‘No need to panic but emissions cut a must’

The Nobel prize-winning team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may have slipped in predicting that Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035, but India’s stand on reducing carbon emissions remains unchanged. This was stated by Union minister of state, environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, on the sidelines of the climate change workshop here at ‘Viksat’.

Ramesh reiterated that, though the IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri had withdrawn his team’s erroneous prediction about the Himalayan glaciers, India will continue its efforts to reduce carbon
emissions. The Union minister laughed when asked about the controversy created by Pachauri initially terming Indian scientist VK Raina’s conservative views on the melting of the glaciers, as ‘voodoo science’.

But Ramesh agreed that the glaciers in the Himalayas were indeed in precarious health. “My objection was to the IPCC’s prediction that they will disappear by 2035,” Ramesh told DNA. “There is, however, no doubt that they are melting and India needs to be concerned.”

In his speech at the National Environment Awareness Campaign workshop on climate change, Ramesh said that though it had been established that the glaciers were receding, it was not yet known for sure why they were melting. He added that only reliable scientific data should be the foundation for all claims. “There is no doubt that the sea-level is rising and the climate is changing,” he said. “What we cannot prove scientifically is ‘why’. Science may eventually have the answer, but we cannot afford to wait till science gives us all the answers. We need to get into climate mitigation now.” Elaborating on that, he said no country in the world is going to be as badly affected by climate change as India. “Around 35 crore people in India live in coastal areas,” Ramesh said.

“It is they who will be affected by rising sea levels.” He further said that India’s economy was almost totally dependent on the monsoon. “If the Himalayan glaciers melt, river Ganga will be affected which, in turn, will have an adverse impact on the water supply in North India,” he added. An alarming fact pointed out by Ramesh was that 40% of India’s forest cover consisted of degrading/degraded forests.

“The Forest Survey of India shows 21% of India’s land, i.e., 70 million hectare, as forest cover, which is an impressive figure. But if you look closely, nearly 28 million hectare is degraded forest. The tree density here is very low, canopy cover frugal. India will be spending Rs8,000 crore on improving forest cover this year,” he said.