Beyond CO2 At Kyoto

At the G-8 summit that will begin this weekend in Gleneagles, Scotland, an entirely new type of conflict is about to break out. It won't be over Iraq; not over aids or poverty in Africa; it will be over global warming. After two years of truly unusual weather, including a summer heat wave that killed more than 3,000 and one of the most severe winters in recent memory, most Europeans are finally convinced that something is going seriously wrong with the weather, and that its root cause is global warming. A recent poll in England found that 83 per cent of Britons subscribed to this view and wanted their government to take the issue up with other nations. This has emboldened British Prime Minister Tony Blair to make this a central issue at the summit. It will bring him into direct conflict with President George Bush.

The issue at stake is the Kyoto protocol on global warming. This had bound signatories to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide—whose build-up in the atmosphere is held mainly responsible for the rise in temperatures—to the level of 1990, and keeping it there. Developing countries were exempted in part from this commitment, so it was a treaty that affected mainly the industrialised countries, by far the largest consumers of fossil fuels—the cause of the build-up. One of the first acts of George W. Bush after he became president was to renege unilaterally on the Kyoto treaty. Since the US accounts for the vast bulk of the total CO2 emissions every year, this made the treaty meaningless. Environmentally, therefore, the world returned to a form of anarchy. At one end, developing countries continued to consume more and more fossil fuels without hindrance. At the other, the US too resumed the same.

At Gleneagles, therefore, Blair, who is the current chairman of the G-8, will lead a concerted effort to persuade Bush to return to the Kyoto protocol. He is not, however, likely to get very far because of the fundamental difference that exists between scientists over the very causes of global warming. Bush took advantage of this in 2001 to withdraw from the treaty. He will almost certainly do so again to resist the pressure to return.

Since this is going to be a battle between the industrialised nations, India and other developing countries are likely to watch it passively from the sidelines. But this would be a mistake. For, not only will the outcome deeply affect us, but we are in a position, through our own actions, to affect the outcome and therefore the fate of the world.

No one challenges the fact that the world has been growing warmer. Nor does anyone challenge the data which show an alarmingly rapid build-up of CO2. Most, if not all, environmental scientists also do not any deny the existence of a 'greenhouse effect' it causes. Where they start to differ seriously is on the importance of the greenhouse effect in relation to other causes of global warming. For, there are at least two other important causes: rapid urbanisation, and the wholesale deforestation of the planet. President Bush's advisors argue that these are far more directly responsible for global warming than the build-up of CO2. But the Kyoto protocol focuses almost entirely on the last.

However much one may deplore Bush's imperial disregard for the commitments made by his predecessor, it does not take much science to concede that there is a good deal of truth in this argument. One has only to drive from the outer, congested fringes of Delhi into the green central zone to feel the drop in temperature, both in summer and winter. And Indians have been retreating into groves of trees to shelter from the summer heat since the beginning of time. There are also puzzling contradictions in the link between CO2 and temperature, at least over shorter periods of time, that still need to beexplained. For instance, CO2 levels have been building steadily since the 1930s and even longer, but between the late '40s and the early '70s, the world actually grew cooler.

A very strong case can therefore be made for taking a much more comprehensive view of global warming and tackling all three of its causes simultaneously. The Kyoto protocol thus needs to be expanded to include commitments on urban planning and reforestation, not simply reaffirmed. But this cannot be done without the active concurrence of the developing countries, because while most of the fossil fuel consumption takes place in the industrialised world, nearly all the urbanisation and deforestation is taking place in the developing one.

We in India have a vital interest in such an expanded protocol. We are already experiencing a sharp increase in the unpredictability of the monsoons. Our cities are growing at up to five per cent per annum. A near-total lack of planning and intolerable congestion has turned them into heat sinks. And our forest cover has dwindled steadily from 23 per cent in 1951 to below 10 per cent today. What is worse, the pace of deforestation is accelerating because prosperity is making villagers even in remote areas switch from mud to brick houses and they are baking their bricks in situ, using timber from the forest.

The only antidote is better urban planning, to which this government is already committed, and reforestation. The latter will not only increase the forest cover but also the supply of firewood in a carbon-neutral way. It will also give millions of the poorest people in the country a stable and relatively comfortable source of income. We are already committed to a rural employment guarantee programme. It will not take much to make reforestation its spearhead.