The Union Government, worried over a bleak monsoon, is preparing to meet the food grains shortage likely to follow. But what we need is a long-term plan to deal with climate change for India's economy in its totality
By all accounts, the Union Government, worried over what seems set to be a bleak monsoon, is preparing to meet the food grains shortage likely to follow. That, however, is a specific response to a specific situation. What is needed is long-term planning to deal with the impact of climate change not only on agriculture but India’s economy in its totality.
Climate change — or global warming — is not going to be arrested in the short-run, and perhaps not even in the long-term, if the current global dragging of feet on the issue continues. The straws in the wind are disconcerting. The limited Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, which came into force in 2005, remains comatose; the Copenhagen meeting of 2009 produced little. The historic accord in lima, Peru, on December 14 last year, saw the representatives of the nearly 200 participating nations committing their respective countries to reducing fossil fuel emissions by March 31 this year and drawing up plans detailing how much emission each would cut by 2020, and the domestic policies it would follow to that end. It further stipulated that those failing to keep the deadline would have to produce their plans by June.
The lima Accord, however, lacks legal sanction; nor does it bind countries to reducing emissions to a particular level. It depends on countries honouring their commitments, which may not happen in all cases. But even if the lima Accord is fully implemented, the most fundamental cause of global warming, increase in human activity, will continue to grow unless its basic cause, the alarming population rise worldwide, is addressed. According to a UN report in June 2013, the world’s population is set to rise from 7.2 billion then to 8.1 billion in 2025 and 9.6 billion in 2050. India’s population, estimated at 1.2 billion this year, is scheduled to rise to 1.3 to 1.6 billion by 2025 and 2050 respectively.
All this has two serious implications for India. First, with climate change persisting and the monsoon continuing to be problematic, food grains shortage is going to be an ongoing problem and not just one confined to specific years. With productions fluctuating and returns uncertain, farmers are liable to turn to other avocations and land, now devoted to agriculture, put to other use. Even if this does not happen and food grain production does not decline, the continuing steep increase in population is bound to produce shortages which, in turn, is going to stoke inflation, the economic consequences of which hardly needs any elaboration,
For one thing, inflation will further aggravate rural poverty and reduce both rural and urban purchasing power, dampening the demand for both consumer and capital goods over large tracts. Clearly, well-thought-out broad spectrum measures on both agricultural and industrial fronts are urgently needed. The foremost of these should be those for forestalling a long-term decline in rural incomes. The project should be so devised as to involve expenditure on infrastructure and assistance that will enhance purchasing power in the interim. It should start by recognising the fact that while the actual amount of rainfall in in each year during the next decade will depend on unpredictable contingencies, the broad general trend caused by climate change should not be difficult to anticipate. In any case, one can always proceed by visualising the worst-case scenario in any year and providing for coping with it.
Within the framework of this broad approach, an important step will be considering changes in cropping patterns in various parts according to anticipated altered region-wise rainfall patterns. Thus, reduced rainfall may prompt shifting of rice cultivation from traditional areas to new ones with increased precipitation. Simultaneously, research should be promoted through grants and assistance to agricultural research institutions for engineering rice, wheat and other food grain seeds that require less water than the varieties in use.
As important, the existing nation-wide agricultural extension network should be expanded and geared to acquainting farmers with the entire range of consequences of climate change and the Government’s counter-strategy through changes in cropping patterns and seeds. The State Governments, which have a key role to play, have to be roped in. The massive efforts in planning and implementation that all this will require will have to be forthcoming. An economic setback, if not disaster, will not only be devastating per se but will cause mass discontent and alienation, which will be heaven-sent to forces across the border and within the country determined to destabilise India.
Economic strength is thus a national security imperative. It is needed for supporting a military establishment, numerically large enough and adequately armed, to defend the country. As important is food security. Dependence on imports can pose serious problems if the exporting countries are unwilling or supplies come under attack on the seas. As important as all of these is a strong campaign to drastically curb population growth. There will, of course, be shrill protests. The Government, however, has a responsibility not to be browbeaten by these. Nothing short of the country’s future is at stake. The impact of a steep population increase is likely to be aggravated by massive population migrations triggered by climate change. Internally, there is going to be a large-scale migration of people from low-lying coastal areas which will be submerged as a result of global warming. Given the extent of the area — from coastal areas of West Bengal in the east to Cape Comorin in the south and Gujarat in the West — one can easily imagine the massive scale of internal migration and what it will do to the pressure on land in the rural areas and creaking civic infrastructure in the cities.
The effect of internal migration is liable to be compounded by a massive influx of people from Bangladesh as its large deltaic region is flooded. Apart from the other adverse consequences of internal migration, there will be a sharp increase in social and communal tensions and crime, which always happens wherever there is a large migrant population.
The question is: What is to be doneIJ First, India must do its utmost to sharpen global awareness of the need to accelerate efforts to reverse global warming. Simultaneously, it should do its utmost at home to curb the emission of greenhouse gases. Third, it must act rapidly and decisively to cope with the consequences of climate change including mass population migrations. There are no soft options.