You cannot outwit nature, cannot escape climate change with oratory or carbon–nationalism

Playing tough with ‘west’ at summits is one thing, but preparing hard for saving people from impending disasters is another. We cannot and should not expect the armed forces always to bear the burn of natural disasters and save persons while we continue ad-hoc-ism.  Moreover, disasters nowadays are not only some week-long or month-long episodes of sudden natural calamities and after effects. We are sinking ourselves in a slow poisoning environment. Let us see.

No doubt that what the government of India has been saying for years – the developed countries became developed by certain path that also led to environmental degradation. When they saw things going out of control they jumped on to make some hasty deal, as they tried in Kyoto and afterwards: reduce emission to 1990 level and then further down, a thing which they could not yet achieve. Anyway, from applying carrying–capacity concept only for humans, they landed, reluctantly, in a situation to admit that there is carrying capacity of consumptions too! For the developed west the emission target is not unreachable – they now have technologies and fund that permit alternate energy harvest without as much emission as may happen in case of fossil-fuel use. These are precisely things that the developing countries lack. So, for the ‘developing’ countries, the Kyoto order is equivalent to “go back to 1990” – the ‘End of History’ – a situation when China, India, Brazil were nowhere near ‘topmost’ in any list other than ‘list of countries by population’; and powers were all concentrated in a unipolar ‘western’ command. That is unthinkable by the would-be powers, naturally, except Russia, which was already a superpower, at least militarily. Things in question were economics and politics, not environmental sciences or public health.

In the consequent drama of reducing ‘dirty’ carbon, twofold ‘dirty’ scenes emerged – a trade in carbon or buying and selling of ‘right to pollute’ and a vociferous carbon-nationalism or ‘we too have right to grow’ (aka right to pollute). So, at these summits what happen are diplomatic bargains. All these go naturally under the cover of saving nature, and also properties and people (these being parts of nature). So, when we read in The Hindu: “If the developed world walks the talk, then we can certainly achieve the targets that we have set ourselves collectively,” Mr. Javadekar – we can only say that government of India is continuing the same climate policy, nothing more. Or when we see Indian PM ‘bunking’ the summit we do not infer that Government of India is not sincere about climate change. 

But what is unpleasant: our leaders are behaving in such a way so as to prove themselves climate-deniers. On the Teachers Day the PM spoke to millions of future citizens and said: climate has not changed, we have. It is interesting to see that our PIL-loving gentry did not jump at this opportunity to file some serious litigation against government for confusing or misleading young minds. Mr Javadekar praised India’s and Gujarat’s environmental performance at the summit when actually we should be ashamed of our lacklustre and disgraceful performance! Indian government is pursuing their 100 smart cities goal by making treaty for 1 smart city (Banaras) in Japan and 3 in USA (Allahabad, Ajmer and Visakhapatnam). Possibly, at this pace, they will complete their target within 30-40 such visits; while 100 or more existing cities will be dying pitifully.

Why should we compete with China or for the matter with the USA to make places unliveable for a large section of populace? In this 2014, 40% of surface water-bodies in the USA are ‘unswimmable and unfishable’ as the EPA confesses; at least 33% of US people still live in areas that are Non Attainment Areas with air quality below standard. Mr Modi and Mr Javadekar surely in their school days did read about Hoang Ho – the River of Sorrow of China, famous for flood. Now China could manage to dry it, almost! Yangtze is also dying with pollution. 

How is China managing its cities? They are among the most polluted in the world. India may cheer because we are not far behind. Beijing Smog has ‘defeated’ Los Angeles smog. Perhaps Delhi will be able to beat Beijing in near future! One of the 6 most common air-pollutants is called PM10, particles that can directly enter human lungs. We can see a graphical picture of presence of this pollutant in big cities of the world:

PM may teach our kids that there is no climate change. But any ‘uneducated’ Maharashtra fisherman or Punjab farmer or monk who stays high up in the Himalayas will say how the climate has changed to the worse during last 30-40 years. Many of our cities including Mumbai and Kolkata are in threshold of climate-change related extreme-weather calamities and rise of sea level. Mumbai, New York, Shanghai, Kolkata feature in all lists showing top 7 or 10 cities of the world that may get inundated due to climate change. Maplecroft, a well known UK based risk analyst and advisor has issued their 2014 vulnerability index for climate change related events and a caption there says: “Most at risk cities Dhaka, Mumbai, Manila, Kolkata, Bangkok – lowest risk in London, Paris”. They have presented a world map of vulnerability too where Gujarat and India as a whole do not look promising at all. 

Anybody concerned with news as regards climate change knew about warning relating to Kolkata and Mumbai since almost a decade. But when New York is already on the way of executing some plan to save that city we are busy with media-covered gatherings, ‘events’, token gestures and at maximum some adhoc short term measures, while hard labour of scientists gathered dusts.

Leaders love claps. But when thunderclaps come, applauses get eclipsed. Ecologists can be jeered as ‘doomsayers’; well, but you cannot shrug off climate change warnings given by famous business houses and their risk analysts, not only Maplecroft, but also Allianz, Lloyds, Deutsche Bank or BNP-Paribas; they mean business. Neither can you wish away climate change by demagogy. 

 published in Business Economics, October 1-15, 2014

the author is a chemical engineer and environmentalist

Smart Cities: but are we smart enough for those?

a few of several issues to ponder before we leapfrog 

Readers can easily remember that Smart City is not a new thing that we are hearing after the new government took charge. In these days, when a mobile phone get ‘outdated’ within a year or two, when durables gets ‘backward’ within a few years, the term ‘Smart City’ is indeed quite old. In the early days of liberalisation a book: ‘The Technopolis Phenomenon: Smart Cities, Fast Systems, Global Networks’ (1992) mentioned this word. In India we have been hearing of smart cities for years. IBM is having an India specific portal on ‘smarter cities’ possibly since 2010. Then, the Hackathon event organised by Planning Commission in April 2013 discussed Smart Cities.

A 2011 Poster (from  http://w42.bcn.cat/)

Globally the idea of Smart Cities got a boost after the grand slump that erupted in 2008. Business needed impetus of public spending and Smart City idea was re-floated as a good business proposition to a world that had just crossed a watershed: 50% of global population became town-dwellers in 2007. It was not proposed from the angle of providing persons who have ‘been long in city pent’ with good liveable cities. The first Smart City Expo & Congress (Asociación mundial de ciudades inteligentes) was held in Barcelona, Spain, 2011, where city Hyderabad was present. Though, of course, we have some great Green Buildings, ‘success stories’ regarding smart cities are not that forthcoming. This is definitely a glitch not to be overlooked, but this is not a cardinal one. Let us look into a few significant points.

Creating cities needs materials and energy, smart or smarter whatever the tag be. And so the steel industry, cement industry, construction companies ... all are waiting in the wings for green signal from the government, which essentially means softer and slack treatment by the government. One such sample tells: “[steel production] is facing intense pressure due to shortage of raw materials ... not to mention problems stemming from closure of mines in states like Karnataka, Goa and Odisha”. Now, we all heard of the worrying phenomenon called global warming and we know that carbon-dioxide is a major culprit for this. But, for producing each kg of steel, even by best available European steel plants, we produce 1.9 kg CO₂. For 1 kg cement, it is at least 1 kg CO₂. It is only one aspect. We dig earth for raw materials — for 1 kg of steel we need about 1¾ kg ore, for 1 kg cement some 1½ kg limestone, and so, de facto, we move much more earth. We may console us telling that we Indians are using much less steel; we may rue our steel usage is only 60 kg/person vis-à-vis world average of 225 kg/person. But if we are to reach that mark we need extra 165×1.2 billion kg steel right now. For that, how much CO₂ we shall produce more? How much more disfigured India’s land will become due to mining? What we shall bequeath for our future generation despite our tall talks on sustainability? Moreover, do we have the right to ruin all the remaining beautiful landscapes and step up Acid Mine Drainage which devastates adjacent land and spoil water? When we shall say ‘enough’? Yes, we have heard of newer technology and green-chemistry coming forward to solve the material problem. But, suppose the glorified Calera Process of cement making – we heard promises and then it was abandoned; surely it lacked business feasibility. We have to work out more.

Dead Zone at the Arabian Sea, a NASA picture

What amenities our smart cities will have? Among others, the government drafted concept note says, there will be 100% sewage treatment, 100% houses will have waste-collection at doorsteps and there will be waste-segregation &c. But all these were essential and known features of any city! Why were we living in ‘stupid cities’ for so long under so many regimes that boasted of Nukes, space missions and even Pollution Control Boards? Why did governments let cities of Gujarat and Maharashtra dump untreated sewage to Arabian Sea to the effect of endangering both fish and fisher communities with a growing ‘dead zone’? How to believe them who are burying such facts with hollow speech-mongering that having 100% sewage treatment and 100% houses with doorstep-waste-collection facility are ‘smart-city’ things (and not some essentials that we should have had twenty-thirty years earlier)? It is shocking to find in a recent ‘research publication’ on smart cities that waste-treatment and not sending all waste to landfill is a ‘betterment’ that a Malaysian ‘smart’ city promises! 

Apart from such obvious aspects there is a very tricky thing called ecosystem complexity. We had words like ‘knowledge worker’ in 1959, ‘knowledge society’ in 1969. At that very time economic policy-makers of Europe, knowledgeable they were of course, formulated a trade policy: high tariff barrier for foodgrains to help their farmers. Animal raisers of Europe got a boon — import permission of cheap tubers like cassava to compensate for animal-feed that became costly due to high grain price. Cassava import started rising, also increased number of tuber-eaters, pigs. Cassava plantations started increasing in Thailand to meet the demand. Result 1: In Thailand cassava plantation grew about 2.5 times in 13 years – from 692,000 hectares in 1975-76 to 1,621,800 hectares in 1988-89 — nearly a million hectare increase. Thus in Thailand an additional area equal to the entire area of the Sunderban forest in West Bengal and Bangladesh combined was gone for cassava within 13 years!  Result 2: Greatly increased pigs (and other animals) meant more animal-excreta, which partly leached to rivers and then to the seas. By early 1990s there were algal blooms in North Sea due to nutrient enrichment from sewage. That proved detrimental for many fish species and so also for fishermen. So? “There are more things in heaven and earth” than we think we know!

The moral is: let us not play with environment and re-examine hundred times the 100 smart cities proposal. 

published in Business Economics, 1-15 October, 2014

the author is a chemical engineer and environmentalist

 

 

An Ecological Angle to the WTO Talks

India’s ‘obstinate’ stand at the Doha talks is a well known fact. Western media is making such a fuss with this and attacking particularly the food-subsidy borne by India that, at times, Indian citizens who work with non-Indians feel a bit embarrassed or try to defend India just on the basis of a kind of patriotism, taking it a priori that India’s stand is good for Indian economy. Nevertheless,  whatever may be the merit or demerit of trade policy or trade negotiations from the economic viewpoint, there is a dearth of understanding of ecological fallouts of trade policies in public discourse.

In many commentaries on WTO deadlock we find that “current WTO rules limit subsidies to farmers in developing countries to 10 percent of the total value of agricultural produce”. This begets a question: who said these rules are OK, sacrosanct and unchangeable? Why not put an amount cap per hectare in $-PPP instead? Moreover, that price is absurdly fixed as 1986-1989 average price! The IOSR Journal of Agriculture and Veterinary Science in one of its recent issues had a paper which gave an exemplary exposure regarding total subsidies farmers get in different countries: the Euro farmers got $82 per hectare, US and Japanese farmers got in between $32-35 per hectare, Chinese farmers got $30 for each hectare whereas in India farmers got only $14 per hectare (Salunkhe and Deshmush, 2012).

Trade-negotiators of India and developing countries can also argue that subsidies of more than $30/Ha (in 2011 $-PPP) are trade-distorting and hence should not be tolerated. Plus, the ‘price’ of produce in 1 Ha of US farm is artificially held high, so that the subsidy appears less in relative term. This is also ‘trade distorting’.  Then, what is distorting to one may be acceptable to others. No one can enforce such ‘standards’. Over and above this subsidy, the US government pays farmers by crop-insurance subsidies. That is a hefty amount, almost $14 billion in 2012, which is seven times that amount spent in 2000! More than 10,000 farms in USA got $100,000 – $1,000,000 each in federal crop insurance subsidies and 26 farms received more than $1 million. The bottom 80 percent of farms numbering 389,494 each received $5,000 on an average that year. Can the USA tell us how much Indian farms get in the form of subsidies?

If we leave aside the question that whether direct and indirect subsidies for farming and farmers distort trade, we can safely say that subsidies for agriculture à la mode or agriculture as it is done nowadays will contribute towards distorting nature by monoculture, depletion of ground water and its nitrate pollution, pesticide and fertiliser leaching to streams and other surface water bodies, a reduction in number of beneficial insects, diminution of soil health and so on so forth. Anyway, let us get back to trade.

Trade policies and political considerations together may affect other policy forming. For example, a US government sponsored publication once mentioned: High energy prices, increasing energy imports, concerns about petroleum supplies particularly after the Gulf Wars, and greater recognition of the environmental consequences of fossil fuels pushed for transportation biofuel. Out of these four reasons the first three were obviously not related to environmental-concerns. Rather the bio-fuel development policy was related to economic, trade and political considerations. Then an environmental aspect was added to paint it greenish. However, the overall result was ‘ungreen’.

Formerly agricultural lands were meant to feed humans and also domestic animals. Now, agricultural land is feeding cars! What about the old ‘beneficiaries’ of agriculture? Two options remained: eat less or eat up non-agricultural lands under forest or grass. Around 2005-06, when biofuel scientists and engineers were busy seeing (and showing) whether sugarcane or corn or soya was better, some environmental economists were noting that quite an amount of forest land and savannah were getting converted to agricultural land. To counter this observation the biofuel and government lobbies did some researching and they declared that no, they were rather increasing land utilisation and thus meeting the increased yield without eating up forests or savannah.

But their study revealed two interesting loopholes: (1) They had to admit that indeed ‘small’ amount of land has to come from forests, in case of Brazil it is only 15% of the extra land that will be needed for biofuel, and that small forest area was only 750 square km. They want us to believe their story in spite of converting 120,000 sq km of non-agricultural land to agriculture in Brazil in this biofuel era. (2) They claimed of increasing cropping intensity – that is how many times a year a certain piece of land is harvested – and their cropping intensity figures showed how US, EU and other big economies actually underutilise their arable land: In USA their cropping intensity was only 0.82 – much less than half of that in Punjab, Haryana or West Bengal or, say, of China! They are telling the world to increase cropping intensity and make agricultural-land exhausted while they keep their land idler to keep grain price high.

Now, what may be the ecological cost of not having Right to Food and agricultural subsidies in India? We know that there are a lot of pilferage and inefficiency in India’s food distribution and acquisition systems. But, after all, at least a fraction of it reaches a part of the target population. The effect is not insignificant. To cite two quite recent studies: # A recent Harvard experiment with Chennai cycle-rickshaw drivers showed that when individuals were provided with an additional 700 calories per day, labour supply and earnings increased approximately 10 percent within five weeks. Just imagine how malnutrition is hampering labour contributing capacity of the poor. # Professors Himanshu and Abhijit Sen showed that compared to the counterfactual of no PDS, PDS increased per capita calorie intake of the population as a whole by about 6% in 2009-10, up from a corresponding contribution of about 3.5% in 2004-05. The percentage would be higher for poorer sections whose food baskets are more dependent on PDS like subsidised programmes. Those are more important as undernourishment is increasing in India.

Therefore, such government schemes cannot be written off just due to obstinacy of US & EU countries. Malnutrition makes people susceptible to diseases. As much government food supply schemes contribute to nutrition that much those also help in fighting spread of diseases and thus keep health-bill of the country at a comparatively reduced level. If India doesn’t have scheme for an assured minimum level of nutrition for all citizens, India’s environment, as much as the biosphere is concerned, will be more vulnerable. According to FAO, poverty and malnutrition also act towards injudicious resource use and increased stress on scarce resources. Then, a undernourished citizen will have less power in contributing labour which will reduce his own earning and reduce productivity – and this two-pronged flaw, with some multiplier effect, may affect and distort the market and society further.

India’s expenditure in this field is not high. This year’s budget of the NDA government allotted some 1.15 trillion for it, which is only 0.35 trillion more than previous year’s figure. ‘Trillion’ sounds big, but if divided by our population, 1.2 billion, our per capita food subsidy comes to a paltry Rs 2.60 per person per day! India’s defence spending is twice that amount! If we add fertiliser subsidy to it, then per person per day food+agro subsidy will be Rs 4 at most. So, Indian government should rather increase the subsidy to shift Indian agriculture to organic and ecological agriculture.

We may look at defence budgets of some countries. Defence budget of the USA is more than defence budgets of China, Russia, India, Japan, UK, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia all put together! Defence expenditure in the USA is more than $4000 per person per year. Surely this defence budget is meant for safeguarding US businesses, trade, profit, properties and US citizens. But it is also trade distorting as it pulls resources to unproductive, destructive and wasteful uses. It also places excess requisitions to selected defence companies who otherwise would not have got such high valued orders.  Additionally, promoting unnecessary use of natural resources, it put pressure on already strained resource bases, it supplies a good part of greenhouse gas emission from USA and US forces overseas, and it supplies the world with dangerous, poisonous and radioactive items.

So, India’s Doha stance has nothing to be embarrassed of. Rather, the US-EU shrewd move to divide the G-77 in this issue must be addressed properly.

published in Business Economics, 15-31 Sept, 2014

the author is a chemical engineer and environmentalist