Cyclone Amphan hit India during COVID. What more is expected in 2020?
Scenario 1
Little Girl Anjali, aged 7, dreamt of becoming a pilot one day. She wanted to study well and make parents proud. But on a fateful day in 2013, cyclone phailin ruined her home and broke her family. Her dreams, just like her home, lay in ruins. Anjali has been a victim of climate change.
Scenario 2
In the faraway hinterlands of Vidarbha in Maharashtra, Baswant Rao is mired in deep debt. He is hoping hgh against hope to have a crp this season, so that he can pay off his debts. As fate would have it, monsoon refused to visit his farm and his crops died a slow death, leaving Baswant Ra and his family in unspeakable misery. Baswant Rao, too, is a victim of climate change.
Like Anjali and Baswant Rao, climate change is wreaking havoc in millions of lives and is leading to destruction of our planet. It has become the greatest challenge to the survival of future generations. Therefore, this calls for a careful analysis of the problem.
In this essay, we will examine what exactly do we mean by climate change?’What are the driving factors and how it is posing a major challenge to future generations? In the end, we will explore solutions as to how we can overcome this challenge to build a sustainable, prosperous future.
CLIMATE CHANGE: MEANING
Climate change refers to the long term alteration in weather, temperature and rainfall patterns. There is strong scientific consensus (97%) that this change is purely driven by human actions. The trend for the past century has been unmistakable — the temperature is on the rise, rainfall more and more erratic and the majority of land increasingly under the threat of desertification and loss of biodiversity. So what are the reasons and consequences of climate change?
CLIMATE CHANGE: A DAUNTING CHALLENGE
Solid Facts: One of prime reasons that contribute to climate change is poverty and deprivation. Without adequate resources and means, the poor are compelled to adopt unsustainable practices. For example, slash and burn agriculture is prevalent mostly among tribes of Indian because they do not have access to fertilizers, farm equipment and weedicides. Similarly, the poor take to open defecation because of lack of access to toilets. From a nations’s perspective too, developing nations such as India, Nigeria contribute to climate change because of the absence of technology transfer from developed nations.
This has led to an unprecedented challenge to our biomes. As temperature rises consistently, it is leading to desertification of farmland and depletion of the ground water table. UN agencies estimate that by 2030, almost 60% of productive landmass face threats of desertification.
This poses a serious question on viability of food chains thus posing risk to future generations.
In the same view, as the glaciers melt at the poles, waters are rising to unprecedented levels — putting island nations such as pacific island nations, Maldives at the risk of complete submergence. Scientists project that the future refugee crisis will not be due to wars but due to climate change. If the Syrian refugee crisis tells us anything, it is that such unprecedented displacement of people is a major threat to social order and global peace in future.
ECONOMIC FACTORS: On the economic front, unfettered consumerism, globalisation and blind pursuit of development are posing severe threat to future generations.
Consumerism is the dogma that tells us to consume and buy more than our needs. Global retail chains such as Amazon, Walmart, KFC Etc, have made more and more people part of the consumerism frenzy.
It leads to severe strain on earth’s resources, and irredeemably pollutes its ecosystem through generations of waste. To illustrate, every year, an area equivalent to state of Maharashtra is cleared in Amazon forest to cater our “needs”
As forests are cleared and ecosystems disputed, it disturbs the carbon sinks of the earth. Thus we fall into the inevitable vicious circle of lack of carbon sinks leading to future rise in carbon dioxide, thus leading with increased levels of carbon dioxide, unchecked mining, we are witnessing rise in inequality and pollution level in the atmosphere and marine ecosystem.
For instance, today, New York square consumes more electricity in one week than Zimbabwe does in a whole year. Also the inevitable rise of respiratory diseases, lifestyle diseases are posing a major threat to public health.
ETHICAL FACTORS
Climate Change is also driven by being unethical. Mahatma Gandhi famously said that “our earth is not an inheritance from our ancestors, but a loan from future generations”
But what ethical example are we setting to our future generations?
Industrial farming of animals is one of the major drivers of climate change. Millions of gallons of waters and thousands of acres of food are being used not to feed the hungry, but to raise animals and slaughter them later.
With erratic climate patterns, rainfall and storms becoming the norm, such practices are vulnerable to destruction thus threatening not only is but also the future. Intensive farming strips the agricultural land of its life, rendering it useless for the future.
INTERNATIONAL FACTORS.
Climate CHange is a global phenomenon and no one nation can solve it. However, ever since the world came together at RIO in 1992 to draft the UN COnvention on Sustainable Development and subsequent climate protocols such as Kyoto, Montreal etc, the contribution of developed nations has been found wanting.
The United States, the world’s biggest polluter, never signed the Kyoto protocol and also recently pulled out of the Paris Climate agreement. The UN Climate Fund of $100 to be transferred to developing nations never took off.
This stubborn attitude of developed nations is posing a major challenge to the future. Developing nations also need to pursue development to lift their people out of poverty. Why must they be punished for what is largely a contribution of developed nations? Such an impasse, therefore, has the potential to debase the international community’s ability and will to take on climate change.
Having discussed how climate change is posing a major challenge to the future, let us turn our attention to how best we can solve it.
The world has a human development Index and even a happiness index, what we need right now is a sustainable living index. People must be made aware of their lifestyle’s impact on the ecosystem (carbon footprint) so that they take to a life characteristics by 3Rs — Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
There must be a worldwide movement to educate people on climate change and practices they can adapt to mitigate it. Innovative measures such as vertical farming (growing plants on buildings), using energy efficient buildings, switching to electric vehicles and solar energy can go a long way in making out lifestyles sustainable.
Finally, the international community must recognise the core principle of equitable climate emission norms that is — common but differentiated responsibility and obligation to transfer clean technology to developing and least developed nations. India must do its part in meeting emission norms as per INDC (Intended Nationally Determined COntribution) through effective implementation of National Solar Mission, National Mission on Electric Mobility and promoting sustainable agriculture practices.
The nations of the world have come together before to abolish practices such as slavery and collaborated in declaration of human rights for all. To meet the challenge of climate change, the need is now more than ever for the world to collaborate and ensure that we leave a planet to our future generation that is better than what we have inherited. Only then can we ensure that millions like Anjali and Baswant Rao have means to live a prosperous life.
