In less than a month’s time India would meet several other nations… rich, poor and broke, in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference. Never before has India and China’s participation mattered to the industrialized nations as now. The frequency of the google news alerts I receive for the string “climate change + India” has almost tripled since the last month. Discussions, debates, predictions and speculations are flying all over making noises muck like the polluting and noisy Indian factories! The loudest I believe is the expectation from the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, himself.(The essentials in Copenhagen)
I once read a story about a spider who hated to share! It’s a folk tale from West Africa about Anansi -the spider. It finds a context even in these modern times. One day when Turtle came to his house at mealtime, his Anansi said, “I can’t give you food until you washed your dusty feet!”. Turtle hurried down to the stream to wash his feet. When he returned, the plate was empty, “Good meal” Anansi said, patting his stomach. Well said Turtle, “One good meal deserves another!” and invited Anansi for dinner. Turtle set the dinner at the bottom of the river. “Come down and eat” he said. Anansi filled his jacket pocket with enough stones so that he could be heavy enough to stay at the bottom to have the fine dinner. “Its impolite to wear a jacket to dinner”, “Take it off!” said Turtle. But when greedy Anansi removed his jacket, he floated back up to the surfaces and hungrily watched Turtle eat his fill !
Should these developing nations (who are looked upon for answers) choose to behave like Turtle and answer a good meal that they have had with another, the conference would reach to no acceptable solution . And I am compelled to think about the deal that would be offered to these developing countries to work on a problem which seems to have very little effect on their people, for whom starvation, malnutrition and disease stand a step away! Why would they even think of giving a higher priority to the problem which was not a problem at all, when the other part of the world (in the west) was industrializing and consuming like never before.
I thought of revisiting the conversations that happened
during the Copenhagen Consensus Conference in 2004. Some of the leading economists came together to prioritize the solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, like water and sanitation, HIV, malaria, free trade , climate change etc. Climate change in that list stood first from bottom. The reason for this had to do with the amount of money spent to make little improvement on the climatic condition compared to what we will be able to achieve in eradicating other problems like malnutrition. Climate change could wait and rightly so for nations that have very little affordability and are reliant on foreign aid! But this analysis is based purely on economics when all the pressing problems of the world are looked at in silos (as Bjorn Lomborg puts it).
The issues of food security, water, sanitation, diseases etc are much more intricately connected than what is usually understood and practiced. In case of poverty alleviation and climate change what should we prioritize? Climate change may not manifest as a disaster in the lives of people everyday or in any observable interval of time or even in the near future. Now, how about poverty? How many people perish each day on the streets of the megacities of the developing world? The population which lives in extreme deprivation and the magnitude of the risk that they are exposed to everyday far exceeds the threat due to climatic changes and disturbances.
This needn’t be inferred as a case against climate change. Acknowledging that this change is indeed happening and that it may not be good for us in the times to come, we must learn to prioritize in order to be able to deal with these problems effectively. In these times of extreme economic vulnerability financial resources are limited, then why should not the spending habits be changed too. Any commitments in the conference would call for significant budgetary outlay, and technology development. Where would that come from? Should we talk about that first?
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