Painting by Michel Granger
At a time when half the country is recovering from a flood fury, especially in Kerala where massive landslides following incessant rains have taken a huge human toll; and much of the remaining half of the country is reeling under a continuing drought, the latest special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) titled ‘Climate Change and Land’ couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. The 1,300 page report, a summary of which was released last week, presents a lot of scary facts, which were being talked about, but perhaps needed an official endorsement.
Speaking to The Guardian, Dave Reay, a professor at the University of Edinburgh who was an expert reviewer for the IPCC report summed it up: “This is a perfect storm. Limited land, an expanding human population, and all wrapped in a suffocating blanket of climate emergency. Earth has never felt smaller, its natural ecosystems never under such direct threat.” Although integral to the discussions on climate change, the direct relationship land has with climate change had never been so loudly emphasised. It however restrains from making any policy recommendations and that in my thinking is its biggest drawback. To illustrate, if fossil fuel subsidies have grown to $ 400 billion in 2018, unless a phase out programme accompanied by adequate public sector investments in sustainable food production systems or land management etc is provided, it is futile to expect any meaningful contribution towards protecting the climate from going haywire.
The report says that since the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) the global mean land surface temperature (till 2006-15) has almost doubled when compared with the global mean surface temperature, which is the average for land and ocean temperatures. While the land surface temperature has increased by 1.53 degree C, the rise in the mean land and ocean temperatures had hovered around 0.87 degree C. In other words, this report shows that to cap the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees, the world will have to ensure that any further rise in the land surface temperature is kept under control. Further, global warming has already brought shift in climatic patterns in many parts of the world, including expansion of the arid climate zones and contraction of polar zones, and has also unleashed extreme weather fluctuations, inducing long dry spells, prolonged heat period, heavy floods, enhanced frequency of cyclones, permafrost thaw thereby resulting in massive land degradation, loss of biodiversity and posing a threat to global food security. The gloom that has descended following the rapidly changing climatic patterns has to be contained by rapidly evolving policy fixes.
Recent studies have shown that ever since the time man started recording temperatures, July has been the hottest month. The Himalayas are losing more than one and a half foot of ice every year since the year 2000, and Swiss glaciers have lost more than 0.8 billion tonnes of snow and ice in the month of June. While the IPCC report says that cultivated soils are being lost at a rate 100 times faster than it is being formed (and 10-20 times in no till areas), a major study by ETC Group had earlier shown that nearly 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost every year to erosion, with damages costing Rs 400 billion a year. In another report, published in Scientific American, a UN official was quoted as saying that if the current rate of degradation continues, the world’s top soil would be gone in 60 years.
Global food production systems, and that includes, agriculture, forestry, livestock and other land uses account for 13 per cent carbon dioxide, 44 per cent methane and 82 per cent nitrous oxide emissions, accounting for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. However this appears to be quite a scaled down estimate from another UN report on the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) for Agriculture and Food released last year which pegged greenhouse gas emissions from the same activities to be somewhere between 49 to 57 per cent. Nevertheless, the challenge to reduce emissions without any negative fallout on food security remains paramount. It has socio-economic as well as political implications.
The IPCC report does suggest sustainable agricultural practices, increasing crop productivity, moving away from bio-energy programmes, and for shifting dietary preferences from meat based to plant based foods among measures that could make a significant dent on the greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, almost a quarter of the food produced, is either lost or wasted. Several studies earlier have pointed to the enormous damage resulting from food wastage and in turn the environmental footprint it leaves behind. If food wastage was a country, it would have ranked third in greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the food that goes waste in US for instance is good enough to meet the needs of sub-Saharan Africa.
Between 1961 and 2013, an additional 1per cent of world’s drylands had turned into drought. This however cannot be entirely blamed on climate change. In India, for instance, increasingly the drylands are getting into the drought zone because of a large number of water guzzling hybrid crops that are cultivated with impunity. Common sense tells us that drylands need crops which require less water. But it is just the opposite – crops that require more water are being grown in water scarce regions for several decades now. In Maharashtra, 76 per cent of the available irrigation is consumed by sugarcane alone, which occupies only 4 per cent of the cultivable area. The remaining 96 per cent of the crops that are cultivated are therefore faced with a terrible water stress which has little to do with global warming.
The IPCC report clearly mentions desertification, deforestation, industries, and urbanisation to exacerbate global warming. It also lists draining wetlands to be responsible for releasing carbon dioxide back into atmosphere. Kerala is particularly a victim of flawed policies that have drained wetlands, and by encouraging rampant quarrying in fragile areas of Western Ghats turned it vulnerable to landslides. In a quest for higher economic growth, natural resources are being ruthless devastated.
IPCC report comes up short. The Tribune. Aug 21, 2019
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/ipcc-report-comes-up-short/820230.html?fbclid=IwAR0mPWda_EGCkdvlQIqiY0poYObXr8j2zggrpmOmwT7nnDhJwuqDdqE57X0
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