The Praful Bidwai Column
Don't hide behind the poor
Nothing exposes the bankruptcy of "GDP-ism," or obsession with gross domestic product growth, better than India's performance where it matters -- human development. The latest United Nations Human Development Report shows India has, in one year, slipped two notches in the Human Development Index to the pitiable rank of 128 among 177 countries.
Thanks to lopsided elite-oriented growth, India remains firmly within the bottom one-third of the world's nations in welfare. India's Human Poverty Index rank has fallen -- despite becoming the world's second fastest-growing economy.
This abysmal performance isn't explained by low incomes. Tajikistan, with a per capita income of 62 per cent lower than India's, has a higher HDI rank (122). The primary cause of India' low HDI is massive (mal)distribution of growth, and deliberate neglect of the underprivileged. We're condemning a majority to suffer life-long disadvantage.
Poor people in big Southern (developing) countries like China (HDI rank 81), Brazil (70), Mexico (52) and Indonesia (107), and even in smaller Malaysia (63), Thailand (78), Sri Lanka (99), Uzbekistan (113), and South Africa (121) have better life-chances than India's poor. Among 100 million-plus-population countries, only Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh are worse off than India.
This year's HDR should alarm us for another reason. It's devoted to climate change, the greatest menace to humanity after mass-destruction weapons. Global warming isn't an apocalypse waiting to happen. It's a tangible reality for millions.
Between 2000 and 2004, there were an average of 326 "climate shocks" a year. These annually affected some 260 million, more than double the number in the first half of the 1980s. People in the South are 79 times more likely to suffer droughts, floods and storms.
Monsoon floods and storms this year displaced 14 million people in India, 7 million in Bangladesh and 3 million in China. In sub-Saharan Africa, 10 million were affected by drought and 2 million by flooding.
As the world drifts towards a "tipping point" -- beyond which corrective action becomes impossible, -- it'll leave hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity and livelihood losses. Tragically, the poor, who are least responsible for global warming, are forced to bear its biggest human costs. This is doubly unjust.
Unless arrested, climate change will lead to a breakdown of agricultural systems, with 600 million more people facing malnutrition, an additional 1.8 billion facing water stress, and over 330 million people in coastal areas confronted with displacement.
Climate change is not only depressing crop yields, lowering food security and increasing human distress but it's also forcing vulnerable people to adopt harmful coping strategies such as cutting back on food intake, withdrawing children from school, and reducing spending on health.
Children born in Ethiopia in drought years are 36 per cent more likely to grow up stunted than those born during normal weather conditions. These trends threaten to reverse human development in the already-vulnerable societies.
The HDR stresses the imperative of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2°C over the pre-Industrial Revolution period. It also sharply criticises United States and European Union policies on global warming, and argues that they cannot avert dangerous climate change.
The OECD countries are failing to meet even the modest targets for cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol: 5.2 per cent reduction over 1990 by 2008-2012. So meagre are these targets that it'll take 30 Kyotos to stabilise the global climate.
The worst culprits are US and Australia who haven't ratified the Protocol, but recklessly increased emissions. (Mercifully, Australia's new Labour government is changing this.) Even the EU has on average achieved emission cuts of only 2 per cent instead of its 8 per cent commitment under Kyoto.
The report advocates a "twin-track" approach to combat global warming, which combines stringent mitigation with adaptation to climate change. Besides regulatory standards, it demands carbon taxation, development of low-carbon energy technologies, and reductions in profligate consumption of fossil fuels.
It estimates that the cost of stabilising emissions can be limited to 1.6 per cent of global GDP -- less than two-thirds of current world military spending.
It proposes that the developed countries should cut their emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. The Southern countries should cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2050, starting 2020.
It proposes that the South must be supported through finance and transfer of low-carbon technologies, and recommends $86 billion a year for "climate-proofing" the South's infrastructure.
The Indian government bristles at the suggestion that the South should accept emission cuts because historically, the North's industrial activities are responsible for global warming.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's maximum offer is to keep India's per capita GHG emissions less than those of the North. India's entire effort at the climate conference in Bali in Indonesia has been devoted to averting GHG capping/cutting targets. It has teamed up with China and Pakistan for this.
This won't do. China and India are imitating the North in its profligate energy and luxury consumption even as they profit from the irrational and iniquitous carbon trading system.
Chinese and Indian emissions are rising three to four times faster than the world average. China will soon replace the US as the world's largest emitter. India has already overtaken Japan to become the world's Number Four.
It's despicable that governments should hide behind the poor to defend elite interests. Citing per capita emissions makes no sense in our deeply unequal societies where the rich enjoy Northern levels of consumption while the majority live frugally.
To acquire global credibility and respect, China and India must show moral clarity and a universal vision. At Bali, they must facilitate the signing of a successor convention to Kyoto, and join efforts to cap and reduce emissions.
Global warming calls for new, radical remedies. If the world is to cut overall consumption while improving living standards for the poor, it cannot rely upon current development models and methods, or on rules governing trade, technology, investment, and finance.
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments