Background

The Climate Debate

By Thana Poopat
Asia News Network

The recent brouhaha over an unfounded prediction in the UN  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report from 2007 is a stark reminder to us all that there is a fine line that separates robust science and climate advocacy. Scientists cross this line at their own peril.

As the Nobel prize-winning IPCC, with egg on its face, found out the hard way. The controversial claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 was retracted, and the global network of over 2,000 scientists went into damage-control mode. (read full story)

Let’s hope that they won’t be spending too much time licking their wounds or getting bogged down in defensiveness. IPCC should undertake vigorous action to put its house in order and emerge from this embarrassing episode as more forthright in outlook with greater transparency in its work process.

The great majority of the international community has reaffirmed its confidence in growing body of knowledge of climate change science, which remains sound despite errors in panel report.

Climate skeptics of every hue and stripe were having a field day. But gloating should not be considered a legitimate part of ongoing climate change debate. Those who are still unconvinced that serious actions must be taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions should continue to be engaged in rational discussion.

Even the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which had expressed doubts about the IPCC 2035 prediction even before the controversy broke out in late January, supported the panel’s overall conclusions about retreating glaciers.

“Based on the analyses we have been doing, we can state that the majority of glaciers in the region are in a general condition of retreat, although with some regional differences; that small glaciers below 5,000 m above sea level will probably disappear by the end of the century, whereas larger glaciers well above this level will still exist but be smaller,” it said in a statement.

ADVERSE EFFECTS: A young boy wades through floods in Jakarta. It has become clear that adverse effects of climate change are beginning to hurt people everywhere. ADEK BERRY/AFP PHOTO

“Lack of scientific knowledge should not hinder us in promoting adaptation to climate change now.” -- Dr Andreas Schild, director general, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development

The Kathmandu-based group added that: “…the glaciation could have serious impacts on the hydrological regime of the downstream river basins.” Put simply, that means the diminished glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region could disrupt the supply of melted snow in summer that is a major source of water feeding major rivers.

Great rivers, like Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong and Yangtse, all trace their origins to the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region that straddles eight countries from Afghanistan to Burma. These rivers are the lifeline of an estimated 1.3 billion people, or one-fifth of the world’s population, residing in their paths or downstream in river basins.

Dr Andreas Schild, Director General of ICIMOD, in an interview with Asia News Network, said the erroneous statements about glaciers in the IPCC report was a cause for worry, they can be overcome with stricter oversight, peer-reviews and better editing.

But the dearth of comprehensive scientific data on the linkage between climate change and the ice caps and glaciers of Hindu Kush-Himalayan region is a much more serious problem. A long-standing constraint that has prevented the United Nations, national governments, NGOs and his group, from doing a more effective job helping 210 million highland population, which have borne the brunt of impacts, adapt to climate change, Schild says.

The Himalayas, one of the youngest mountain ranges on earth are also among the most disaster-prone due to its complex geological structures, characterised by high relief and steep slopes, with active tectonic process and continued seismic activities.

Couple this with a climatic system with pronounced seasonality of monsoon rain, and one has a recipe for a variety of deathly hazards of flash floods, ranging from intense rainfall flood (IRF) to dramatic-sounding glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) and landslide dam outburst flood (LDOF), with devastating consequences to match.

Glaciers retreat can be the result of global warming or the result of the fact that they move to lower plane. Glacial lakes form behind some of the now exposed terminal moraines (rocks or debris carried down and deposited by a glacier) in high mountains. Rapid accumulation of water in a glacial lake such as these can lead to a sudden breaching of the unstable moraine dam. This results in the discharge of huge amounts of water and debris, a form of flash flood known as a glacial lake outburst flood, which can have catastrophic effects downstream.

Global climate change adds another totally uncalled-for dimension - reduced predictability of disasters - to the already dangerous mix. Less dramatic phenomena include irregular rainfall pattern, with days of more intense precipitation punctuated by more dry days in between, which affect production of staple crops and thus threaten food security of subsistent farmers.

“Lack of scientific knowledge should not hinder us in promoting adaptation to climate change now,” Schild said. “After all, hazards are not new for the mountain population. Only they are more frequent and less predictable now.”

The resilience of hardy mountain people of Nepal and Bhutan is being put to the ultimate test.
 
Dr Satya Priya, climate change specialist of UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said it became clear that adverse effects of climate change are beginning to hurt people everywhere. But developing countries, particularly those still struggling with abject poverty, food security and natural disasters, are among the hardest hit because of lack of resources and preparedness to implement mitigation measures.

“It matters little where most of the greenhouse gas emission take place. CO2 and other greenhouse gases already out there will stay in the atmosphere for a long time, causing long lasting impacts,” Satya said. “Development is no longer business as usual.”

The Asian Institute of Technology/UNEP Asia Pacific and its partners, including international agencies, donor countries and NGOs, last year launched the Climate Change Adaptation Knowledge Platform for Asia, a three-year programme funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, aimed to help 13 countries in Asia and the Pacific, from Nepal to the Philippines, better cope with climate change impacts while ensuring sustainability of development.

“What we are doing is helping developing countries living in uncertainty to do planning in uncertainty to have a better and safer tomorrow,” Satya said.

That’s exactly what the people of Nepal need and that’s what Practical Action Nepal, an NGO, has been doing to help poverty-stricken people in rural communities in Nepal cope with adverse effects of climate change since 2004, says Practical Action’s Dinanath Bhandari.

“Our approach is to learn first-hand how climate change affects people and their communities, such as how erratic pattern of rainfall and weather-induced extremities, like floods, drought, affect their crops, livelihood and living standard before we begin to work with them to find solutions based on cost-effective, appropriate technologies,” Dinanath said.

Part of the difficulty is in helping people to draw a connection between climate change as a global phenomenon and the effects that it has in compounding their struggle with existential problems, like not having enough to eat or not being able to afford nutritious meals for their children.

“It is not easy to explain to people we work with, most of them semi-literate or illiterate, how human activities cause greenhouse gases to get trapped in the atmosphere, causing climate change that is affecting their lives. Not that we haven’t tried,” Dinanath said, adding that in order not to cause them further distress, he and his colleagues would for now spare them of the burden of having to try to make sense of international negotiations on climate change with no solutions in sight.

Lobbying for peoples and governments in the rich world to put their money where their mouth is might be more useful for the time being.

“We, along with our international partners, also campaign to ‘Stop Climate Injustice’, which is based on the fact the greatest contributors to global climate change are the developed countries as the historical large emitters, and yet the worst impacts are in the developing countries, like Nepal, which have contributed very little to the problem and are the least prepared to deal with the implications of climate change.”

The idea is to persuade members of the public in industrial countries, like the United Kingdom and European countries, to pressure their governments to cough up more funds to help developing countries more effectively adapt to climate change.

Although supported mostly by foreign funding, its initiatives to work with people to build resilience for their communities against adverse effects of climate change are homegrown. The NGO also works closely with government agencies and international aid agencies in advisory role and in development policy advocacy.

Practical Action was founded in 1966, as ITDG (the Intermediate Technology Development Group), by the radical economist Dr EF Schumacher to prove that his philosophy of ‘Small is Beautiful’ could bring real and sustainable improvements to people’s lives.

“The high mountains were considered an abode of the gods, or a geopolitically- and strategically-important concern of governments, but never a priority for research,” says Schild of ICIMOD.

That may soon change.

“Although the lack of information and knowledge about the glacier melt processes in the Himalayas has been used to politicize the larger issues, the positive aspect of the debate has been the immense awareness created at various levels including politicians, decision makers, the media, and the public at large, which has led to some positive outcomes in recent months,” he said.

The Indian government has recently decided to create a specialised glacier research centre while China’s Academy of Sciences has come up with the concept of Hindu Kush-Himalaya region as the Third Pole Environment. These moves will help toward closing the gaps in the basic understanding of ice cap and glaciers.

“More science-based knowledge is required so that we can understand the trends, have a sound basis for making investment decisions, and to support the international debate on mitigation of climate change,” Schild said. “This information is also essential for estimation of water availability, which is essential for the food security of the whole region.”

Investment in scientific research on the impacts of global warming in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan area should not be difficult to justify. The wellbeing of one-fifth of humanity is at stake.

All it takes to significantly improve the knowledge base, according to ICIMOD 2008 proposal is to define representative trans-Himalayan corridors, areas in which regional research could be concentrated so as to develop consistent knowledge. This idea is now being discussed further among international researchers and regional institutions.

That certainly is a more attractive proposition for the global campaign to decelerate global climate change and the need to equip the world’s poor and marginalized with the tools to help themselves not only to survive but to thrive in this climate of uncertainty. Climate change scientists at IPCC will have more solid scientific data on which to base their analyses and projections. The quality of climate change debate will certainly improve.