On September 20, over a million students skipped school in New York to demand climate action. The youth have emerged as a key voice urging climate action.

Pandey, 11, is from Haridwar in Uttarakhand, and had, in 2017, filed a case against the Indian government at the National Green Tribunal for failing to take action against climate change.

As countries reiterated old promises to control climate change, the youth, led by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, emerged as climate leaders. “I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” said Thunberg.

Every country, except the United States, has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Of those countries, 45 have agreed to an additional protocol that allows children to petition the UN directly about treaty violations.

Within that group of 45, Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey are some of the biggest emitters of the pollution that causes climate change. None of the five is on a path needed to keep the planet from heating over 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius by the turn of the century.

The petition by children comes on the heels of the latest report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that said global temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees Celsius since systematic record-keeping began in 1850, and by 0.2 degrees Celsius compared to 2011-2015.

“Climate change causes and impacts are increasing rather than slowing down,” said Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the WMO.

Antonio Gueterres, the UN secretary general, has praised Thunberg for her leadership, calling it “absolutely remarkable”. The UN credits the pressure from the youth for pushing climate action across countries.

“I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” said 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations Climate Action Summit 2019 in New York. 

Closer home, 600 million people living in the Indo-Gangetic plain stand to be affected, as global warming causes Himalayan glaciers to melt, threatening the steady flow of water to the Ganga and its tributaries, according to World Bank estimates.

Nearly 148 million Indians live in areas that are “severe hotspots” of climate change and are already witnessing large-scale changes, as a special IndiaSpend reporting project has chronicled. Climate change has led to a rise in extreme events like floods and heatwaves. It threatens India’s water security and could widen inequality.

Yet, at the summit, India only reiterated commitments already made several years ago.

India’s plan

Despite efforts, CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions continue to rise at a 2% growth rate. Currently China is the highest emitter of earth warming greenhouse gases (GHGs), followed by the United States (US), the European Union (EU) and India. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was one of more than 90 speakers at the climate summit. India will scale up renewable energy to 175 gigawatt (GW) by 2022 and to 450 GW in the coming years, he said, without giving a specific deadline. He also said that India was focussing on increasing the use of bio-fuels and was successful in providing 150 million families with clean cooking gas. He reaffirmed India’s commitment against single-use plastic but said nothing about reducing the use of coal, which has been flagged as a concern in fast-growing India and China. 

India is one of the few countries on track to meet the targets it set itself at the 2015 Paris summit and justifies the platform the UN has given for it to speak at the climate summit, said Leena Srivastava, outgoing vice-chancellor of Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) School of Advanced Studies, and co-chair of the Science Advisory Group of the UN Climate Summit. “If you look at the totality of it and not just one part of it then I think we deserve to be on the platform.” 

Countries need to do more 

China is the highest GHG emitter followed by the United States, European Union and India.
Source: CAIT Climate Data Explorer. 2017. Country Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute

“Science tells us that on our current path, we face at least 3 degrees Celsius of global heating by the end of the century,” said UN Secretary-General Guterres. He had set an ambitious target for those in attendance: reduce carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 and make it net-zero by 2050. 

Policies to lower GHG emissions must triple to meet the 2 degrees Celsius target and increase fivefold to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set by the UN, found the latest WMO report released on September 22 in New York.

“We are at risk of crossing several critical tipping points in the country systems,” said Srivastava of TERI. “There is also in the science community a greater recognition of the fact that climate change impacts are hitting harder and sooner than what climate assessments had estimated nearly a decade ago and that is something we need to worry about.” 

So far 66 countries have said they will step up their Nationally Determined Targets or NDCs–targets to reduce carbon emissions that each country sets for itself under the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

The UN had said that only countries with strong plans would be allowed to speak at the New York emergency climate summit, but most countries, including India, as we explained above, only reiterated old promises. 

“While countries were expected to come to the summit to announce that they would enhance their climate ambition, most of the major economies fell woefully short. Their lack of ambition stands in sharp contrast with the growing demand for action around the world,” said Andrew Steer, President & CEO, World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research organisation.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan repeated his earlier promise of planting 6 billion new trees.

The US President, Donald Trump, who was invited but had said he would skip the climate summit and send a delegation instead, made a brief appearance as PM Modi took to the stage. The US, one of the largest greenhouse emitters, has pulled out of the Paris Agreement.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke of her country’s prior commitment to plant a billion trees by 2028. She reiterated that New Zealand has also stopped issuing permits for offshore oil and gas exploration and aims for 100% renewable electricity generation by 2023. 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would phase out coal by 2038, an announcement she had made earlier this year. 

Businesses pledge 

Recognising the need to rope in corporations, the UN has made an effort to encourage them to set ambitious targets. Eighty seven major corporations–with a combined market capitalisation of over $2.3 trillion and annual direct emissions equivalent to 73 coal-fired power plants–are taking action to align their businesses with the Paris climate summit targets. 

Banks financing development projects and CEOs of companies said they would stop investing in coal. “Coal is out of the window for funding,” said Peter Hiliges, head, climate change at the German bank KfW that funds development projects. Oliver Bäte, the CEO of Allianz, an insurance company, reiterated their stand of not selling insurance to companies investing in coal. 

In a recorded message, Pope Francis called the post-industrial era the most “irresponsible” and questioned the political will to mitigate the impact of climate change.

No fossil fuel subsidies

The world temperature has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius since systematic record keeping began in 1850, and by 0.2 degrees Celsius compared to 2011-2015.
Source: United in Science report, WMO, September 2019.

Without climate action, human emissions are expected to peak well beyond 2030, according to the latest WMO report.

The UN has asked governments to end all subsidies to fossil fuel companies by 2020, and incentivise renewables. “After all, is it common sense to give trillions in hard-earned taxpayers’ money to the fossil fuel industry to boost hurricanes, spread tropical diseases, and heighten conflict?” Gueterres asked at the climate summit.

“Fossil fuel companies must pay to clean up the mess they have made. Rich country governments must stop giving handouts to those companies. Instead, they need to support communities on the frontline of the climate emergency rather than those who created the crisis in the first place,” said Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change at ActionAid, a South Africa based nonprofit.

The UN has also called for no new coal plants from 2020, asking countries to turn to renewable energy instead. India currently gets over 76% of its energy needs from coal, as IndiaSpend reported earlier. Only one-twentieth of its energy comes from renewables, although it is a fast-growing segment. PM Modi was silent on coal during his UN address.

India and China continue to open new coal plants despite the 2020 deadline set by the UN, as these countries have to balance the energy needs of the underserved population while meeting climate targets.

“Yes, there are plans to build coal-fired power plants but we are doing very well in terms of renewable energy expansion,” said Srivastava of TERI on India. 

(Shetty is a reporting fellow with IndiaSpend and reporting from the United Nations on a Reham al-Farra Memorial Journalism Fellowship.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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A unique campaign by the name Beyond Carbon launched by current UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, Michael Bloomberg, aims to close every U.S. coal-fired power plant by 2030 and halting the construction of any new natural gas plants. The former New York city mayor also committed to invest $500 million, in what is being hailed as the “largest ever philanthropic effort to fight the climate crisis.”

This announcement comes just a month after the American businessman committed $5.5 million to the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat to make up for the “funding gap left by the failures of the current Trump administration.”

An earlier campaign called Beyond Coal, launched by the Bloomberg Foundation and the Sierra Club in 2011 had a goal of closing at least one-third of the United State’s coal fired power plants. Beyond Carbon aims to follow on from the work done by the Beyond Coal campaign.

Michael Bloomberg, made the announcement while speaking to students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and said, “We’re in a race against time with climate change, and yet there is virtually no hope of bold federal action on this issue for at least another two years. Mother Nature is not waiting on our political calendar, and neither can we.”

Eight years into the Beyond Coal campaign and reportedly, 289 of the country’s 530 coal-fired power plants have been closed- more than half of the US fleet. Beyond Carbon aims to close the rest and halt the rush to build new power plants fuelled by natural gas.

A Bloomberg spokesperson told The New York Times that the new campaign will direct its funding towards environmental groups’ lobbying efforts in state legislatures, city councils and public utility commissions, as well as to elect politicians with pro-clean energy policies.

It is believed that the campaign’s goals exceed “even the most aggressive clean energy and zero-carbon mandates” set by states such Huawei, California, New York and others. However, it’s unclear how the push will affect either the coal industry or the current plans in much of the country to rely on natural gas fired electricity.

Bloomberg also added, “Politicians keep making promises in about climate change mitigation by 2050- hypocritically, after they are long gone, and no one can hold them accountable.”

Trump administration’s backing of coal industry is well known and reportedly the administration has attempted to use the authority of Department of Energy tp push federal regulators to provide out-of-market payments to “struggling” coal and nuclear plants.

“Beyond Carbon will respond to this crisis with the urgency and ambition that it requires, by taking the fight to the states and turbo-charging current on-the-ground efforts,” said Bloomberg while adding that they will employ the same advocacy, legal, and electoral strategies that have proven successful in retiring coal-fired power plants – which they have continued to close at the same rate under this administration.

 Bloomberg also claimed “This campaign will ensure that after the 2020 election, the next Administration inherits a country on its way to a 100 percent clean energy economy.”

The campaign aspires to work with grassroots organisations and frontline communities and will urge governments to pass climate and clean energy policies such as 100% clean energy laws. It will also look to expand low-carbon transit models.

Earlier, Bloomberg has been involved in elevating the global adoption of climate rish disclosure through the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), as well as bringing stories of community-led climate action to light through a book written with Carl Pop entitled Climate of Hope, and two documentaries entitled “From the Ashes” and “Paris to Pittsburgh”.

This initiative has left activists in other countries pondering if their leaders too will show such commitment for clean energy and climate change mitigation.
 
 
 

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Faridabad: A farmer inspects his crops after rains left them damaged.

If all countries managed to achieve all their climate commitments, the earth will still get 3°C warmer by 2100, twice the 1.5°C limit agreed upon in the Paris Agreement of 2015, according to the report released by Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a consortium of three research organisations that analyse climate-change policies of 32 countries.

The report was released on December 11, 2018, in the recently concluded 24th Conference of Parties (COP24) of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change. Representatives from 196 countries and European Union met in Katowice, Poland to set guidelines to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement. The countries signed the Katowice Climate Package after a two-week long discussion and negotiation.

“The guidelines contained in the Katowice Climate Package provide the basis for implementing the agreement as of 2020,” said Michal Kurtyka, economist and President of COP 24. But states already dealing with devastating floods, droughts and extreme weather made worse by climate change said the package lacked the bold ambition to cut emissions the world needed.

“Urgent adaptation needs of developing countries have been relegated to a second-class status,” said Wael Aboulmagd, Egyptian ambassador and chair of the G77 plus China negotiating bloc comprised of developing countries.

Countries clashed on how to recognise the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on 1.5°C and whether to clearly state the need for greater ambition to stay below this temperature limit, Carbon Brief, a UK-based website that covers climate science and climate and energy policy, reported on December 16, 2018. Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth are projected to increase with global warming of 1.5°C and increase further with 2°C, said the IPCC special report released on October 8, 2018.

Efforts Taken By Countries To Fight Climate Change

Source: Climate Action Tracker

CAT rates the policies of the countries it analyses in terms of the temperature rise they could lead to. None of the 32 countries featured in this analysis have policies that will keep global warming under 1.5°C. Only Morocco and The Gambia complied with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5°C.

Also, global CO2 levels rose in 2017 after a three-year break and greenhouse gas emissions reached a record high as per the Emissions Gap Report, 2018 by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released in November 2018. There is no sign this trend will reverse, the report noted, adding that nations would need to triple their efforts to meet the Paris Agreement targets.

Unless emissions are rapidly reduced, temperatures are expected to rise, leading to runaway climate change as early as next 10-12 years, predicted a November 2018 report by Climate Trends, a Delhi-based climate research firm. Events related to global warming such as floods, droughts, heat waves and cyclones will impact the world’s poor more and will push them into further poverty, stated the report, released on November 30, 2018, in New Delhi.

Poor worst affected by the impact of global warming
People exposed to natural hazards in low-income regions are seven times more likely to die, and six times more likely to be injured or displaced, compared to those in high-income regions, said the Climate Trends report.

Although absolute economic loss is higher in high-income areas, it is the poor who will lose a bigger part of their assets and income, as per a 2016 World Bank report titled, ‘Shock Waves, Managing The Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty’. Poor communities tend to hold most of their wealth in forms like housing or livestock which are less resistant to natural hazards. In a flood, for instance, houses in a slum are more likely to be destroyed than those in the more affluent quarters of a city.

Natural disasters also mean exposure to diseases and loss of livelihood for the poor.

Half of India could have moderate to severe climate hotspots
India is the 14th most vulnerable country to impacts of climate change; 2,726 people died in India in 2017 because of extreme-weather events. And such casualties are expected to rise in the future. Around 44.8% of India’s current population (600 million) live today in locations that could become moderate or severe climate hotspots by 2050 if climate change efforts remain at current levels, said a June 2018 World Bank report titled ‘South Asia’s Hotspots : Impacts of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards’

By 2050, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh will be the top two climate hotspots and the living standards in these states will reduce by 9%, predicted the report. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra take up the other three places in the top five.

India will witness two contrasting trends in the future: There will be more extreme rainfall which will lead to floods and a weaker monsoon which will lead to less rainfall over central India, said the report by Climate Trends. Such erratic rainfall patterns will affect the food security in the country where 56% of the farms are unirrigated.

Rural India, farmers will be more acutely affected
A 1°C rise in temperature reduces farmer incomes by 6.2% during the kharif (winter) season and 6% during rabi (monsoon) season in unirrigated districts, IndiaSpend had reported on March 22, 2018. And for every 100 mm drop in average rainfall, farmer incomes fall 15% during the kharif season and 7% during rabi. This will affect India’s food security, leaving its poor more vulnerable to rising food prices. It will also impact over half of India’s population which is dependent on the agricultural sector.

Climate change affects those living in rural areas more those in urban areas, said the Climate Trends report. This is because rural communities–with less access to market, capital and insurance–have fewer resources to cope with a disaster and rebuild themselves.

More than 100 million pushed into poverty
The impact of climate change is not just limited to those living in extreme poverty. By 2030, the income of the bottom 40% people will reduce in comparison to scenarios without climate change, predicted the 2016 World Bank report. More than 100 million people may be pushed into poverty, it added.

This widening of the wealth gap and the impact of climate change on worsening poverty will be much smaller in countries where development is rapid, inclusive and climate-informed, stated the report.

The 2016 World Bank Shock Waves report considered two scenarios–‘prosperity scenario’ and ‘poverty scenario’–to understand the effect of the world’s current choices in fighting climate change. Prosperity scenario assumes that extreme poverty in the world will have been reduced to less than 3% by 2030. The poverty scenario assumes that 11% of the population will continue to remain in extreme poverty.

The effects of climate change on poverty are significantly reduced in the prosperity scenario as compared to the poverty scenario, the study found.

Impact Of Climate Change On Poverty

Note: Increase in number of extreme poor people due to climate change in the high-impact climate scenario (% of total population)

Governments need to choose pro-poor and inclusive development policies to reduce the long-term threat of climate change, stated the report. Further, targeted actions in agriculture, health and ecological sectors to make those living in poverty less vulnerable to climate change may help reduce the wealth gap.

(Shreya Raman is a data analyst with IndiaSpend.)
 

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