A breeze stirs the silence at Joshua Tree National Park as a red-tailed hawk takes flight from the spiky arm of one of the namesake plants in search of breakfast.
It's a scene that national parks protector Mike Cipra has witnessed many times. Still, he can't contain his enthusiasm on this early morning outing, despite the gloomy topic he's discussing with a visitor -- the probable extinction of the Joshua tree in the park that bears its name.
The ancient plants are dying in the park, the southern-most boundary of their limited growing region, scientists say. Already finicky reproducers, Joshua trees are the victim of global warming and its symptoms -- including fire and drought -- plus pollution and the proliferation of non-native plants. Experts expect the Joshuas to vanish entirely from the southern half of the state within a century.
A breeze stirs the silence at Joshua Tree National Park as a red-tailed hawk takes flight from the spiky arm of one of the namesake plants in search of breakfast.
It's a scene that national parks protector Mike Cipra has witnessed many times. Still, he can't contain his enthusiasm on this early morning outing, despite the gloomy topic he's discussing with a visitor -- the probable extinction of the Joshua tree in the park that bears its name.
The loss would be devastating, said Cipra, who is California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that evaluates conditions at national parks and lobbies for their preservation.
"Joshua trees aren't just iconic pictures on a postcard. They're essential to a functioning ecosystem," he said. "We're going to be losing a lot of what makes this place special
Monday, June 22, 2009
Missing the river for the dam
Two million people have been displaced by the flooding of the river Kosi in Bihar following the breach of the river’s eastern embankment in Nepal on August 18, 2008. The breach, just 12 km upstream of the India-Nepal border, started out measuring 400 m, but is now almost 1.7 km long. Around 800 villages in Madhepura, Supaul and other districts have been affected.
Each major flood in Bihar causes a flurry of aerial surveys, relief packages and evacuations. Each major flood also results in a reiteration of the old demand for a high dam in the upper reaches of Nepal, a demand that Kathmandu rejects, arguing that neither a high dam nor its exaggerated benefits will favour Nepal.
The truth is that Delhi has got its flood action plan consistently wrong over the years, and so has Patna. Shockingly, it is the flood control measures themselves that have over the years turned north Bihar into a watery grave for millions. Over 2 million people are permanently trapped between the flood control embankments which have been built along the Kosi river since the early-1950s (see a story providing the background on this at http://infochangeindia.org/200501156863/Disasters/Related-Features/Abandoned-victims-of-the-Kosi-embankments.html). An estimated 8 million people are faced with acute water-logging outside of the embankments. Strait-jacketing the silt-laden Kosi has actually caused flood-prone areas in the state to increase threefold since independence, from a low of 25,00,000 hectares to a high of 68,00,000 hectares today. No less than 73% of the entire land mass of Bihar remains flood-prone.
The present deluge upstream of the Bhimnagar barrage on the Kosi has only underlined the follies of the embankments.
In March 2008, an independent fact-finding mission set out to investigate the perpetual flooding cycle of north Bihar. I was part of that team. The dilapidated state of the Bhimnagar barrage could not convince us that it could carry its designed discharge of 950,000 cusecs. The east and west bank canals emanating from the barrage are choked by silt, their combined irrigation capacities reduced by two-thirds on account of the defunct silt ejectors.
Sharing preliminary findings with the press, the fact-finding mission had warned: “..not only are floods in Bihar manmade but the worse has yet to come should the political economy of flood control continue to promote ‘embankments’ as the only solution to the scourge of floods.
Over 3,465 km of embankments have been built in Bihar since 1952. More are in the offing; a Rs 792 crore package to tame the Bagmati has been approved and another proposal to embank the tributaries of the Mahananda at an estimated cost of Rs 850 crore has been planned. The business of embankment-building reflects the politician-bureaucrat-contractor nexus at its best.
The efficacy of these embankments has always been suspect. Engineer Captain F C Hirst, in 1908, had commented, “in recent times, on the left bank of the Kosi, in the Purnea district, private enterprise has copied the work of the makers of the Bir Band, giving temporary relief which, as will be seen later, is probably a menace to future welfare”. This century-old observation has proved prophetic.
Embankments may work on rivers that are stable and that carry a moderate silt load. The Kosi, in contrast, is a meandering river with maximum available energy-producing currents. Having drifted 160 km in the past 250 years, the natural tendency of the meandering Kosi disproves the traditional 'steady-state' equilibrium approach of the engineers. Once embanked, the river’s incredible silt load only adds to its defiant nature.
The embankments have proven counterproductive in the case of the Kosi, arresting the natural dispersion of sediment on the floodplains. This increases deposition, raising the level of the riverbed and later causing the breaking of the embankments, with resultant floods and water-logging. Thanks to the embankments, the Kosi riverbed has risen by 12-15 feet on account of silt deposition that otherwise would have been spread over the floodplains.
It is erroneous to assume that north Bihar is geographically positioned to remain flooded. Conversely, it’s the state’s arrogance and misplaced faith in engineering that has stopped these rivers from performing their natural task of land-building. Without the nurturing role of these rivers, Bihar would never have become the centre of knowledge.
Can a high dam over the Kosi reverse Bihar’s misfortune? Like the embankments, the chances of a Rs 35,000 crore project (estimated cost of 269 mt high dam) going wrong are high. While silt deposition by the river is one major issue impacting any dam’s lifespan, its proposed location in Nepal’s Brahashetra will capture only 78% of the river’s catchment, leaving a significant 22% of the flows dangerously unattended.
What then is the option? Having failed to tame the rivers Rhine and Meuse, Dutch hydrologists have come to the conclusion that absolute safety from flooding cannot be guaranteed by technical-infrastructural measures. Adopting spatial flood protection measures, they are now implementing a ‘room for the river’ approach, with broad political support. It is measures like these that need to be negotiated with Kathmandu, but not before the political lobbies of Patna (and Delhi) get rid of their misconceptions.
Each major flood in Bihar causes a flurry of aerial surveys, relief packages and evacuations. Each major flood also results in a reiteration of the old demand for a high dam in the upper reaches of Nepal, a demand that Kathmandu rejects, arguing that neither a high dam nor its exaggerated benefits will favour Nepal.
The truth is that Delhi has got its flood action plan consistently wrong over the years, and so has Patna. Shockingly, it is the flood control measures themselves that have over the years turned north Bihar into a watery grave for millions. Over 2 million people are permanently trapped between the flood control embankments which have been built along the Kosi river since the early-1950s (see a story providing the background on this at http://infochangeindia.org/200501156863/Disasters/Related-Features/Abandoned-victims-of-the-Kosi-embankments.html). An estimated 8 million people are faced with acute water-logging outside of the embankments. Strait-jacketing the silt-laden Kosi has actually caused flood-prone areas in the state to increase threefold since independence, from a low of 25,00,000 hectares to a high of 68,00,000 hectares today. No less than 73% of the entire land mass of Bihar remains flood-prone.
The present deluge upstream of the Bhimnagar barrage on the Kosi has only underlined the follies of the embankments.
In March 2008, an independent fact-finding mission set out to investigate the perpetual flooding cycle of north Bihar. I was part of that team. The dilapidated state of the Bhimnagar barrage could not convince us that it could carry its designed discharge of 950,000 cusecs. The east and west bank canals emanating from the barrage are choked by silt, their combined irrigation capacities reduced by two-thirds on account of the defunct silt ejectors.
Sharing preliminary findings with the press, the fact-finding mission had warned: “..not only are floods in Bihar manmade but the worse has yet to come should the political economy of flood control continue to promote ‘embankments’ as the only solution to the scourge of floods.
Over 3,465 km of embankments have been built in Bihar since 1952. More are in the offing; a Rs 792 crore package to tame the Bagmati has been approved and another proposal to embank the tributaries of the Mahananda at an estimated cost of Rs 850 crore has been planned. The business of embankment-building reflects the politician-bureaucrat-contractor nexus at its best.
The efficacy of these embankments has always been suspect. Engineer Captain F C Hirst, in 1908, had commented, “in recent times, on the left bank of the Kosi, in the Purnea district, private enterprise has copied the work of the makers of the Bir Band, giving temporary relief which, as will be seen later, is probably a menace to future welfare”. This century-old observation has proved prophetic.
Embankments may work on rivers that are stable and that carry a moderate silt load. The Kosi, in contrast, is a meandering river with maximum available energy-producing currents. Having drifted 160 km in the past 250 years, the natural tendency of the meandering Kosi disproves the traditional 'steady-state' equilibrium approach of the engineers. Once embanked, the river’s incredible silt load only adds to its defiant nature.
The embankments have proven counterproductive in the case of the Kosi, arresting the natural dispersion of sediment on the floodplains. This increases deposition, raising the level of the riverbed and later causing the breaking of the embankments, with resultant floods and water-logging. Thanks to the embankments, the Kosi riverbed has risen by 12-15 feet on account of silt deposition that otherwise would have been spread over the floodplains.
It is erroneous to assume that north Bihar is geographically positioned to remain flooded. Conversely, it’s the state’s arrogance and misplaced faith in engineering that has stopped these rivers from performing their natural task of land-building. Without the nurturing role of these rivers, Bihar would never have become the centre of knowledge.
Can a high dam over the Kosi reverse Bihar’s misfortune? Like the embankments, the chances of a Rs 35,000 crore project (estimated cost of 269 mt high dam) going wrong are high. While silt deposition by the river is one major issue impacting any dam’s lifespan, its proposed location in Nepal’s Brahashetra will capture only 78% of the river’s catchment, leaving a significant 22% of the flows dangerously unattended.
What then is the option? Having failed to tame the rivers Rhine and Meuse, Dutch hydrologists have come to the conclusion that absolute safety from flooding cannot be guaranteed by technical-infrastructural measures. Adopting spatial flood protection measures, they are now implementing a ‘room for the river’ approach, with broad political support. It is measures like these that need to be negotiated with Kathmandu, but not before the political lobbies of Patna (and Delhi) get rid of their misconceptions.
Green capitalism
Environmentalists and activists have often been criticised for opposing so-called development projects and not having anything constructive to offer in their place. The late Anil Agarwal, founder of the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, underlined this by pointing out that the greens opposed dams, coal-based thermal power stations and nuclear plants. But, he noted, the dilemma remained: How is a developing country like India going to obtain electricity to run a modern economy?
The question becomes all the more significant in the context of the contemporary “LPG” ideological framework -- liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. How does one combat this juggernaut, which sees all economic growth as an end in itself, no matter that it excludes huge swathes of the population?
Some answers have been provided by the Pune-based Society for People’s Participation in Ecosystem Management. Since 1991, it has been working on participatory irrigation management and has since broadened its activities to include watershed management, gender and livelihoods, water conflicts and river basin studies. Its mentor is K R Datye, who, for 25 years, worked as an irrigation engineer but then turned to exploring various alternative technologies. At the end of March, likeminded activists and academics paid tribute to Datye, who is now 82, by organising a two-day conference on his seminal ideas at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai.
The key word in the deliberations was the emphasis on a “regenerative” economy, as opposed to a “degenerative” one based on fossil fuels and outmoded notions of industrialisation. In Datye’s view, the 73rd constitutional amendment is a vital step forward. He bases his alternative development paradigm on the gram sabha, the smallest unit of self-governance in the village. If one unit in a village consisted of 100 households, the first task was to demarcate its boundaries, including common lands, and to evaluate its resource base. The objective is to establish what entitlement such a unit has to that most previous resource -- water.
The village as a whole, typically, may consist of 400 households. The area suitable for producing crops and biomass (organic matter) may be 800 hectares, while the village would have a watershed extending over 1,000 hectares. After meeting these vital needs, there would be sufficient land available for irrigated commercial crops, dryland cultivation, pastures, grass, shrubs and trees. The average availability of water would be estimated by adding up the surface water, groundwater as delayed run-off and groundwater storage. Half this water, in a regenerative economic model, would be allocated to a 100-household gram sabha for priority use.
But, as has been pointed out time and again in any discussion on rural society, it is far from being homogeneous. Caste and class intervene at every stage to make any equitable distribution of natural resources that much more complicated. This is why Datye and his acolytes refer to the “resource poor” among villagers who, again typically, may comprise 20-40 households out of the 100 in a gram sabha. These are jobless artisans, nomadic and denotified tribes, destitute women and project-affected people awaiting resettlement. They are also entitled, as a priority, to water for domestic use and their cattle.
Proponents of this approach recognise the need to boost land productivity without resorting to capital- and resource-intensive inputs. They believe that this can be achieved by boosting the production of biomass, celebrated in Datye’s book Banking on Biomass. This is radically different from the environmentally destructive production of ethanol and biofuels throughout the world, almost all of which either divert land from food crops or are dependent on expensive inputs.
A fifth of the area available for a 100-household unit could be used to grow wood, bamboo and fibre. Around 15% could be devoted to what is known in foresters’ jargon as “non-timber forestry”. Foodgrain would comprise a fifth, as would sweet sorghum, pulses and fodder 10%, and 4% devoted to organic vegetables. Nitrogen-fixing varieties could be grown on another 10%. The output would be over 1,100 tonnes of biomass a year. Such a gram sabha would be entitled to preferential employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which entitles a person to 100 days of paid work in a year.
K J Joy, who with Suhas Paranjpye is a close associate of Datye’s, breaks down these figures and arrives at a scenario where a poor family of five would produce 18 tonnes of biomass a year. In addition, it would produce 3 tonnes of surplus biomass “for value-addition -- the basis for a transition to a dispersed industrial system”. This surplus consists of fruits, vegetables and other high-value agricultural produce, which is perishable. Instead, other produce like bamboo, fibres, oils or medicinal plants are a valuable alternative. Such an option, it should be noted, is in direct contrast to Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which represent a highly concentrated, egalitarian form of virtual forced industrialisation.
In this situation, there is a distinction between “assured water”, which is the minimum required to guarantee livelihoods and should be 80% dependable, and “variable” water, which could include supplies from outside the area. Joy explains the position succinctly: “We need to use the assured component of water to provide an equitable basic service for all, and utilise the variable component to provide water as an economic service to the enterprising.” If the variable water is used to grow perennial tree species, which produce bulk biomass, these serve as a fallback when the seasonal farm crop fails, as is unfortunately only too often. Indeed, with climate change, such fluctuations in weather are going to become more frequent. The biomass produced per family represents both an energy and capital stock.
Following pioneers such as the late Vilasrao Salunkhe’s pani panchayats, as well as the phad irrigation system in Maharashtra, Datye believes in delinking water rights from land rights. It is this ideology that has inspired movements in southern Maharashtra for the equitable distribution of water, which began with the well-known Bali Raja dam, constructed by local people with their own labour (Bharat Patankar, a veteran of that struggle, was present at TISS). The idea is that all those who depend on land for their livelihood should get a certain minimum amount of water, which includes farmers, landless labourers, artisans, women, dalits, etc, irrespective of their holdings.
The concept does not mean that all the water is divided equally among all the villagers. The basic requirement is for drinking and domestic use, for livestock, for production (agriculture, processing, etc) to meet consumption as well as to generate income for needs that are mediated by the market (like education, health and recreation). In a typical family, this works out in the region of 6,400 cubic metres of water per year. The basic service is a right; only after meeting this minimum should water be provided as an “economic service” for production for the market. As Joy explains, this is roughly equivalent to treating the first component as a social good and the second as an economic good.
Water has to be priced. The basic service is at an affordable cost, primarily to recover operation and maintenance costs. The second could be priced at full recovery, recovering the capital costs over time. Such an approach would address the opposing viewpoints about pricing water. The World Bank prescribes full cost recovery, whereas the Left believes it is a social good and opposes privatisation. According to Datye, there is a third strand that tries to bridge the two polarised positions.
This would mean that the basic service has necessarily to be subsidised, whether by cross-subsidy within the sector or across different sectors. But the economic service has to be charged at full economic cost and at premium rates to subsidise the basic service. Joy says: “It is difficult to see how free markets can even begin to meet these complex and contradictory demands.”
Professor A Vaidyanathan, a former member of the Planning Commission, who was present at TISS and once headed the Irrigation Pricing Committee, advocates a differential or graded tariff system, which can at least partly address the tension between the two components.
Another novel feature of Datye’s regenerative economics is that doles and grants, which make people dependent on the state, have to be replaced by concessional credit which is linked to performance. According to researcher Seema Kulkarni, who presented a paper on the role of institutions and finance in the transition to an alternative system, every gram sabha eligible for employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act will have to agree to norms for allocating resources and their use. Thus, if resource-poor and rich asset-owning households agree to share resources, this would qualify the former for employment assistance. The concessional credit would be available for investing and participating in the biomass-based regenerative system. Additional employment assistance could be secured to create food security and produce energy out of biomass, which would ensure minimum needs.
At the conference, Amita Shah from the Gujarat Institute of Development Research in Ahmedabad elaborated the role of finance and credit in the system. There were investments and subsidies by the state, with special emphasis on employment assistance. The creation of a biomass bank was the main source of credit for developing micro-enterprises in a decentralised setting. Alternative energy modes were promoted and costs recovered through affordable and progressive rates of interest. And even the poorest people -- for instance, tribals -- would have access to the biomass bank.
The strong point about this alternative approach is that these aren’t merely theoretical ideas -- almost wishful thinking -- that remain on paper. They have been tested on the ground at every stage, over the years. A typical initiative in this context is by the Jagrut Mahila Samaj in a village near Ballarpur, in Chandrapur district of eastern Maharashtra, which is a severely drought-prone area. In Kalamana village, through regenerating the local economy, a person with 2 hectares was able to earn Rs 41,000 after two years. In addition, by using the United Nations Development Programme’s small grants scheme, the village started a vermiculture project that generated vermicompost worth Rs 65,000. From experience, a prerequisite was a good women’s group that could handle the funds in such projects.
According to M P Parameswaran, a veteran of the renowned Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat and the literacy movement, “green capitalism” or “solar socialism” was the order of the day. The concept of land ownership would be replaced by the “right to work on land to earn a livelihood”, and growth would be predicated upon sharing, not the accumulation of surplus. He envisages that once, say by 2050, every family is provided with a pucca house, the roofs of all buildings can be designed to collect solar energy. Around 60 square metres of such area would be required to generate photovoltaic electricity -- between 4,800 and 6,000 units a year. He estimated that the average annual household demand would be only around 2,500 units; the rest could be sold to the grid for intensive energy use.
Parameswaran was clear-sighted enough, however, to recognise that “another world was possible”, but not probable. As he put it: “It is impossible within a capitalist regime, where profit is the only motive force. It is based on competition and leads invariably to larger and larger scales, increased urbanisation, growing inequalities and imminent eco-catastrophe.” The only answer, as he saw it, was for hundreds of small-scale experiments to show the way to a regenerative ecosystem. If nothing else, presumably, sheer desperation will drive the poorest people to learn how to live within their own natural resource base and to build an economy from the base, without relying on the illusory trickle-down.
The question becomes all the more significant in the context of the contemporary “LPG” ideological framework -- liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. How does one combat this juggernaut, which sees all economic growth as an end in itself, no matter that it excludes huge swathes of the population?
Some answers have been provided by the Pune-based Society for People’s Participation in Ecosystem Management. Since 1991, it has been working on participatory irrigation management and has since broadened its activities to include watershed management, gender and livelihoods, water conflicts and river basin studies. Its mentor is K R Datye, who, for 25 years, worked as an irrigation engineer but then turned to exploring various alternative technologies. At the end of March, likeminded activists and academics paid tribute to Datye, who is now 82, by organising a two-day conference on his seminal ideas at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai.
The key word in the deliberations was the emphasis on a “regenerative” economy, as opposed to a “degenerative” one based on fossil fuels and outmoded notions of industrialisation. In Datye’s view, the 73rd constitutional amendment is a vital step forward. He bases his alternative development paradigm on the gram sabha, the smallest unit of self-governance in the village. If one unit in a village consisted of 100 households, the first task was to demarcate its boundaries, including common lands, and to evaluate its resource base. The objective is to establish what entitlement such a unit has to that most previous resource -- water.
The village as a whole, typically, may consist of 400 households. The area suitable for producing crops and biomass (organic matter) may be 800 hectares, while the village would have a watershed extending over 1,000 hectares. After meeting these vital needs, there would be sufficient land available for irrigated commercial crops, dryland cultivation, pastures, grass, shrubs and trees. The average availability of water would be estimated by adding up the surface water, groundwater as delayed run-off and groundwater storage. Half this water, in a regenerative economic model, would be allocated to a 100-household gram sabha for priority use.
But, as has been pointed out time and again in any discussion on rural society, it is far from being homogeneous. Caste and class intervene at every stage to make any equitable distribution of natural resources that much more complicated. This is why Datye and his acolytes refer to the “resource poor” among villagers who, again typically, may comprise 20-40 households out of the 100 in a gram sabha. These are jobless artisans, nomadic and denotified tribes, destitute women and project-affected people awaiting resettlement. They are also entitled, as a priority, to water for domestic use and their cattle.
Proponents of this approach recognise the need to boost land productivity without resorting to capital- and resource-intensive inputs. They believe that this can be achieved by boosting the production of biomass, celebrated in Datye’s book Banking on Biomass. This is radically different from the environmentally destructive production of ethanol and biofuels throughout the world, almost all of which either divert land from food crops or are dependent on expensive inputs.
A fifth of the area available for a 100-household unit could be used to grow wood, bamboo and fibre. Around 15% could be devoted to what is known in foresters’ jargon as “non-timber forestry”. Foodgrain would comprise a fifth, as would sweet sorghum, pulses and fodder 10%, and 4% devoted to organic vegetables. Nitrogen-fixing varieties could be grown on another 10%. The output would be over 1,100 tonnes of biomass a year. Such a gram sabha would be entitled to preferential employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which entitles a person to 100 days of paid work in a year.
K J Joy, who with Suhas Paranjpye is a close associate of Datye’s, breaks down these figures and arrives at a scenario where a poor family of five would produce 18 tonnes of biomass a year. In addition, it would produce 3 tonnes of surplus biomass “for value-addition -- the basis for a transition to a dispersed industrial system”. This surplus consists of fruits, vegetables and other high-value agricultural produce, which is perishable. Instead, other produce like bamboo, fibres, oils or medicinal plants are a valuable alternative. Such an option, it should be noted, is in direct contrast to Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which represent a highly concentrated, egalitarian form of virtual forced industrialisation.
In this situation, there is a distinction between “assured water”, which is the minimum required to guarantee livelihoods and should be 80% dependable, and “variable” water, which could include supplies from outside the area. Joy explains the position succinctly: “We need to use the assured component of water to provide an equitable basic service for all, and utilise the variable component to provide water as an economic service to the enterprising.” If the variable water is used to grow perennial tree species, which produce bulk biomass, these serve as a fallback when the seasonal farm crop fails, as is unfortunately only too often. Indeed, with climate change, such fluctuations in weather are going to become more frequent. The biomass produced per family represents both an energy and capital stock.
Following pioneers such as the late Vilasrao Salunkhe’s pani panchayats, as well as the phad irrigation system in Maharashtra, Datye believes in delinking water rights from land rights. It is this ideology that has inspired movements in southern Maharashtra for the equitable distribution of water, which began with the well-known Bali Raja dam, constructed by local people with their own labour (Bharat Patankar, a veteran of that struggle, was present at TISS). The idea is that all those who depend on land for their livelihood should get a certain minimum amount of water, which includes farmers, landless labourers, artisans, women, dalits, etc, irrespective of their holdings.
The concept does not mean that all the water is divided equally among all the villagers. The basic requirement is for drinking and domestic use, for livestock, for production (agriculture, processing, etc) to meet consumption as well as to generate income for needs that are mediated by the market (like education, health and recreation). In a typical family, this works out in the region of 6,400 cubic metres of water per year. The basic service is a right; only after meeting this minimum should water be provided as an “economic service” for production for the market. As Joy explains, this is roughly equivalent to treating the first component as a social good and the second as an economic good.
Water has to be priced. The basic service is at an affordable cost, primarily to recover operation and maintenance costs. The second could be priced at full recovery, recovering the capital costs over time. Such an approach would address the opposing viewpoints about pricing water. The World Bank prescribes full cost recovery, whereas the Left believes it is a social good and opposes privatisation. According to Datye, there is a third strand that tries to bridge the two polarised positions.
This would mean that the basic service has necessarily to be subsidised, whether by cross-subsidy within the sector or across different sectors. But the economic service has to be charged at full economic cost and at premium rates to subsidise the basic service. Joy says: “It is difficult to see how free markets can even begin to meet these complex and contradictory demands.”
Professor A Vaidyanathan, a former member of the Planning Commission, who was present at TISS and once headed the Irrigation Pricing Committee, advocates a differential or graded tariff system, which can at least partly address the tension between the two components.
Another novel feature of Datye’s regenerative economics is that doles and grants, which make people dependent on the state, have to be replaced by concessional credit which is linked to performance. According to researcher Seema Kulkarni, who presented a paper on the role of institutions and finance in the transition to an alternative system, every gram sabha eligible for employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act will have to agree to norms for allocating resources and their use. Thus, if resource-poor and rich asset-owning households agree to share resources, this would qualify the former for employment assistance. The concessional credit would be available for investing and participating in the biomass-based regenerative system. Additional employment assistance could be secured to create food security and produce energy out of biomass, which would ensure minimum needs.
At the conference, Amita Shah from the Gujarat Institute of Development Research in Ahmedabad elaborated the role of finance and credit in the system. There were investments and subsidies by the state, with special emphasis on employment assistance. The creation of a biomass bank was the main source of credit for developing micro-enterprises in a decentralised setting. Alternative energy modes were promoted and costs recovered through affordable and progressive rates of interest. And even the poorest people -- for instance, tribals -- would have access to the biomass bank.
The strong point about this alternative approach is that these aren’t merely theoretical ideas -- almost wishful thinking -- that remain on paper. They have been tested on the ground at every stage, over the years. A typical initiative in this context is by the Jagrut Mahila Samaj in a village near Ballarpur, in Chandrapur district of eastern Maharashtra, which is a severely drought-prone area. In Kalamana village, through regenerating the local economy, a person with 2 hectares was able to earn Rs 41,000 after two years. In addition, by using the United Nations Development Programme’s small grants scheme, the village started a vermiculture project that generated vermicompost worth Rs 65,000. From experience, a prerequisite was a good women’s group that could handle the funds in such projects.
According to M P Parameswaran, a veteran of the renowned Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat and the literacy movement, “green capitalism” or “solar socialism” was the order of the day. The concept of land ownership would be replaced by the “right to work on land to earn a livelihood”, and growth would be predicated upon sharing, not the accumulation of surplus. He envisages that once, say by 2050, every family is provided with a pucca house, the roofs of all buildings can be designed to collect solar energy. Around 60 square metres of such area would be required to generate photovoltaic electricity -- between 4,800 and 6,000 units a year. He estimated that the average annual household demand would be only around 2,500 units; the rest could be sold to the grid for intensive energy use.
Parameswaran was clear-sighted enough, however, to recognise that “another world was possible”, but not probable. As he put it: “It is impossible within a capitalist regime, where profit is the only motive force. It is based on competition and leads invariably to larger and larger scales, increased urbanisation, growing inequalities and imminent eco-catastrophe.” The only answer, as he saw it, was for hundreds of small-scale experiments to show the way to a regenerative ecosystem. If nothing else, presumably, sheer desperation will drive the poorest people to learn how to live within their own natural resource base and to build an economy from the base, without relying on the illusory trickle-down.
How big business gets away with environmental violations
March 2005 cartoon in Business India sums up the business strategy of UK-based mining giant Vedanta/Sterlite’s founder-cum-boss Anil Agarwal. The cartoon depicts a corpulent Agarwal squeezing himself through an hour-glass saying, “In India, you must have patience. Everything will come through.” The London-based billionaire’s analysis of India is frighteningly accurate. Indeed, it is borne out by the fact that big business houses are constructing and operating mines and factories in blatant violation of laws. The formula for violating laws is simple: If you want to construct an illegal factory, just do it quick, make it big, and ensure that the investment is substantial.
The legal infrastructure, and judicial and political will to crack-down on blatantly illegal big investments just isn’t there. Increasingly, activists and residents are hesitant to approach courts for relief. Rather than take the violator and complicit regulators to task, the courts have willy-nilly tended to permit the regularisation of illegalities with barely a rap on the violator’s knuckles.
It is in this sobering context that a recent report by a Supreme Court panel on forests and wildlife has to be viewed.
On September 21, 2005, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee on Forests issued a report recommending the revocation of environmental clearances given to Vedanta Alumina Ltd’s 1 million tonne aluminium refinery in the Niyamgiri forests in Lanjigarh, Orissa. The CEC found that Vedanta had falsified information to obtain environmental clearances, destroyed more than 10 hectares of forest land and begun construction work onsite without obtaining necessary clearances under the Forest Conservation Act.Hinting at the complicity of the Union Ministry of Environment and the Orissa government in the violations, the CEC has written that “The casual approach, the lackadaisical manner and the haste with which the entire issue of forests and environmental clearance for the alumina refinery project has been dealt with smacks of undue favour/leniency and does not inspire confidence with regard to the willingness and resolve of both the State Government and the MoEF to deal with such matters keeping in view the ultimate goal of national and public interest.”
The CEC is unequivocal about the legality, or lack thereof, of Vedanta’s investments in Lanjigarh, and the consequences that ought to follow. Referring to the Niyamgiri forests as “an ecologically sensitive area,” the CEC has recommended to the Supreme Court to consider revoking the environmental clearance dated 22.9.2004 granted by the MoEF for setting up of the Alumina Refinery Plant by M/s Vedanta and directing them to stop further work on the project. The refinery project is integrally dependent on the availability of 3 million tonnes of bauxite ore annually from the densely forested Niyamgiri hills for which no clearance has been obtained. The CEC and the Orissa government acknowledge that the area is rich in wildlife, has dense forest cover and was constituted as an Elephant Reserve by the state of Orissa in August 2004.
Curiously, although Vedanta admits that the proximity of the Niyamgiri deposits is what makes the Lanjigarh project commercially viable, it has sought the delinking of the mining proposal from the refinery project. Even more curiously, the Ministry of Environment has obliged.
“Such delinking is objectionable,” reports the CEC. “In the event [that], for the mining component, the environmental clearance and/or the forest clearance is rejected, the expenditure of about Rs 4,000 crore being incurred on the project will become infructuous,” it concludes.
Considering the grave human rights violations committed and abetted by the state and Vedanta, CEC’s ‘Recommendations’ and ‘Observations and Conclusions’ take on all the more significance. Forcible eviction of tribal families from their homes, illegal and violent take-over of private property belonging to tribals, unlawful confinement of local villagers by Vedanta security forces, and the use of police and district administration to suppress dissent – nothing short of a full-blown CBI inquiry will do to unearth the sordid details of how big business conducts itself in India.
Neither Vedanta/Sterlite’s disregard for the law, nor the alleged “leniency” shown by the central and state governments to Vedanta is without precedent. In fact, the Lanjigarh scam is merely one wave in an ocean of scandals. The company, its subsidiaries and its boss Anil Agarwal have been linked to insider trading, harassment of employees, financial malpractices, illegal construction, unsafe workplaces and numerous other illegalities.
Sterlite’s copper smelter in Tuticorin perhaps has the dubious distinction of being among the most illegal facilities in the region. A proposal to set up the facility in the Ratnagiri district of coastal Maharashtra had to be abandoned after farmers and fisherfolk there put up a spirited fight. Upon the invitation of the then Tamilnadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, Sterlite put together a copper smelter in Tuticorin in 1995 using moth-balled equipment from the US and other countries. The proposal was pushed through without public consultation despite vociferous opposition by Tuticorin residents and political parties.
The half-hearted conditions laid down by the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board regarding where the factory should be located, or how much it should produce were promptly violated. Instead of locating the smelter 25 km away from the sensitive coral reefs of the Gulf of Mannar marine national park as stipulated in the TNPCB’s consent to establish, the company located the arsenic and sulphur dioxide-spewing smelter 14 km from one of the protected coral islands. Rather than restrict its annual production to 40,000 tonnes of blister copper as per TNPCB’s consent to operate, Sterlite went ahead and milked more than 1,70,000 tonnes of copper anode from its smelter, and proudly announced its production achievements to impress its shareholders.
Operating at higher than permitted capacity, and the setting up of a number of unapproved plants within the complex seems to have had an immediate bearing on the safety, health and environmental conditions within the factory. According to workers and ex-workers, most of the occupational injuries and fatalities go unreported, and the local police and even the district administration “cooperate” with the company to cover up all but the most notorious of incidents. Between 1999 and 2004, the Tuticorin plant reportedly killed 13 people and injured 139. Criminal proceedings have been initiated in only 3 out of 15 incidents reported by workers. Ironically, the Tamilnadu government issued safety awards to the company in 1999 and 2000, during which time at least 11 people were injured, and villagers had apprehended company staff for releasing toxic effluents into a village drinking water pond.
Encouraged by the government’s pliability, the company has gone ahead with an ambitious capacity expansion plan to make its Tuticorin assets more attractive to global investors. A 300,000 tonne smelter, a 127,000 tonne refinery, a power plant, a copper rod unit and an oxygen plant were all set up and were close to commissioning by September 2004 when a Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes (SCMC) visited the plant. Not one of these units had any permits – safety, environmental, revenue or local government clearances had all been ignored.
A day after the SCMC’s visit, the Ministry of Environment rushed in an environmental clearance for the new smelter and refinery. The power plant, copper rod unit and oxygen plants continue to operate without permits. Even the threat of action from the country’s highest court did not daunt the company or government authorities. In April 2005, the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board consented to the operation of the above plants despite the fact that the plants were not even permitted to be built.
Vedanta’s promises to its shareholders, particularly with regard to its Lanjigarh and Tuticorin operations, were built on the company’s confidence that the Indian system will condone its violations. Vedanta’s house of cards may collapse if the Indian “system” should behave uncharacteristically and actually implement the law. But this possibility seems to have perturbed no one, and certainly not the company’s shareholders and financiers. In the lead-up to the company’s London listing, a team of 120 lawyers, bankers and engineers visited India to verify Vedanta’s assets. None seem to have been able to spot, anticipate or take seriously the legal problems resulting from the company’s brash violations.
At Vedanta’s annual shareholder meeting in London in August 2005, a few concerned shareholders raised questions about the viability of Vedanta’s Indian operations. “Preserving throughout the smile of a Cheshire cat and the cool of a well-heeled guru, Agarwal’s main strategy was to agree with what his critics said. Not one of the 15 or so critical questions fired at Vedanta on August 3rd were answered,” writes Roger Moody, a London-based mining industry researcher and observer.
Vedanta’s violations have been brought to the notice of the Supreme Court in the Goa Foundation case highlighting the Union environment ministry’s grant of post-facto environmental clearance to polluting industries, or their condoning of the operation of hazardous units without requisite clearances.
It’s now exactly a year since the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee saw for itself Sterlite’s violations. In these months, the company has illegally doubled its production, and cocked a toxic snook at the apex court and its monitoring committee, even while continuing its tradition of sailing close to the wind.
Unfortunately, it is not just the environment ministry or State Pollution Control Boards that consider environmental regulations a hindrance to the country’s development. Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is guilty of encouraging flexible implementation of environmental laws and due process in the interests of expediting industrialisation. The multi-crore Sethusamudram shipping channel project, for instance, was begun less than a year from the time that it was introduced by the Congress-led government. That is record time considering the scale and environmental ramifications of the project. It was inaugurated by the prime minister at a time when the state government of Tamilnadu and the Pollution Control Board had withheld clearances pending clarification of a number of environmental and technical issues.
The Singh government has got to be the most corporate-friendly government in the history of India. The daily newspapers are agog with stories about our ministers hobnobbing with corporate CEOs.
Seen in this dismal backdrop, it is difficult to imagine that some courageous and upright institution will come forward to hold industrialists to account, or that the law will apply equally to the poor and the rich.
By Nityanand Jayaraman
The legal infrastructure, and judicial and political will to crack-down on blatantly illegal big investments just isn’t there. Increasingly, activists and residents are hesitant to approach courts for relief. Rather than take the violator and complicit regulators to task, the courts have willy-nilly tended to permit the regularisation of illegalities with barely a rap on the violator’s knuckles.
It is in this sobering context that a recent report by a Supreme Court panel on forests and wildlife has to be viewed.
On September 21, 2005, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee on Forests issued a report recommending the revocation of environmental clearances given to Vedanta Alumina Ltd’s 1 million tonne aluminium refinery in the Niyamgiri forests in Lanjigarh, Orissa. The CEC found that Vedanta had falsified information to obtain environmental clearances, destroyed more than 10 hectares of forest land and begun construction work onsite without obtaining necessary clearances under the Forest Conservation Act.Hinting at the complicity of the Union Ministry of Environment and the Orissa government in the violations, the CEC has written that “The casual approach, the lackadaisical manner and the haste with which the entire issue of forests and environmental clearance for the alumina refinery project has been dealt with smacks of undue favour/leniency and does not inspire confidence with regard to the willingness and resolve of both the State Government and the MoEF to deal with such matters keeping in view the ultimate goal of national and public interest.”
The CEC is unequivocal about the legality, or lack thereof, of Vedanta’s investments in Lanjigarh, and the consequences that ought to follow. Referring to the Niyamgiri forests as “an ecologically sensitive area,” the CEC has recommended to the Supreme Court to consider revoking the environmental clearance dated 22.9.2004 granted by the MoEF for setting up of the Alumina Refinery Plant by M/s Vedanta and directing them to stop further work on the project. The refinery project is integrally dependent on the availability of 3 million tonnes of bauxite ore annually from the densely forested Niyamgiri hills for which no clearance has been obtained. The CEC and the Orissa government acknowledge that the area is rich in wildlife, has dense forest cover and was constituted as an Elephant Reserve by the state of Orissa in August 2004.
Curiously, although Vedanta admits that the proximity of the Niyamgiri deposits is what makes the Lanjigarh project commercially viable, it has sought the delinking of the mining proposal from the refinery project. Even more curiously, the Ministry of Environment has obliged.
“Such delinking is objectionable,” reports the CEC. “In the event [that], for the mining component, the environmental clearance and/or the forest clearance is rejected, the expenditure of about Rs 4,000 crore being incurred on the project will become infructuous,” it concludes.
Considering the grave human rights violations committed and abetted by the state and Vedanta, CEC’s ‘Recommendations’ and ‘Observations and Conclusions’ take on all the more significance. Forcible eviction of tribal families from their homes, illegal and violent take-over of private property belonging to tribals, unlawful confinement of local villagers by Vedanta security forces, and the use of police and district administration to suppress dissent – nothing short of a full-blown CBI inquiry will do to unearth the sordid details of how big business conducts itself in India.
Neither Vedanta/Sterlite’s disregard for the law, nor the alleged “leniency” shown by the central and state governments to Vedanta is without precedent. In fact, the Lanjigarh scam is merely one wave in an ocean of scandals. The company, its subsidiaries and its boss Anil Agarwal have been linked to insider trading, harassment of employees, financial malpractices, illegal construction, unsafe workplaces and numerous other illegalities.
Sterlite’s copper smelter in Tuticorin perhaps has the dubious distinction of being among the most illegal facilities in the region. A proposal to set up the facility in the Ratnagiri district of coastal Maharashtra had to be abandoned after farmers and fisherfolk there put up a spirited fight. Upon the invitation of the then Tamilnadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, Sterlite put together a copper smelter in Tuticorin in 1995 using moth-balled equipment from the US and other countries. The proposal was pushed through without public consultation despite vociferous opposition by Tuticorin residents and political parties.
The half-hearted conditions laid down by the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board regarding where the factory should be located, or how much it should produce were promptly violated. Instead of locating the smelter 25 km away from the sensitive coral reefs of the Gulf of Mannar marine national park as stipulated in the TNPCB’s consent to establish, the company located the arsenic and sulphur dioxide-spewing smelter 14 km from one of the protected coral islands. Rather than restrict its annual production to 40,000 tonnes of blister copper as per TNPCB’s consent to operate, Sterlite went ahead and milked more than 1,70,000 tonnes of copper anode from its smelter, and proudly announced its production achievements to impress its shareholders.
Operating at higher than permitted capacity, and the setting up of a number of unapproved plants within the complex seems to have had an immediate bearing on the safety, health and environmental conditions within the factory. According to workers and ex-workers, most of the occupational injuries and fatalities go unreported, and the local police and even the district administration “cooperate” with the company to cover up all but the most notorious of incidents. Between 1999 and 2004, the Tuticorin plant reportedly killed 13 people and injured 139. Criminal proceedings have been initiated in only 3 out of 15 incidents reported by workers. Ironically, the Tamilnadu government issued safety awards to the company in 1999 and 2000, during which time at least 11 people were injured, and villagers had apprehended company staff for releasing toxic effluents into a village drinking water pond.
Encouraged by the government’s pliability, the company has gone ahead with an ambitious capacity expansion plan to make its Tuticorin assets more attractive to global investors. A 300,000 tonne smelter, a 127,000 tonne refinery, a power plant, a copper rod unit and an oxygen plant were all set up and were close to commissioning by September 2004 when a Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes (SCMC) visited the plant. Not one of these units had any permits – safety, environmental, revenue or local government clearances had all been ignored.
A day after the SCMC’s visit, the Ministry of Environment rushed in an environmental clearance for the new smelter and refinery. The power plant, copper rod unit and oxygen plants continue to operate without permits. Even the threat of action from the country’s highest court did not daunt the company or government authorities. In April 2005, the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board consented to the operation of the above plants despite the fact that the plants were not even permitted to be built.
Vedanta’s promises to its shareholders, particularly with regard to its Lanjigarh and Tuticorin operations, were built on the company’s confidence that the Indian system will condone its violations. Vedanta’s house of cards may collapse if the Indian “system” should behave uncharacteristically and actually implement the law. But this possibility seems to have perturbed no one, and certainly not the company’s shareholders and financiers. In the lead-up to the company’s London listing, a team of 120 lawyers, bankers and engineers visited India to verify Vedanta’s assets. None seem to have been able to spot, anticipate or take seriously the legal problems resulting from the company’s brash violations.
At Vedanta’s annual shareholder meeting in London in August 2005, a few concerned shareholders raised questions about the viability of Vedanta’s Indian operations. “Preserving throughout the smile of a Cheshire cat and the cool of a well-heeled guru, Agarwal’s main strategy was to agree with what his critics said. Not one of the 15 or so critical questions fired at Vedanta on August 3rd were answered,” writes Roger Moody, a London-based mining industry researcher and observer.
Vedanta’s violations have been brought to the notice of the Supreme Court in the Goa Foundation case highlighting the Union environment ministry’s grant of post-facto environmental clearance to polluting industries, or their condoning of the operation of hazardous units without requisite clearances.
It’s now exactly a year since the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee saw for itself Sterlite’s violations. In these months, the company has illegally doubled its production, and cocked a toxic snook at the apex court and its monitoring committee, even while continuing its tradition of sailing close to the wind.
Unfortunately, it is not just the environment ministry or State Pollution Control Boards that consider environmental regulations a hindrance to the country’s development. Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is guilty of encouraging flexible implementation of environmental laws and due process in the interests of expediting industrialisation. The multi-crore Sethusamudram shipping channel project, for instance, was begun less than a year from the time that it was introduced by the Congress-led government. That is record time considering the scale and environmental ramifications of the project. It was inaugurated by the prime minister at a time when the state government of Tamilnadu and the Pollution Control Board had withheld clearances pending clarification of a number of environmental and technical issues.
The Singh government has got to be the most corporate-friendly government in the history of India. The daily newspapers are agog with stories about our ministers hobnobbing with corporate CEOs.
Seen in this dismal backdrop, it is difficult to imagine that some courageous and upright institution will come forward to hold industrialists to account, or that the law will apply equally to the poor and the rich.
By Nityanand Jayaraman
Landmark Report On Climate Change Impacts
Climate change is already having visible impacts in the United States, and the choices we make now will determine the severity of its impacts in the future, according to a new and authoritative federal study assessing the current and anticipated domestic impacts of climate change.
The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," incorporates the findings of years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous large national and global assessments. It was produced by a consortium of experts from13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes.
With its production and review spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, it offers a valuable, objective scientific consensus on how climate change is affecting-and may further affect-the United States.
"This new report integrates the most up-to-date scientific findings into a comprehensive picture of the ongoing as well as expected future impacts of heat-trapping pollution on the climate experienced by Americans, region by region and sector by sector," said John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
"It tells us why remedial action is needed sooner rather than later, as well as showing why that action must include both global emissions reductions to reduce the extent of climate change and local adaptation measures to reduce the damage from the changes that are no longer avoidable", he added.
The report, which confirms previous evidence that global temperature increases in recent decades have been primarily human-induced, incorporates the latest information on rising temperatures and sea levels; increases in extreme weather events; and other climate-related phenomena.
Adding greatly to its practical value in the realm of policy and planning, it is the first such report in almost a decade to break out those impacts by U.S. region and economic sector, and the first to do so in such great detail.
"This report stresses that climate change has immediate and local impacts - it literally affects people in their backyards," said Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"In keeping with our goals, the information in it is accessible and useful to everyone from city planners and national legislators to citizens who want to better understand what climate change means to them. This is an issue that clearly affects everyone," she noted.
A product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program, the definitive 190-page report, produced under NOAA’s leadership, is written in plain language to better inform members of the public and policymakers. Commissioned in 2007 and completed this spring, the science-based report is a consensus product spanning two Presidential administrations and transcends political leanings or biases. It underwent intensive review by scientists inside and outside of government and includes information more recent than that incorporated into the last major report on global climate change released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report is not intended to direct policy makers to take any one approach over another to mitigate climate change or adapt to it. But it emphasizes that the choices we make now will determine the severity of climate change impacts in the future. "Implementing sizable and sustained reductions in carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible would significantly reduce the pace and the overall amount of climate change," the report states, "and would be more effective than reductions of the same size initiated later."
The study finds that Americans are already being affected by climate change through extreme weather, drought and wildfire trends and details how the nation’s transportation, agriculture, health, water and energy sectors will be affected in the future. The study also finds that the current trend in the emission of greenhouse gas pollution is significantly above the worst-case scenario that this and other reports have considered.
Among the main findings are:
Heat waves will become more frequent and intense, increasing threats to human health and quality of life. Extreme heat will also affect transportation and energy systems, and crop and livestock production.
Increased heavy downpours will lead to more flooding, waterborne diseases, negative effects on agriculture, and disruptions to energy, water, and transportation systems.
Reduced summer runoff and increasing water demands will create greater competition for water supplies in some regions, especially in the West.
Rising water temperatures and ocean acidification threaten coral reefs and the rich ecosystems they support. These and other climate-related impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems will have major implications for tourism and fisheries.
Insect infestations and wildfires are already increasing and are projected to increase further in a warming climate.
Local sea-level rise of over three feet on top of storm surges will increasingly threaten homes and other coastal infrastructure. Coastal flooding will become more frequent and severe, and coastal land will increasingly be lost to the rising seas.
By breaking out results in terms of region and economic sector the report provides a valuable tool not just for policymakers but for all Americans who will be affected by these trends. Its information can help:
Farmers making crop and livestock decisions, as growing seasons lengthen, insect management becomes more difficult and droughts become more severe;
Local officials thinking about zoning decisions, especially along coastal areas;
Public health officials developing ways to lessen the impacts of heat waves throughout the country;
Water resource officials considering development plans; and,
Business owners as they consider business and investment decisions.
Responses to climate change fall into two catories.
The first involves "mitigation" measures to limit climate change by reducing emissions of heat-trapping pollution or increasing their removal from the atmosphere. The second involves "adaptation" measures to improve our ability to cope with or avoid harmful impacts, and take advantage of beneficial ones. "Both of these are necessary elements of an effective response strategy," said Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, a report co-chair.
"By comparing impacts that are projected to result from higher versus lower emissions of heat-trapping gasses, our report underscores the importance and real economic value of reducing those emissions," said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. and one of the co-chairs of the report. "It shows that the choices made now will have far-reaching consequences."
The report draws from a large body of scientific information, including the set of 21 Synthesis and Assessment reports from the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The government agencies affiliated with the program include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, State, and Transportation; the Environmental Protection Agency; NASA; National Science Foundation; Smithsonian Institution; and the United States Agency for International Development.
The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," incorporates the findings of years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous large national and global assessments. It was produced by a consortium of experts from13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes.
With its production and review spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, it offers a valuable, objective scientific consensus on how climate change is affecting-and may further affect-the United States.
"This new report integrates the most up-to-date scientific findings into a comprehensive picture of the ongoing as well as expected future impacts of heat-trapping pollution on the climate experienced by Americans, region by region and sector by sector," said John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
"It tells us why remedial action is needed sooner rather than later, as well as showing why that action must include both global emissions reductions to reduce the extent of climate change and local adaptation measures to reduce the damage from the changes that are no longer avoidable", he added.
The report, which confirms previous evidence that global temperature increases in recent decades have been primarily human-induced, incorporates the latest information on rising temperatures and sea levels; increases in extreme weather events; and other climate-related phenomena.
Adding greatly to its practical value in the realm of policy and planning, it is the first such report in almost a decade to break out those impacts by U.S. region and economic sector, and the first to do so in such great detail.
"This report stresses that climate change has immediate and local impacts - it literally affects people in their backyards," said Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"In keeping with our goals, the information in it is accessible and useful to everyone from city planners and national legislators to citizens who want to better understand what climate change means to them. This is an issue that clearly affects everyone," she noted.
A product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program, the definitive 190-page report, produced under NOAA’s leadership, is written in plain language to better inform members of the public and policymakers. Commissioned in 2007 and completed this spring, the science-based report is a consensus product spanning two Presidential administrations and transcends political leanings or biases. It underwent intensive review by scientists inside and outside of government and includes information more recent than that incorporated into the last major report on global climate change released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report is not intended to direct policy makers to take any one approach over another to mitigate climate change or adapt to it. But it emphasizes that the choices we make now will determine the severity of climate change impacts in the future. "Implementing sizable and sustained reductions in carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible would significantly reduce the pace and the overall amount of climate change," the report states, "and would be more effective than reductions of the same size initiated later."
The study finds that Americans are already being affected by climate change through extreme weather, drought and wildfire trends and details how the nation’s transportation, agriculture, health, water and energy sectors will be affected in the future. The study also finds that the current trend in the emission of greenhouse gas pollution is significantly above the worst-case scenario that this and other reports have considered.
Among the main findings are:
Heat waves will become more frequent and intense, increasing threats to human health and quality of life. Extreme heat will also affect transportation and energy systems, and crop and livestock production.
Increased heavy downpours will lead to more flooding, waterborne diseases, negative effects on agriculture, and disruptions to energy, water, and transportation systems.
Reduced summer runoff and increasing water demands will create greater competition for water supplies in some regions, especially in the West.
Rising water temperatures and ocean acidification threaten coral reefs and the rich ecosystems they support. These and other climate-related impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems will have major implications for tourism and fisheries.
Insect infestations and wildfires are already increasing and are projected to increase further in a warming climate.
Local sea-level rise of over three feet on top of storm surges will increasingly threaten homes and other coastal infrastructure. Coastal flooding will become more frequent and severe, and coastal land will increasingly be lost to the rising seas.
By breaking out results in terms of region and economic sector the report provides a valuable tool not just for policymakers but for all Americans who will be affected by these trends. Its information can help:
Farmers making crop and livestock decisions, as growing seasons lengthen, insect management becomes more difficult and droughts become more severe;
Local officials thinking about zoning decisions, especially along coastal areas;
Public health officials developing ways to lessen the impacts of heat waves throughout the country;
Water resource officials considering development plans; and,
Business owners as they consider business and investment decisions.
Responses to climate change fall into two catories.
The first involves "mitigation" measures to limit climate change by reducing emissions of heat-trapping pollution or increasing their removal from the atmosphere. The second involves "adaptation" measures to improve our ability to cope with or avoid harmful impacts, and take advantage of beneficial ones. "Both of these are necessary elements of an effective response strategy," said Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, a report co-chair.
"By comparing impacts that are projected to result from higher versus lower emissions of heat-trapping gasses, our report underscores the importance and real economic value of reducing those emissions," said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. and one of the co-chairs of the report. "It shows that the choices made now will have far-reaching consequences."
The report draws from a large body of scientific information, including the set of 21 Synthesis and Assessment reports from the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The government agencies affiliated with the program include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, State, and Transportation; the Environmental Protection Agency; NASA; National Science Foundation; Smithsonian Institution; and the United States Agency for International Development.
Green Prosperity - 1 Million New Green Jobs
An important and insightful report was released today by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), in partnership with Green for All and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The report ("Green Prosperity") looked at the economic, environmental and social impacts of investing about $150 billion per year in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies.
That number includes funding from the federal stimulus package signed into law in February as well as the proposals in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is currently making its way through Congress
As noted by the report’s authors, the United States faces an enormous challenge-successfully managing the transformation from a carbon-intensive economy to becoming a predominantly clean-energy-based economy. This economic transformation will engage a huge range of people and activities. It is crucial for economic policymakers and the American people to understand the likely effects of the activities and policies enacted.
This report examines these broader economic considerations-jobs, incomes, and economic growth-through the lens of two government initiatives this year by the Obama administration and Congress. The first is the set of clean-energy provisions incorporated within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The second is the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act which is now before Congress. The analysis shows that these measures operating together can generate roughly $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments in the United States over the next decade. This estimated $150 billion in new spending annually includes government funding but is notably dominated by private-sector investments.
The authors estimate this sustained expansion in clean-energy investments triggered by the economic stimulus program and the forthcoming American Clean Energy and Security Act can generate a net increase of about 1.7 million jobs.
This expansion in job opportunities can continue as long as the economy maintains a commitment to clean-energy investments in the $150 billion per year range. If clean-energy investments expand still faster, overall job creation will increase correspondingly. These investment could, therefore, not only guide us out of our fossil-fuel dependent crisis, but serve as a powerful engine of economic recovery and long-term economic vigor in the U.S.
That number includes funding from the federal stimulus package signed into law in February as well as the proposals in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is currently making its way through Congress
As noted by the report’s authors, the United States faces an enormous challenge-successfully managing the transformation from a carbon-intensive economy to becoming a predominantly clean-energy-based economy. This economic transformation will engage a huge range of people and activities. It is crucial for economic policymakers and the American people to understand the likely effects of the activities and policies enacted.
This report examines these broader economic considerations-jobs, incomes, and economic growth-through the lens of two government initiatives this year by the Obama administration and Congress. The first is the set of clean-energy provisions incorporated within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The second is the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act which is now before Congress. The analysis shows that these measures operating together can generate roughly $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments in the United States over the next decade. This estimated $150 billion in new spending annually includes government funding but is notably dominated by private-sector investments.
The authors estimate this sustained expansion in clean-energy investments triggered by the economic stimulus program and the forthcoming American Clean Energy and Security Act can generate a net increase of about 1.7 million jobs.
This expansion in job opportunities can continue as long as the economy maintains a commitment to clean-energy investments in the $150 billion per year range. If clean-energy investments expand still faster, overall job creation will increase correspondingly. These investment could, therefore, not only guide us out of our fossil-fuel dependent crisis, but serve as a powerful engine of economic recovery and long-term economic vigor in the U.S.
Eco Tech: Green Roadway – Converting endless highways into renewable energy generators
Solar and wind generators mounted on highways could be a new way to generate green power.
With the ever increasing demand of green energy, inventors and scientists are working on ways that can by no means be termed conventional. Gene Fein and Ed Merritt are two such inventors who want the endless highways, which we use daily to commute to our places of work, be converted into renewable energy generators, which could one day power our cities with clean energy and can also offer electricity for roadside charging of electric vehicles.
The Green Roadway Project, as the plan has been named, makes use of strings of solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal devices that can convert these natural resources into precious electricity. The technology which would be used in these roads has been patented by the inventors, who hope to capitalize on government economic- stimulus money and tax breaks for clean energy projects by auctioning off rights to use their inventions in each of the 50 states in the U.S.
The proponents believe that a 10-mile stretch of the technology can power more than 2,000 homes with clean energy, for which most people will readily pay more. Talking about the feasibility of the system, the inventors claim that unlike horizontal axis wind turbines, which have been regularly criticized for their unsightly looks, their system would be based on better turbines, which will be no more than 25 feet high and will be placed 500 feet back from the pavement.
With the ever increasing demand of green energy, inventors and scientists are working on ways that can by no means be termed conventional. Gene Fein and Ed Merritt are two such inventors who want the endless highways, which we use daily to commute to our places of work, be converted into renewable energy generators, which could one day power our cities with clean energy and can also offer electricity for roadside charging of electric vehicles.
The Green Roadway Project, as the plan has been named, makes use of strings of solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal devices that can convert these natural resources into precious electricity. The technology which would be used in these roads has been patented by the inventors, who hope to capitalize on government economic- stimulus money and tax breaks for clean energy projects by auctioning off rights to use their inventions in each of the 50 states in the U.S.
The proponents believe that a 10-mile stretch of the technology can power more than 2,000 homes with clean energy, for which most people will readily pay more. Talking about the feasibility of the system, the inventors claim that unlike horizontal axis wind turbines, which have been regularly criticized for their unsightly looks, their system would be based on better turbines, which will be no more than 25 feet high and will be placed 500 feet back from the pavement.
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