From denial to urgency

This 800-page magnum opus, Climate Change: The Policy, Law and Practice, is much more than a labour of love. Jatinder (Jay) Cheema has done meticulous research for several years, documenting the global, multilateral, regional, and national commitments on climate change, the laws enacted by the national and state legislatures, and listing some of the most important and contentious cases with overlapping jurisdictions, the status of state compliance for SDGs, and the wide gap between what some leading MNCs profess and what they actually do, especially with regard to environmental protection.

The MNC doublespeak started with the first edition of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, published in 1962. This was the first book to bring the discourse on the environment into the public domain. Until then, the belief—both for corporates and governments—was that only anthropocene (human species) mattered, and that the rest—the birds and butterflies, flowers and trees, rivers and mountains—had no right to exist independently of their utilitarian benefits to our species. DuPont, American Cyanamide, and Monsanto accused her of being a ‘Communist’ who wanted to reverse the march of the modern world to the Middle Ages. It took another ten years for the World Meteorological Organisation to prep the UN and its member nations to take cognizance of the lasting damage to the environment from the chemical industry and fossil-fuel-driven growth in every sector—from agriculture to industry to urbanisation—at the Stockholm conference of 1972. Also known as the First Earth Summit, it raised the issue of ‘identification and control of pollutants of broad international significance,’ warning governments to be cognizant of activities that could lead to climate change and to assess the likelihood and magnitude of climate effects. However, it has taken over six decades for climate change to become URGENDA (urgent agenda) and part of SDGs accepted by the member nations of the UN.

Cheema takes us on this journey from a time when climate change was denied and dismissed as a Luddite hype against industrial progress to the establishment of the UNEP at Nairobi after the Earth Summit, the 1985 Vienna convention for Protection of the Ozone Layer, the IPCC in 1988, followed by the Montreal protocol a year later. Montreal is important for its acceptance of ‘the stratospheric ozone layer as a global common,’ which allowed for express prohibitions to be placed on states to prevent further depletion. Cheema tells us that in the absence of the Vienna convention and the Montreal protocol, ozone depletion would have grown tenfold by 2050. Its implementation, on the other hand, will save two million skin cancers each year until 2030.

The next milestone was the signing of the United Nations Framework for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in May 1992. This was indeed a monumental month in the history of the world because it also marked the formal end of the Cold War between the USA and the erstwhile USSR. With ratification from 197 countries, the Convention’s goal was to ‘stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level which would prevent harmful anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’ Per Article 7 of the UNFCCC, a Conference of Parties (CoP) was established as the supreme body of the Convention. At its third session, in 1997, the CoP adopted the Kyoto Protocol, but it came into effect in February 2005, when 55 parties responsible for 55 per cent of the CO2 emissions in 1990 ratified the same. Incidentally, India’s ratification had come three years earlier – in 2002.

The picturesque island of Bali saw the adoption of an Action Plan named after it. The CoP accepted the findings of the fourth IPCC assessment report, which reiterated that ‘significant reductions in global emissions would require long-term cooperative action’ between the Global North, which had the resources and the historic responsibility, and the Global South, which had to bear the brunt. Then came the Doha round in 2012, which set the timetable for the global climate change agreement in 2015. When the CoP met in Paris that year, President Hollande said, “In Paris, there have been many revolutions over the centuries. Today is the most beautiful and the most peaceful revolution that has just been accomplished – a revolution for climate change.” This legally enforceable international pact came into effect in November 2016 with 192 signatories (191 countries plus the European Union). It accepted the idea of ‘common but differentiated obligations and separate capabilities’ with the overall objective of keeping the average global warming below two degrees, while also encouraging parties to pursue efforts to keep it below one and a half degrees centigrade. This was followed by the Glasgow Climate Pact of 2021, in which Prime Minister Modi spelt out the Panchamrit agenda: increasing non-fossil fuel energy capacity, meeting 50 percent of energy requirements through renewable energy, reducing total carbon emissions, lowering the carbon intensity of the economy, and achieving net-zero emissions for India by 2070. He also gave the coinage LIFE (lifestyle for environment). The Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan of 2022 saw a commitment of USD 4-6 trillion dollars in annual investment for the global transition to a low-carbon economy and greater awareness about the implications of glacial melts (the cryosphere).

As Cheema had completed the book by early 2023, the last major conference referenced in this volume is the Stockholm +50 (2022) to mark fifty years of the first declaration. This was also the time when the world was recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic. The ‘little virus’ made us more than willing to acknowledge that ‘singularity’ had its limitations.

We were willing to acknowledge the ravages of global warming, rising ocean levels, and loss of biodiversity and realised that both tracks—international cooperation as well as implementation of national commitments—were equally important.

Cheema then delves into India’s domestic framework on climate change. The importance of the environment became explicit when the 42nd amendment introduced Article 48A as part of the Directive Principles of State Policy, which read, “The State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country.” It also added Article 51A (g), part of the Fundamental Duties, which read, “It shall be the duty of every citizen of India… to protect and improve the natural environment.”

Notably, the wisdom around climate change is reflected not just in Cheema’s words, but also in action. The preface of the book mentions that a forest was planted to offset the usage of paper for this publication, which exhibits a remarkable sense of responsibility.

To be continued…

The writer, a former Director of LBS National Academy of Administration, is currently a historian, policy analyst and columnist, and serves as the Festival Director of Valley of Words — a festival of arts and literature