Poverty Reduction - the International Experience

Last year, an Oxford University study said that the share of people living in extreme poverty has declined continuously for two centuries; and it has never declined faster than in recent years. "This long decline is one of the greatest achievements of humanity", it said.

It went on to say that a claim that often comes up in discussions of extreme poverty is that the share of people in extreme poverty is declining only because international institutions deliberately choose a poverty line that is much too low. It is suggested then that "true poverty" in the world is actually increasing. However the study says that this allegation is unfounded. 

The USD 1.9 a day per person expenditure poverty line translates to about 700 USD a year per person. If we position the poverty line higher - at 1,000 USD per year, in 2003, 48% of the world population was below this poverty line; and ten years later, in 2013, 29% was below this line. 

If we place the international poverty line much higher at 4,000 USD, then we see that in 2003, 80% of the world population was below that poverty line. 10 years later: 67%.

We can also look back over a longer time period - of 33 years, from 1981 to 2013, which also this study reports on. Much of the globally comparable poverty data became available in 1981. In that year, a little over 30 % of the people of 'Non-Rich countries' (all countries of the world save the 24 developed ones - Western & Southern Europe, UK, US, Australia & New Zealand) earned USD 1100+. In contrast, in 2013, such people comprised nearly 70 % of non-rich countries. 

In 1981, more than half the people in non-rich countries earned just uptil USD 1.9 a day. By 2013 this percentage had dwindled to just 13 % !

A study describes how the performance of developing countries against poverty is quite diverse. Inequality comes  into the story in efforts to explain this diverse performance. Amongst growing developing countries in terms of mean household income, those experiencing falling inequality see the $1.25 a day poverty rate falling at a median rate of about 1.30% points per year versus a median fall of only 0.42 % points per year for countries with rising inequality.

For example, Botswana in Africa has experienced tremendous income increases, even by global standards, but the growth has been transformed to only a minimal decline in poverty. In contrast, Ghana, also in Africa, has succeeded in translating its relatively modest growth to considerable poverty reduction. The difference in the levels of income inequality between the two countries appears to explain much of this disparity in performance.

Bolivia’s case is even more illustrative. While the country’s mean monthly income increased slightly from 175 dollars in 1990 to over 200 dollars in 2005, its poverty rate actually rose from 4.0 percent to 20 percent over the same period. The main culprit was the considerable increase in income inequality.

Based on cross-country African data, a study found that poverty is more sensitive to income inequality than it is to the level of income. 

It is noteworthy that poverty fell less in India during 1981-1995 and in 1996-2005 than in the South Asian region generally for each of these sub-periods. Moreover, poverty reduction in India during the latter period was about the same as that in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), despite the fact that India’s GDP growth was much faster than SSA’s. 

In fact, when the time period of early 90s to 2010 is considered, reasonably strong GDP growth resulted in substantial poverty reduction in most developing nations save India and Iran. But in these two large countries and a few small ones, strong GDP growth was accompanied by only modest poverty reduction either because the growth did not result in similar increases in income or because inequality increased to thwart the transformation process.

In fact looking at the figures above, South Asia seems to have the lowest co-relation between GDP growth to improving incomes of the poorest people. 

What does rural poverty look like in India ?

"India is by far the country with the largest number of people living under the international USD 1.90-a-day poverty line (224 million), more than 2.5 times as many as the 86 million in Nigeria, which has the second-largest population of the poor worldwide," a World Bank report said.

I have been thinking about what the USD 1.9 per person per day poverty line established by the World Bank actually means in the case of India. On the face of it sounds like a lot comparatively - Rs. 128 per person per day at market exchange rate. But the World Bank uses purchasing power parity in applying the poverty line to each country, which in India's case translates to 17.12 Rs. purchasing power per US dollar. 

So 1.9 USD is equivalent to a poverty line of 33 Rs. which is similar to what the Rangarajan Committee too recommended to the Government to adopt for rural areas. This translates to Rs. 5000 per month expenditure per family of 5 people. Based on my observations in a group of 10 villages in Chattarpur district of Bundelkhand in 2016, backed by media reports which spike during drought, I can say that rural poverty looks like this (people living at or near the poverty line) :

• Some families skip one of the two meals routine in rural areas - brunch and evening. 
• Meals in North India consist of roti (bread baked immediately before eating) and potato vegetable for the most part. Very few households grown their own green vegetables and those few who do, sell them if they can. Poor families have no purchasing power to afford to buy green vegetables and do without. 
• Dals are had once a week in poor households. 
• Even if there is milk available from 1-2 cattle, it is sold for use in nearby towns, and is not retained even to make tea with.
• There is no question of buying fruits and nuts ofcourse.. if your land or your neighbour's has fruit trees, you may get to eat some during the season..  but not everyone has fruit trees.. 
• Children do go to Government schools but are likely to drop off after some years as families are unable to support them with schooling. 
• Poor families have few clothes and are inadequately protected during winter. 
• Polluting kerosene lamps are still the preferred source of light at night when electricity is not available.
• Families still use open areas for toilet. 
• There is no money for acquiring skills or investing in a small business. Labour work that is found is intermittent and the wages are small and delayed. 
• Loans are taken at very high interest from local money lenders in emergencies such as major illness or the repair of one's house.

It is obvious that the poverty line does not allow for even enough nutrition, let alone other needs such as education or health care. In India, children living at $1.90 still have a 60% chance of being malnourished (the very high rates of malnourishment of children in our country, in fact show that poor children are in fact malnourished). An “ethical poverty line” has been suggested by Researchers where in order to achieve normal human life expectancy, people need roughly three times the existing poverty line. If this ethical poverty line was applied across the world, some 60 % of humanity would be below it. 

How did China reduce poverty so dramatically ?

It was in 1990 that the UN set a goal to cut the world’s poverty rate in half by 2015. The goal was reached five years early, in 2010; over a billion people escaped extreme poverty in just 20 years. That’s a remarkable and unprecedented shift.

The drop in poverty from the 1980s to present was mainly driven by just two countries: China and India. China dropped its population in poverty from 88 to 2 %, and India from 54 to 21 %. Sub-Saharan Africa, by comparison, had a 54 percent poor population in 1990, down to 41 percent in 2013. Not only is the decline much smaller than China or India’s, but due to massive population growth in Africa, the absolute number of poor people actually rose by 113 million.

How did China reduce poverty so dramatically ?

It is well known that there was a massive manufacturing influx due to the China’s plentiful cheap labor and increasingly global supply chains, but this alone wouldn’t have yielded the same outcome just anywhere. China got a leg up thanks to three main drivers.

Articles have pointed out that had China been a democracy, it likely wouldn’t have grown as much or as fast as its authoritarian government enabled it to. When making decisions and implementing reforms, there was no need to appease disgruntled voters or negotiate between parties. The government also owned all the country’s land, which made launching new infrastructure projects like roads or bridges relatively fast and barrier-free.

Even if a country’s GDP grows consistently, it’s not going to benefit the average citizen much if the population is growing even faster. The Chinese government introduced its one-child policy in 1979, and over the next 20 years the fertility rate dropped from 2.7 births per woman to 1.4. This resulted in the Chinese population growing 38 percent between 1980-2013. Compare that to India’s 84 percent in the same time period, or Sub-Saharan Africa’s whopping 147 percent.

High birth rates before the one-child policy meant the opening of China’s economy coincided perfectly with a huge working-age population. Children and the elderly can’t pick up and move to cities to work in factories, but people in their 20s to 40s can.

The economic reforms China implemented starting in the late 1970s and its massive investment in education certainly contributed to its drop in poverty, too.

The challenges before Africa

Replicating China’s success, though, will be difficult on multiple fronts, if not impossible. Africans have already begun to leave rural areas in favor of cities, but those cities aren’t equipped to keep up with the influx of new residents.

The Chinese government was able to overcome these limitations fairly quickly. But Sub-Saharan Africa is made up of 46 different countries with 46 different governments, many of which are mired in corruption or even classified as fragile or failed states.

Perhaps the starkest contrast with China, though, is Africa’s population growth. The UN’s medium forecast puts Africa’s 2050 population at 2.5 billion, a number that would strain resources even in an economy dramatically stronger than the continent’s current ones.

China's initiatives in Africa

To reduce poverty, African countries should pour resources into family planning and education for women. They should invest in infrastructure now, when the working-age population is plentiful, to begin positioning the continent as the world’s next industrial powerhouse.

And guess who’s helping? Besides investing heavily in infrastructure projects across Africa, China is running political training programs for African leaders, teaching them the tactics it used to spur development. China has also given tens of thousands of scholarships to African students, and now hosts more of them at its universities than the US or the UK do.

Whether China’s activity is more philanthropic or self-interested is up for debate—but luckily, the two motivators aren’t mutually exclusive. If China can duplicate its success in Africa by helping lift its people out of poverty, making returns on its investments in the process, it’s unlikely anyone will complain.

Acknowledgement : This blogpost is sourced from an article on Singularity Hub : 'World Poverty Has Plummeted—But Will It Ever Disappear?' by Vanessa Bates Ramirez

Surely Congress would have done something Right ?

I had missed this remarkable story till now - Andhra Pradesh (AP) HALVED the no. of poor people over just two years (from 176 lakh in '09-10 to 80 lakh in '11-'12). They did this by crop diversification on farms, branching out into dairying, and by MGNREGA pushing up wages in rural areas. The agriculture growth rate went up. 

The Congress Reddy Government had been in power in AP from 2004 to 2014 – while I had not thought much of Reddy’s Government earlier, I was forced to think it must have done some things right, after all.

No other Indian State came close to this rate of poverty reduction. Some experts compared Andhra Pradesh’s declining poverty rates to those of China, stated to have lifted more people out of poverty in the last 30 years than any country in history. 

In 1981, a staggering 88 percent of Chinese were extremely poor, but by 2013 that figure had dropped, incredibly, to just 2 percent. India’s figures, though not as drastic, are still impressive: In about the same period of time, India’s poor population declined from 54 to 21 percent.

In the 32 years from 1981 to 2013, BJP ruled India for 6 years, and UF / Janata Dal governments for 3.5 years. However the UF / Janata Dal Governments were still supported from the outside by the Congress. So Congress ruled India for a majority of this period - it must have done something right for poverty levels to drop by over 60 % over the 1981 base figure ?

By 2013, only 11 % of the World's Population remained in Poverty !

Last night, my husband mentioned poverty rates across the world have been declining.. I said that there had been recent reversals due to worsening ecological impacts of global warming but he did not think so. I decided to look up the data. 

A 2016 report by the World Bank was very encouraging : In 2013, fewer than 800 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day (nearly Rs. 130 at today's exchange rate). That's less than 11 percent of the global population. As recently as 1990, about 35 percent of all people lived in such extreme poverty. That means about 1.1 billion people rose out of extreme poverty.

The percentage of people in Latin America, East Asia, North Africa and Eastern Europe who still lived in poverty was 5 % and below. But it was still over 40 % in Sub-saharan Africa and 15 % in South Asia. 

Researchers tied future poverty declines to reducing inequality. The countries where inequality declined in recent years included Brazil, Cambodia and Tanzania. Some successful policies employed which in my assessment, India pays inadequate attention to, include early childhood development and nutrition, universal health coverage, universal access to quality education and making cash transfers to poor families.

In 2012, according to Reserve Bank of India data, the States with the highest percentages of population in poverty (upto 40 %) were Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Mizoram.

The next States with upto 30 % of their population in poverty were Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Assam.

The States with the least poverty in India (uptill 10 %) were Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Himachal. 

India is a World Leader in Carbon Neutrality where Airports are Concerned...

But this story seems to have been missed not only by the Indian press, but the international press too.. 

What is Carbon Neutrality in the context of Airports ?

Boeing 757 Air Europe
San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives

Budapest airport became the latest airport to be accredited carbon neutral in April this year. As an industry site explains : 

"Airports are at different points on this journey to become cleaner and more efficient. As the centrepoints of a complex web of aircraft movements, technical operations and surface access transport, airports can address their CO2 emissions in a variety of ways. These can include better insulation and energy efficiency, switching to green energy sources, investing in hybrid, electric or gas-powered service vehicles, encouraging employees, passengers & visitors to use public transport, working with airlines & air traffic management to reduce runway taxiing times and implement green landing processes and much more."

Convair 880 165-62 Swissair in flight 13Mar64
San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives

Another industry site says : "Not only did these airports measure their carbon footprint (Level 1), managed and reduced their emission (Level 2) and engaged partners and clients to do the same (Level 3), they are now offsetting their own (carbon) emissions" (that is Level 3+ : Carbon Neutral level which the Budapest Airport just achieved).

But thats not the story the media may have missed. What they have missed - or chosen not to highlight anyway, are the factoids below. 

Air plane over Jamuna Future Park 2014 /
Aashaa / CC-BY-SA 3.0

India is a World Leader in Airport Carbon Neutrality 

• Out of 39 Carbon Neutral Airports in the world, four are Indian ! The airports in Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Mumbai have been accredited as carbon neutral. 

• Delhi Airport was the first airport to be accredited carbon neutral in the whole of Asia Pacific !

The developed nations - other than Europe, havent been that interested

• Even today, there is not a single airport that has been declared carbon neutral in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, or any of the South East Asian Tigers - or even in some of the richest countries in the world in the Middle East - UAE, Saudia Arabia, and others. 

• ONE airport in Australia has been declared carbon neutral - none in New Zealand.

  

  Air Canada Airbus A319-114 on approach to LAX
  / Timo Breidenstein /GNU Free Documentation License.

• In the Asia-Pacific region, other than India and Australia, only one other country's airport has a carbon neutral accreditation - Jordan, which is a poor country, with per capita GDP one-fourth that of the world average. 

• In fact, entire continents are able to showcase just one airport each as carbon neutral accredited - North America, South America and Africa !

Boeing 767 over Mount Rainier, circa 1980s
Seattle Municipal Archives / CC-BY-SA 2.0

• The country with the largest number of airports in the world - the USA (in North America), has just ONE airport accredited carbon neutral. 

As a Continent, Europe leads in Airport Carbon Neutrality

• 30 out of 39 airports worldwide to have received carbon neutrality are in Europe. 10 of  these airports are in a single country - Sweden. 

• India has the most airports accredited for carbon neutrality after Sweden. The next countries with the most airports accredited are the UK and Turkey - three each.

The History of the Programme

The Airport Council International (ACI), Europe Annual Congress in 2007 saw Europe’s airports commit to reducing their CO2 emissions, with the ultimate goal of becoming carbon neutral. ACI EUROPE commited to developing a tool to help airports achieve this goal. In 2009, it launched the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme. Within months, Stockholm Arlanda Airport became the first airport in the world to achieve the highest level of accreditation: 'Neutrality'.

Air New Zealand Boeing 737-219 (ZK-NAR), 1979
Daniel Tanner / CC-BY-SA 4.0

In 2011, Airport Carbon Accreditation was extended to airports in the Asia-Pacific region, in partnership with ACI ASIA-PACIFIC. In 2012, Swedavia became the first national airport group to achieve full carbon neutrality across its suite of 10 airports in Sweden. Airport Carbon Accreditation was extended to Africa in 2013 in partnership with ACI AFRICA. Also in 2013, Airport Carbon Accreditation was judged one of the top 3 low carbon projects for Europe. 

The programme was FINALLY launched in North (and South) America in 2014, in partnership with ACI-NA, a full five years behind Europe, and 3 years after Asia Pacific. 

Climate change is impacting the poor severely - and we are doing little to help them

Climate change will impact India's poor severely

A 2009 report says that at least one-third Indians (some 400 million) face poverty and discrimination, and lack of educational opportunities; and 60 percent are dependent upon agriculture for their livelihoods. Those who lack financial resources, adequate education and who depend on agriculture for sustenance, will be disadvantaged under climate change because they have few choices but continued dependence on shrinking or uncertain resources. 

Millions of subsistence and smallholder farmers in India will experience hardship and hunger through being less able to predict climate conditions, requiring government relief programs on a massive scale. Their plight may act as a force that can change governments, strain public budgets, and foster unrest. 

Some (or many) of these workers will migrate to urban areas, placing stress on cities. Climate change will cause "uncontrollable" escalation in migration in South Asia, including India.The need to add to or replace infrastructure affected by climate change (e.g., in the energy and transportation sectors, as well as irrigation systems) will present additional economic costs.

India's adaptive capacity to adjust to climate change is low

The impacts of climate change will be felt differentially, depending upon how well a society can cope with or adapt to climate change, that is, its adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity is defined by the IPCC as, “The ability of a system to adjust to climate change  to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences.” 

India's adaptive capacity ranks low - at 119 out of 160 countries ranked for adaptive capacity in 2005. Although countries like Morocco and Haiti rank still lower, many others who are also struggling to become developed countries, rank far higher - Indonesia, Mexico, China and the Philippines. 

Adaptive capacity in India varies by state, geographical region, and socioeconomic status. Where adaptive capacity is low, the potential is greater for impacts to result in displaced people; deaths and damage from heat, floods, and storms; and conflicts over natural resources and assets. 

Many Indian states have limited resources and lack robust disaster management plans. Because of these factors, India's disaster response record has been mixed, with delayed response, lack of early warning systems and resources to undertake measures like mass evacuation, inadequate coordination among various government departments, failure to keep essential stores (e.g., sandbags, medicines, and life-saving equipment) on hand, and inadequate coordination with the Army and other service organizations, as well as donors. As an example of disaster response, in 2007 the New York Times reported a United Nations official as saying that about 2,800 people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan had died in monsoonal floods (“the worst in living memory”). For survivors, the land damage meant there would be no near-term agricultural work for millions of landless laborers, leaving them to rely on the sporadic support of aid agencies and government relief organizations. The condition of the 31 million people affected in India was covered internationally but was not featured either in New Delhi newspapers or on national news channels.

Cities are impacted more severely by climate change - but India's strategy is focused just on solar power

Cities are impacted more severely by climate change

Climate change affects all parts of the planet, but scientists now say cities are going to be affected far more than small towns and villages. Hydrologists and climate researchers know why cities are so vulnerable to climate change — they have altered their natural environment so much, they now create their own climates. 

Because of the higher temperatures and increased pollution, cities are expected to get less frequent rainfall, leading to water-stress. Already 15 percent of groundwater aquifers in India are in critical condition, a figure that is projected to increase to a “frightening” 60 percent by the year 2030. 

A global increase of temperature of 2 degrees C can result in an increase of 4-5 degrees C in cities. 

Other studies say that the incidence of dengue has increased 30-fold in the past 50 years, with the disease spreading to higher latitudes, as temperatures rise. 

India's climate adaptation strategy is focused only on solar power

A 2009 study showed that India's electrical system runs mostly on domestic coal: 83 percent fossil fuel, 14 percent hydropower, and 3 percent nuclear. The transportation sector runs mostly on imported oil; domestic production is 785,000 bbl/day against a demand of 2.45 million bbl/day.

India, through normal policy developments, is “making significant progress in limiting greenhouse emissions” (i.e., from what emissions might have been) through energy efficiency improvements and environmentally friendly energy development. 

India has had an almost decade-long plan to combat climate change. “The aggressive focus on renewables, particularly solar, is right. But that’s about all,” says former Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh. “Dealing with climate change goes well beyond solar expansion.." 

Sea-level rise and deforestation - what are we doing to cope ?

Sea-level Rise

Over the past 20 years, sea levels have risen by 5-6 cm on the Konkan coast, just North of Mumbai. A 5-6 cm rise has led to the ingress of sea water up to 1 km inland, eroding beaches, harming mangroves and coconut and cashew plantations. So it can be imagined what impact the estiamted 90 cms of sea-level rise will have by 2100 - Nearly 40% of Mumbai could be under water. The Indian subcontinent is likely to lose 14,000 sq km of land if sea level rises by a meter. 

The standard response of the authorities only when the situation gets too serious is to construct bunds to keep the sea at bay. These cost as much as Rs 60,000 per metre and are only built at certain stretches.

In India, almost 40 million people will be at risk from sea-level rise by 2050, according to a UN report, with people in Mumbai and Kolkata at higher risk. Experts believe that given this increasing risk, coastal cities must prepare for such eventualities. Evacuation plans should be put in place. In 2005, no Mumbaikar could access higher ground because the roads and railway tracks were under water. Boats, which could have worked, were not provided for rescue or relief.

Deforestation has led to less rain

Analysis of rainfall amount during different seasons indicates decreasing tendency in the summer monsoon rainfall, and increasing trend in the rainfall during pre-monsoon and post-monsoon months. This impacts the present cropping patterns - for example, the pre-monsoon showers in April and May 2018 have caused heavy losses to farmers. 

A study found that forests in north and northeast India contributed significantly towards rainfall through recycled precipitation. Thick vegetation holds moisture well, this evaporates and comes back as rain. Large amounts of trees have been cut in these regions to make way for crops. The study found that large-scale deforestation is responsible for the declining rainfall in the Gangetic plain, Northeast India, and Central India. 

Studies say that overall crop yields could decrease up to 30% in South Asia by the middle of this century. 

This time of the severe dust storm..

This time of the severe dust storm is as good as any to look climate change in the face. 125 people have died in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh in the present dust storm - young men celebrating their selection for the Delhi Police.. Four young children who had just finished dinner in the cool breeze on the roof of their house.. 

Three weeks ago also, heavy rains and thunderstorms had claimed 42 lives in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on April 11-12.

Intense Rainfall

Increasingly intense cycles of droughts and floods are expected as more of a region’s precipitation falls in a single large storm rather than a series of small ones. For example, this year, Alwar district recieved 900 per cent of the normal rain usually received by it in the entire month of April, in a single day - April 11.

Last July, the normally quiet Rel river had overflown, causing havoc in Dhanera in Gujarat. In two days, the region had got twice the seasonal total of rainfall, and the water level in the river had exceeded 50 times the high water mark. 

Researchers have found that one-to-five-day extreme rains, at levels earlier found once in about 500 years, can increase by about 20-30%. On a high emissions pathway, in the latter half of this century, the probability of a once-in-a-century flood increases 1,000 times for a city like Kolkata. The probability of intense once-in-30-year floods in the Ganga basin could increase six fold — that is, it could become once in five years. 

In 2005, Mumbai received 1.5 times its normal rain for the month of July in a single day, killing 450 people in the ensuing floods. Sadly, heedless maldevelopment has continued in Mumbai, increasing the likelihood of similar events. A single day of lost productivity in Mumbai costs Rs 5,000-6,000 crore. Studies say that by 2050, the economic costs to Mumbai from climate change could be 20 % more than its entire current GDP.

Cyclones in the Arabian Sea

More heat and water in the atmosphere and warmer sea surface temperatures could provide more fuel to increase the wind speeds of tropical storms. Rising temperatures can cause more frequent and more severe storms over Indian cities also. 

Due to climate change, cyclonic activity is increasing over the Arabian Sea and decreasing over the Bay of Bengal. Mumbai was found to be the fifth coastal city in the world to be most affected by flooding in the future, measured by economic losses. The first four are Guangzhou, Miami, New York-Newark and New Orleans.

Between 1998 and 2001, three cyclones struck the west coast of the subcontinent, not far from Mumbai, claiming over 17,000 lives. Gujarat was also hit by a severe cyclone in 1998 which caused 10,000 deaths. Then in 2007, the Arabian Sea generated its strongest ever recorded storm: Cyclone Gonu, a Category 5 hurricane, which hit Oman, Iran and Pakistan in June that year, causing widespread damage. Chennai has been hit by cyclones three years running - in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The probability of a cyclonic storm like Harvey hitting Texas is now once in 16 years, up from once in a 100 years in the 20th century. Since the mid-1970s, the number of hurricanes that reach Categories 4 and 5 in strength has roughly doubled. 

We are headed to average temperature increase by 3-4 degrees C by 2100..

A report by the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE) just out, says : 1. धरती के वायुमंडल में ग्रीन हाउस गैस का स्तर पिछले 8 लाख वर्षों में उच्चतम स्तर पर पहुंच गया है. 2. 1901 से 2017 के बीच, भारत का औसत वार्षिक तापमान लगभग 1.2 डिग्री सेल्सियस बढ़ गया है। 3. हम 3 से 4 डिग्री सेल्सियस के औसत तापमान वृद्धि की ओर बढ़ रहे हैं (by the year 2100).

Bangkok traffic jam /Ahoerstemeier
/ CC-BY-SA 3.0

Many articles are pointing out that at the current rate of Co2 burning (via use of petrol, coal, cooking gas – all energy essentially – that we use in homes, for transport and in manufacturing the products we buy, and via burning of crop residues & forests), we are hurtling towards raising the temperature on earth (compared to pre-industrial levels) by 2 degrees C in just 30 years. Our children will certainly experience those impacts and worse, as the worldwide temperature increases beyond 2 degrees to 3+ and then 4+ after 2050 uptil 2100.

How does this temperature increase impact our day to day life ? As we go on, it will spell the difference between life and death for vast numbers of humanity – and trees, forests and animals. I request that you urgently see this film by the National Geographic Channel – Six Degrees can change the World - Much of the film’s data is from 2005 – so we are already 10+ years ahead in the curve.

Who provides leadership for climate change in India ?

Glaciers at the Taboche summit, Nepal, have been 
reduced by warming / bonn_4 / CC-BY-SA 2.0

A report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) just out :

धरती के वायुमंडल में ग्रीन हाउस गैस का स्तर पिछले 8 लाख वर्षों में उच्चतम स्तर पर पहुंच गया है. 1901 से 2017 के बीच, भारत का औसत वार्षिक तापमान लगभग 1.2 डिग्री सेल्सियस बढ़ गया है। (By 2100) हम 3 से 4 डिग्री सेल्सियस के औसत तापमान वृद्धि की ओर बढ़ रहे हैं.

(From another report) even a 1°C rise in global mean temperature (compared to the 1990s) will mean that about 8 per cent of the global population will see a severe reduction in water resources, according to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate.

Some newspaper reports have made it sound in the last 2-3 years as if India was providing global leadership on climate change. Therefore, I was shocked to read the report by CSE on state action plans on climate change, prepared between 2009 and 2014. Four of the States whose plans were analyzed, were ruled by BJP, and 4 by other parties, including one by Congress. The Central Govt. was then headed by the Congress party.

Ploughing with cattle in West Bengal / ILRI / CC-BY-SA 2.0

The analysis said : States don’t have qualified, dedicated staff to prepare climate change action plans. States said they received little guidance from the Centre on how to assess impacts of climate change and have been unable to prepare a detailed risk assessment. Although Nodal officers were appointed in each State Dept., they have other responsibilities and climate change was not a priority for them. In the name of preparing climate change action plans, the States largely just made shopping lists of the usual development works.

Monsoon clouds, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
/ Sunnyoraish

विभिन्न राज्यों में अलग-अलग क्षेत्रों में प्रस्तावित बजट में काफी विसंगतियां हैं। सेक्टर के जोखिम के हिसाब से उसका बजट नहीं रखा गया है। उदाहरण के लिए उत्तर प्रदेश की लगभग 70 प्रतिशत आबादी कृषि पर निर्भर है और यहां के किसान प्राकृतिक आपदाओं के रूप में पहले ही बहुत मार झेल रहे हैं। इस सबके बावजूद प्रस्तावित बजट का सिर्फ 0.2 प्रतिशत ही कृषि क्षेत्र के लिए रखा गया है, जो कि हास्यास्पद है।

एक और उदाहरण में, गुजरात में राज्य का सबसे लम्बा समुद्र तट है, जिसमें गुजरात की 37 प्रतिशत जनसंख्या निवास करती है और ये आर्थिक रूप से भी बहुत महत्वपूर्ण है। इसको जलवायु परिवर्तन से होने वाले कई खतरे जैसे बढ़ता समुद्री जल स्तर, जलप्लावन, चक्रवाती तूफान की स्थिति में बाढ़, खारे पानी की घुसपैठ आदि है। लेकिन, इन सबके बावजूद भी तटीय क्षेत्र प्रबंधन को राज्य के एसएपीसीसी में सही तरह से सम्मिलित नहीं किया गया और लगभग पूरी तरह नजरअंदाज कर दिया गया।

Farmer in India / Azhar feder / CC-BY-SA 3.0

जलवायु परिवर्तन के चलते देश का किसान पहले ही बहुत बुरी तरह से प्रभावित हो रहा है तथा हाल ही के अध्ययनों के मुताबिक आगे और भी ज्यादा प्रभावित होगा। लेकिन ज्यादातर राज्यों के एसएपीसीसी में कृषि व किसानों के लिए एक समग्र अनुकूलन रणनीति नहीं बनाई है, और कृषि क्षेत्र का प्रस्तावित बजट भी अन्य क्षेत्रों के मुकाबले काफी कम रखा है। केंद्र सरकार ने हाल ही में सभी राज्यों को एसएपीसीसी को दोबारा से बनाने को कहा है। 
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So this is one more area where the Congress Govt. at the centre was unable to provide leadership to the country in the end. Jairam Ramesh had set good standards of engagement and understanding on many areas of the environment. But he was removed reportedly because he was not compliant enough to greenlight industries that would not meet environmental crieteria. Under Jayanti Natarajan thereafter and then Moily, it all seems to have gone downhill.