Climate Change

Down To Earth Cover Story: Future shock

As the world continues to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the global temperatures could rise by 3°C by mid-century, says a soon-to-be-released report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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Study release and panel discussion on 'Climate change impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation in Indian Sundarbans

Sundarbans, straddling both Bangladesh and India, is a fragile ecosystem, and one which is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Despite the wealth of information available on the region, there is little understanding of how various impacts will hit and are hitting lives and livelihoods. In the Indian part of the Sundarbans, what compounds these impacts is the severe ‘development deficit’ that the region is saddled with.

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Deal won, stakes lost

Last fortnight we discussed the clandestine endgame afoot at Cancun to change the framework of the climate change negotiations to suit big and powerful polluters. Since then Cancun has concluded and a deal, in the form of a spate of agreements, has been gavelled into existence by the chair. Commentators and climate activists in the Western world are ecstatic. Even the critics say pragmatism has worked and the world has taken a small step ahead in its battle to fight emissions that determine its growth.

CSE at CoP-16, Cancun

Cancun draft pleases all, except a belligerent Bolivia! The deal circumvents all the contentious issues, erases historical debts, avoids legally binding global emission targets for wealthy nations, leaves the thorn of IPR in technology transfer mechanism for Durban CoP17 among others.

As CSE had warned, Cancun turned out to be compromises of epic proportions for the poorer countries, without any substantive returns from the developed nations. Lest Development and Millenium Development Goals be forgotten.

Politics, surely, has triumphed over science.

Liability, compliance must be mainstreamed in climate movements

Civil society needs to forge partnerships with lawyers, scientists and take legal recourse to enforce accountability

New Delhi, March 3: Next two years will be critical for the civil society and NGOs working in the field of climate change to ensure that the negotiations yield meaningful compliance and liability mechanisms.

The endgame at Cancun

As I write this, some 24 hours are left to finalise the agreement at the 16th Conference of Parties to the climate change convention being held in Cancun. At this moment it seems the predictable deadlock in talks will continue. Like all other global climate meetings, the world remains deeply divided on the matter of how to cut emissions of greenhouse gases that even today determine economic growth. Not much is expected to happen at the beach city of Cancun.

India capitulates at Cancun, betrays its poor; agrees to a weak and ineffective text that paves the way for ineffective emission reduction targets for the developed countries and scrapping of the Kyoto protocol.

Cancun, December 10, 2010: At about 5.00 pm Mexico time today, a text of an agreement for the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) made its appearance at the Moon Palace Hotel, the venue of the 16th Conference of Parties. For India and its millions of poor, this text can only be termed as a betrayal.

The Last Hurrah, soaked in 'spirit of compromise'

Negotiators have a menu too long on the last day, here how they are poised
By Aditya Ghosh

Look what’s swelling the sea

By:  Bharat Lal Seth

Use of groundwater accounts for 0.8 mm sea level rise

Groundwater is becoming important to sustain agriculture, industry and drinking water. But as we exploit aquifers, more water becomes part of the hydrological cycle. A recent study shows evaporation and precipitation of groundwater is responsible for a fourth of the annual sea level rise of 3.1 mm.