By Sudhirendar Sharma
28 Dec 2009
With increased influence of auto-industry over policy making, massive expenditures have been made to expand space for private cars. However, the near monopoly of car owners over road has not improved the transport either.
Widening roads and building new flyovers result in more cars on the roads
Festive season of Delhi makes car travel in the city dreadful. The new elevated highways and widened roads have seemingly made matters worse. The consequent traffic snarl has led to the widening of the next choked inter-section. The road widening work invariably excludes the pedestrians, the cycle and the rickshaws from the traffic plans but the intriguing puzzle remains - new roads contribute to increase in traffic.
If Delhi is a case in point, most roads have either been elevated or widened. The city, nicknamed as the city of flyovers, has invested over Rs 2,300 crore on road improvements in the current year, with provision for 30 per cent hike in the next year. However, nowhere does it assure that traffic movement would be smooth thereafter. The elevated roads built to ease traffic have often been found clogged, mocking at transport planners who made us think otherwise.
Like other cities, Delhi is witness to the enigma of the modern age. There is hardly a city in the world where traffic has not choked people's road space and lungs. The amazing consistency in the trend implies that, despite all that spending, some other factor must be at work. If there are better roads do people buy more cars? Economists have found it to be true, new roads release what they called 'suppressed demand' for people to buy more cars.
There is hardly a city in the world where traffic has not choked people's road space and lungs.
Delhiites are indeed expressing their suppressed demand - by adding over 1,000 new personal vehicles on city's overstretched roads each day; by switching from small to medium and from medium to big car in a reasonably short time; and by increasing the per capita number of cars. No one seems to care that the idling time due to traffic congestion costs Rs 11.5 crore every day and the air pollution is its undesired gain.
Instead of bolstering public transport, private car owners are pampered
It is Catch-22. Neither can people stop buying cars nor can manufacturers stop producing them. Yet, the traffic ought to run smoothly. As improvement in road infrastructure is proving ineffective, the task is to invent disincentives for people to keep their cars away. Could selective restriction on vehicle numbers reduce the number of cars on the road? Alternately, could reduction in parking spaces alongside introduction of congestion charges do the trick?
London, where billions have been spent on traffic management and urban motorways, hasn't found a solution. In just over a century since motorized transport was introduced in the city, then centre of empire, the door-to-door average speed hasn't shown any improvement. It was 19 km/hr during the horse drawn era whereas with cars it has slipped down to 18 km/hr. The congestion charge introduced by Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2003 hasn't been found effective either.
In just over a century since motorized transport was introduced in London, then centre of empire, the door-to-door average speed hasn't shown any improvement.
Where does this lead us to? It is clear that classical economics, which believes that people make their decisions entirely in terms of money, has got it wrong because it fails to understand why people behave the way they do. Traffic planners, on the other hand, seek more resources to improve existing infrastructure, knowing well that it may not work. Livingstone's unsuccessful idea was based on the assumption that people preferences are a factor of the price they pay.
The kind of economics that reduces everything to money may find it hard to understand what is going on. It is now an accepted fact that more the roads more the number of cars, at the cost of other forms of transport that are essentially environment-friendly - be it a pedestrian, a cycle or a rickshaw. The question worth considering is whether city roads are meant for cars only. Should 'rights' of other users not be protected on city roads?
Well-known transport theorist Martin Mogridge, author of Jam Yesterday, Jam Today and Jam Tomorrow, reckoned that traffic speed could be doubled just by reducing space for cars. It may seem a tough call, given that car manufacturers and owners have monopolized city roads, but is nevertheless a call worth taking. Else, in the absence of legal provision on 'right over road' attempts like the one to rid the historic Chandni Chowk of rickshaws will continue to be made.
Cars ought to compete for space with other forms of transport. The city administrators and traffic planners must consider creating 'disincentives' for cars from clogging the roads. By the end of his life, Mogridge had suggested that taxing the inefficient road user (the motorist) and subsidizing the efficient public transport could be an effective disincentive. However, not without first abandoning the expensive urban road building programs, and not before establishing the 'right over road' for other forms of non-commercial transport.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
You can forget, internet won't!
By Sudhirendar Sharma
23 Dec 2009
Psychologists believe that forgetting is good for mental health. But the expanding reach and capacity of information technology, particularly the internet, to store and remember all types of information can have critical consequences for humanity.
Every bit of shared information remains on the web or in distant servers
Memory matters but not when one has a mobile phone at hand. It not only acts as a personal telephone directory but keeps track of important dates too. Add to this a personal computer and the hard disk acts as perfect memory prosthesis. Everything that one ever wants to recall is a click away, relieving human mind of the unsavory task of remembering facts and events. Perfect digital memory may seem amazing but its hidden dimensions are no less disturbing.
Several cases of profound embarrassment, and even legal action, have been reported - many employees have been fired for mentioning on Facebook that their bosses/jobs were 'boring'. Uploaded for the fun of it, revealing pictures of innocent acts have devastated the lives of many young women. Digital memory didn't spare Bill Clinton either. Some of his intimate e-mails would continue to embarrass him throughout his life.
All this because the internet remembers what humans would like to forget. Digital memory is an onslaught on the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history. It is now proven that forgetting is central to human experience whereas the difficulty of remembering is an implicit result of the second law of thermodynamics. The trouble with digital memory, given its cheap storage and easy retrieval, is that it does not allow outdated information to go away.
The trouble with digital memory, given its cheap storage and easy retrieval, is that it does not allow outdated information to go away.
For economists, better information means efficient systems. But the question remains whether humans can live in peace without forgetting? At a societal level, such accessible digital memory aids in forecasting general trends and society-wide development, enabling policy-makers to adjust policies before problems get out of hand. But on the other extreme, the failure to forget creates a panopticon crossbred with a time-travel machine.
Why remember, when we can store everything?
Recent research concludes that forgetting plays a central role in human decision-making, letting us act in time, cognizant of, but not shackled by, past events. However, through perfect memory we may lose this fundamental human capacity - to live and act firmly in the present. The case of a 41-year old Californian woman, AJ, is riveting. She lacks the biological gift of forgetting since she was 11, but incessant memory has agonizing impact on her ability to decide, and live.
Most people have called what AJ has a gift, but for her it is a burden. In her recently published autobiography, AJ writes "Though people tend to think of forgetting as an affliction and are disturbed by the loss of so much memory as they age, I've come to understand that there is a real value to being able to forget a good deal about our lives." For her, forgetting is not an annoying flaw but a life-saving advantage. Isn't digital memory creating clones of AJ?
Retrieving information is easy, but somewhere it is remembered for you
Forgetting not only comes naturally to humans, we also forget as a society. Societal forgetting gives individuals who have failed a second chance. In some instances, bankruptcies are forgotten as years pass. Even criminals have their convictions expunged from their records after sufficient time has passed. Through collective forgetting our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from the past in readjusting our behaviour.
The extensive documentation of our lives goes beyond the dilemma of 'privacy' though. Ever since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, there has been significant reduction of control over 'our' information. Others have gained 'power' from our loss, using information to influence the circumstances of our future interactions with the world. By placing eloquent personal details on social networking sites, we unknowingly empower others to use it.
Not without reason are companies like Google investing in maintaining hundreds of thousands of hard disks in huge server farms. It is reported that Google is operating half a million servers with up to a million hard disks, the cumulative storage capacity being in excess of 100,000 terabytes (million megabytes) of data. What Google might do with this information remains a mystery but it is clear that the information can be digitally altered as well as commercially traded.
History is replete with instances where control over society's past extended dictatorial powers to its rulers. There are cases where historical texts were deliberately altered to construct a reality that didn't exist. With monopolized digital memory, the task of altering history will be easier and quicker. Since most of us are beginning to repose the trust in our past with the trust in digital memory, we are becoming vulnerable to alterability of the digital memory, and our history.
Given the fact that the present generation has started preferring digital memory over human memory, the centralized control over information will have serious social, cultural, legal and political implications. Without doubt, digital technology is creating a new world order where forgetting will be an exception, and remembering the default. This is in contrast to how humans have evolved - wherein forgetting has been the norm and remembering the exception.
Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, author of Delete: the virtue of forgetting in the digital age and director at the National University of Singapore, argues that the issue ought to be debated in the public, and till such time the only way of getting out of the digital trap is by proposing an expiry date on information.
23 Dec 2009
Psychologists believe that forgetting is good for mental health. But the expanding reach and capacity of information technology, particularly the internet, to store and remember all types of information can have critical consequences for humanity.
Every bit of shared information remains on the web or in distant servers
Memory matters but not when one has a mobile phone at hand. It not only acts as a personal telephone directory but keeps track of important dates too. Add to this a personal computer and the hard disk acts as perfect memory prosthesis. Everything that one ever wants to recall is a click away, relieving human mind of the unsavory task of remembering facts and events. Perfect digital memory may seem amazing but its hidden dimensions are no less disturbing.
Several cases of profound embarrassment, and even legal action, have been reported - many employees have been fired for mentioning on Facebook that their bosses/jobs were 'boring'. Uploaded for the fun of it, revealing pictures of innocent acts have devastated the lives of many young women. Digital memory didn't spare Bill Clinton either. Some of his intimate e-mails would continue to embarrass him throughout his life.
All this because the internet remembers what humans would like to forget. Digital memory is an onslaught on the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history. It is now proven that forgetting is central to human experience whereas the difficulty of remembering is an implicit result of the second law of thermodynamics. The trouble with digital memory, given its cheap storage and easy retrieval, is that it does not allow outdated information to go away.
The trouble with digital memory, given its cheap storage and easy retrieval, is that it does not allow outdated information to go away.
For economists, better information means efficient systems. But the question remains whether humans can live in peace without forgetting? At a societal level, such accessible digital memory aids in forecasting general trends and society-wide development, enabling policy-makers to adjust policies before problems get out of hand. But on the other extreme, the failure to forget creates a panopticon crossbred with a time-travel machine.
Why remember, when we can store everything?
Recent research concludes that forgetting plays a central role in human decision-making, letting us act in time, cognizant of, but not shackled by, past events. However, through perfect memory we may lose this fundamental human capacity - to live and act firmly in the present. The case of a 41-year old Californian woman, AJ, is riveting. She lacks the biological gift of forgetting since she was 11, but incessant memory has agonizing impact on her ability to decide, and live.
Most people have called what AJ has a gift, but for her it is a burden. In her recently published autobiography, AJ writes "Though people tend to think of forgetting as an affliction and are disturbed by the loss of so much memory as they age, I've come to understand that there is a real value to being able to forget a good deal about our lives." For her, forgetting is not an annoying flaw but a life-saving advantage. Isn't digital memory creating clones of AJ?
Retrieving information is easy, but somewhere it is remembered for you
Forgetting not only comes naturally to humans, we also forget as a society. Societal forgetting gives individuals who have failed a second chance. In some instances, bankruptcies are forgotten as years pass. Even criminals have their convictions expunged from their records after sufficient time has passed. Through collective forgetting our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from the past in readjusting our behaviour.
The extensive documentation of our lives goes beyond the dilemma of 'privacy' though. Ever since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, there has been significant reduction of control over 'our' information. Others have gained 'power' from our loss, using information to influence the circumstances of our future interactions with the world. By placing eloquent personal details on social networking sites, we unknowingly empower others to use it.
Not without reason are companies like Google investing in maintaining hundreds of thousands of hard disks in huge server farms. It is reported that Google is operating half a million servers with up to a million hard disks, the cumulative storage capacity being in excess of 100,000 terabytes (million megabytes) of data. What Google might do with this information remains a mystery but it is clear that the information can be digitally altered as well as commercially traded.
History is replete with instances where control over society's past extended dictatorial powers to its rulers. There are cases where historical texts were deliberately altered to construct a reality that didn't exist. With monopolized digital memory, the task of altering history will be easier and quicker. Since most of us are beginning to repose the trust in our past with the trust in digital memory, we are becoming vulnerable to alterability of the digital memory, and our history.
Given the fact that the present generation has started preferring digital memory over human memory, the centralized control over information will have serious social, cultural, legal and political implications. Without doubt, digital technology is creating a new world order where forgetting will be an exception, and remembering the default. This is in contrast to how humans have evolved - wherein forgetting has been the norm and remembering the exception.
Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, author of Delete: the virtue of forgetting in the digital age and director at the National University of Singapore, argues that the issue ought to be debated in the public, and till such time the only way of getting out of the digital trap is by proposing an expiry date on information.
Environmental cancer spreading far and wide
By Gopal Krishna
24 Dec 2009
There's an alarming rise in work-related cancers in the country, but the government has failed to put any measures in place to prevent the epidemic or raise awareness
As we cry ourselves hoarse about dreaded diseases like AIDS or 'pandemics' like H1N1 or avian flu, a more lethal epidemic has been quietly spreading its tentacles. India is facing a cancer epidemic which has almost entirely been missed in official statistics. Shockingly, out of more than 900 substances and chemicals evaluated since 1971, approximately 400 have been identified as carcinogenic.
Worldwide, occupational cancer claims at least one life every 52 seconds, a startling figure completely ignored by both Indian regulators as well as employers. Over 600,000 deaths a year are caused by occupational cancer, making up almost one-third of all work-related deaths. However, none of the 300 medical colleges in India have the capacity to deal with the alarming rise in use of unregulated chemicals and hazardous substances. Contrast this with Europe, where about half of occupational diseases are related to dangerous substances and every fifth recognised as occupational neurological diseases.
In India, this monstrous problem has been swept under the carpet. The decay in our public health system has ensured that exposed populations are not recorded and thus not protected. Besides this, scientists and doctors don't disclose their affiliation to companies while investigating cancer risks from the industry. The goings-on in the National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH), Gujarat, where industry-sponsored research was conducted, is illustrative of this fact.
In October 2009, 23 scientists from six countries met at the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to reassess the carcinogenicity of a number of chemical compounds, complex mixtures and occupational exposures and to identify additional tumour sites and mechanisms of onset of cancer. In their 33-page report, there is sufficient evidence about the carcinogenicity of benzene, formaldehyde, Mustard gas and Vinyl chloride.
Among other findings, sufficient evidence was also found about the carcinogenicity of soot, seen in occupational exposure of chimney-sweeps. Soot causes cancer of the skin (observed in the scrotum) and of the lung. Similarly, coal gasification is said to cause lung cancer while exposure in aluminium production can lead to cancer of the bladder and of the lung.
The list doesn't end here. The iron and steel industry, painting work and even rubber manufacturing carry massive cancer risks. While exposure during iron and steel founding can cause cancer of the lung, painters can get mesothelioma, cancers of the urinary bladder, and lung. Causal association of maternal exposure to painting (including preconception and during pregnancy) has also been linked to leukaemia in the offspring. Exposure in the rubber manufacturing industry causes leukaemia, lymphoma, cancers of the urinary bladder, lung and stomach.
The menace of asbestos
One of the biggest hazards emanates from the asbestos industry. Experts at a recent international scientific conference called for elimination of the disease caused worldwide by exposure to environmental and occupational hazards such as asbestos. The tragedy of the asbestos epidemic is that all illnesses and deaths related to it are entirely preventable. Italy-based Collegium Ramazzini, one of the co-organizers of the conference, stated that safer substitutes for asbestos exist and they have been introduced successfully in many countries.
Experts took note of the advertisement by the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturer's Association published in a newspaper (The Times of India, 17 December, 2009), which coincided with the inauguration of the conference and debunked the misleading claims and disapproved the attempts by the industry to hide behind government agencies like Directorate General, Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI), which took note of Prevalence of Asbestosis and Related Disorders in a Asbestos Fibre Processing Unit in West Bengal as early as in 1996. (http://www.dgfasli.nic.in/newsletter/jan_march_96.pdf)
Officials from the Labour Ministry, who were present at the conference, joined Prof Arthur Frank and Dr Barry Castleman - both well-known asbestos experts - in dismissing industry references to absence of asbestos diseases in India as junk science. The seminar advised press and advertising watchdogs as well as newspapers to avoid publishing such ads.
Scientists at the conference noted that the health consequences of the use of asbestos in contemporary industrial society have been amply documented in the international scientific literature. The toll of illness and death among asbestos workers in mining, construction and heavy industry is well-known. The risks from toxic exposures affect not only those who work with asbestos, but also their families and neighbours (from material on clothing or plant emissions), users of products that contain asbestos and the public at large.
The experts repeatedly urged government of India to harbour no illusions about the "controlled use" of asbestos because there is no realistic alternative to a ban. Moreover, even the best workplace controls cannot prevent occupational and environmental exposures to products in use or to waste. The alarming rise in the consumption of asbestos in India in hospitals, schools, homes and commercial buildings now resemble those that existed in the industrialized countries before the dangers of asbestos were widely recognized.
The conference took note of the hazards faced by construction industry, including asbestos, silica, dust, chemicals and noise etc which most workers and employers are unaware of. Construction has five times higher rates of injuries and deaths. Most of these environmental and occupational health hazards are preventable.
So far, the government has failed to learn anything from Bhopal and others disasters. There was a chimney collapse in Bhilai last month, that killed more than 40 workers. The rise in the rate of accidents in the construction of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and for Commonwealth Games Village is illustrative of how no one is held accountable. Infrastructure development projects choose not to take cognisance of occupational and environmental hazards and neither workers nor consumers are ever informed of the irreversible health damages by building materials such as asbestos products.
At the conference, Katja Radon, a researcher from Munich, said the social system in Germany is geared to provide pension to asbestos victims and their families besides compensation. Such a system is a far cry in India. Health experts and officials admitted that there is no occupational and environmental health infrastructure in place and the cancer registry of the country of does not even record occupational cancers.
The three day conference entitled 'Preventing Emerging Occupational and Environmental Risks in South Asia and Beyond' was organized by Centre for Occupational & Environmental Health (New Delhi), Collegium Ramazzini (Italy), and Drexel University, School of Public Health, Philadelphia. It was supported by Union Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, and WHO, SEARO and held at capital's Maulana Azad Medical College where Dr Andrew Watterson from UK asked Indian public health experts, trade unions and civil society organizations to be part of a Global Occupational Cancer Prevention Campaign and Hemantha D. Wickramatillake from Sri Lanka underlined a need for a South Asian Forum for Occupational and Environmental Health Researchers.
Climate Concern or Commerce?
By Gopal Krishna
07 Dec 2009
Can Copenhagen Conference finalize the emission reduction targets of the developed countries in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-2020) and make available sufficient public funding for developing nations for low emission growth?
All governments must give their adequate response to the urgent challenge of climate change during the historic UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, beginning from today. Negotiators appear to have the clearest signal ever from their leaders to craft concrete proposals. Referring to numerous emission reduction pledges that developing and developed countries have made in the run-up to COP 15, Yvo de Boer, the top climate change official of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) commented that there was unprecedented political momentum to clinch an ambitious deal in Copenhagen. Die hard optimists are saying that in the past 17 years of climate negotiations never have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together.
The Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC was adopted at the third session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 3) in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 which entered into force in 16 February 2005 - the ninetieth day after at least 55 Parties to the Convention, incorporating Annex I Parties - deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession. As of November 2009, 189 countries and 1 regional economic integration organization (the EEC) have deposited instruments of ratification, accession, approval or acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol. The total percentage of Annex I Parties' emissions is 63.7%. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for Annex I Parties i.e. 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These amount to an average of five per cent reduction against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
The major distinction between the Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC is that while the Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so.
One the eve of the Copenhagen summit, according to the UNFCCC's Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer, developed countries will need to provide fast-track funding on the order of at least 10 billion USD a year through 2012 to enable developing countries to immediately plan and launch low emission growth and adaptation strategies and to build internal capacity. At the same time, developed countries will need to indicate how they intend to raise predictable and sustainable long-term financing and what their longer-term commitments will be.
Parties to the UN treaty agreed at UNFCCC's meeting in Bali, Indonesia to jointly step up international efforts to combat climate change and get to an agreed outcome in Copenhagen in 2009. The Copenhagen agreed outcome need not resolve all details, but it must provide clarity on four key issues: Ambitious emission reduction targets for developed countries; Nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries; Scaling up financial and technological support for both adaptation and mitigation; and An effective institutional framework with governance structures that address the needs of developing countries.
Therefore, Copenhagen should provide a post-2012 outcome as well as important decisions and start-up finance to immediately kick-start action on climate change in 2010.
A UN Climate Change Conference is more of a political conference attracting key members from governments and civil society professionally dealing with climate change. The opening day and the end of the conference attract high level government participation. As far as the political proceedings are concerned, it should be noted that concluding negotiations usually go well into the last night of the conference.
Denmark's first goal is to avoid all unnecessary emissions of GHG. Therefore, Denmark has decided to offset emissions for COP 15 through a project in Bangladesh organised by the Danish Energy Agency. The DEA calculates this project will cut more than 50,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year and improve air quality in one of the world's most polluted cities. The direct cost of the COP15 for the UNFCCC secretariat will be approximately US$ 2 million. A finalised budget for government expenditure related to COP 15 has not yet been produced. The Danish government has allocated approx. US$ 62 million to COP activities, but it is possible that the final amount will exceed this figure.
Notably, deliberations in Bangkok & Barcelona during September, October and November 2009 were not successful in concluding any legal text for the seemingly final round of climate change negotiations ahead of the Copenhagen Summit in December, 2009, where a comprehensive international climate change deal is to be finalized. Earlier, negotiations in the aftermath of COP-14 too continued in Bonn, Germany with no gains in hand.
The core point under debate is the emission reduction targets of the developed countries in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-2020). The efforts by Group of 77 and China comprising of 131 developing countries like India and China are aimed at making the industrialized countries take obligations for pollution reduction as a logical step in view of their historical responsibility but there is no progress on it so far. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012.
India and other developing countries have proposed that industrialized countries should reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 because they are responsible for almost all the excess green house gases (GHG) and dangerous interference with the atmosphere.
Attempts by US and EU to terminate the Kyoto protocol's next phase have not succeeded so far. A joint statement by G-77 and China (comprising of 131 countries) in Barcelona, Spain on November 6, 2009 at the last plenary of Ad Hoc Working Group Under Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) before Copenhagen clearly demonstrates their position that "a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol must be established for a period beyond 2012 as the legal basis for comparable Annex I emission reduction commitments." The Group of 77 and China look forward to achieving a momentous and historical international climate change outcome in Copenhagen.
The stalemate is evident and so far any possibility of radical breakthrough is not in sight. It appears that the routine pronouncement of being "committed to working together and with other countries in the weeks ahead for a successful outcome at Copenhagen" only reveals that nations would work together bilaterally and with all other countries for an agreed outcome at that meeting. This amounts to agreeing to US position of taking domestic action instead of an internationally legally binding action. No one knows the exact contours of the "agreed outcome" which would pave the way for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol that commences in 2013.
The Group of G-77 and China "strongly stand against all attempts by developed countries to reach an agreement which could in any way result in the Kyoto Protocol being superseded or made redundant. G 77 and China have reaffirmed that the core mandate of the AWG-KP is to define the second and subsequent commitment periods with ambitious quantified emission reductions for developed countries that will significantly contribute to the minimization of future impacts of climate change on developing countries."
Venezuela, a member of G-77 and China group, has voiced objection to proposals seeking to "market the atmosphere", which it said amounted to a situation wherein country "who pays may pollute." The developing countries have said that developed countries are using "green excuses" to get out of their historical responsibilities. They have underlined that market approaches play a limited role in the Kyoto Protocol and are not mentioned in the UN Convention, suggesting their inclusion poses a legal problem. India emphasized that climate technology transfer does not refer to commercial transfer but to concessional transfer.
US, along with the EU and other industrialized countries, is emphasizing the importance of the private sector and the carbon markets towards financing of the climate solutions. In the context of private sector funding, India and China drew attention to the unpredictability of private finance, double counting arising from emission reductions achieved through offset mechanisms like carbon markets, exaggerated estimates concerning how much finance the private sector and markets could generate and the structural link between climate change and markets. Developed countries are seeking to erase the distinction between developed and developing countries and impose new mitigation and reporting commitments on the latter. G77 and China have opposed such proposals, noting historical responsibilities and the clear distinction between mitigation by developed and developing countries, also reflected in the Bali Action Plan.
Given such state of affairs which appear to be guided by forces bigger than sovereign nation states nothing beyond a political statement or a COP decision is expected from Copenhagen, Denmark.
In the meanwhile, a proper independent inquiry into one of the greatest scientific scandal of our age must be undertaken to get to the bottom of the claims by the group of scientists who have for years been more influential and played a role at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Copenhagen, governments reach a satisfactory agreement or not, scientific truth with regard to the basis of claims regarding adverse climate change must be unearthed.
07 Dec 2009
Can Copenhagen Conference finalize the emission reduction targets of the developed countries in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-2020) and make available sufficient public funding for developing nations for low emission growth?
All governments must give their adequate response to the urgent challenge of climate change during the historic UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, beginning from today. Negotiators appear to have the clearest signal ever from their leaders to craft concrete proposals. Referring to numerous emission reduction pledges that developing and developed countries have made in the run-up to COP 15, Yvo de Boer, the top climate change official of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) commented that there was unprecedented political momentum to clinch an ambitious deal in Copenhagen. Die hard optimists are saying that in the past 17 years of climate negotiations never have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together.
The Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC was adopted at the third session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 3) in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 which entered into force in 16 February 2005 - the ninetieth day after at least 55 Parties to the Convention, incorporating Annex I Parties - deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession. As of November 2009, 189 countries and 1 regional economic integration organization (the EEC) have deposited instruments of ratification, accession, approval or acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol. The total percentage of Annex I Parties' emissions is 63.7%. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for Annex I Parties i.e. 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These amount to an average of five per cent reduction against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
The major distinction between the Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC is that while the Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so.
One the eve of the Copenhagen summit, according to the UNFCCC's Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer, developed countries will need to provide fast-track funding on the order of at least 10 billion USD a year through 2012 to enable developing countries to immediately plan and launch low emission growth and adaptation strategies and to build internal capacity. At the same time, developed countries will need to indicate how they intend to raise predictable and sustainable long-term financing and what their longer-term commitments will be.
Parties to the UN treaty agreed at UNFCCC's meeting in Bali, Indonesia to jointly step up international efforts to combat climate change and get to an agreed outcome in Copenhagen in 2009. The Copenhagen agreed outcome need not resolve all details, but it must provide clarity on four key issues: Ambitious emission reduction targets for developed countries; Nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries; Scaling up financial and technological support for both adaptation and mitigation; and An effective institutional framework with governance structures that address the needs of developing countries.
Therefore, Copenhagen should provide a post-2012 outcome as well as important decisions and start-up finance to immediately kick-start action on climate change in 2010.
A UN Climate Change Conference is more of a political conference attracting key members from governments and civil society professionally dealing with climate change. The opening day and the end of the conference attract high level government participation. As far as the political proceedings are concerned, it should be noted that concluding negotiations usually go well into the last night of the conference.
Denmark's first goal is to avoid all unnecessary emissions of GHG. Therefore, Denmark has decided to offset emissions for COP 15 through a project in Bangladesh organised by the Danish Energy Agency. The DEA calculates this project will cut more than 50,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year and improve air quality in one of the world's most polluted cities. The direct cost of the COP15 for the UNFCCC secretariat will be approximately US$ 2 million. A finalised budget for government expenditure related to COP 15 has not yet been produced. The Danish government has allocated approx. US$ 62 million to COP activities, but it is possible that the final amount will exceed this figure.
Notably, deliberations in Bangkok & Barcelona during September, October and November 2009 were not successful in concluding any legal text for the seemingly final round of climate change negotiations ahead of the Copenhagen Summit in December, 2009, where a comprehensive international climate change deal is to be finalized. Earlier, negotiations in the aftermath of COP-14 too continued in Bonn, Germany with no gains in hand.
The core point under debate is the emission reduction targets of the developed countries in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-2020). The efforts by Group of 77 and China comprising of 131 developing countries like India and China are aimed at making the industrialized countries take obligations for pollution reduction as a logical step in view of their historical responsibility but there is no progress on it so far. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012.
India and other developing countries have proposed that industrialized countries should reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 because they are responsible for almost all the excess green house gases (GHG) and dangerous interference with the atmosphere.
Attempts by US and EU to terminate the Kyoto protocol's next phase have not succeeded so far. A joint statement by G-77 and China (comprising of 131 countries) in Barcelona, Spain on November 6, 2009 at the last plenary of Ad Hoc Working Group Under Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) before Copenhagen clearly demonstrates their position that "a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol must be established for a period beyond 2012 as the legal basis for comparable Annex I emission reduction commitments." The Group of 77 and China look forward to achieving a momentous and historical international climate change outcome in Copenhagen.
The stalemate is evident and so far any possibility of radical breakthrough is not in sight. It appears that the routine pronouncement of being "committed to working together and with other countries in the weeks ahead for a successful outcome at Copenhagen" only reveals that nations would work together bilaterally and with all other countries for an agreed outcome at that meeting. This amounts to agreeing to US position of taking domestic action instead of an internationally legally binding action. No one knows the exact contours of the "agreed outcome" which would pave the way for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol that commences in 2013.
The Group of G-77 and China "strongly stand against all attempts by developed countries to reach an agreement which could in any way result in the Kyoto Protocol being superseded or made redundant. G 77 and China have reaffirmed that the core mandate of the AWG-KP is to define the second and subsequent commitment periods with ambitious quantified emission reductions for developed countries that will significantly contribute to the minimization of future impacts of climate change on developing countries."
Venezuela, a member of G-77 and China group, has voiced objection to proposals seeking to "market the atmosphere", which it said amounted to a situation wherein country "who pays may pollute." The developing countries have said that developed countries are using "green excuses" to get out of their historical responsibilities. They have underlined that market approaches play a limited role in the Kyoto Protocol and are not mentioned in the UN Convention, suggesting their inclusion poses a legal problem. India emphasized that climate technology transfer does not refer to commercial transfer but to concessional transfer.
US, along with the EU and other industrialized countries, is emphasizing the importance of the private sector and the carbon markets towards financing of the climate solutions. In the context of private sector funding, India and China drew attention to the unpredictability of private finance, double counting arising from emission reductions achieved through offset mechanisms like carbon markets, exaggerated estimates concerning how much finance the private sector and markets could generate and the structural link between climate change and markets. Developed countries are seeking to erase the distinction between developed and developing countries and impose new mitigation and reporting commitments on the latter. G77 and China have opposed such proposals, noting historical responsibilities and the clear distinction between mitigation by developed and developing countries, also reflected in the Bali Action Plan.
Given such state of affairs which appear to be guided by forces bigger than sovereign nation states nothing beyond a political statement or a COP decision is expected from Copenhagen, Denmark.
In the meanwhile, a proper independent inquiry into one of the greatest scientific scandal of our age must be undertaken to get to the bottom of the claims by the group of scientists who have for years been more influential and played a role at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Copenhagen, governments reach a satisfactory agreement or not, scientific truth with regard to the basis of claims regarding adverse climate change must be unearthed.
Consume, throw and then blame
By Sudhirendar Sharma
09 Dec 2009
As rapidly growing mountains of trash raise a stink across the globe, it's time to discard the 'use and throw' culture which has no concern for environment and humanity.
Adam's wasting the mythical apple unleashed a culture of consumption and waste for the human civilizations. This culture has relentlessly amplified and waste has grown in quantities and categories ever since. Mountains of rubbish have come to symbolize a democratic expression of growth, embedded within them a consumptive pattern that reflects class, power and dignity. An average American's 700 kg waste a year and a European's 500 kg is no coincidence, providing substrate for millions of poor to make a living from the waste heaps of the 'effluent' class.
Our neighborhood waste dumps may impinge our senses and may take away our natural paradises but a look at the mass of trash spread before us makes it clear that money has been made. The huge tertiary sector devoted to getting rid of things is central to the maintenance of capitalism. At its core lies the linear model of resource use, of manufactured and packaged products, that has left society rushing headlong into the destructive frenzy of consumption. With 80 million new citizens joining the planet each year, search for a new Earth with a new Adam may seem orderly!
With waste bins overflowing, the terrible pressure of accumulation means that waste itself has become a historical force that calls for strengthening the system (of disposal) without addressing the symptom (of consumption). This notion is somewhat problematic as the policy and economic instruments keep 'the reduction of waste' central to crafting strategies without asking the more difficult questions about whether or not recycling makes much sense in either economic or thermodynamic terms. Plastic recycling with its dreadful emissions is a case-in-point.
Recycling does have a place under the sun but the problems waste poses may be more than economic or environmental. Else, the huge tertiary sector that converts garbage into money would not be counter-positioned to ecological movements that stress on human values and 'the natural'. Jonathan Chapman of the University of Brighton laments 'adulterous consumption' and the associated inevitability of recycling, because there is simply no relationship at all between the product and the purchaser. This disconnect nurtures a culture that is conducive to capitalism.
Waste is a key category for understanding cultural value. In more conservative societies, the idea of waste rarely exists because the metabolism of the human species aligns with the metabolism of natural world. Consider the cotton dhoti that rural Indian women drape around themselves: its multi-stage metabolism would pass through distinct household usages, from being man's shirt to a window curtain, before being stretched to the last thread for mopping the floor. The emotional relationship with the product ensured that its re-use and re-cycling remained largely private.
Contrast it with the modern culture that first disposes of the 'bad stuff' and then engages in a constant struggle to redeem it. Paradoxically, what gets disposed is essentially through 'private' action but what accumulates as a result warrants 'public' attention. Seeing half the contents of your garbage bin spread over the street can be irritating and may trigger strong feelings of disgust and exposure. Our intimate life is often on public display, yet any attempt at relating to it makes one shudder with the horror of contamination.
Similarly, the clogging of storm water system, designed to manage runoff from streets, with raw sewage from overflowing drains during rains blur the distinction between private and public. When the rain clears and everything is meant to smell fresh, but a strong stench emanates from the gutters, almost as if human excrement is in the air. Obviously, this is grossly unpleasant. But individuals who contribute to it neither feel personally exposed nor implicated. On the contrary, it is called a failure of public infrastructure.
It is clear from these two urban encounters that waste that is most threatening to the self has to be rendered out of sight and mind as quickly as possible. Waste is a function of our pre-public individuality that loses its identity once it enters the public arena, triggering public concern towards its bureaucratic (mis)management. Though the status of waste in public and private spheres seems incommensurable; the human relationship to waste is markedly distinct. A blocked toilet becomes the ultimate domestic nightmare but the overflowing drain remains nobody's concern.
In making human waste management a state matter through the formation of regulations and institutions to administer it, says Gay Hawkins author of 'Culture of Waste', the realm of privacy and personal habit gets substantially reordered. And only by understanding how waste has been deployed to produce a modern public-private distinction is it possible to assess the fundamental paradox of waste in public. A paradox that goes something like this: horror at the very idea of open defecation and resigned acceptance of overflowing sewage drains.
How humans relate to waste is critical because the magnitude of the problem is extraordinary. If Americans had recycled the 32 billion cans of fizzy drinks they threw away in 2002, they would have saved 435,000 tonnes of aluminium - enough to rebuild the world's entire commercial fleet more than 1.5 times. But that was not to be, as capitalist market does not encourage an iota of concern in individuals towards use-and-throw culture. Young consumers might relate to their favourite pair of jeans but the aluminium cans don't generate any emotional connect.
Aluminium cans and human excreta represent two significant but somewhat unrelated aspects of the growing waste debate which reflect that our subjectivity and self is at stake when we deal with waste at home. However, when the inefficient waste management system is criticized, the same consumers take on activist citizen role to hold the state accountable for its inactions. In the long journey from the bathroom to the sewer or from the kitchen to the garbage dump, not only does waste get transformed but so does our relationship with it.
That there's public waste which is the responsibility of government was established during the year of 'the Great Stink' in London in 1858. The restoration of the Thames from the scourge of public waste was necessitated because peoples' representatives were finding it hard to stand the stench from untreated sewage in the river flowing next door to the Parliament. The subsequent creation of 1,240 miles of sewage tunnels laid the foundation of the state's defining role in managing and disposing public waste.
In the long journey from the bathroom to the sewer or from the kitchen to the garbage dump, not only does waste get transformed but so does our relationship with it.
The role of state hasn't changed ever since, though its inability to handle waste has been glaring. Some 2.5 billion people across the world not only lack access to basic sanitation but remain vulnerable to its consequences too. Every conceivable water body, be it a lake or a river, has been converted into a public laundry, bathroom and toilet. Each open space has inadvertently been littered with plastic bags, bottles and the like. With the state being presumed to be the savior, little thought is given to the ethical and environmental implications of our waste habits.
The legitimate dependence on state as a service provider leads to a set of intriguing questions. Is it not a reality of our times that when waste happens the demand for it to be rendered invisible generally means its disposal outside both public and private spheres, distant landfills and rivers, for example? Does it not restrict our sense of obligation to the rivers where our waste ends up? Does efficient techniques of waste elimination not a measure of cleanliness at the cost of nature and environmental stability?
Curiously, there hasn't been any imagination in the way waste has been handled since late 19th century. In a broader sense, waste management has remained a function of sound infrastructure investment based on effective public policy. However, saddled with inefficiency and corruption the municipalities have run out of resources to manage the growing rubbish mountains. Any number of innovative solutions on waste reduction, including the boards made of human excreta, have yet to prove their aesthetic appeal and economic viability despite the promise they hold.
Waste corrupts the system
Waste generation has clearly outpaced its management, compounded by the incredible challenge of mobilizing resources for this resource-crunched sector. Successful civil society initiatives like the Sulabh's pay-and-use toilets showcase that community can indeed pay, providing clues on innovative financing to the beleaguered municipalities. Such self-help models do chide the state for its failure to meet peoples' expectation but absolve the state of its primary role of a service provider as well. The net result is the convenience of creating business opportunities for waste management by partnering with the commercial sector. It is somewhat ironic that the capitalist culture of consumption returns to the capitalist route for managing waste.
No wonder, big companies and large multi-national corporations jump into the fray to partner the state in helping reduce the public waste. For the urban consumer it offers a win-win situation as the public-private partnership route to corporate investment promises an early disposal of the overflowing neighborhood garbage bin. But as the state rechristens its role as a regulatory authority, the ethical and environmental consideration of waste disposal gets undermined as profit-making moves centre-stage in the new relationship.
What seems genuinely encouraging may not promote environmental values on account of the new institutional arrangement of waste management being pivoted around profit. The breadth of the reform relies on financial orthodoxy, discounting the fact that such a system remains easily corruptible. Simply put, the modus operandi of efficient waste disposal hinges on the choice of technology that need not necessarily adhere to the ethics of safe disposal. Most people don't get a sense of the ferment of ideas going on out there till they actually feel the 'heat'.
And, heat is indeed generated as solid waste is burnt under controlled conditions in the incinerators, a technology that has been favoured despite its poor environmental records. It replaces the more cumbersome composting technique. Without doubt, incinerator render the waste invisible as also reduce its volume faster than the labor-intensive method of composting that is visibly offensive and malodorous. That it generates toxic organic fumes and dreadful heavy metals like mercury remains conspicuously absent from any public discourse.
Sukhdev Vihar residents in South Delhi recently demonstrated their ire against the controversial citing of an incinerator in proximity to their habitation for reasons enumerated above. This hasn't been the first such instance of public outrage against a technology that is designed for effective and speedy waste elimination but one that underscores the need to understand how addressing waste disposal in public re-emerges as a problem that leads to implication of the 'solution' itself. The regulatory body often feigns ignorance to such intricacies.
Search for benign technology catches attention but the emerging power dynamics of waste management legitimizes the use of technology by corrupting the system. Expectedly, the regulatory body plays to the divided house thereby creating perfect conditions for converting an environmental concern into a political controversy. Without doubt, the next logical step takes the matter to the court of law. As waste transits from a subtle 'cultural context' into complex 'legal arena', it gains an altogether distinct currency with changed relationship matrix.
As public waste is assigned a new currency, it attains the level of a tradeable commodity. Pierre Bélanger, a landscape architect, points to the North American Free Trade Agreement - that allows a plot of farmland in Michigan to become, literally, a mountain of Canadian trash. In another bizarre case, the Dutch had made an abortive attempt to offload their overflowing dung heaps on the Gujarat shore in the early 1990's. Be it obnoxious waste or obsolete technology, developing countries have been the favoured dumping ground for the developed West.
The ship breaking industry at Alang on the Gujarat coast has grievously violated environmental laws of the land, by manipulating the regulatory and legal systems, but has continued to grow even though the world has been witness to an unprecedented economic recession. Someone's waste generates employment for others across several seas, justifying its dumping. Waste - be it public or industrial - has attained the level of a global industry. The waste industry is deeply connected to the free market economy's ongoing need to intensify and expand consumption. Indeed, an economy that relies on constant growth requires consistent wasting.
Love it or hate it, waste is a testament of culture. Yet, it is tough to reconcile how waste has moved from being a private act to a more pronounced corporate product with limitless possibilities of creating an industrial enterprise around it. If market globalization is anything to go by, we are a society that has an insatiable desire to consume and give a damn to the waste we generate in the process. The capitalist economy is supportive: many companies in the US have withdrawn refillable from the market shelves. The trend has caught on!
Unless there is a cultural renaissance, the wasteful society will grow in numbers followed by a committed section outside of it playing the activist citizen role to protect the stability of the system. Prophetic though it may sound, technology of waste elimination and minimization will be pronounced in a capital-dominated world of waste management. However, it could easily be doubted if the sum of all waste management techniques will erase the garbage footprints of modern society - economic recession and climate change notwithstanding.
Aesthetics in garbage footprints
Future anthropologists, paleontologists, and archeologists would be jobless if the present human race were not to leave its garbage footprints. They have written history by scraping feces and bones from the garbage pits of primitive people and from the detritus have pieced together the diet, culture, commerce, and possibly the eventual downfall of a people. The United States excretes more garbage, in more durable forms, than any society before it. History may remember them as much as the earth remembers their garbage today.
In a 2006 Canadian compilation Trash, artists have helped ease the notion of waste as a problem. They have instead looked at the infinite beauty in castoff items, either as testaments of the ingenuity of human life or as remnants of our once-great civilization. If you're one who instinctively opposes the continued trashing of our world, this occasional ambivalence about garbage - is it ugly or is it strangely beautiful and human - can be unsettling. Yet, it offers us imaginative new insights on looking at the dispossessed, the lost and the left behind.
It should be difficult for the environmentalist, or the conscientious consumer, to see beauty in trash - and yet some of space-age packaging clearly reflects smart industrial design worthy of appreciation. Paradoxically, both the appealing futuristic packing along with the product contained therein will soon be garbage themselves. It may sound polemic but the sense of appreciation helps to emotionally reconnect with the product that has long been presumed to be part of the unending waste stream.
Within limits evoking sympathy for rubbish may be critical, argues Hawkins, because it may help draw distinction between useful and useless, humble object and the recalcitrant. Isn't vintage stuff, be it broken chairs or eviscerated recliners, aesthetically placed in public parks and historical monuments? Not all stuff can be treated at par though, yet there exists an opportunity to appreciate the uniqueness in a waste product and rebuild emotional connection with it. Traditional societies have amply demonstrated that such connection works in reducing waste.
Sociologists have consistently argued that a throwaway culture has a serious disregard for humanity. Adequately reflected in modern lifestyle, the power of consumption has reduced nature as a source of entertainment and willful manipulation. Waste generation and disposal is an indicator of gross neglect of environment and serious disregard for humanity.
Waste is more than the used up, the broken, the outgrown and the obsolete. Evoking relationship between the purchaser and the purchase can refurbish the emotional bonding and revive a culture that has a regard for humanity as well as nature. The corporate logic of manipulating public to profit from trash ought to be challenged to create a society that distances itself from the dominant use-and-throw culture.
09 Dec 2009
As rapidly growing mountains of trash raise a stink across the globe, it's time to discard the 'use and throw' culture which has no concern for environment and humanity.
Adam's wasting the mythical apple unleashed a culture of consumption and waste for the human civilizations. This culture has relentlessly amplified and waste has grown in quantities and categories ever since. Mountains of rubbish have come to symbolize a democratic expression of growth, embedded within them a consumptive pattern that reflects class, power and dignity. An average American's 700 kg waste a year and a European's 500 kg is no coincidence, providing substrate for millions of poor to make a living from the waste heaps of the 'effluent' class.
Our neighborhood waste dumps may impinge our senses and may take away our natural paradises but a look at the mass of trash spread before us makes it clear that money has been made. The huge tertiary sector devoted to getting rid of things is central to the maintenance of capitalism. At its core lies the linear model of resource use, of manufactured and packaged products, that has left society rushing headlong into the destructive frenzy of consumption. With 80 million new citizens joining the planet each year, search for a new Earth with a new Adam may seem orderly!
With waste bins overflowing, the terrible pressure of accumulation means that waste itself has become a historical force that calls for strengthening the system (of disposal) without addressing the symptom (of consumption). This notion is somewhat problematic as the policy and economic instruments keep 'the reduction of waste' central to crafting strategies without asking the more difficult questions about whether or not recycling makes much sense in either economic or thermodynamic terms. Plastic recycling with its dreadful emissions is a case-in-point.
Recycling does have a place under the sun but the problems waste poses may be more than economic or environmental. Else, the huge tertiary sector that converts garbage into money would not be counter-positioned to ecological movements that stress on human values and 'the natural'. Jonathan Chapman of the University of Brighton laments 'adulterous consumption' and the associated inevitability of recycling, because there is simply no relationship at all between the product and the purchaser. This disconnect nurtures a culture that is conducive to capitalism.
Waste is a key category for understanding cultural value. In more conservative societies, the idea of waste rarely exists because the metabolism of the human species aligns with the metabolism of natural world. Consider the cotton dhoti that rural Indian women drape around themselves: its multi-stage metabolism would pass through distinct household usages, from being man's shirt to a window curtain, before being stretched to the last thread for mopping the floor. The emotional relationship with the product ensured that its re-use and re-cycling remained largely private.
Contrast it with the modern culture that first disposes of the 'bad stuff' and then engages in a constant struggle to redeem it. Paradoxically, what gets disposed is essentially through 'private' action but what accumulates as a result warrants 'public' attention. Seeing half the contents of your garbage bin spread over the street can be irritating and may trigger strong feelings of disgust and exposure. Our intimate life is often on public display, yet any attempt at relating to it makes one shudder with the horror of contamination.
Similarly, the clogging of storm water system, designed to manage runoff from streets, with raw sewage from overflowing drains during rains blur the distinction between private and public. When the rain clears and everything is meant to smell fresh, but a strong stench emanates from the gutters, almost as if human excrement is in the air. Obviously, this is grossly unpleasant. But individuals who contribute to it neither feel personally exposed nor implicated. On the contrary, it is called a failure of public infrastructure.
It is clear from these two urban encounters that waste that is most threatening to the self has to be rendered out of sight and mind as quickly as possible. Waste is a function of our pre-public individuality that loses its identity once it enters the public arena, triggering public concern towards its bureaucratic (mis)management. Though the status of waste in public and private spheres seems incommensurable; the human relationship to waste is markedly distinct. A blocked toilet becomes the ultimate domestic nightmare but the overflowing drain remains nobody's concern.
In making human waste management a state matter through the formation of regulations and institutions to administer it, says Gay Hawkins author of 'Culture of Waste', the realm of privacy and personal habit gets substantially reordered. And only by understanding how waste has been deployed to produce a modern public-private distinction is it possible to assess the fundamental paradox of waste in public. A paradox that goes something like this: horror at the very idea of open defecation and resigned acceptance of overflowing sewage drains.
How humans relate to waste is critical because the magnitude of the problem is extraordinary. If Americans had recycled the 32 billion cans of fizzy drinks they threw away in 2002, they would have saved 435,000 tonnes of aluminium - enough to rebuild the world's entire commercial fleet more than 1.5 times. But that was not to be, as capitalist market does not encourage an iota of concern in individuals towards use-and-throw culture. Young consumers might relate to their favourite pair of jeans but the aluminium cans don't generate any emotional connect.
Aluminium cans and human excreta represent two significant but somewhat unrelated aspects of the growing waste debate which reflect that our subjectivity and self is at stake when we deal with waste at home. However, when the inefficient waste management system is criticized, the same consumers take on activist citizen role to hold the state accountable for its inactions. In the long journey from the bathroom to the sewer or from the kitchen to the garbage dump, not only does waste get transformed but so does our relationship with it.
That there's public waste which is the responsibility of government was established during the year of 'the Great Stink' in London in 1858. The restoration of the Thames from the scourge of public waste was necessitated because peoples' representatives were finding it hard to stand the stench from untreated sewage in the river flowing next door to the Parliament. The subsequent creation of 1,240 miles of sewage tunnels laid the foundation of the state's defining role in managing and disposing public waste.
In the long journey from the bathroom to the sewer or from the kitchen to the garbage dump, not only does waste get transformed but so does our relationship with it.
The role of state hasn't changed ever since, though its inability to handle waste has been glaring. Some 2.5 billion people across the world not only lack access to basic sanitation but remain vulnerable to its consequences too. Every conceivable water body, be it a lake or a river, has been converted into a public laundry, bathroom and toilet. Each open space has inadvertently been littered with plastic bags, bottles and the like. With the state being presumed to be the savior, little thought is given to the ethical and environmental implications of our waste habits.
The legitimate dependence on state as a service provider leads to a set of intriguing questions. Is it not a reality of our times that when waste happens the demand for it to be rendered invisible generally means its disposal outside both public and private spheres, distant landfills and rivers, for example? Does it not restrict our sense of obligation to the rivers where our waste ends up? Does efficient techniques of waste elimination not a measure of cleanliness at the cost of nature and environmental stability?
Curiously, there hasn't been any imagination in the way waste has been handled since late 19th century. In a broader sense, waste management has remained a function of sound infrastructure investment based on effective public policy. However, saddled with inefficiency and corruption the municipalities have run out of resources to manage the growing rubbish mountains. Any number of innovative solutions on waste reduction, including the boards made of human excreta, have yet to prove their aesthetic appeal and economic viability despite the promise they hold.
Waste corrupts the system
Waste generation has clearly outpaced its management, compounded by the incredible challenge of mobilizing resources for this resource-crunched sector. Successful civil society initiatives like the Sulabh's pay-and-use toilets showcase that community can indeed pay, providing clues on innovative financing to the beleaguered municipalities. Such self-help models do chide the state for its failure to meet peoples' expectation but absolve the state of its primary role of a service provider as well. The net result is the convenience of creating business opportunities for waste management by partnering with the commercial sector. It is somewhat ironic that the capitalist culture of consumption returns to the capitalist route for managing waste.
No wonder, big companies and large multi-national corporations jump into the fray to partner the state in helping reduce the public waste. For the urban consumer it offers a win-win situation as the public-private partnership route to corporate investment promises an early disposal of the overflowing neighborhood garbage bin. But as the state rechristens its role as a regulatory authority, the ethical and environmental consideration of waste disposal gets undermined as profit-making moves centre-stage in the new relationship.
What seems genuinely encouraging may not promote environmental values on account of the new institutional arrangement of waste management being pivoted around profit. The breadth of the reform relies on financial orthodoxy, discounting the fact that such a system remains easily corruptible. Simply put, the modus operandi of efficient waste disposal hinges on the choice of technology that need not necessarily adhere to the ethics of safe disposal. Most people don't get a sense of the ferment of ideas going on out there till they actually feel the 'heat'.
And, heat is indeed generated as solid waste is burnt under controlled conditions in the incinerators, a technology that has been favoured despite its poor environmental records. It replaces the more cumbersome composting technique. Without doubt, incinerator render the waste invisible as also reduce its volume faster than the labor-intensive method of composting that is visibly offensive and malodorous. That it generates toxic organic fumes and dreadful heavy metals like mercury remains conspicuously absent from any public discourse.
Sukhdev Vihar residents in South Delhi recently demonstrated their ire against the controversial citing of an incinerator in proximity to their habitation for reasons enumerated above. This hasn't been the first such instance of public outrage against a technology that is designed for effective and speedy waste elimination but one that underscores the need to understand how addressing waste disposal in public re-emerges as a problem that leads to implication of the 'solution' itself. The regulatory body often feigns ignorance to such intricacies.
Search for benign technology catches attention but the emerging power dynamics of waste management legitimizes the use of technology by corrupting the system. Expectedly, the regulatory body plays to the divided house thereby creating perfect conditions for converting an environmental concern into a political controversy. Without doubt, the next logical step takes the matter to the court of law. As waste transits from a subtle 'cultural context' into complex 'legal arena', it gains an altogether distinct currency with changed relationship matrix.
As public waste is assigned a new currency, it attains the level of a tradeable commodity. Pierre Bélanger, a landscape architect, points to the North American Free Trade Agreement - that allows a plot of farmland in Michigan to become, literally, a mountain of Canadian trash. In another bizarre case, the Dutch had made an abortive attempt to offload their overflowing dung heaps on the Gujarat shore in the early 1990's. Be it obnoxious waste or obsolete technology, developing countries have been the favoured dumping ground for the developed West.
The ship breaking industry at Alang on the Gujarat coast has grievously violated environmental laws of the land, by manipulating the regulatory and legal systems, but has continued to grow even though the world has been witness to an unprecedented economic recession. Someone's waste generates employment for others across several seas, justifying its dumping. Waste - be it public or industrial - has attained the level of a global industry. The waste industry is deeply connected to the free market economy's ongoing need to intensify and expand consumption. Indeed, an economy that relies on constant growth requires consistent wasting.
Love it or hate it, waste is a testament of culture. Yet, it is tough to reconcile how waste has moved from being a private act to a more pronounced corporate product with limitless possibilities of creating an industrial enterprise around it. If market globalization is anything to go by, we are a society that has an insatiable desire to consume and give a damn to the waste we generate in the process. The capitalist economy is supportive: many companies in the US have withdrawn refillable from the market shelves. The trend has caught on!
Unless there is a cultural renaissance, the wasteful society will grow in numbers followed by a committed section outside of it playing the activist citizen role to protect the stability of the system. Prophetic though it may sound, technology of waste elimination and minimization will be pronounced in a capital-dominated world of waste management. However, it could easily be doubted if the sum of all waste management techniques will erase the garbage footprints of modern society - economic recession and climate change notwithstanding.
Aesthetics in garbage footprints
Future anthropologists, paleontologists, and archeologists would be jobless if the present human race were not to leave its garbage footprints. They have written history by scraping feces and bones from the garbage pits of primitive people and from the detritus have pieced together the diet, culture, commerce, and possibly the eventual downfall of a people. The United States excretes more garbage, in more durable forms, than any society before it. History may remember them as much as the earth remembers their garbage today.
In a 2006 Canadian compilation Trash, artists have helped ease the notion of waste as a problem. They have instead looked at the infinite beauty in castoff items, either as testaments of the ingenuity of human life or as remnants of our once-great civilization. If you're one who instinctively opposes the continued trashing of our world, this occasional ambivalence about garbage - is it ugly or is it strangely beautiful and human - can be unsettling. Yet, it offers us imaginative new insights on looking at the dispossessed, the lost and the left behind.
It should be difficult for the environmentalist, or the conscientious consumer, to see beauty in trash - and yet some of space-age packaging clearly reflects smart industrial design worthy of appreciation. Paradoxically, both the appealing futuristic packing along with the product contained therein will soon be garbage themselves. It may sound polemic but the sense of appreciation helps to emotionally reconnect with the product that has long been presumed to be part of the unending waste stream.
Within limits evoking sympathy for rubbish may be critical, argues Hawkins, because it may help draw distinction between useful and useless, humble object and the recalcitrant. Isn't vintage stuff, be it broken chairs or eviscerated recliners, aesthetically placed in public parks and historical monuments? Not all stuff can be treated at par though, yet there exists an opportunity to appreciate the uniqueness in a waste product and rebuild emotional connection with it. Traditional societies have amply demonstrated that such connection works in reducing waste.
Sociologists have consistently argued that a throwaway culture has a serious disregard for humanity. Adequately reflected in modern lifestyle, the power of consumption has reduced nature as a source of entertainment and willful manipulation. Waste generation and disposal is an indicator of gross neglect of environment and serious disregard for humanity.
Waste is more than the used up, the broken, the outgrown and the obsolete. Evoking relationship between the purchaser and the purchase can refurbish the emotional bonding and revive a culture that has a regard for humanity as well as nature. The corporate logic of manipulating public to profit from trash ought to be challenged to create a society that distances itself from the dominant use-and-throw culture.
Poverty line or starvation line?
By Devinder Sharma
Dec 2009
The much hyped economic growth figures of India are often twisted and skewed in favour of very rich. While the nation is asked to celebrate few billionaires' multiplying wealth, millions of Indians continue to sink deeper below the poverty line...
There is something terribly wrong with India's growth economics. Almost two decades after the country ushered in economic liberalisation, the promise of high growth to reduce poverty and hunger, has not worked. In fact it has worked the other way round: the more the economic growth, higher is the resulting poverty.
A report by an expert group headed by Suresh Tendulkar, former chairman of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, now estimates poverty at 37.2 per cent, an increase of roughly 10 per cent over the estimates of 27.5 per cent in 2004-05. This means, an additional 110 million people have slipped below the poverty line in just four years.
The number of poor is multiplying at a time when the number of billionaires has also increased. Economic growth, however, does not reflect the widening economic disparities. For instance, the economic wealth of mere 30-odd rich families in India is equivalent to one-third of the country's growth. As the wealth accumulates in the hands of these 30 families, so the country's economic growth figures rise. A handful of rich therefore hide the ugly face of growing poverty.
If these 30 families were to migrate to America and Europe, India's GDP, which stands at 7.9 per cent at present, will slump to 6 per cent. And if you were to discount the economic growth resulting from the sixth pay commission, which is 1.9 per cent of the GDP, India's actual economic growth will slump to 4 per cent.
Anyway, the complicated arithmetic hides more than what it reveals. Poverty estimates were earlier based on nutritional criteria, which means based on the monthly income required to purchase 2,100 calories in the urban areas and 2,400 calories in the rural areas. Over the years, this measure came in for sharp criticism, and finally the Planning Commission suggested a new estimation methodology based on a new basket of goods that is required to survive - including food, fuel, light, clothing and footwear.
Accordingly, the Tendulkar committee has worked out that 41.8 per cent of the population or approximately 450 million people survive on a monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs 447. In other words, if you break it down to a daily expenditure, it comes to less than Rs 15. I wonder how can the rural population earning more than Rs 15 and less than say Rs 30 a day be expected to be over the poverty line. It is quite obvious therefore that the entire effort is still to hide the poverty under a veil of complicated figures.
India's poverty line is actually a euphemism for a starvation line. The poverty line that is laid out actually becomes the upper limit the government must pledge to feed. People living below this line constitute the Below the Poverty Line (BPL) category, for which the government has to provide a legal guarantee of food. It therefore spells out the government subsidy that is required to distribute food among the poor. More the poverty line more is the food subsidy.
If the government accepts Tendulkar committee report, the food subsidy bill will swell to Rs 47,917.62 crore, a steep rise over the earlier subsidy of Rs 28,890.56 crore required to feed the BPL population. This is primarily the reason why the government wants to keep the number of poor low. In other words, the poverty line reflects the number of people living in acute hunger. It should therefore be called as the starvation line.
I remember a few years back, a group of charitable organisations in England presented a list of demands to the government for helping the poor. Unlike India, where BPL category only receives food rations, and that too severely short on the minimum nutritional requirement for a human body, the first demand of UK charities was to provide the poor in England with washing machines.
India's poverty criteria therefore are the most stringent in the world. I don't know the economic justification of hiding the true figures, but politically it makes terrible sense. Each government therefore is happy to gloss over the starvation figures in the guise of poverty estimates. I wonder when India will include a basket of essential good like footwear, cycles, sewing machines, solar lamps, water purifiers for the poor. This is economics, and not politics as the media will like us to believe.
It is in this context that I think the political initiative in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar to provide bicycles to the girl child makes terrific economic sense.
Going back to the poverty line arithmetic, I think the N C Saxena committee suggestion of considering 50 per cent of the population in the BPL category lacks any scientific basis. He has simply tried to reach a compromise. The 2007 Arjun Sengupta committee report (officially the report of the National Commission on Enterprise in Unorganised Sector), which had estimated that 77 per cent of the population or 836 million people, were unable to spend more than Rs 20 a day, is a correct reflection of the extent of prevailing poverty.
In addition to monthly income, poverty estimates must incorporate the human development index as prepared by the United Nations Development Programme. Expenses on health and education, and also indices of water and sanitation are absolutely essential in measuring poverty. Such a broad calculation is a right measure of the real poverty, and there is no reason why the country should not accept the ground realities. This should comprise the new poverty line.
India should therefore have two ways to classify the poor. The Starvation line (or call it the Hunger line if you feel politically embarrassed) should indicate the percentage of population living in abject poverty and hunger. They desperately need direct cash transfers in addition to the basic requirement of food supplies. Otherwise, the Global Hunger Index will continue to place India below Sudan and Rwanda.
Those above the hunger line (AHL), and constituting the true poverty line, should not only receive food (but in lesser quantities) but also be provided with other economic necessities. Economic growth has to be inclusive, and to make possible the development path that the country has adopted is not the right approach. Growing economic disparities, more so after economic liberalisation, have created unforeseen socio-economic upheavals which have the potential to tear apart the national fabric.
The menace of naxalism is a clear reflection of the flawed policies. This bloody monster has reared its destructive head because the nation has refused to acknowledge the existing inequalities, cleverly hiding behind the façade of economic growth figures that are tossed around every day. It is time to make the necessary corrections, beginning with redefining the criteria behind poverty and drawing two lines - a hunger line and another, a new poverty line.
Dec 2009
The much hyped economic growth figures of India are often twisted and skewed in favour of very rich. While the nation is asked to celebrate few billionaires' multiplying wealth, millions of Indians continue to sink deeper below the poverty line...
There is something terribly wrong with India's growth economics. Almost two decades after the country ushered in economic liberalisation, the promise of high growth to reduce poverty and hunger, has not worked. In fact it has worked the other way round: the more the economic growth, higher is the resulting poverty.
A report by an expert group headed by Suresh Tendulkar, former chairman of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, now estimates poverty at 37.2 per cent, an increase of roughly 10 per cent over the estimates of 27.5 per cent in 2004-05. This means, an additional 110 million people have slipped below the poverty line in just four years.
The number of poor is multiplying at a time when the number of billionaires has also increased. Economic growth, however, does not reflect the widening economic disparities. For instance, the economic wealth of mere 30-odd rich families in India is equivalent to one-third of the country's growth. As the wealth accumulates in the hands of these 30 families, so the country's economic growth figures rise. A handful of rich therefore hide the ugly face of growing poverty.
If these 30 families were to migrate to America and Europe, India's GDP, which stands at 7.9 per cent at present, will slump to 6 per cent. And if you were to discount the economic growth resulting from the sixth pay commission, which is 1.9 per cent of the GDP, India's actual economic growth will slump to 4 per cent.
Anyway, the complicated arithmetic hides more than what it reveals. Poverty estimates were earlier based on nutritional criteria, which means based on the monthly income required to purchase 2,100 calories in the urban areas and 2,400 calories in the rural areas. Over the years, this measure came in for sharp criticism, and finally the Planning Commission suggested a new estimation methodology based on a new basket of goods that is required to survive - including food, fuel, light, clothing and footwear.
Accordingly, the Tendulkar committee has worked out that 41.8 per cent of the population or approximately 450 million people survive on a monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs 447. In other words, if you break it down to a daily expenditure, it comes to less than Rs 15. I wonder how can the rural population earning more than Rs 15 and less than say Rs 30 a day be expected to be over the poverty line. It is quite obvious therefore that the entire effort is still to hide the poverty under a veil of complicated figures.
India's poverty line is actually a euphemism for a starvation line. The poverty line that is laid out actually becomes the upper limit the government must pledge to feed. People living below this line constitute the Below the Poverty Line (BPL) category, for which the government has to provide a legal guarantee of food. It therefore spells out the government subsidy that is required to distribute food among the poor. More the poverty line more is the food subsidy.
If the government accepts Tendulkar committee report, the food subsidy bill will swell to Rs 47,917.62 crore, a steep rise over the earlier subsidy of Rs 28,890.56 crore required to feed the BPL population. This is primarily the reason why the government wants to keep the number of poor low. In other words, the poverty line reflects the number of people living in acute hunger. It should therefore be called as the starvation line.
I remember a few years back, a group of charitable organisations in England presented a list of demands to the government for helping the poor. Unlike India, where BPL category only receives food rations, and that too severely short on the minimum nutritional requirement for a human body, the first demand of UK charities was to provide the poor in England with washing machines.
India's poverty criteria therefore are the most stringent in the world. I don't know the economic justification of hiding the true figures, but politically it makes terrible sense. Each government therefore is happy to gloss over the starvation figures in the guise of poverty estimates. I wonder when India will include a basket of essential good like footwear, cycles, sewing machines, solar lamps, water purifiers for the poor. This is economics, and not politics as the media will like us to believe.
It is in this context that I think the political initiative in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar to provide bicycles to the girl child makes terrific economic sense.
Going back to the poverty line arithmetic, I think the N C Saxena committee suggestion of considering 50 per cent of the population in the BPL category lacks any scientific basis. He has simply tried to reach a compromise. The 2007 Arjun Sengupta committee report (officially the report of the National Commission on Enterprise in Unorganised Sector), which had estimated that 77 per cent of the population or 836 million people, were unable to spend more than Rs 20 a day, is a correct reflection of the extent of prevailing poverty.
In addition to monthly income, poverty estimates must incorporate the human development index as prepared by the United Nations Development Programme. Expenses on health and education, and also indices of water and sanitation are absolutely essential in measuring poverty. Such a broad calculation is a right measure of the real poverty, and there is no reason why the country should not accept the ground realities. This should comprise the new poverty line.
India should therefore have two ways to classify the poor. The Starvation line (or call it the Hunger line if you feel politically embarrassed) should indicate the percentage of population living in abject poverty and hunger. They desperately need direct cash transfers in addition to the basic requirement of food supplies. Otherwise, the Global Hunger Index will continue to place India below Sudan and Rwanda.
Those above the hunger line (AHL), and constituting the true poverty line, should not only receive food (but in lesser quantities) but also be provided with other economic necessities. Economic growth has to be inclusive, and to make possible the development path that the country has adopted is not the right approach. Growing economic disparities, more so after economic liberalisation, have created unforeseen socio-economic upheavals which have the potential to tear apart the national fabric.
The menace of naxalism is a clear reflection of the flawed policies. This bloody monster has reared its destructive head because the nation has refused to acknowledge the existing inequalities, cleverly hiding behind the façade of economic growth figures that are tossed around every day. It is time to make the necessary corrections, beginning with redefining the criteria behind poverty and drawing two lines - a hunger line and another, a new poverty line.
Climate accord betrays the vulnerable
By Bhaskar Goswami
20 Dec 2009
Obama with EU leaders at Copenhagen (photo courtesy: Telegraph)
The climate deal hastily put together by the BASIC countries and the USA gives license to the rich countries to continue polluting the planet, thereby rewarding them instead of imposing penalty for their climate crimes.
Crunch times call for desperate measures. This time round, it demanded trusting politicians for reaching a deal on climate change. Well, they did reach a deal but not one on saving the climate but on betrayal of climate justice. The clinically depressing document has reaffirmed that none of the political leaders landed at Copenhagen with a heart to do good.
After burning midnight oil, some hung-over from feasting at the Danish Queen’s do, and some sober heads produced a please-the-rich-countries draft. It allows these countries to continue polluting, ensures that some, if not all, vulnerable island nations will submerge, and postpones a deal by a year till a meeting at Mexico happens next November. By that time, citizens of Tuvalu, Kiribati and Maldives, among others, would be on their knees desperately seeking rehabilitation and citizenship in distant nations.
The deal is a document drafted by developed countries in consultation with India, China, Brazil and South Africa – the BASIC bloc. It is a reflection of how farcical norms rule the roost at multilateral negotiations, be it the WTO, WIPO or, in this case, UNFCCC. The UN has completely failed to uphold democratic norms and has instead allowed itself to be dictated by countries that control its purse strings.
The UN Secretary General said that the “finishing line is in sight”. For the island nations and billions of farmers in the developing world, this finishing line translates to an endgame for their livelihood and culture. President Obama calls it a “meaningful” agreement that will serve as a roadmap to future wherein all countries will have to figure out how best to serve the cause of the planet. Sorry Mr. President, what the deal does is to uphold the right of the mighty United States to continue polluting the planet.
But then President Obama presides over a nation that is unwilling to pay heed to his personal calls to reduce emissions. The US Congress and Senate have steadfastly blocked all attempts to put in place a climate change and emission control regime, so he might be a bit hamstrung. Nothing similar of this nature prevails in the case of the EU where, barring Poland, most nations were open to undertake deeper emission cuts. But then, once the US set the trend, why would the EU volunteer to shoulder the burden of its transatlantic brethren?
What about the other major polluters – China and India? Both can vie with each other when it comes to flaunting weak environmental norms – some of the so-called banana republics have a better record of protecting the environment than these two. Here’s a rain check on what the Indian delegation is peddling as a pyrrhic victory engineered by the BASIC bloc:
Emission Cuts: The US gets away with 14-17% reduction on 2005 levels i.e. 3-4% of the 1990 levels; EU, Japan and Russia agree to predetermined 1990 level cuts (Europeans now are the only binding carbon regime in the world). Target for 2050 suddenly goes missing from the text! Further, these emission cuts are not binding.
Temperature: Cap at 2 degrees. So what if more than 100 nations (a majority, if it were ever put to vote at UNFCCC) wanted it capped at 1.5 degrees or the fact that many island nations will go under at this higher level of temperature increase.
Peaking of Carbon Emission: No dates set. This is to please the BASIC bloc at the expense of the rest of the developing economies. Don’t believe it? Well, this is how the text goes: “We should co-operate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognising that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries”. Can anything get vaguer than this?
Finally, the Moolah! Don’t read much into the $100bn announcement by Hillary Clinton; she herself is not sure how and where from this money will be raised in the first place. While promises of climate adaptation funds have been made in the past and gone undelivered, this deal is offering $30 billion over the next three years. Now, was this not what Gordon Brown was working on for the past few days at Bella Centre? Brown must realise that while he may have achieved partial success in leading the revival of the world banking system, climate change is an entirely different ballgame. A closer look at the annexure reveals that not only the contributions of Japan, EU and US do not add up to $30 billion, the US’ offer is a paltry $3.6 billion!
Ostensibly on Clinton’s announcement, the text says, “Developed countries set a goal of mobilising jointly $100bn a year by 2020 to address needs of developing countries.” Nicely put, but exactly how many US’ corporations will stand to benefit from this?
President Obama along with the BASIC bloc lackeys turned the negotiations into a wrestling bout. Not only will the US be legally allowed to continue polluting the planet, they will not have to pay any significant penalties for it either. The industrial domination of rich countries will continue while the planet will pay the price for it.
December 2010, Mexico City is where this sell-off deal will be granted legitimacy. This is yet another multilateral deal that overlooked the legitimate demands of more than 100 developing countries and muzzled dissent. Democracy was never at play during the two weeks of COP 15 negotiations and a deal brokered between the US and four BASIC bloc nations was thrust on the world as a consensus. Thankfully, even with a fractured coalition, the G77 refused to endorse the deal.
Yet again India played up to the politics of rich nations and deserted the developing countries. It actively participated in allowing an eraser to be run over unresolved issues in square brackets of the text. Today it stands responsible for the cracks in the G77 and at a later date may have to pay a heavy price at other multilateral platforms of negotiations, especially the WTO. While Jairam Ramesh and Mamohan Singh might gloat over their achievement at this disastrous summit, the truth is otherwise and the world knows. By endorsing this deal, India has sleepwalked into a global disaster.
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