India Launches National Action Plan on Climate Change

The Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh finally unveiled the National Action Plan on Climate Change (pdf: 15 mb). It is a 52 page document. There are 8 missions to combat, mitigate and adapt to climate change: 1. Solar Energy 2. Enhanced Energy Efficiency 3. Sustainable Habitat4. Conserving Water 5. Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem 6. A “Green India” 7. Sustainable Agriculture 8. Strategic Knowledge Platform for Climate Change. I have not read the document yet but I plan to and maybe post on some topics of interest. Meanwhile I was struck by this statement by the PM that India's per-capita greenhouse gas emissions will "at no point exceed that of developed countries."

This is a clever statement. It re enforces our commitment to the per-capita method of looking at CO2 emissions, which India has argued is the only equitable way of addressing emissions, but at the same time issues a challenge to developed countries to reduce their emissions as much as possible. It also gives us a huge space to increase our own emissions. Currently per-capita emissions of developed nations average to about 15 tons of CO2 per year. India emits per-capita about 1.3 tons CO2 per year. The G8 have made various pledges to reduce emissions by 60-80% by 2050. Even if they are able to reduce emissions by 50%, an amount considered very optimistic by many, India will theoretically be able to increase its per-capita emissions about 5 fold while maintaining levels below those of the developed nations. Our emissions will most likely not grow that much. The projections are for a 2-3 fold increase in our emissions by 2050 with the business as usual scenario, but might be a lot less (pdf: 8 mb) if we enlarge our energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, both of which feature in the National Action Plan on Climate Change.

We need to look at reducing our CO2 emissions not only from the perspective of combating global warming but all the associated pollution that accompany CO2 emissions. Coal burning power plants, industrial emissions, emissions from transportation are all adding to the rapid growth of sulphate pollution one of the main ingredients of soot. This not only has damaging local health effects but may even impact monsoon patterns. Climate models predict an overall increase in the Indian monsoons over the next several decades, but a recent study shows that an increase in soot also known as brown haze which hangs over the Indian subcontinent may weaken the monsoon by blocking sunlight reaching the Indian ocean. While an uneven increase in rainfall due to a warming trend will come with its own problems, even a short to medium term decrease in overall rainfall might prove to be disastrous for India. Flipping or rather scrolling through the report I noticed that there is not much enthusiasm on carbon capture and storage strategies (CCS) for coal power plants. This is a pity since much of our expansion in power generation in the 11th 5-year plan will be through increased coal plants. I think this is where we should be proactive in pursuing technology transfer for CCS under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. Power generation will account for about 50% of our emissions in 2050 and a shift towards cleaner technologies for coal plants and a larger component of renewable energy in power sector will go a long way in achieving emission reductions.

Reducing these emissions is in our own interest and I hope we don't get too caught up in our "right" to emit as much per-capita as developed countries to ignore the impacts of increasing emissions and associated pollution on our own citizens. We keep making the argument of our per-capita emissions being lower than developed countries but what is never pointed out by the government but has been pointed out by others is that there is a huge disparity in our emissions. Although the average per-capita emissions of an Indian is about 1.3 ton CO2 per year, about 150 million Indians already emit considerably more than the sustainable limit (2.5 tCO2 per year) needed to restrict CO2 levels to about 450 ppm corresponding to about a 2 deg centigrade increase in temperature (this is considered a threshold figure, any temperature increase more than this will increase the risk of catastrophic changes to the climate system). The rest of the 800 million or so emit much less, but this is the section of society which will feel the impacts of local pollution as well as long term climate change the most. If through a scientific evaluation we have come to a consensus cutoff value for our emissions, then an exceeding of that limit by rich Indians is as unjust on poor Indians as exceeding that limit by a rich European. So while we argue for the right to equitable per-capita emissions with developed countries we need to extend the same principle to address disparities in our society.

I am sure there is a lot more to say about various aspects of our response to climate change but this will do for now.

Immigrating to America

A couple of days ago I finished reading The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America And Its Peoples by Tim Flannery, the Australian mammal expert and ecologist. I really enjoyed the book. It is written on an epic scale covering the natural history of the continent over last 65 millions years. The earth went through a rapid period of reorganization of its terrestrial and marine ecosystems following a mass extinction and Flannery chooses that event to begin his exploration. Covering 65 million years in 300 odd pages means that the book moves along at a fairly brisk pace but I thought Flannery has done an exceptionally skillful job of identifying the higher level geological and climatic controls on the transformation of North America over this period. This gives the book a well defined framework within which to think through the ecologic, bio geographic and evolutionary patterns exhibited by the continents fauna and flora. Cultural patterns too as Flannery devotes the last segment to the arrival of humans and their considerable impact on the terrestrial and marine biosphere.

North America at various times over the past 65 million years has been attached to Asia and Europe through land "bridges". That has enabled it to be the land of immigrants as mammalian groups of Asian and European stock made their way into the continent and evolved a unique north American characteristic over time. This has mostly been a one way traffic, of all the modern placental mammals, only camels, horses and dogs are north American exports of ancient pedegree. Apparently, no one wants to leave once inside the continent and Flannery sees a continuity in the immigration patterns of another mammal - Homo sapiens. Since I am not a vertebrate paleontologist or a mammal expert, I liked the part of the book that dealt with human arrival and impact more than some of the early pre-human history. The modern north American ecosystems have been rendered depauperate of mammalian megafauna and other animal and plant groups and Flannery gives ample evidence in the form of timings of extinctions and some ingenious research on mammoth tusks that it has been mostly human influence and not climatic changes that is to blame. The book deals with big themes, extinction, migration and evolutionary adaptation of groups of organisms over large periods of time, but I found enough small details and asides that weave through the narrative and makes reading a pleasure in the first place. Details that you can ruminate over, those that suddenly crystallize some nebulous ideas and thoughts you have. You also now possess some fodder to impress friends over coffee. Why is cactus common in the Sonaran desert of Arizona and not in the Australian desert? Answer: Even if scant, the plant does needs predictable rainfall and nutritious soil. The Australian desert is bereft of either. Why did the field of vertebrate paleontology develop to the extent it did in the U.S and not in Canada? Answer: The ice age glaciers covering large expanses of Canada but not the U.S. ground up literally to dust the sediment cover and entombed fossils. The Canadians had little to work with. And this gem: The key to the bison's role in the prairie ecosystem lay in the fact that the great grassland were piss-driven. Buffalo urine fertilized the grasslands!

Flannery is pretty severe on the human propensity and ability to devastate the environment and treat fellow human beings with astonishing intolerance. He has a lot to say about the relationship of native Indians and the Europeans. The conflicts and wars were known to me, but I learnt something new in his explanation on the different approaches taken by the Spanish, French and English settlers. The Spanish came as a state and having defeated the incumbent Indian state, simply took over possession of state property. They never worked the land themselves, but collected taxes and used labor just as the native Indian chiefs had done. This though limited their influence over only the captured property and not much beyond. The French came as fur traders and developed a sort of a business relationship with the Indians. This meant they had to maintain good relations with the Indians. Grabbing land was self-defeating as they had to rely on the Indians for sources of fur and other goods. The English though came either as Puritan rebels with a belief that this was the chosen land, or as commerical expansionists, who saw Indians are competitors for the rich soil and resources they craved for. Winning land became an all consuming goal and the eventual victory handed them the biggest share of the continent.

Flannery identifies three phases of human occupation in North America. A pioneer phase, a period of ecologic release and finally adaptation. According to him much of North America is still stuck in the second phase, one in which people are living as if on the frontier, appropriating resources with scant regard to the consequences. Adaptation, where one learns to live within the constraints imposed by the environment is slow in coming. It's hard to disagree with the general tone of this argument, but humans do have an ability to reinvent themselves, none more so than North Americans and change is slowly coming. Two recent news items caught my eye that gives me some hope. Plans are afoot to restore part of the great plains prairie, the vast sea of grasslands that was home to the great buffalo herds of the past. And yesterday came the news that Florida is planning to acquire several thousand hectares of land from sugar companies and revert in back into a marshland, connecting Lake Okeechobee to the southern everglades national park. This won't transform the landscape to a pre-human form, for the prairie and the everglades have themselves been forged by early human activity. There is a radical remedy proposed in the book to correct that too, namely the re-introduction of fauna which disappeared from North America 13,000 to 10,000 years ago. Let lions, camels and peccaries roam again on reserve lands. This may make ecologic sense, but just take notice of the vociferous objections by ranchers to the re-introduction of one carnivore species, the wolf, in Yellowstone and I have doubts about anything more ambitious being put into action in the foreeable future. As managers of the biosphere we need to find a compromise between development and bringing reserve areas back to an acceptable state of "pristineness", and these two experiments on the prairie and the everglades look promising.

This is a cracking good book. Go get it.

Bundelkhand Water Refugees and More To Come?

I often have conversations with friends about global warming and how it will affect India. One popular scare scenario is the rise in sea-level of a metre or more. That, many experts say may be enough to inundate large areas of the low-lying deltaic regions of Bangladesh, resulting in an exodus of hundreds of thousands to millions of "water refugees" into India. Now this scenario is just one on the more extreme end of the spectrum of sea-level rise projections, not likely to unfold until end 21st century if at all, but its a scary story regardless. Reading some recent news of the water crisis in Bundelkhand region of U.P and M.P what struck me is that the internal displacement of people in India due to water problems has already started. We already have water refugees poring into our cities from affected regions like Bundelkhand. In the case of Bundelkhand, people are not fleeing a sea-level rise and a water excess but an acute water shortage. It has not rained enough for more than 5 years in this region, ground water levels have dropped and agriculture has taken a huge beating. The water shortage has reached such desperate levels due to a total neglect of water conservation measures and government policies skewed in favor of solving the problem by encouraging more drilling and extraction of groundwater.

Unlike a sea-level rise and coastal inundation, which is a more nebulous scenario that might take place century end, this movement of people, the abandonment of homes, fields and an agricultural heritage due to water shortages is unfolding here and now. It is a serious problem today, and during the next drought or next year in some other region, something that will demand immediate action in not just providing relief to any particular individual incident but in drawing up more effective mitigation strategies for future water shortages that are likely to become more common due to global warming. Some time back the planning commission issued a report on the national ground water situation with recommendations for improving ground water deficits, but it admits that there are political road blocks for implementing changes in ground water law. Besides this report did not take into account the changes in rainfall patterns expected to occur due to warming induced monsoon variability nor an overall drop in summer availability of water due to a decline in Himalayan glaciers.

Climate models suggest that an overall warming trend in this century will intensify the Indian monsoons, but rainfall will not increase uniformly across India. Parts of western Indian and northern India will receive less rainfall. Thus the contrast between wet and dry areas will increase. How will the long term warming trend overlay on the natural variability of rainfall in across India? Will global warming increase rainfall in a particular region or will it make prolonged droughts like the one Bundelkhand is experiencing more common? Just last month, the U.S government released a summary of federal and independent research pointing out region specific impacts of human induced global warming. This was followed by another report on extreme weather and how that may impact different regions in the U.S. We too badly need a thorough region-specific scientific assessment of how global warming will affect different regions in India. Only with such a geography sensitive study can we start making long term plans on how to combat the effects of changing climate on availability of water and its impact on agriculture. That may mean giving a big impetus for reviving traditional water harvesting methods in some areas and clamping down on excessive drilling for ground water, to changing the crop type planted in a particular region with considerations for climate suitability and water availability. These decisions will require a lot of political courage and I am not so confident that our politicians will take the required steps for a radical overhaul on how we use and manage our water resources. A national action plan on climate change is due to be released soon and I hope that besides the obvious focus on reducing carbon emissions, increasing energy efficiency and concerns on rising sea-levels, it spares some thought to warming induced rainfall variability across part of the country and the impact of large scale displacement of our own citizens within.

What Does It Mean To Be Human?

What does it mean to be human was one of the panel discussions at the 2008 World Science Festival in New York City. Anthropology.net had a post some time back reviewing that discussion. The panel pundits were a collection of eminent psychologists, geneticists, anthropologists and neuroscientists among many other fields. Each expert gave an opinion of what makes humans unique, in the sense of possessing a unique biological property. Most of the answers focused on various aspects of our cognitive abilities and for good reason since we seem to differ qualitatively in our ways of thinking and communication from other animals. Almost all the answers were rejected by the blog author, who gave examples of similar traits being present in various species of apes and birds. The post is worth reading. I was left thinking, so okay just what is it that makes us different? Maybe the difficulty arises because of the insistence of the term unique. That carries the burden of showing that we posses something that absolutely does not exist anywhere in the animal kingdom. This approach will likely fail, since our characters are ultimately derived from an ancestral condition and echoes of human-like properties are bound to exist in related groups. Besides evolution can be strongly convergent. Evolution comes up with similar solutions to deal with similar problems. Even in groups such as birds which are only distantly related to us, cognitive properties similar to our own, such as anticipation and deception have been shown to exist, a result not due to shared ancestry but due to convergence.

I am trying to think of what evolutionary trigger could have lead to the considerable differences in cognition that have accumulated between humans and our closest relatives. If I was to thrown my opinion in the ring I would go for neoteny , which is the retention of juvenile features in adults due to a slowing down or delay in development. The main consequence in humans of developmental delay has been a prolongation of helplessness in infants and an extended childhood. Some say we, especially the men, never really grow up, but there is a deeper evolutionary reason for it! Having helpless infants and inquisitive children in early human groups would have had radical consequences on group dynamics and given rise to different selection pressures on different sex and age groups. Sexual selection for intelligence in harsh habitats is one of the favoured explanations for the rapid rise of our cognitive abilities but that is consistent with a children centric scenario. Women may have selected men more capable of acquiring food and with more tolerant temperaments , ones likely to stick around and help out with the kids, giving rise to the now familiar system of pair-bonding. Another consequence would be an increase in group size, these social changes setting up evolutionary pressures for more complex forms of communications and signalling. As tool use became an intergral part of human life, children too would have come under selective pressures for skills and abilities to use tools and communicate what they have learned. As we grapple with the problems of economic growth, "knowledge economy" has become something of a buzzword. But humans have always been experimenters and innovators and evolution of a distinct life-history characterized by a long period of learning most likely played a big role in fuelling selection for and reinforcing these cognitive traits. In this sense we have always been knowledge based societies with a high premium placed on innovation, communication and information sharing. Neoteny is again not unique to humans. Within primates, apes in general are the most neotenous. Within mammals, primates in general are the most neotenous, and mammals tend to be more neotenous among terrestrial animals. This is not a rejection of neoteny being a special feature in our evolution, merely an acknowledgment that evolution works by remolding, re sculpting, exaggerating and recombining pre-existing traits. Evolution is descent with modification and not descent with "poof, where did that come from?".

In trying to make a list of what make us unique, I felt too much attention of the panel was on the what is now unique/very very different and not on how we got there. I accept the panel's agenda might have been restricted to the here and now but maybe it does make sense to take a longer view. What I mean is that all humans share an evolutionary history and uniqueness lies in the particulars of the evolutionary pathway taken by the human species, a trajectory followed only once in the 4 billion years or so of life on earth. Whatever our differences, genetic and cultural, what we do share is a history, one that is not shared with any other species, and that it is this history that we can use to differenciate ourselves from other species. And that applies equally to all other creatures as well. And so just what could be the particular shared history, the longer view that I referred to? Competition and adaptation take place in an ecological context and I like Jonathan Kingdon's explanation of what makes humans so different. He calls us "niche thieves", who through superior use of technology have gradually expanded out of habitats that we were originally biologically adapted to. Throughout our evolutionary history human populations have progressively encroached upon the habitats of competing species, driving many including other hominid species to extinction. Our biological evolution since the advent of complex tool use more than 2 million years ago has been keeping pace with and sometimes falling behind new cultural practices and our tool driven expansion into evolutionarily unfamiliar habitats. I like this definition because it is a constant reminder that we are an invasive species, one that has appropriated resources with total impunity. But it is also a reminder that with command and control comes the responsibility of managing these resources in a sustainable way. Our abilities to displace other species and take over resources has deep evolutionary roots. But evolution has also given us the mental make up to override these impulses and fix past wrongs. Maybe that's what makes us unique.

Survey Of Indian Scientists

I came across a survey of Indian scientists last week (link through Nonoscience). Arunn at Nonoscience has a post detailing the survey done by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, Trinity College, Connecticut, USA in Cooperation with the Center for Inquiry India. A wide range of questions related to science and worldviews were asked. I won't go into all the survey questions as Arunn has already done that. I have a few observations to add. Looking at the scientists surveyed I found that only those working in universities and research institutes were polled. I would have liked scientists working in industry to have been included also. It is possible that scientists who join industry are temperamentally different from those who choose academia and it would have been useful to sample that potential range. Work experience, work culture, goals and priorities at industry R & D labs differ from academia and this might systematically influence the way some of the questions were answered. I also would have preferred the answers to be broken down by profession. In the survey, scientists of different professions are lumped into just one category, the "Indian scientist". This means that we don't get a feel for specialized opinions at all. Arunn mentions this problem in his post. For example 29% of those surveyed refused to work on human cloning, but how many of these are life scientists? The answer matters because while the opinions of an engineer towards cloning may be interesting it is the opinions and beliefs of life scientists toward this issue that will have consequences on the direction and growth of this field.

I write about evolution a lot in my blog so the question on belief in evolution caught my eye. The majority of Indian scientists believe that evolution is a fact, but a small number tend to think that humans may be an exception. The numbers in any case are refreshingly higher than in the U.S and Canada. But as is often the case with surveys, how the question is framed has a lot to do with the answers. For example I would have liked a followup question on whether you think evolution is guided by an intelligent agent or is a completely naturalistic process devoid of any intelligent guiding force. I suspect a significant number of Indian scientists would have split on this issue. The survey shows that a majority of Indian scientists believe in God, either a personal deity or a "higher power" and when questioned directly about God intervening in the evolutionary process, I feel the answer for many would be in the affirmative.

A couple of topics currently on the top of the list for policy makers, those of global warming and genetically modified crops were given a miss in the survey. Again these are the types of issues where surveying only academia and research institutions may bias the answers towards one position. Are geologists and engineers working in the petroleum industry more dismissive of evidence of human induced global warming than their university colleagues? How do life and environmental scientists and ecologists working in universities view the usefulness of GM crops compared to an industry researcher? These are topics of enormous relevance to the economic development of our country and it would have been nice to have a more detailed and wider range of views of people who will be recommending policy.