Govt's $300 billion green war, a sham?

In its efforts to adapt to climate change, the Indian government plans to spend $265 billion to $300 billion in 10 years which will be 5% of the GDP that is likely to touch $5.3 trillion to $5.9 trillion by then. A major portion of this will go towards adaptation and the rest for mitigation.

According to finance ministry officials, the spend on climate change will pan across various sectors including energy, power, electricity, nuclear energy, transport, agriculture, forestry, marine and coastal environment, health, rural education and infrastructure.

However, environmentalists are not impressed with the sum because they think this is “business as usual”. The government is re-packaging its already existing programmes to show big investments, they say.

Senior finance ministry official claimed that social sector programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has an annual budget of around Rs 35,000 crore, also have climate change adaptation embedded in them.

“Nearly half of the projects executed under NREGA are for community water supply and conservation projects like wells, canals, terrace piping, in check dams, channels and rain water harvesting, which address climate change component,” the official pointed out.

However, environmentalists think this is sheer accounting gimmick. Noted environmentalist and water rights activist Himanshu Thakkar said: “The National Action plan for Climate Change is a collection of ongoing projects. So the claim of such huge spending on climate adaptation and mitigation measures is fraudulent.”

Infrastructure will be one thrust area where a lot of spending will take place. A huge chunk of the $1 trillion that is slated to be spent on infrastructure, during the twelfth five year plan, is expected to go towards the choice of technology for energy, transport, urban and rural infrastructure.

“Huge capital investments are envisaged in setting up of nuclear plants, railways, roads, transport sector, urban development, cities and corridors. The government also plans to increase energy prices as a step towards climate change adaptation,” a senior finance ministry official said.

Resorting to nuclear energy does not go down well with environmentalists either. Nuclear plants consume huge amounts of water and this certainly cannot be counted as environment friendly. When it is said that nuclear energy helps solve climate change problems one does not take cognizance of the fact that the solution for radioactive waste has not been found.

Delhi-based environmentalist Gopal Krishna said, “Including the cost of present and ongoing projects for climate change adaptation may make the numbers more impressive but certainly not convincing as these are regular projects. The touchstone about all these claims is nothing additional specifically for climate change.”

“For example, MGNREGA is a plan for rural employment. It is through co-incidence that water related works helps in climate change adaptation. With regard to climate change, GOI is resorting to King Canute principle, which means it is taking credit for something that is already there,” Krishna told DNA. 

Eight major ongoing national missions like Solar Mission, Water Mission, National Mission on Sustainable Habitat, National Mission of Green India may involve both the aspects of adaptation and mitigation and will have higher outlays during the next five years.

“For instance, the National Water Mission talks about inter-basin transfer of water, which means interlinking of rivers and which itself has huge harmful environmental effects. Now, if this is promoted in name of climate change mitigation or adaptation efforts, then it reveals the true colours of the government. It’s just business-as-usual projects being re-packaged,” Krishna said.

He said if the government is actually sincere about undertaking mitigation and adaptation measure then it should undertake additional measures. “Time has come to measure for GOI to propose measures or projects which would be undertaken in addition to the business as usual projects,” he said.