All of you journalists are here on the occasion of the release of the latest book “An India that can say YES “, and we have Ms.Kalpana Sharma to preside over this session. Before that I would just add two lines about the CIP- The Citizes Initiative for Peace and the name indicates is here to work for Peace in this city also in the National and International context. Particularly last year in the after math of the 26/ 11, on 12th of December there was a Human Chain organized by the Citizen Initiatives of Peace, since then it is working in its own way, not at this same tempo but we do various sorts of programs, as a part of that we are happy to have Mr. Praful Bidwai here; over to Ms.Kalpana Sharma.
Ms.Kalpana Sharma: It is a pleasure to introduce Praful Bidwai; he is no stranger for most of the Journalist here and there in Mumbai from many years. Some of you, I noticed, are from another generation, you must have heard his name, probably you don’t know as much about him.
There are many things; Praful Bidwai at the movement is a columnist, he writes very widely, has written books. But I think as a journalist he is one of those who has been very consistent in the issues that he has been taking up. And as a person who has worked within mainstream and outside that is not an easy task I can tell you. The other thing that Praful has managed to do is; he has managed to combine an understanding of Science, Economics and Politics, so that the issues that is to be tackled whether it is Bhopal or the Tobacco growing in Andhra and the impact that it had the series of issues like he has taken up on the Environmental and Developmental plain or in terms of politics and his whole critic of Hindutva politics, his critic of the Nuclear issues has been one of the path breaking thing that he has done as a journalist in exposing the Nuclear Establishment in India which is like a top secret establishment which few can penetrate and yet Praful was one of the first actually who broke stories about the Nuclear Establishment in India. Sadly that is not the issue that we have enough written today. So in many ways I think Praful is probably one of the best qualified people to critic the whole issues of climate change, which we are getting bombarded with in the media from all sides. Some of it - informed and some of it is uninformed and lot of it is without any kind of perspective so, as a lead person for instance one day you get news that some scientists had said that Himalayan glaciers are receding and it is really going lead to catastrophic and the next day you hear that Jayaram Ramesh our Environment Minister saying that well we don’t really know there is a doubt about it, this has to be further investigated. One day you hear things about black carbon and how that is going to lead to an acceleration of the melting of the glaciers; and an another day you will hear climate skeptic saying well this is not really a proven fact. Every day there is for the fact that is mentioned there is a counterfact, what do you make of it. In fact Climate change it is now gone up by 2o and 1o - what is the impact? Are the Oceans really going to rise? Or there it is going to be really floods and cyclones and droughts, are the poor going to suffer or city is going to be swept out, is the Maldives going to be drowned all these kind of things that are floating around. There are many sorts of aspects that we have to make sense of it.
One of course science of it since as a journalist, the challenge really how to explain the science in an accessible way so, that the people actually can understand what this is about?
Second how do we explain the economic and the impact of this kind of scientific issues that come up? And third about the politics so, I think Praful in this book which I have looked at and to me it is one of the first thing that needs to be in an accessible style which is actually goes through all these things in a way that anybody can pick up and understand has made a very important contribution through the whole debate on climate change. But more than that I think what he is done which was you know one was waiting to do explain what is important for India and how we as Indians should respond to this whole thing. And once again the debate has got located within as an International diplomacy as a more issues of the rights and the wrong who is to blame and whose to blame for the historical accumulation of the CO2, in the atmosphere, which is lead to global warming. What should be the developing world or the third world what should be their position how wrong the northeast or how right we are etc. The second aspect of it is the whole per capita aspect, which is been discussed. How per capita actually India’s emissions are very low because of our population is large so, is that the just way we are looking at the whole issue climate change, each individual’s right to pollute the global carbon, how much can we pollute? And we have as much right as the American, can we pollute as much as them.
And I think that the third aspect which is hardly get discussed is really what about within Indian, what about two or three world that co-exist here? what about the extent which there are emissions enquire but for our own sake should we make some effort to control it, to make some change in manner in which we that as business? Do we exist of continuing to do with the business to believe that somebody else to blame what is happening? So what I found most interesting in Praful book about is that he has dealt with this third aspects in a very clear way, for instance he has blown the bogey of this whole thing of Nuclear Power been a cleaned alternative which is been talked about which is hardly anybody questioning but if you read the media we find hardly a single critical piece looking at the whole articles together a Nuclear power are really to answer for this problem of CO2 emission. He also as brought out which I personally appreciate very much and I have been writing about is the gender angle. To me, I find it almost comical like today black Carbon which he talk about has become an issue because it accelerates the melting the glacier is suddenly there is attention been paid something that has been a perennial problem billions of women who have been cooking in the stove that burns biomass whose lungs who’s body systems are getting poison because they are inhaling the smoke. Years and years ago there was a lot of talk of smokeless choolas they just disappeared and now people are suddenly discovered that there is a need for smokeless choolas because the think of global warming and I wanted to argue if you look at justice and equity, poverty as you have and gender then many of these decisions which we rooted in dealing with those aspect. And as the result of the environmental issues and economical and political issues of that end and therefore I am glad that you have actually brought up strongly which I really find an optics, which I generally been missing in the debate.
I have said enough, I would recommended that everybody gets holds of this book and reads it and we should find ways of getting this debated much more, regardless of what our primary concern is, ultimately this is a concern that will affect all of us. As citizens who are interested; who want to be intervene things that are happening in our country with aspects of climate change and India’s positions and what the Indian government ought to be doing is something that as we ourselves as a citizen are ought to be informed about and how to find ways out of intervening, and there is a very good way I think reading something like Praful book and generating debate on it. And the way, which Praful is going to talk about the issues that he has raised, and then we open it up for discussion.
Praful Bidwai: Thank you very much, it is a great pleasure to be amongst some very old friends and people whom I have known 30 years or so. It is an issue that I think concerns all of us that needs to be debated thoroughly, let me just out line the couple of very simple facts about climate change, which has become a menace; it is a threat not in the future; but is something looking upon us now. There are erratic patterns of weather everywhere, extreme events like snow in Dubai and so on so forth. And increase velocity frequency of cyclones and sea storms, very rapid melting of glaciers, and above all the collapse of arctic ice sheet, the greatest mass of ice and snow on planet Earth, this is actually coupled with rise in sea levels which is three times higher in the year than it was between the 60s to the 90s. So you have a gathering of all these effects, accelerating at a very rapid trend. This will tell the scientists to revise their estimates of the likely effects of Green House Gas emissions on the climate system in the world. Barely 2 years publication of the most authoritative report by the Inter-Governmental panel on climate change IPCC. The scientist told us that, most of the worst cases of phenomenon are likely to be exceeded in the coming decades. For instance what is happening to the arctic ice sheet is a phenomenon that is compounded by the melting of the ice sheet leading to greater thermal expansion of water in turn releases more heat then as ice reflects 80 of sunlight back, whereas the dark ocean water will absorb 95% and release only 5% that adds to the global warming effects. So you have a compounding, this is called a positive feedback but it should be called negative feedback. So we a have second order effect which is going to accelerate climate change. Two things that matter a lot – in terms of the effects of the growing concentrations of Green House Gases emissions which we have to feel which mean the reducing capacity of the nature's sinks. The oceans and forests today absorb almost more than half of worlds CO2 and also some other GHGs. As the oceans gets acidified, that you can actually measure the PH value the capacity to absorb CO2 is actually decreasing very visibly by something like 12% over the past 15 years and this is going to accelerate. Secondly the forests there are huge important thing to say but would say – as the earth warms up their capacity to absorb CO2 will decreasing more rapidly than in the case of the Oceans. For instance today the global temperatures are just 0.8o Celsius above the pre-industrial levels. The rate at which global warming is taking place they are likely to rise up to 4%. Some scientists are saying 5%, beyond 3% global warming forests will stop working as sinks of Carbon Dioxide. So you will have compounding of several events. War, the GHGs being spewed out, fewer fuel being sourced, climate change has to go in catastrophic changes which are actually going to tell upon each other – you will have a cascading effect. As the ice plates melt, as glacier will melts, as the sea levels will rise, again you are going to have displacement. According to estimates already something like 200million people have been badly affected by climate change and these numbers are likely to triple by 2020 or 2025 or so. Economic looses are enormous huge, agricultural productivity according to FAO will be very badly effected, to the extent of the third world loosing something like one forth of its food production due to rainfall, weather patterns and so on. So it is needless to say that this is going to lead to ecological refugees and migrant migration of large scale of crises will lead to serious security conflicts in the world. Already the question of who controls the mountains and who controls the river systems, how do we share river waters that are common across countries like India and Nepal, India and China and China and Pakistan have become very contentious issues. Rumors and reports which I need building a dam across the Brahmaputra, in that case what happens downstream, these are issues that we have ignored for the long time? They are going to come back to us leading to excess tensions would be between India and Pakistan; already there are protests over the sharing of Indus waters. These are truly some of the consequences. The worst consequence will be the human and social consequence – hunger-greater prevalence of diseases – vectors carrying diseases like the malaria – change in habitat you will have more and more mosquito breeding in north parts of the world including in parts of India such as the Himachal Pradesh and the Himalayan States in the north India which was earlier free from malaria will become the popular area to remix. Then you have the contamination of water, and notorious source of the highest proportion of deaths in India, it is going to get worse from the climate change. So what it is meant that is specific about the Indians , why should we concerned –
A) because we are vulnerable – India is highly vulnerable, if you draw a grade, India would be at no 2 and the small island states will be absolutely wiped out- Maldives and so on and those of the pacific Islands- 43 of these countries of which at least 24 of them could be wiped out in the next 25 years and this is serious prospects. If sea levels rise by 1 meter, something like 58 Million Bangladeshis will become refugees – where will they go, perhaps India and of course the Sunder bans – one of the most vulnerable eco-systems that India and Bangladesh share. We also have low lying deltas, rivers which are flood-prone, we have erratic monsoons as we could see in this year as there is a 23% deficient monsoon rainfall and you had simultaneous floods at the same time and droughts in large parts of the country.
Threat to bio-diversity – forests will disappear much more rapidly, the tree line will go up further up in mountain ranges, bio-diversity which is already under threat in India will deplete in the coming decades. These are very serious problems, but I think two most serious and immediate threats in which are largely in more India in media and in public perception are the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers. This is an in controversial scientific fact. The IPCC report confirmed it in 2007 in fact that says in 30 or 35 years there will be no Himalayan glaciers left towards the name.