In New Delhi — For five hours every day, Ranjit Kumar and his
10-year-old son rummage through a giant pile of rotting trash with their
bare hands, filling bags with pieces of metal, plastic and glass to
take by cart to the recyclers market nearby.
But an incinerator under construction not far away may mean
that he and other waste workers will lose access to the trash, he said,
which fetches his family a little more than $5 a day.
The incinerator is one of two projects in New Delhi aimed at
turning the city’s trash into electricity and earning carbon credits
under the Kyoto Protocol, the global climate pact designed to reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions. Local politicians have hailed the projects for
addressing the city’s chronic problems of excess untreated waste and a
shortage of electric power.
But for almost 300,000 workers in the
city engaged in waste collection, sorting and recycling, the plants mean
the loss of their livelihood.
“If all the trash goes to the
plants to be processed, how do we feed our stomachs?” Kumar said as
foul-smelling fumes rose from the trash and dark-brown water trickled
past him. “My work may look dirty, but it keeps my family alive.”
A worldwide campaign
Waste-worker communities have mobilized in
Brazil, Colombia, South Africa and India to campaign on behalf of trash
dumps and the livelihoods they provide, and against the idea of burning
waste. The United Nations, however, has been encouraging incinerator
projects that burn waste — rotting trash produces the potent greenhouse
gas methane — to produce energy.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, nations
can earn carbon credits for such projects; the credits can be used to
offset the emissions of coal-fired power plants elsewhere.
This month, hundreds of waste workers gathered outside the U.N. office in New Delhi to protest 21 municipal waste projects for which India has applied for carbon credit.
The projects, not all completed, use biodegradable, combustible and
inert waste. They include trash-to-compost, incinerators and
refuse-derived fuel.
Waste-worker groups appealed to climate
negotiators when they met in Mexico, Germany and China in the past year,
and they are preparing to protest at the climate meeting in Durban,
South Africa, set to begin next week.
Waste workers want access to
the United Nations’ $30 billion Green Climate Fund — the effort by
developed countries to help the developing world prepare for climate
change — for their role in mitigating climate change by recovering
recyclable materials from waste.
But advocates of the trash-
to-energy
projects say that India’s growing population, changing consumption
patterns and urban boom have created a waste problem that must be
addressed in a scientific manner.
“It is not an us-versus-them
situation. We must frame the debate differently. Do we want the
ragpickers to continue working in inhuman, hell-on-Earth, unhygienic
conditions at these untreated dump sites? Should their sons and
daughters do the same, too?” asked Mahesh Babu, chief executive of
IL&FS Ecosmart, which heads several trash-to-energy projects across
India, including the incinerator near Kumar’s neighborhood. “The
solution lies in integrating some of the waste-workers into the
processing activities of the plants.”
But India has a staggering 1.7 million waste workers, and any
effort to mainstream them is often just a drop. Babu’s project in the
central city of Nagpur has given jobs to 70 people to collect trash, out
of a total of 1,700 waste workers in the city.
“The waste pickers are at the lowest rung of the occupational
ladder and often the most marginalized, hence they do not have
alternative livelihood options to which they can move,” Prema Gera,
assistant country director of the U.N. Development Program, said in an
e-mail, referring to a study.
Bhojahari Paramni, 41, has worked with waste for 25 years. He removes
dirt and twigs from balls of human hair in his home in a large slum of
waste workers.
“You cannot take away my job and expect me to
become a successful electrician, plumber or mason overnight,” he said.
There is no regulatory protection for waste workers in India.
Waste workers say that 80 percent of Indian trash is wet, organic waste and that 30 percent contains recyclable material.
“To
run an incinerator, they will burn everything, including the
recyclables like plastics. Is that good for the environment?” asked
Shashi Bhushan Pandit, secretary of the All India Waste Workers Union.
This year, New Delhi residents protested another new incinerator because
they feared emissions of dioxin and other toxic gases.
Two Indian
waste workers will represent their country at next week’s protest in
Durban, which will demand that poor people be factored in climate policies.
Carbon trading’s future
Although the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States has not
signed, is facing an uncertain future when it comes up for renewal in
2012, analysts say that its key component, carbon trading for emissions
reductions, may survive in some form.
Countries such as China,
Japan and New Zealand are developing carbon markets. California recently
announced the nation’s first state-run cap-and-trade program. This
year, India launched an exchange program for renewable-energy
certificates.
“We are hoping that the carbon-trading market will
continue in some [form] — both within India and bilaterally with other
countries, even if the multilateral arrangements under the Kyoto
Protocol are not renewed,” Babu said.
He said carbon credit prices have fallen more than 50 percent in the past year because of the euro-zone economic crisis.
Source: DNA INDIA
Ahmedabad: In an exclusive interview with DNA, Gujarat power and industries minister Saurabh Patel discussed the state's future plans for energy.
What do the ongoing Climate Change summit in Copenhagen, world energy conservation day celebrations, and Gujarat have in common?
They are all concerned about the future requirements of energy and the impact of power generation on global warming. Even as there is a debate underway on India's commitment to reduction in carbon emissions, the Modi government already has several ambitious plans for energy generation.
The future is gas-based power generation. In the next few years, Gujarat aims to switch to clean mechanisms -- such as solar, hydro, wind and tidal power -- for as much as 50 per cent of its total power generation. A tidal power project will be launched either in the Gulf of Kutch or Khambhat.
This will be achieved at a huge initial cost. But the extra cash will be well spent as it will lead to savings on recurring expenses. It will ensure that state's carbon emission does not shoot up in the next decade because of its power generation projects.
What are your thoughts on Climate Change and how high is it on Gujarat government's agenda?
Climate Change is an issue that is being debated world over and needs to be tackled seriously. Gujarat has already started doing its bit by promoting clean energy. In fact, Gujarat is the first state in the country to set up a separate Climate Change department. The state government has been encouraging the use of clean fuels to generate energy. Unfortunately, the amounts of such clean fuel (such as gas) needed in Gujarat is very high but we do not have adequate supplies.
How is the state government promoting green energy?
We are promoting power generation through renewable sources such as wind and solar power. We are also focusing on nuclear power generation. The state government is working on a biomass policy for electricity generation, the draft of which is being readied and will be soon placed in the assembly.
How are things shaping up as far as wind power generation is concerned?
As far as wind energy is concerned, Gujarat, with an installed power generation capacity of over 1,500 MW, is second only to Tamil Nadu. We are promoting this sector in a big way and aim to expand capacity by a further 500 MW this year. We are utilising state PSUs such as GACL, GNFC, GSFC, GMDC and GSPC to generate wind power.
The cost of tapping solar power for energy is very high. How does the government plan to overcome this problem?
The Gujarat government is taking the lead in promoting solar energy generation. We realise that as solar energy is costlier than power from other sources, it will never pick up if it is not taken seriously. We have, therefore, decided to offer Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited Rs1,000 crore as subsidy for solar power generation for the next 10 years.
It is a huge sum, but it will ensure that solar energy is properly tapped. Moreover, once new technologies are produced, the cost of power will come down and the subsidy burden will ease. The government is even planning to promote hybrid power generation through plants that run on sunlight during daytime and gas at night.
What is the status of the work on expanding the gas grid in the state?
Gujarat was the first state to encourage use of gas as fuel and continues to do so. We already have gas grid in 15 districts and plan to cover the remaining areas soon. We also want to include the smaller towns in North Gujarat and Saurashtra. The grid will be expanded to Pipavav, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Mundra, Mehsana, Vapi and other places.
Around 150 CNG stations will be set up across the state in the next 15 months.
These include mother stations which will be directly connected to the main pipeline, and daughter stations which will be supplied gas by tankers. We are even asking all government vehicles to switch to CNG.
What is the status of the work on expanding the gas grid in the state?
Gujarat was the first state to encourage use of gas as fuel and continues to do so. We already have gas grid in 15 districts and plan to cover the remaining areas soon. We also want to include the smaller towns in North Gujarat and Saurashtra. The grid will be expanded to Pipavav, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Mundra, Mehsana, Vapi and other places.
Nitin Sethi, TNN 11 December 2009, 03:08am IST
Source: TOI
COPENHAGEN: India on Thursday got all-round credit for suggesting a proposal and forging a consensus on a deal to share new green technologies.
Even as talks on the issue of financing technologies and other actions got stalled, the Indian delegation was able to forge near complete consensus on the formation of Climate Innovation Centres which would be akin to the CGIAR model created during Green Revolution to develop and share crop varieties.
The innovation centres would be a collaborative effort by all countries in terms of both funds and capacities to create new green technologies. The rights over these new technologies would be shared by all countries that contribute to the work. the CGIAR model created during the food crisis in the 1970s had led to large scale deployment of hybrid and high productivity seeds across the poor world.
Its authors — primarily the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and the power ministry — have pinned hopes on similar breakthrough on the clean tech front through the innovation centres.
While the details of the technology deal would still take a couple of days to be finally fleshed out, the talks on this front over the last four days have been the most fruitful. "We should ideally get most of the details sorted out before the high level rounds begin next week. It now seems we can at least have a deal on technology even if other things get stuck," an Indian negotiator said.
Sources said the key issue that would remain to be thrashed out towards the end would include the list of technologies that would get financial support.This issue has got stuck with negotiations on the finance issue getting completely jammed. The industrialised countries have not even been able to come up with numbers that add up to the $10 billion informally offered by them.
Worse still, sources said the negotiations have not been able to move on creating a structure and formula by which money will be collected, from whom it would be collected and which countries shall benefit from the funds.
"We expect this would be the last of the four pillars to be built up, the others being mitigation action, adaptation and technology. The issue of financing the other three pillars is obviously linked so the chances are that the size of the pot would be left to the last to be sorted out," said a G77 negotiator. He pointed out that developed countries were dragging their feet on the finance issue as they were extremely reluctant to provide public funds to poor and developing states.
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.
