Biodiversity Key to Climate Change Control, Says Expert

Source: India West
By SUNITA SOHRABJI indiawest.com December 08, 2009 03:06:00 PM

Biodiversity and curtailing fertility are the keys to combating climate change, said Ashok Khosla, president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Khosla is scheduled to speak at the upcoming United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18. The summit — which will draw leaders from 192 countries — is expected to yield a new climate treaty to replace the 1994 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. 

“My job will be to get up there and say ‘investment in nature will pay off handsomely,’” Khosla told India-West, in a telephone interview from his home in New Delhi.

Khosla is widely credited as the man who sparked Nobel laureate Al Gore’s interest in climate change. 

As a Harvard teaching fellow, Khosla – the 2002 winner of the United Nations’ Sasakawa Environmental Prize – designed and taught the university’s first class on the environment, “Population, Resources and the Environment,” which Gore took during his first year there, in 1965.

At the global summit next week, IUCN will advocate for forest conservation and reforestation, along with sustainable management of wooded areas and alternatives to commercial logging. 

The organization’s ecosystem-based adaptation program utilizes sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems to help people adapt to the impact of climate change. 

Reforestation and smaller families are two key elements in mitigating climate change, said Khosla, adding that India is “doing a huge amount” in these two areas.

“Women do not have a say in their fertility decisions until they achieve a certain social standing,” he said, adding that creating schools for girls, and jobs for women could be two key weapons in the war against climate change. “These cost virtually nothing, yet fertility drops dramatically,” said Khosla, who also heads up Development Alternatives, which creates sustainable livelihood projects for India’s rural dwellers.

Ten to 15 percent of the world’s carbon emissions can be reduced through these two key schemes, he asserted.

The United Nations Population Fund released a report Nov. 18, which also concluded that controlling fertility was a key step in curtailing climate change.

"Helping women to make their own decisions about family size would protect their health, make their lives easier, help put their countries on a sustainable path towards development, and ensure lower greenhouse-gas emissions in the long run," said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UNFPA, as the report was released.

The UNFPA’s report stressed that climate change was most challenging for women in the developing world, who would have to work harder to secure food, water and fuel for their families as the world becomes hotter and drier.

“Given women’s significant engagement in food production in developing countries, the close connection between gender, farming and climate change deserves far more analysis than it currently receives,” stated the UNFPA in its report.

“Marginalization of and discrimination against women and the lack of attention to the ways gender inequality hampers development, health, equity and overall human well-being all undermine countries’ resilience to climate change.”

Population dynamics and reproductive health are key elements of the climate change debate, asserted the UNFPA, adding that countries must put greater funding into family planning and contraceptives.

The report cited Andhra Pradesh’s women farmers, who have tackled climate change head-on with organic, non-irrigated and pesticide-free crop plantings. Agriculture accounts for 28 percent of India’s greenhouse gas emissions, including methane emission from paddy fields and cattle, and nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizers.

In Zaheerabad, dalit women have created a system of interspersing crops which do not need extra water, chemicals or pesticides for production. In the village of Bidakanne, women use sunflowers to attract pests away from their crops, and then use legumes to fix nitrogen in the soil.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that India’s rainfall pattern will be changing disproportionately due to climate change, with intense rain occurring over fewer days, which will lead to agricultural confusion.

In the months leading up to the Copenhagen summit, India has steadfastly refused to set binding targets for reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, maintaining that doing so would hamper its economic growth. India is currently the world’s second-fastest growing economy. 

But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Nov. 28 that India would consider signing on to a global treaty for emissions reductions. 

His announcement came after Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of forests and environment and a vociferous opponent of legally-binding emissions reduction targets for his country, said India would consider voluntarily reducing its carbon emissions by 20 to 25 percent (see separate story).

Last December, India released its national action plan on climate change, with eight key initiatives to reduce the country’s impact. 

Among the plan’s schemes is a national solar mission to harvest more solar energy; enhanced energy efficiency in industry, factories and home appliances; sustainable agriculture; and water conservation.

India’s national action plan also calls for a “Green India” program, which would reforest six million hectares in the country. More than Rs. 6,000 crore has been committed to the “Green India” initiative.