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Climate Change Perspectives

■ Gender and Climate Change ■ India’s Carbon Sinks ■ The Consumption Explosion ■ Urban Poverty ■ Crop Insurance ■ Drying Deserts of Ladakh

2 s e p t e m b e r - o c t o b e r 2 0 0 9 G e o G r a ph y a n d y ou G e o G r a ph y a n d y ou s e p t e m b e r - o c t o b e r 2 0 0 9 3

GeoGraphy and youVol. 9 ■ Issue 56 ■ september - october 2009

Contents

editorSulagna Chattopadhyay

Legal advisorKrishnendu Datta

Cover photograph Ecofriendly transport Valmiki Forest, Champaran, Bihar Photograph Prasad

IrIS publication pvt. Ltd.registered office: 111/9, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, Kishangarh, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi-110070

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© IrIS publication pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, part or whole, is prohibited.

Printed, published and owned by Sulagna Chattopadhyay.

printed at: India Graphic Systems pvt. Ltd. F-23, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110020

published at: IrIS publication pvt. Ltd. Geography and You does not take any responsibility for returning unsolicited publication material.

All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi/New Delhi only

Reports 12 Forests India’s Carbon Sinks Story StaFF reporter photoGraph praSad

16 emission targets Green House Gas Emissions in India Story StaFF reporter photoGraph praSad

22 poverty Studies Urban Poverty: India Report 2009 Story dr SaraSwatI raju photoGraph praSad

Water Woes 26 drying deserts Ladakh: Water Security and Climate Change Story and photoGraph Shobha S.V.

expert and oFFICIaL Speak, StaFF reporter

Interventions 34 Flow patterns Living Rivers: Environmental Flows

Story StaFF reporter photoGraph praSad

40 earth Sciences Integrated Coastal and Marine Area Management Story StaFF reporter photoGraph praSad

Opinion 46 neighbourhood Afghanistan 2009 Story and photoGraph deepak Ghura

50 reckless purchases The Consumption Explosion Story dr joe SmIth photoGraph praSad

Vision Capsule 57 Urban India: Housing Stress 58 Ecosystem Under Threat: Lakshadweep 59 Climate Change: Crop Insurance 60 16th September: World Ozone Preservation Day Travel 61 traveller’s diary Narkanda, Himachal Pradesh Story and photoGraph dr S SrInIVaSan

FEATURES

4 Editor’s Note

Gender and Climate Change 6 Gendered Space Where is the gender in climate change? Story Seema arora-jonSSon photoGraph praSad

9 disaster proofing A Rice Gene to Tackle Floods Story and photoGraph manIpadma jena

20In conversation Dr Amitabh Kundu: Urban Poverty and Climate Change in India

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letters to the editor

Dear readers, Global warming is real and it is man made. But statements about strong, ominous and

immediate consequences of global warming are often exaggerated as scientists who

have contributed articles to us have shown. What India perhaps requires is need-based

focussed or smart solutions to put global warming in perspective. Climate change is not

really the issue - adaptation is. Moreover, half baked truths of the sensationalist media,

screaming doomsday headlines, trivialise issues of HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, sanitation,

poverty, malaria, clean drinking water and make them utterly unimportant as compared

to global warming. Although changing climatic regimes are apparent, it is a problem that

needs to be tackled in the context of each concern that is affecting or likely to affect India.

This issue of G’nY has been developed with a view to understand critical issues from

the perspective of climate change. The gendered manifestations of climate change, the

increase in urban poverty in coming decades, the compounding shortage of low cost

housing and fresh water, policy inadequacies in understanding and computing minimum

ecological flows in rivers of the nation, and the unsustainable consumption patterns have

been explored. I extend a very warm thanks to Dr Bahadur Kotli, Dr B M Jha and Dr A

Kundu for specially taking out time to resolve our queries.

Sulagna Chattopadhyay

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water■ Monsoon Failures and Rainwater Harvesting ■ Rainfall Variability in India ■ Ground Water ■ Transboundary Waters ■ Fresh Water Status and Management

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Traveller’s diary

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Developing countries have identified climate change as a phenomenon linked closely to development. It is apparent that poorer

countries and moreover the poor and vulnerable in such countries are the ones that are going to be affected adversely. The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) in India states further that climate change has different effects on women and men, that the impacts of climate change could prove particularly severe for women and special attention should be paid to the aspects of gender (Government of India, 2008). Studies on gender and climate change claim that by ignoring the gendered effects of climate change, policy makers and others can make position of women even more vulnerable. Changes in climate patterns impact the management and access to natural resources such as water and forests. In many communities where women are responsible for getting water or collecting fuelwood, this greatly affects their daily lives and household burdens. The health effects (increased malaria and dengue cases, for example) of climate change will fall mainly to women as they are usually responsible for caring for the ill. Values and ideas of what is appropriate for women vis a vis men can affect women adversely. Activists have pointed to the situation during the tsumani in 2004 wherein there were a higher number of women fatalities because women were never taught to swim as it was not considered appropriate for

them to be out in the water. As past development research has pointed out, the spokespeople for communities and in public fora are most often men. Due to the gendered division of labour that often prevails in most communities, not having women in public discussions or advisory situations when negotiating development programmes or projects meant to tackle climate change leads to ineffective and incomplete implementation apart from its negative impacts on women. These are some of the things that policy makers and others need to keep in mind when formulating programmes to deal with climate change and associated issues of development.

The overriding solutions to deal with climate change that have emerged are market driven mechanisms: be it carbon emissions trading, clean development mechanisms or technology transfer. The focus has been on one particular gas, carbon dioxide. Carbon trading has emerged from the assumption that we all share one atmosphere and that the harmful effects of too much carbon in the atmosphere can be reduced from anywhere, the location of emission reduction being irrelevant. This has led to the idea of trading carbon credits, i.e., richer countries that are responsible for the high emissions pay for development works and other mitigating factors in developing countries that would reduce carbon emissions and benefit the whole earth. This is based on certain economic

Where is the gender in climate change?

Climate change is quite obviously something that affects everyone.

However the effects of these changes and the policies meant to deal with

climate change can be gendered. It is true that the interface between

gender and climate change is still being conceptually understood. But it is

clear that women, landless farmers and others who lack access to markets

especially in the developing world will be further marginalised.

—Story Seema Arora-Jonsson Photograph Prasad

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gendered space

thinking that assumes that it would be cheaper to mitigate climate change in developing countries. Clean development mechanisms (CDM) spring from this in the idea that the developed world funds projects in the south that would mitigate the effects of climate change. Lastly, this is to be done with a transfer of the latest and cleanest technology to developing countries. These are all highly contentious issues.

GenderCC, a network formed by gender activists and experts at a side event at the Conference of the Parties in Milan in 2003 criticise the move towards the market in a number of publications. One of the members, Ulrike Röhr (2008), cites the Stern Report that states that climate change is the biggest market failure that the world has ever seen. In her opinion then as women in the GenderCC, they do not trust the markets that have failed in the past to preserve the earth from climate change. Taking the example of CDM she writes that CDM is not pushing the most sustainable projects or the ones with the most co-benefits like poverty reduction, but those where the highest returns of investments in terms of carbon credits are expected such as in the field of industrial gases, landfill gas utilisation and fossil fuels. Röhr writes that the

CDM projects do not meet the needs of the less developed countries nor of the people at the end of the poverty chain – the majority of whom, she claims, are women. On the contrary, she points out that many of these projects depend on substantial land use change which compounds the problems of local men and women. The effects are worse for women since the projects offer cash awards and technology transfers and it is often men who enjoy access to them. Wherever there is land involved, especially collective land, it becomes all the more difficult for women since it is mostly men who hold titles to land.

Although, the interface between gender and climate change is still in the stage of being conceptually understood, Ulrike Röhr, one of the most important observer, highlights the inadequacy of market based mechanisms in general, which are not applicable to sectors that are not market driven. Given this, the women, landless farmers and others who lack access to the markets especially in the developing world, would have no use for these mechanisms.

The author is from the Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.

A Rice Gene to Tackle Floods and Feed Families The village of Dekheta in Orissa, was selected as a field

research base by Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI), Cuttack, in 2008

just before the monsoons. The results were so encouraging that today the

women here have organised themselves to create a flood-resistant

paddy seed bank with technical help being offered by CRRI.

—Story and Photograph Manipadma Jena

Orissa has long been held hostage to extreme weather. A State Government’s document, ‘Status of Agriculture in Orissa’ (July 2008),

records that over 48 years - from 1961 to 2008 - this eastern coastal State has had to grapple with floods 21 times, drought 15 times, and has faced

5 cyclones. Moreover, for the first time in 2001 and again in 2006, the traditionally drought prone hilly districts saw severe floods leaving families in 25 out of 30 districts in dire straits.

While the frequency of floods has increased two fold, their intensity too has seen a sharp

increase. In 2008, Orissa experienced 18 cyclonic depressions in the Bay of Bengal with heavy rain towards the fag end of the monsoon season, resulting in severe floods in 19 districts. Monsoons thus have become even more erratic.

Too much or too little rain has catastrophic consequences for a population where 65 per cent derive a livelihood from agriculture. 83 per cent of the cultivated land is held by marginal and small farmers, and 67 per cent of farmland depends on the monsoons as the main source of irrigation. This translates into poverty, food insecurity, mass out migrations and loss of primary education and health care. Out of the 61 lakh hectares of total cultivated land in Orissa, 44 lakh hectares are under paddy cultivation. Of this, 10 lakh hectares are chronically flood prone, according to the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) in Cuttack district. Over the last decade, barring two years (2002 and 2008),

the State has seen a rice deficit. However, not all have suffered. Dekheta

village in Nimapara block of Puri is within 100 meters from the Dhanua River. For years the river has either provided a rich harvest to the farmers or flooded and damaged their entire crop. When they tried growing cash crops they discovered that they do not provide the food security that paddy does. Then, in 2006 and 2007, the river swelled very late in the monsoon, just when paddy was flowering. Unplanned constructions had choked the natural rainwater drainage systems and the paddy remained under water for almost three weeks.

That year, able bodied men from almost every family left the village in search of work. According to local estimations, 200 men have out migrated from the 100-odd households over the last few years. Some work in the flour mills of Hyderabad, others in the soap and oil factories

The village women, members of ‘mahila mandals’ (women’s groups) rally behind Bishnu Priya (centre, in blue sari) who with her husband reaped a bumper crop from the new variety of flood-resistant paddy seed.