SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Governments continue to dither and differ on solutions and their adoption.

Experts are in panic because the rich nations are trying to lock in their advantages
by revising the 1992 Rio bargain and re-ordering their Kyoto Protocol obligations,
inviting sharp division between haves and have-nots, on a similar pattern as was
created by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) when the Nuclear Powers tried to
impose an unequal treaty to which India never became a signatory. Now,
belatedly the Nuclear haves are tackling the anomalies through the India-USA
Nuclear Deal.

On Climate Change, a new bargain is being hammered out for fashioning a 2009
Copenhagen Protocol to rich nations’ advantage.

The Kyoto Protocol had targeted only 7 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide
emissions below 1990 levels but richer nations did not adhere to their
commitments. For their failure, they are blaming India and China. They are
resorting to high sounding rhetoric to justify their lack of responsibility and
asserting that global warming cannot be slowed down unless India and China
agree to cut their emissions at par with them, even though emission levels in
these countries are much lower.

Decision makers in rich countries hold the ultimate power to decide the fate of
billions but cannot think beyond their own national and geographic boundaries.
They can also not think of times beyond their own. They care only for their
immediate national interests, pushing the world to the brink of global disaster.
But, the threat of climate change is global and cannot be dealt with by individual
nations who all face the challenge of sustainable development.

Men of narrow vision believe that global warming would affect different countries
differently and some, who currently wield great political clout, are smug with the
thought that their own country would not be so badly off. The rich nations, with
their vast technological resources, appear to have calculated that countries in the
colder climes would, in fact, gain by climate changes because warming would
bring about favourable changes in terms of cropping and vegetation, thus
providing them with greater food security than they enjoy currently.

Such beliefs could prove devastatingly illusory. Recently, US Senator Joe

Lieberman acknowledged at a group discussion that US government dishes out
such ideas and information as foster resistance in the US Congress to America
slashing its high emissions. This was the reason why the Lieberman-Warner cap-
and-trade Bill got defeated in the US Congress. We must not forget that the USA
accounts for nearly a quarter of the world’s total carbon emissions. The sly
diplomacy of the western nation-States led by the USA is shocking.

The Western powers, whether it is the question of subsidies at the WTO’s Doha
rounds of talks or global bargaining on climate change, are trying to trick and
deceive the poorer nations into arrangements that would render them even more
vulnerable. And, Western powers’ political and economic dominance will
continue. They are not willing to work out arrangements that are equitable and
fair to all nations.

China and India are being targeted to bear the maximum brunt of climate change
even though their current contribution to global warming is small compared to
that of the advanced G-8 countries. China and India’s enlarging economies are
causing concern among Western nations and they would do everything possible
to keep India and China at a competitive disadvantage.

Western diplomacy works on the principle that national interest is the ultimate
director of foreign policy and the powerful nation is entitled to use all the
persuasive-coercive tools to make other nations bend to the powerful nation’s
demands and interests. But in the present situation, they are forgetting that there
will be no winners against global dimensions of climate change. Climate change,
as is already being seen, will make weather patterns more unpredictable
everywhere, including in higher latitudes. In the upper reaches of the Arctic
already warming is twice as fast as the rest of the world. Un-seasonal heat and
rain, floods and droughts have affected Europe and USA as much as Asian
countries. Climate change potentially can wreck agriculture, public health and
ecosystems in colder lands also, besides breeding unmanageable viruses.
Strangely, in the subsahara regions it is bringing rain and greenery and a
new pattern of cropping that these deserts never saw before.

Another important point to remember is that China and India are no longer weak
on the negotiating table. The western countries are not in a position to ignore the
huge developing markets and economies of these two Asian giants. These two
countries are fast developing and leading other poor nations in the WTO and
other forums. Western powers are finding it difficult to divide the poor nations at
the economic forums and so is also the case at the Climate Change Conferences.

There is danger and risk in this climate of distrust and division among
governments of the world for people everywhere. These divisions and unresolved
disagreements will create more threats for humanity. The efforts and vision of
sustainable development at this time is enveloped in an atmosphere of devilish
disregard to the questions of survival. We cannot talk of sustainable development
and national interests at the same time. Globalization is being exploited by richer
nations to gain an upper hand and not for treating the McLuhanesque global
village as one community.

It is true that our scientific knowledge at this time is short of fully understanding
and answering questions that are being thrown up by climate change and
changing world environment. So, US President and other western leaders find the
environmental issues as mere exaggerated projections of scientists and human
rightists. They, therefore, underestimate the likely impact of climate change.

In the present international political scenario, we can see that climate change
could escalate interstate and intrastate competition and contest over natural
resources. For India, this potential threat looms very large. The Great Game over
water, experts predict, will have Asia in its grip. China’s control over Tibet, which
is the source of all major Asian rivers except the Ganga, may create problems of
continental dimensions for agriculture and sustainable development and
countries from India to Cambodia could find it difficult to sustain the growth of
their economies. “Accelerated melting of glaciers and mountain snows would
affect river-water flows, although higher average temperatures are likely to bring
more rainfall in the tropics”, says Brahma Chellany, a security expert.

Higher extremes of weather could create a rise in ocean levels and will “spur
greater interstate and intrastate migration—especially of the poor and the
vulnerable—from the delta and coastal regions to the hinterland”. The influx of
aliens would disturb the local populations and “provoke a backlash” and internal
and regional security will be threatened as there would be strains on the
resources. Already, Bangladesh has been losing land to saltwater incursion and
further trend in this environmental change will force its people to enter India in
hordes.

The whole concept of sustainable development is in jeopardy because of climate

change and human security itself faces the maximum threat. Climate Change will
devastate the vulnerable economic sectors altogether. Disparities are bound to
get aggravated. The resource conflicts and uncontrollable migrations, failing
states, spreading extremism and high frequency of unpredictable weather are in
store for the whole world, if governments do not come together to deal with
questions arising from the issue of changing climate and its impact on human
environment.
The changing pattern of production and how it will impact humanity at large
is illustrated by the diversion of food for biofuels that has created a windfall for
major farm industries while pushing the world’s poor to greater backwardness.
This is how the issues of environment and sustainable development are
inextricably linked. Another innovative but highly counterproductive measure is
the buying of carbon credits from poor nation-States to exceed carbon emission
targets of richer nations. This is proving as no more than mere “environmental
grandstanding” and a form of “carbon colonialism” because, ultimately, the net
impact on global warming remains the same.