. A Reference Manual. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Bonn. (At www.unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/cdm_afforestation_bro_web.pdf, accessed 25 May 2015).

World Bank. 2013. Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the case for Resilience. World Bank, Washington, D.C. (http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/17862361/turn-down-heat-climate-extremes-regional-impacts-case-reslience-full-report, accessed in January 2014)

20 Climate change and the logic of collective action. Climate Change Strategies and Forests in India-II.

Climate as a global commons

Granted that we should be conscious of the limited capacity of the environment to absorb our emissions and repair the damaging effects of excessive resource extraction and unsustainable use, what should be our approach as a world community, and as an individual country? The global atmosphere (and climate) is like a commons, with hundreds of independent countries, thousands of corporate and other bodies, and billions of individual families. There is no mechanism to impose the required controls on carbon emissions on the independent countries, apart from a voluntary agreement. But here the “logic of collective action” comes into operation (Olson, 1965. 1971). Even the nation-state in modern times is not capable of supporting itself solely on voluntary contributions, despite the strong emotional bonds that hold the citizens together, and the benefits that they undeniably get in the continuance of the state structure; the state has to impose compulsory taxes and collect them with a firm hand. This is because, when there is a large multitude of members, no one of them can be prevented from enjoying the benefits of the organization; hence there will be an underlying incentive for the individual to withhold his or her individual contribution as far as possible, as long as it is reasonably certain that the contributions of the myriad others will carry the organization forward. In fact, that would the rational thing to do, even if not ethical or fair.

Another metaphor used to describe such situations is the “tragedy of freedom in a commons” that Hardin (1968) talked about many decades back. The problem with regulating use of a commons is that private costs and benefits are mismatched with public ones: each person has to incur a private cost that may be substantial from the individual point of view, but the collective benefits are enjoyed by everybody, and moreover the individual has little or no control on the actions of all the others, and hence on the outcome. If the others choose to break the agreement and maximize their private returns, our sincere individual may be left ‘holding the short stick’. My PhD guide had a favourite story of his school days to illustrate this: they would tell all the boys line up all the boys around the unheated swimming pool on a winter morning, tell them to close their eyes and jump in on the count of three, and when they opened their eyes, my professor would realize he was the  only guy that had followed the order. No one likes to be taken advantage of in this manner, so there is an in-built tendency for a mismatch between public professions and actual behaviour, if the individual feels that they can get away with it, or suspects that the majority of actors are intending to take advantage.

In simple terms, when there are large numbers of actors, and where the benefits are collective, or public goods, and where no one person could be excluded from enjoying those benefits, it would be the narrowly rational choice for individuals to avoid, as far as possible, the incurring of costs on their side, while continuing to hold a cooperative public posture so as to preserve their position as beneficiary. The consequent loss of the cumulative benefits due to the individual’s covert actions will likely be miniscule (after all, the individual’s contribution is a miniscule proportion, and the enterprise will not break down even if there are a few defaulters), but the return to the defaulter will be disproportionately high. Of course, this sort of ‘free-riding’ will be penalised if it becomes chronic and the community gets tired of it, so the individual may have to pay his dues once in a while, just to maintain his membership in the community. The enterprise can still be viable if the majority adhere to the rules, but sometimes a few bad apples can spoil the whole lot.

Faced with this situation, one would have to resort either to some control from outside (the state makes and enforces strict laws, for example), or the resource is privatized so that both the costs and benefits are incident on the same entity (i.e., externalities are internalized).  There is, however, a possible third alternative in-between state control and privatization (Dilip Kumar, 1991), where the community and the state get together in a joint arrangement, an example of the ‘nested’ institutions that Elinor Ostrom recommended as the most conducive to successful management of common property resources (e.g., see Ostrom, 1990).

This problem of ‘collective action’ is recognized by the “Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report” (IPCC 2014c) in the following words:

“Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests independently. Climate change has the characteristics of a collective action problem at the global scale… Cooperative responses, including international cooperation, are therefore required…The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to more effective cooperation.” (IPCC, 2014c, p.76; emphasis in original).

In the Indian forest scenario, for example, this principle has been institutionalised in the Joint Forest Management (JFM), regime wherein the state forests are managed in partnership with the communities, and conversely, communities also find it more effective to protect even their own forest resources if there is support from the state (e.g. Dilip Kumar, 2013).

Choosing between domestic interests and global concerns

In our climate change scenario, what would be the rational choice for a country like India, given this ‘logic of collective action’? We need to be clear about two things: firstly, if India were to limit its GHG emissions (say at today’s levels), what would be the impact on global climate change? India contributes a sizeable quantum of current emissions (because, like China, it has a huge population, although at very low per capita levels of consumption and, consequently, emissions), and it may be thought that a cap on aggregate emissions at the current level would have a discernible impact, but in the world situation this may be masked because other countries will continue to increase their  emissions. Moreover in spite of such caps, India and other economies will still be adding sizeably every year to the carbon load in the atmosphere. Consider, for example, India’s contribution to global CO₂ from the “energy and transformation industries” in 2007 according to NATCOM-2 (Government of India, 2012): taking the figure as 749,617 Gg, or 749.6 mta (or 0.7496 Gt per annum), it constitutes a small (if not exactly negligible) fraction of the annual contribution of 49 Gt in 2010 (globally) referred to above. Even if India wants to double the energy production, say over a period of 10 years, this will add only around 0.075 Gt to the annual addition to the global GHGs, compared to the annual increase of 1 Gt per year globally (see above).  This is only 7.5% of the increase in annual CO₂ accretions, but CO₂ levels will still be increasing year to year, unless some great new sink or method of fixing it could be found.

In other words, India by itself will not be able to contribute meaningfully to the resolution of the GHG problem just by curbing energy production at current levels, or influence the actions of the rest of the world (this is not a situation where the famous moral force of Gandhism can be applied!). So India will have to proceed as if the rest of the world is going to keep increasing its emissions in the near future. If India were to make any voluntary, unilateral sacrifices now, it would have neither the imagined benefits of the reduced carbon loads, nor the benefits of a stronger economy and greater world influence in the future. Indeed, the very fact that a huge population like India foregoes its present entitlements, will only prompt other countries to appropriate that share for themselves.

Therefore, it is not a rational strategy for a country like India to make any unilateral cuts or promises at the present juncture, and this has rightly been our position in the world climate conferences, with the only concession made that we will never exceed the current per capita emission levels of the industrial countries. These, of course, are levels we will never even aspire to: as has been repeated often enough, we will need another seven planet Earths if all the world’s people were to consume at the western levels.

We will, however, be aspiring to some intermediate level of consumption, which will require a many-fold increase in the production of energy and various other sectors. On the other hand, India has the world’s largest population of poor, with low quality of life indicators; it has to vigorously pursue its course of positive affirmation to set right the historical wrongs to sections of the population, and increase investment in public health and medicare, education, communications, skills development, job creation, etc., and at the same time play its geo-political role as one of the largest economies of the world. The experience of the last general election suggests that the masses also are looking for something beyond just subsidized food and other doles, and there is a huge middle class that has aspirations of making it in the modern economy.  

This does not mean, however, that we should be indifferent to the issues of environmental degradation in our own sphere, quite regardless of the world climate conferences (just as, indeed, high carbon emitters like the developed west would be well advised to reduce per capita consumption levels, not for the sake of the global good, but in the interests of the health and well-being of their own citizens).

Indeed, this has been the strategy adopted by our governments over the past decades: while insisting on our share of the global carbon cake, in terms of increasing per capita consumption (and emissions) levels, we have also steadily taken many steps to improving the sustainability of our development process and mitigating damage to our own environment. Of course, the complaint is that we are strong in legislation, but weak in enforcement, as the numerous articles in the popular media, and the spate of environmental cases in the courts, attest. This lag between intent and action, however, is to be expected during the catch-up phase, when all output levels are being racked up many-fold. In keeping with the form of the Kuznets curve, we may expect to see a lessening of this gap and an improvement in both the incidence of poverty  and the laxity in enforcing environmental safeguards as GDP per capita progresses beyond a certain level (see Lomborg, op. cit., p.177 for examples of this in the context of particle pollution and SO₂ pollution).

In the meanwhile, it will be an advisable strategy to identify the points of greatest importance that need to be addressed to keep our country’s environmental systems and natural resource base intact in anticipation of those future levels of relative prosperity. Some of these crucial sectors are our water resources, our forests and grasslands, our biodiversity and wildlife habitats, our marine resources and coastlands, our wetlands (especially mangroves), our catchment areas in the hills, and our urban air quality. While we need to accelerate our development process, we also need to ensure grater participation in the fruits of that development, by rapidly improving public education and public health, communications and transport facilities, raising skill levels and employability, minimizing displacement of people and ensuring proper rehabilitation where displacement is unavoidable, just as with diversion of natural habitats.

(This article series is based on my paper prepared for the “International Conference on Climate Change and Social-Ecological-Economic Interface-Building”, May 20-21, 2015, organized by the Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources (CEENR), Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru-560072, India. Uploaded at: www.academia.edu/13402458/...)

Keywords

Climate change, green-house gases, development strategy, natural resources, forest, carbon sequestration, IPCC, REDD

References

Dilip Kumar, P.J. 1991. Between common property and state monopoly: the institutional context of wasteland management in India. In “Managing the Village Commons”, Proceedings of national workshop 15-16 December, 1991, Bhubaneswar, Orissa. IIFM, Bhopal.

Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2013. Village Communities and Their Common Property Forests. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLVIII, No.35, August 31, 2013, p.33-36.

Government of India. 2012. India. Second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. New Delhi.

Hardin, G. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162, p.1243-1248.

Lomborg, Bjørn. (1998) 2001. The Skeptical Environmentalist. Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press, UK and New York.

Olson, Mancur. 1965, 1971. The Logic of Collective Action. Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (USA).

Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge Universities Press, Cambridge.

19 Climate Change Strategies and Forests in India-I. The climate change prognoses

Introduction and summary

It is now accepted by the majority of people that climate change due to human activities is going to be a reality in the very near future, and that we may even currently be seeing some of the early manifestations in the form of increased fluctuations in weather and related phenomena, frequent extremes like excess rainfall leading to floods or deficiencies resulting in droughts, accelerated melting of glaciers, and so on. While every natural disaster or unforeseen event should not be linked directly to the effects of global warming and climate change, it is also not easy to ignore the warning signs that human pressure on the environment and natural resources is at unprecedented levels, and the damage to property and lives is also becoming unacceptably high because of the high populations, huge amount of built infrastructure, high financial stakes in extractive industries, and so on.

All this leads to a heightened concern to find ways to reduce or slow down the impacts of climate change through mitigative and adaptive measures. While the rhetoric of sustainable development is heard strongly on every forum, it is a different thing when it comes to concerted action. As can be seen from successive international meetings on climate change, there have been many disagreements on the relative responsibility of countries at different levels of aggregate and per capita incomes, and agreement has still not been reached on the balance between gross and per capita consumption of environmental resources and the concomitant obligations to the world at large of each country.

What then should be the optimal strategy for a developing country like India, faced with the twin problems of low per capita consumption levels (which demands  a many-fold stepping up of use of natural resources, especially fossil fuels and minerals), and the high contribution to global pollution (because of the huge population)? Although we would all love to rise to the challenge of capping the carbon levels in the atmosphere, and arresting the drift to higher global temperatures, when we look at the choices in the framework of common pool  resources and the divergence between private and public costs and benefits, we will be forced to take a more pragmatic and even selfish stand. While a developing country has to be mindful of the global effects of its increasing consumption, it also has to make a dispassionate calculation of what effect any sacrifices in current consumption will have on the global trends and global climate change scenario.

It appears that any sacrifice by India at the current low levels of per capita consumption will have negligible impact on the global trends, whereas it will cause economic distress within the country, for example to the poor who are yet to achieve reasonable standards of consumption. In such a situation, as Mancur Olson (1965) has demonstrated, the rational (and thereby sensible?) choice would be to make the minimum contribution to the collective good that will keep the protagonist from being criticized as uncooperative in the next climate conference,  while maximizing private (here read country) returns.

However, there is also the danger that most of the incremental benefits of development may be cornered by the already well-off, with little improvement in the plight of the poorest. Such a country or government then could justifiably be pilloried as hypocritical, that is claiming a larger share of the global carbon load on the plea of poverty and low human welfare indicators, but actually ending up with a rich class that lives as well as the better-off in the already developed world. In order to make wise choices that do not result in more poverty in the name of development, we may therefore have to devise and apply more sensible measures of well-being, rather than blindly following the high-consumption paths of the developed world.

The climate change prognoses

The world’s climate is like a global commons; a large number of countries, and billions of individuals, are doing things that are affecting the world climate in unexpected, and unpleasant, ways. This of course is only the latest addition to various other global commons that are known to be under unprecedented pressure, such as the air and water quality, the environment in general (especially the load of chemicals), the soil and vegetation (the erosion of land and forest resources), the natural habitats (forests, wetlands, grasslands, arid lands and wild areas in general), the world’s stock of species (biodiversity), and so on. In more philanthropic spheres, there is concern at the gradual erosion and impoverishment of traditional cultures and societies, with the consequent erosion of languages, local knowledge, art, culture, oral histories and literature, religions, and so on.  These effects are all traced back to the global adoption of western economic and technological models of development, coupled with a gradual homogenisation of cultures and mores, that have amounted to a second wave of domination over the less developed third world after the winding up of the imperial project of the last couple of centuries of the European powers.

Ever since the global environment has become a subject of study, discussion and action in the world forums, it is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that has been the main source of our understanding of climate change issues and our main guide to policy. It would be instructive, therefore, to take a brief look at the IPCC reports before going on to analysis of our options. The latest tranche is the Fifth Assessment Report, AR5, 2014, and naturally it has generated a plethora of documents by a large number of authors and drafters, that are available on the internet (thankfully they do not have to cut down too many trees to reach them to us nowadays, but on the other hand, the relatively negligible incremental cost of publishing encourages enormous output!). It therefore becomes difficult for any one individual to access all of these documents, let alone understand or analyse them; we will, therefore, fall back on the executive summaries provided, and refer to published independent critiques to bring in some element of critical understanding.

Let us, then, take a look at one such document: Climate Change 2014. Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Summary for Policymakers, (IPCC, 2014), which is the Working Group II contribution to AR5 (at https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf, accessed on 25 May 2015). The claim is made in this document, that climate change effects are becoming distinguishable from other influences or causes in recent decades: changing precipitation, (accelerated) melting  of snow and ice affecting water resources, shrinking of glaciers, permafrost warming and thawing, shifting geographical ranges of many terrestrial and aquatic species, and a few recent species extinctions (op. cit., p.4). Negative impacts on crop yields have been more common than positive, although some gains have also been studied in high-latitude regions (ibid.).

In all this profusion of information, what can be said with a high level of confidence, according to the WG2 report, is that “it is not yet clear whether the balance of impacts has been negative or positive” (p.5). However, they do ascribe recent periods of “rapid food and cereal price increases” in key producing regions to climate extremes; as also “increased heat-related mortality and decreased cold-related mortality in some regions as a result of warming” (op. cit., p.6). Marginalized, poor people are adjudged (not surprisingly) as more vulnerable to climate change, “and also to some adaptation and mitigation responses”. Impacts are considerable even from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones and wildfires, showing a “significant vulnerability” and “significant lack of preparedness” to current climate variability, in some sectors (ibid.).

A possible source of relief for us in India is that the WG2 report ascribes only “minor” contribution of climate change (medium confidence level) to food production in the subcontinent (Figure SPM.2, p.7). A previous report Turn Down the Heat of the World Bank (2013), which was released even as devastating floods were wreaking havoc in Uttarakhand state in June 2013, suggested that South Asia would be especially impacted by climate change as the world atmosphere warms up from the present level of 0.8°C to say 4°C above pre-industrial times by 2100, with sea levels rising by over 100cm, monsoon rains becoming more variable, while floods (and droughts) would be more frequent and damaging  (Balasubramanian and Dilip Kumar, 2014). Kolkata is suggested to be among the 10 most exposed cities to flooding, and a significant reduction in crop yields is to be expected due to extreme heat by the 2040s. Reduced water availability due to changes in precipitation levels and falling ground water tables are likely to aggravate the situation. The worst effects, it was suggested in the report, could be avoided by holding global warming below 2°C (above pre-industrial times).

We need not cover the climate change prognostications in any further detail here, because the material is available everywhere at whatever level of expertise is required. However, a few considerations come up immediately to the discerning observer. One is, of course, what is the rigour of these exercises: are these prognoses just guesses, or are they based on specific cause-and-effect models or formulae. Can we take them on face value, as actual predictions rather than just alternative scenarios? Secondly, what will be the likely actual rise in global temperatures due to human activities, especially the addition of carbon due to a greater burning of fossil fuels as the third world countries seek to increase their production levels? Thirdly, what will be the efficacy of the mitigative (and adaptive) measures usually suggested (e.g., limiting the additions of each nation’s future carbon contributions, investing in additional carbon-absorbing measures like new forests), and how would these measures relate to the quest for better standards of living and higher incomes in the poorer countries of the world? Finally, what should be the policy to be adopted by India (and other developing countries with large numbers of poor), that will balance the needs of growth and development in the immediate future, and the justifiable demands of the world at large, and of future generations of our own countries, to a fair and equitable share of the world’s resources, which include the global climate commons? 

Turning to the first issue, that of the dependability of the prognoses, the problem is that there is a wide range in the predictions according to different assumptions or scenarios. The IPCC reports ascribe different levels of confidence to their statements, but it is easy to be somewhat mislead, because the words “high confidence” are often juxtaposed to projections or to the possible impacts of mitigative and adaptive measures, whereas they usually refer to phrases in the earlier parts of the respective paragraphs that refer to other aspects, not the measures themselves. A simple example is this one on p.9 of the WG2 summary (IPCC, 2014):

“Responding to climate-related risks involves decision-making in a changing world, with continuing uncertainty about the severity and timing of climate-change impacts and with limits to the effectiveness of adaptation (high confidence).” (emphasis in original)

This sentence suggests, to an unwary reader who is skimming the text, that there is a high confidence in the severity and timing of climate change impacts, and in high effectiveness of adaptation, whereas the text actually suggests the exact opposite: there is high confidence in the continuing uncertainty of impacts and in the limits to the effectiveness of adaptation.

From the figures accompanying these paragraphs in the WG2 report, it appears that there will be warming almost everywhere, except a few patches in the north Atlantic, where however the moderate cooling effect is “not statistically significant”.  What we are given to understand is that the projections (which range from say 1 to 4°C above pre-industrial times) by 2100, are based on a combination of diverse sources:

“…empirical observations, experimental results, process-based understanding, statistical approaches, and simulation and descriptive models. Future risks related to climate change vary substantially across plausible alternative development pathways, and the relative importance of development and climate change varies by sector, region, and time period (high confidence). Scenarios are useful tools for characterizing possible future socioeconomic pathways, climate change and its risks, and policy implications. … Uncertainties about future vulnerability, exposure, and responses of interlinked human and natural systems are large (high confidence).” (Op. cit., p.11, emphasis in original)

Once again, the casual reader may well go away with the impression that future vulnerability, exposure, etc. are large, whereas the sentence only states (with high confidence) that the uncertainties are large.

In a long and detailed critique of such dire environmental prognoses, Bjørn Lomborg (who describes himself in his Preface as “an old left-wing Greenpeace member”), also addresses the issues of global warming and climate change (Lomborg, 2001, Ch.24). On considering all the evidence, Lomborg concluded that there has been a rise in temperature of some 0.6°C over the past century, and it is reasonable to ascribe this partly to an anthropogenic greenhouse effect,  “although the impression of a dramatic divergence from previous centuries is almost surely misleading” (op. cit., p.317). He points out the basic weakness of the prognoses, that still are unable to say with certainty whether a doubling of CO₂ concentrations will lead to a rise of 1.5°C or the “dramatic” high estimate of 4.5°C.  A weakness he points out is that the IPCC models do not deal with other effects (water vapour feedback and clouds, for example), that may reduce the impact. Lomborg feels that the large number of “scenarios” presented  indicates that the IPCC has “explicitly rejected making predictions about the future, but instead gives us ‘computer-aided storytelling’, basing the development of crucial variables on initial choice and depicting normative scenarios ‘as one would hope they would emerge’ “ (quoting de Vries et al., 2000, p.170). Indeed, Lomborg points out that some of the scenarios even suggest a net gain in incomes in both the developed and developing worlds.  

Not only is the quantum of temperature rise uncertain, but the consequences are also not as devastating as people have been led to assume: “Global warming will not decrease food production, it will probably not increase storminess or the frequency of hurricanes,…” and so on. However, it will have costs (to the order of $5 trillion), and it will “hit the developing countries hardest”,  “primarily because they are poor – giving them less adaptive capacity” (Lomborg, 2001, p.317-18).

As can be expected, such sceptical ideas have not been received kindly, and there are numerous counters, e.g. the Danish biologist Kåre Fog’s website www.lomborg-errors.dk, dedicated to debunking Lomborg’s arguments. This paper does not claim to be a scientific assessment of these arguments and counter-arguments, and concerned readers would do well to delve into the voluminous literature available. Fog states that it is not sufficient just to read Lomborg’s book and think of the ideas in it, but one has to go back and check every piece of information to see whether it is “true” and if “the presentation is balanced” (Fog, op. cit., probably 2004, accessed 31-08-2015). Of course, we would have to state the same of the climate change prognoses as well, such as are contained in the IPCC documents. Obviously, every reader cannot undertake such a verification, and since the effects are far out into the future, it becomes a matter of strategic choice how far the arguments are pursued (especially as regards national actions in response to the prognoses).

It would perhaps be fair to state here that Lomborg himself seems to be not so much a climate-change denier today, as advancing arguments based on strategic priorities to use the available money, especially international development assistance, in areas that will offer the maximum gains in terms of human welfare: public health, for instance. Academics tend to dismiss this as pseudo-science, which provides for a lot of heated arguments in the media and on public platforms. 

What about the likely impact of the mitigative measures that we are all exhorted to take in the present so that our futures can be secured? Once again, we turn to an IPCC “Summary for Policymakers”, which is all that the average reader is going to have time to look at, this time of the Working Group III to the fifth IPCC report (IPCC, 2014b). This report, like the previous one cited, is prefaced by an equally punctilious and precise statement of the basis of the uncertainty evaluations. The report points out that “Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests independently”,  which therefore demands “international cooperation” (op. cit., p.5). This immediately brings up “Issues of  equity, justice, and fairness”, because past contributions to global CO₂ have been different (we point fingers at the industrialized countries), and current challenges (to reduce poverty, to increase incomes) and capacity to take up mitigation and adaptation measures also differ (developing countries are at a disadvantage here). Further, “Climate policy intersects with other societal goals creating the possibility of co-benefits”, which suggests a stronger basis for undertaking climate action, and so on (ibid.).

An important part of the WG3 report is the information on the trends in greenhouse gases (GHGs) and their drivers (op. cit., p.6 et seq.). We are told that total anthropogenic GHG emissions grew by around 1.0 gigatonne CO2 equivalent (a rate of 2.2% per year) from 2000 to 2010, as against just 0.4 Gt per year (a rate of 1.3%) from 1970 to 2000. It may be noted that these are just year-to-year increases in the annual GHG emissions; the actual emissions were of the order of 49 Gt in 2010 (the highest recorded so far). The major contribution to the annual GHG emission increase is said to have come from CO₂ emissions from Fossil Fuel combustion and Industrial Processes: in 2010, these contributed around  65%,  followed by other major sources like CO₂ from Forestry and Other Land Use (11%, with a very large uncertainty of the order of +/- 50%), methane (16%), nitrous oxide (6.2%), fluorinated gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol (2.0%) (op. cit., p.7). Population and economic growth have been the major drivers of increases in CO₂ emissions, and have outpaced emission reductions from improvements in energy intensity (op. cit., p.8).

What are the prognoses for global CO₂ levels? Without additional efforts at mitigation, the growth in emissions is expected to “result in global mean  surface temperature increases in 2100 from 3.7°C to 4.8°C compared to pre-industrial levels”,  disregarding climate uncertainty, with a three-fold increase in CO₂ concentration levels from around 430 ppm CO₂ eq in 2011 to 1300 ppm by 2100 (op. cit., p.9). The WG3 summary document goes on to discuss mitigation measures and their possible costs, based on a collection of about 900 mitigation scenarios based on integrated models, which would leave the CO₂ load by 2100 between 430ppm and 720ppm (op. cit., p.10). As can be imagined, it is not easy to comprehend all these variations and their implications, but it appears that a concentration of around 250ppm would be likely to keep temperature rise below 2°C. Pledges made at Cancun are said to be “broadly consistent with cost-effective scenarios that are likely to keep temperature change below 3°C” (p.13). Lomborg (2001), however, has earlier cautioned that any action to reduce emissions in the immediate future will have heavy costs into the future, and we have to carefully balance the potential gains from accelerated development (and consequent higher welfare) in the intermediate run against the admittedly highly uncertain penalties that will come in the far future, on the unrealistic assumption that no improvements will take place in technology (even new sources of energy, for instance).

Having covered briefly the possible impacts of carbon accumulation in the atmosphere, we go on in the next section to the strategy choices that a developing country like India is faced with.

(This article series is based on my paper prepared for the “International Conference on Climate Change and Social-Ecological-Economic Interface-Building”, May 20-21, 2015, organized by the Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources (CEENR), Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru-560072, India. Uploaded at: www.academia.edu/13402458/...)

Keywords

Climate change, green-house gases, development strategy, natural resources, forest, carbon sequestration, IPCC, REDD

References

Balasubramanian, M. and P. J. Dilip Kumar. 2014. Climate Change, Uttarakhand, and the World Bank’s Message. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol.XLIX No.1, January 4, 2014, p.65-68.

de Vries, Bert, Johannes Bollen, Lex Bouwman, Michel den Elzen, Marco Janssen and Eric Kreilman. 2000.  Greenhouse Gas Emissions in an Equity-, Environment- and Service-Oriented World: An IMAGE-Based Scenario for the 21^st Century. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 63:137-74. (Quoted by Lomborg, 2001, p.317).

IPCC. 2014. Summary for Policymakers. In:  Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC  AR5). [Field, C.B. et al.]. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom and New York, USA, pp.1-32]. (https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf, accessed on 25 May 2015).

IPCC. 2014b. Summary for Policymakers. In:  Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC  AR5). [Edenhofer,O., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom and New York, USA, pp.1-32]. (report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf, accessed on 25 May 2015).

Lomborg, Bjørn. (1998) 2001. The Skeptical Environmentalist. Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press, UK and New York.

Olson, Mancur. 1965, 1971. The Logic of Collective Action. Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (USA).

World Bank. 2013. Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the case for Resilience. World Bank, Washington, D.C. (http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/17862361/turn-down-heat-climate-extremes-regional-impacts-case-reslience-full-report, accessed in January 2014)