6.1 Ideas
6.1.2 The science
2007 was a seminal year for climate politics, not only internationally but within India too. As shown in Figure 31 above, the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), which was much less equivocal about the instrumental role played by humans in the changes being wrought on the climate: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (meaning a greater than 90% probability) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations” (IPCC, 2007b: 39, 2.4). This was also the year that the IPCC and former US Vice-President Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” (Nobel Media AB, 2007).
The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was published between February and November 2007 in three volumes and a synthesis report. It provided an update on the science since the publication of the Third AR in 2001 and more analysis of the state of the climate, and projected impacts of changes. In AR4 the working groups remained the same as those in the Third Assessment Report (TAR), but whereas WGIII in the TAR had assigned no confidence levels, this time the WGIII authors assessed uncertainty qualitatively as a sense of the amount and quality of evidence, for example as
“high agreement, medium evidence” (IPCC, 2007b: 27). As in TAR, WG II assessed uncertainty quantitatively as a judgement of the underlying data, models or analysis in terms of confidence, but in addition it also attributed a certainty level to specific outcomes, for example extremely likely etc., which had up till then only been used by WGI authors (IPCC, 2007b: 27).
The headline finding was that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level” (IPCC, 2007b: 30, 1.1). Observed changes include rising global mean temperatures, increasingly severe weather events like storms and droughts, melting of snow and ice coverage, and rising sea levels. Between 1995 and 2006 eleven of the twelve warmest years on record since 1850 were recorded; this is in keeping with an increase in the linear trend from 0.6°C (between 1901 & 2000) (as per AR3) to 0.74°C (between 1906 & 2005) (IPCC, 2007b: 30, 1.1). Thus the synthesis concludes that there is “very high confidence” that the net effect of human activities in post-industrial (since 1750) times has been one of warming (IPCC, 2007a:37 point 2.2) and that it is “extremely unlikely” that the past 50 years of global warming can be
“explained without external forcing and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes alone”
(IPCC, 2007b: 39, 2.4). The report stated that “anthropogenic forcing”, i.e. human-induced climate change, contributed to: sea-level rise (very likely); increase in areas stricken with drought or more
heavy precipitation (more likely than not); increases in extreme daily temperatures (likely) and increased heat waves (more likely than not) and changes in wind patterns (likely) (IPCC, 2007b: 40- 41, 2.4).
The AR4 scenarios projected a continued increase in global emissions and a 0.2°C-per-decade increase in temperature. It also predicted that a continued rise in emissions would cause continued warming and could possibly induce changes in the 21st century that were very likely to be worse than changes noted to date in the 20th century (IPCC, 2007b: 45, 3.2). In addition, warming would create a feedback loop wherein the ability of the land and ocean to absorb carbon dioxide would be reduced, thereby increasing emissions in the atmosphere. Due to these types of feedback loops and the long-lived natured of atmospheric GHGs, warming and sea-level rise would continue for centuries, even if the concentrations of GHGs were stabilised immediately (IPCC, 2007b: 46, 3.2.3).
However, mitigation could lead to a variety of these effects being reduced, deferred or avoided, provided emissions reductions were not delayed, as delay would “significantly constrain the opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increase the risk of more severe climate change impacts” (IPCC, 2007b: 73, 6.3). A major contribution to stabilisation would be the adoption of sustainable development pathways, which would have the benefit of reducing vulnerability to climate change impacts (IPCC, 2007b: 60, 5.8). That said, the report also asserts that “[u]nmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt” (IPCC, 2007b: 73, 6.3).
For India, Working Group II noted an observed “0.68°C increase per century, increasing trends in annual mean temperature, warming more pronounced during post monsoon and winter”, while changes in precipitation had, in recent decades, taken the form of increased extreme rains in the north-west during the summer monsoon, but a lower number of rainy days along east coast (IPCC, 2007c: 475, Table 10.2). The projected impacts for India covered everything from crop yield, water availability to the spread of diseases. Rising temperatures of 0.5 to 1.5°C in winter would potentially decrease wheat and maize crop yields by between 2and 5% (IPCC, 2007c: 480) at the same time as increased urbanisation and population would result in increased demand for food and pressures on availability of cropland (IPCC, 2007c: 482). Rising sea levels as a result of climate change would increase the salinity of groundwater supplies, threatening crops and people (IPCC, 2007c: 483) – especially along coastal areas – well before inundating low-lying areas and highly populated deltas.
A one-metre sea-level rise would potentially inundate 5,763 km2 of India (IPCC, 2007c: 484), affecting millions of people living along the Indian coastline and potentially causing 0.37% GNP loss, as projected by the Stern Review (Rajamani, 2007).
_________________________________________________ Chapter 6. India in the wings: the second phase (2005-2010)
Average mean-temperature increases of even a small magnitude could have a substantial effect on the Indian monsoon and therefore affect agricultural yield with negative effects for livlihoods based on subsistence farming (Challinor et al., 2005; Turner & Annamalai, 2012). When combined with the projected decrease of winter precipitation this would result in a state of water stress by 2025, with water availability estimated to fall below 1000m3 per capita annually. Even as water was projected to become scarcer, precipitation patterns were likely to change to include more intense rain spread over fewer days, thus increasing the risk of flooding and reducing the chances of groundwater being replenished (IPCC, 2007b: 484). In addition, there was no forecast reduction in the risks of climate change attributable malnutrition and diarrhoea, while the risks of contracting dengue fever and dying of heat stress would be very high (IPCC, 2007b: 487). The Stern Review projected that these impacts would potentially weaken India’s economic growth and set progress in alleviating poverty back substantially, exacerbating extant poverty and underdevelopment (Challinor et al., 2005).
The IPCC at the time of the publication of AR4 was chaired by Rajendra K. Pachauri – an Indian academic and climate-thinker who trained in India and the USA. His national and international credentials enabled him to “[w]hip up – within domestic limits – enough emotions about it [AR4]
and that is where also mass media, large newspapers and others, picked it up…mass media groups in English which cater to the urban Indians mainly” (Sethi, 2014). This coverage seemed to gain significant momentum, “so they picked it up and other mainstream papers picked it up. Over time, they also realised not only the environmental implications of the subject, but also…economic implications. So they ratcheted up the coverage a lot and consequently led to, I think, a breathing of air into the idea of climate change; at least in the middle classes” (Sethi, 2014). Although this kind of media coverage no doubt focused awareness within government too, it is important to keep in mind that the IPCC has little prominence in India beyond a relatively small English-speaking elite. While it is not possible to trace a causal link to government actions like the creation of the PM’s Council on Climate Change (discussed below), the increased media attention would certainly have interacted with and reinforced government-level decisions and institution building, especially where these were seen as resulting from a reaction to international climate-regime-related events. An analysis of four major English dailies (Times of India, The Hindu, Hindustan Times and Indian Express) underscores the importance of COPs and the huge wave of publicity surrounding COP15 in particular: there were 691 stories in December 2009 (the month of COP15), compared with, for instance, 185 in December 2007 (around Bali’s COP13) or 52 stories in December 2005 (COP 11) (Boykoff et al., 2016). Another regression analysis of India media coverage of climate change in the Times of India and The Hindu found that coverage was not increased in reaction to long-term temperature changes or even specific extreme weather events. Feedback and events at the level of
institutionalised politics, the actions of international environmental non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace and WWF, and the occurrence of events like the annual UNFCCC COPs, however, did increase coverage (Schäfer, Ivanova & Schmidt, 2014).
At the time of publication of AR4, the Working Group II report contained a statement that Himalayan glaciers were not only retreating faster than glaciers in other parts of the world, but that they would, given a continuation of current trends, likely all disappear by 2035 (paragraph 10.6.2 in the Working Group II report). The Himalayan glaciers are regionally crucial as seasonal runoff releases meltwater into tributaries of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers supporting the agricultural and economic activities of approximately 500 million people (Kehrwald et al., 2008).
During the government review round of the AR4, the Indian government successfully argued against the inclusion of this point in the SPM but could not have the whole paragraph removed from the WGII report (Kutney, 2014). By 2009 this finding had been further questioned by glaciologists around the world and challenged by an Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) commissioned report on the state of the Himalayan glaciers, which posited that they did not show an abnormal rate of retreat (Raina, 2009). Ramesh went on to call the IPCC report “alarmist”, which in turn provoked IPCC chair Pachaurito call the MOEF report “voodoo science” (Bagla, 2009). By early 2010, “glacier-gate” had resulted in an apology by the IPCC (Black, 2010) and a review of the IPCC’s procedures (InterAcademy Council, 2010).
AR4 also contained the influential “Box 13.7” in the WGIII report (Gupta et al., 2007: 776), displayed in Figure 34 below. This box summarised the emerging scientific consensus that developing countries would need to contribute to emissions reductions in order for CO2e concentrations to stay at levels, which would provide a 50:50 chance of the earth’s temperature rise staying below the important threshold of 2 degrees Celsius. Under the KP, industrialised countries (Annex I) had committed to reduce GHGs 5% below 1990 levels in the (first) commitment period running between 2008–2012 (United Nations, 1998: article 3), but the developing countries were not committed to emissions reductions. The science in AR4, however, was highlighting that the KP reduction scenario of Annex I countries reducing between 0% and 25% from 1990 levels by 2020 combined with business as usual trajectory from NAI countries would put the globe on the path to concentrations of 650ppm CO2e and potentially dangerous temperature increases. For a “safer” level of 450ppm CO2e, Annex I countries would need to reduce emissions from 1990 levels by between 25% and 40%
by 2020 and NAI countries would need to undertake “substantial deviation from baseline” (Gupta et al., 2007).
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Figure 34: IPCC AR4 WGIII, Box 13.7 Source: Gupta et al. (2007: 776)
An article published in 2008 by the authors of Box 13.7 provided some elaboration of the terms
“substantial deviation from baseline”. Thus they calculated that in order to maintain a 450ppm CO2e level, Non-Annex I countries (as a group) would have to reduce their emissions by 15% to 30%
from the baseline. The less ambitious stabilisation goal of 550ppm CO2e would require a 0% to 20%
reduction and the 650ppm CO2e goal would allow for a range from a 10% increase to a 10%
decrease from baseline (Den Elzen & Höhne, 2008). These reductions would need to be in addition to the reductions made by Annex I countries.