Op-ed: Climate change and developing countries —M V Ramana

Developing countries have rightly stressed their lower emission levels of greenhouse gases and have demanded equity in using the biosphere as a sink. But it is also prudent and wise for them to use the reduction of GHG emissions as a consideration, though not the sole one, in deciding energy and land use policy

One major bone of contention at various climate change related meetings relates to what developing countries ought to do about their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Should they join the developed countries and reduce their already low levels of emissions even further? That seems to be the position of the US administration. In his March 2001 letter to the US Senate, President George Bush wrote “I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the US economy.”

Developing countries, on the other hand, have rightly stressed their lower emission levels, especially historical emission levels, and equity in terms of the use of the biosphere as a sink. They have also maintained that development of their countries requires increased energy use and consequent emissions. Let us parse the last contention a bit.

Development entails offering a better life in material terms for the poor and the disadvantaged. This involves, inter alia, better and more jobs, access to food, clean drinking water and acceptable housing. Energy is an essential ingredient in providing many of these. However, there are a couple of implicit assumptions that are seldom questioned within mainstream discussion. The first is to equate energy with electricity. The second is the assumption that the cheapest way to satisfy the demand for electricity is to burn coal or some other fossil fuel. This then leads to the ‘requirement’ for an increase in GHG emissions as the price for development.

Both of these contentions are debatable. Energy by itself is not of much direct use. What one is interested in are the services it helps provide. This includes, for example, illumination, high temperatures for cooking, water pumps for irrigation and so on. Electricity is often not the appropriate way to provide these services. Therefore, it is wrong to equate the need for increased energy use with the requirement to install more electricity generation capacity. More electric generation capacity is certainly needed but a coherent and sound energy policy would also emphasise, for example, energy efficiency technologies.

The second assumption is also questionable. To start with, many countries, certainly the ones in South Asia, have not carried out the exercise of finding the cheapest sources of power honestly or comprehensively. Neither have they based their energy strategy on the results of such an exercise. The widespread fascination for nuclear power is an illustration of this failure. Decisions on what kinds of electricity generation systems are built and where they are built are based on politics and ideology.

If they did perform such an exercise, they would likely find that building centralised power stations based on fossil fuels is not that economical. In India, for example, an integrated least cost planning exercise for the state of Karnataka performed by analyst Amulya Reddy and his collaborators showed that a substantial fraction of the projected electricity requirements (that was then used to justify the construction of a nuclear plant) could be met through end-use efficiency improvements and electricity substitution measures, as well as decentralised generation. All of these would reduce a country’s GHG emissions when compared to a fossil fuel dominated strategy.

The other choice that governments make is to decide whose electricity needs are met first. As energy analysts like Jose Goldemberg have argued, development and the mitigation of poverty require that energy services be directed deliberately and specifically toward the needs of the poor. Installing a centralised nuclear reactor or thermal plant and extending the grid to cover distant villages is an inefficient way of providing lighting to the primarily rural societies that characterise most developing countries. Such communities are better served by distributed renewable energy systems based on a number of different technologies and sources — micro hydel plants, windmills, photovoltaics and biomass based power.

We will, of course, be told that these are expensive and that the government doesn’t have money to invest in a large scale programme of this sort. One should understand that lack of money is partly also a matter of choice. Many of these governments — in both developing and developed countries — seem to have plenty of money to spend on fighter aircraft or atomic weapons.

There are other considerations. One pressing concern in many developing countries is local air pollution. Lowering pollution levels would involve technological and social measures that would also have the benefit of lowering GHG emissions. Another issue of concern that is increasingly under focus is the impact on rural women’s health from using biomass for cooking as well as the enormous amounts of time spent collecting firewood. Once again, attempts to deal with this problem, through for example programmes to build more efficient cookstoves, would result in lower GHG emissions. A somewhat different consideration is the inertia of the energy infrastructure and its slow pace of change. This means that today’s energy choices will have long-term repercussions.

It is worth recalling the frequently quoted dictum of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘the world has enough for every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.’ The Earth simply cannot sustain its entire six billion or more people following an energy-intensive lifestyle like the US. The people who would suffer the most from catastrophic climate change mostly inhabit developing countries. It is therefore prudent and wise for all countries to use reduction of GHG emissions as a consideration, though not the sole one, in deciding energy and land use policy.

In no way does all of this absolve the developed countries of their responsibility. Rather, it would add to the pressure on them to reduce their emissions drastically — which is absolutely necessary to combat climate change. One hopes that the ongoing Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at Milan, will result in the formation of a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to pursue this task.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

Home | Editorial