downtoearth-subscribe

Chink in the armour

  • 14/07/1996

The dynamism of Western academia never ceases to amaze me. Once an idea enters the people's mind-set, scholars of all hues begin analysing it from the standpoint of different disciplines. This is quite unlike what happens in a country like India. Gunnar Myrdal in his '60s trilogy, Asian Drama, had pointed out that corruption is an issue that figures in almost every dinner conversation and media article; yet he could hardly find any academic research on the subject. Thirty years later, the situation remains unchanged.

But let me come to the issue of environment. Going through a recent edition of a journal called Global Environmental Change, I came across a fascinating paper by Susan Subak of the Centre for Social and Economic Research at the University of East Anglia, UK. There is a widespread feeling in the West that if industrialised countries were to take steps to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), but without ensuring that developing countries did the same, then their efforts would be unproductive. This is because emissions-generating economic activities would then shift to developing countries not bound by an international agreement to control their emissions. Western economists use an evocative word to describe this phenomenon: 'leakage'.

One. study carried out in Europe has argued that if the European Community (EC) were to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions unilaterally, it would push down world energy prices, which in turn will increase energy consumption in developing countries. According to another study based on a global equilibrium model, if the EC reduced emissions by 20 per cent, global emissions will only decline by 0.7 per cent instead of the estimated three per cent. In other words, 75 per cent of the EC's reduction would be lost through leakage.

Since industrialised countries have now bowed to world opinion at the Berlin meeting (1995) to start negotiating a new protocol which sets targets for limiting CO2 emissions, several economists have produced studies to show that the potential of leakage of CO2 emissions from participants to non- participants may be large in the future. A participating country could meet its national abatement targets, but it could import commodities from non- participating countries, which have been produced with high emissions.

This argument is extended in Subak's paper by taking a look at methane emissions. Subak points out that while most countries are now setting goals to limit CO2 emissions, many have also started to address measures for controlling the emission of methane, the next most important GHG after CO2. Her paper analyses the amount of methane that was released in non-participating countries to produce exports destined for participating countries, that have pledged or are likely to pledge to stabilise or reduce methane emissions. She has calculated the amount of methane that was embodied in agricultural goods like rice, meat and milk products that were exported to six industrialised nations - USA, UK, Germany, Japan, France and Canada - in 1990.

Subak finds that the total amount of methane in imports from developing countries destined for these six nations equals 1.2 million tonnes, or about seven per cent of emissions from livestock in these importing countries. This quantity is more than the total anthropogenic methane emissions produced by 103 countries out of the 140 surveyed by her.

Subak's concern is that with increasing pressure on nations to reduce agricultural subsidies and import tariffs, developing country livestock and crop production could become more competitive; therefore, the opportunity for trade in methane -embodied products is likely to increase. She suggests two measures. One would be to change the methodology for estimating national GHG emmisions by taking emissions embodied in traded goods into account, so that countries do not leak their emissions to non -participating countries while claiming that they are meeting their national targets. But "the more practical and equitable approach is to extend greenhouse gas emission targets to all countries participating in the climate convention," she concludes.

Subak's views do not surprise me in the least. In 1991, when Sunita Narain and I had written Global Warming in an Unequal World as a rejoinder to West's argument that countries like India must also curtail their GHG emissions, we too had raised this issue of who should be credited the GHG emissions embodied in internationally traded commodities - the producing countries of the developing world or the consuming countries in the industrialised world. The idea of roping in developing countries without first setting out a clear system of entitlements! to global common property resources like the atmosphere, is nothing new for Western academics.

SLibak, of course, deserves credit for the good work she has done for Western policy-'makers. My key worry, however, is: has any academic or policy-making bureaucrat in India prepared any study to respond to these arguments and, if so, why * have they not become part of the public debate? Subak is thinking of the future. So should Indians. If India learns to manage its middle and lower Indo-Gangetic Plains properly, it has the potential to feed not just itself but a large part of the world as well. That is why this issue is of such importance for India's, and for other developing nations', future. But more than Subak's dynamism, it is our somnolence that has the potential to sabotage our future.

Related Content