Oped»
On thin ice
- LONDON CALLING
NOV 19 - When Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh a couple of months ago labelled the issue of Himalayan glaciers melting a western propaganda, his critics wondered what he was up to.
They raised their eyebrows even more when the state minister later kicked a controversy proposing a change in India’s position on climate change.
The dust had hardly begun to settle after Ramesh backtracked on his proposal that India should agree to mandatory carbon cuts, his ministry came up with what it called a discussion paper that trashed the Himalayan glacial meltdown theory.
His critics, including those in the Indian establishment, did notice the unbelievably super swiftness with which he brought out the document after branding the glacier issue a western agenda.
And so, as expected, this was what the paper said: Himalayan glaciers, although shrinking in volume and constantly showing a retreat front, have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat, of the order that some glaciers in Alaska and Greenland are reported.
“It is premature to make a statement that glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating abnormally because of global warming.”
Noticeably, while it brought the discussion paper out, the Indian Ministry of Environment said the views in the document were not necessarily endorsed by it.
While Minister Ramesh chose this to say in the same paper: I invite you to read and challenge the ideas presented in these papers.
Whether anyone will challenge the document and prove it wrong remains to be seen.
But what is already clear is that the paper could weaken the say of the least developed and climatically vulnerable countries with Himalayan ecology like Nepal.
Meltdown triggering floods, glacial lake outburst and causing rivers to run dry in the long run is the main, and often the only, issue Nepal has been raising when it comes to climate negotiations.
With experts, one after another study and even the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change having said the same about Himalayan glaciers, it is quite natural for politicians so pre-occupied with politicking to harp on it.
But if what the Indian discussion paper says makes its way into international negotiations like Copenhagen summit next month and waters down the Himalayan glacial retreat issue, how will countries like Nepal make itself heard?
Even as the document is being called a discussion paper, the Indian environment ministry that brought it out has not said otherwise about the state of glaciers. Minister Ramesh has rather dismissed the glacial retreat threat. Add to that New Delhi’s not-at-all-moving plan of combating climate change through regional cooperation.
“We will need to exchange information with the South Asian countries and countries sharing the Himalayan ecology,” read the Indian climate change national action plan that was launched two years ago. All that has happened since is the routine meetings of SAARC environment ministers in which they always talk the talk.
For all the talks about China-India deal on climate matters, the two have failed to agree on conducting joint glacial researches. Chinese media has blamed New Delhi for not allowing such a study in the Indian Himalayas.
Whatever the fact, all indications are that India will not make glacial retreat an issue in Copenhagen.
The point I am pressing here is not whether that would be the right thing for the Indian government to do. Nor is it about whether glaciers are actually retreating or not. This would be a separate debate altogether.
What should be a matter of worry for Nepal is what if the issue of retreating Himalayan glaciers loses ground — whether or not they actually are retreating — in climate negotiations.
Because if it does, the country will have almost no case to crank up in such meets. So engrossed the country has been with the issue of glacial meltdown in regard to climate change all these years.
Erratic monsoon unleashing devastating floods, persisting droughts, failing crops and wildfires, rising temperature harming flora and fauna are, experts say, few of the climate change impacts Nepal has begun to see already.
And with the fresh findings of Global Carbon Project, an international group of climate scientists, that temperature rise at present rate is heading towards six degrees Celsius above pre-industrial period, such impacts are bound to multiply.
But no one talks about them as there hardly has been any study, nor are there any proper official records. But these are some of the real issues that need to be dealt with.
This is where the issue of rapid glacier retreat could have been of some help. Irrespective of whether it is happening or not, it could at least draw the world’s attention to climate change impacts Nepal has had to suffer. Himalayas, after all, do sell on the global stage.
But if the Indian discussion paper scuppers that, it would then become a Himalayan task for Nepal to make its climate case.
Will the newly formed group of eleven climatically vulnerable countries — V11, as they have begun to call themselves — which Nepal has joined come to the country’s rescue?
But, more importantly, will the loose alliance of the least developed and developing countries, the G77 plus China allow it to?
“When the V11 met in the Maldives recently, Sudan (the present chair of the G77+China) was there as an uninvited guest,” said a noted environment commentator not wanting to be named. “Clearly, it was to make sure that the V11 did not out step the G77 boundary.”
(The writer is a BBC journalist based in London)
Navin Singh Khadka
navin.khadka@gmail.com
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