Uttarakhand floods and Texas Cold Snap - Need for Climate Action
iasparliament
March 04, 2021
What is the issue?
The recent Uttarakhand floods and the Texas cold snap highlighted the effects of global warming and climate change.
In this context, here is a look at how vulnerable India is and the approach to be adopted for effective climate action.
What happened in these recent incidents?
Uttarakhand glacier burst - Disaster struck Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district in February 2021 in the form of an avalanche and deluge.
It happened after a portion of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off.
There was sudden flood in the middle of the day in the Dhauli Ganga, Rishi Ganga and Alaknanda rivers.
All these are intricately linked tributaries of the Ganga.
The floods triggered widespread panic and large-scale devastation in the high mountain areas.
Two power projects — NTPC’s Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project and the Rishi Ganga Hydel Project — were extensively damaged.
Scores of labourers in these projects got trapped in tunnels as the waters came rushing in.
At least 32 people are feared dead, and over 190 missing.
Texas cold snap - A historic winter storm in Texas, U.S. has killed at least 21 people.
It left millions of Texans without power.
It has led to killer tornadoes into the U.S. Southeast.
The brutal cold has engulfed vast swaths of the United States.
It led to the closure of COVID-19 inoculation centers and hindering vaccine supplies.
Is global warming the cause?
What precipitated both the above events was human-made global warming.
The melting of the Himalayan glaciers that prompted the floods and landslides in Uttarakhand has the fingerprints of global warming.
The United States has already witnessed many deadly avalanches since the beginning of 2021.
Furthermore, as glacier cover is replaced by water or land, the amount of light reflected decreases.
This aggravates warming, a contributor to the sweltering heat in cities like Delhi and Hyderabad, or the epic floods in Chennai or Kerala.
The extreme cold weather in Texas is connected to Arctic-peninsula warming, at a rate almost twice the global average.
Usually, there is a collection of winds around the Arctic keeping the cold locked far to the north.
But global warming has caused gaps in these protective winds.
This made way for the intensely cold air to move south, a phenomenon that is accelerating.
How vulnerable is India?
The stakes are laid out in alarming reports, which show that India is particularly vulnerable.
HSBC ranks India at the top among 67 nations in climate vulnerability (2018).
Germanwatch ranks India fifth among 181 nations in terms of climate risks (2020).
But public spending does not reflect these perils.
Worryingly, the Uttarakhand government and the Centre have been diluting, instead of strengthening, climate safeguards for hydroelectric and road projects.
Studies had flagged ice loss across the Himalayas, and the dangers to densely populated catchments, but policy response has been lacking.
Similarly, Kerala ignored a landmark study calling for regulation of mining, quarrying and dam construction in ecologically sensitive places.
These notably contributed to the massive floods and landslides in 2018 and 2019.
What should be done?
Emission - India is the third-largest carbon emitter after China and the United States.
For India, a decisive switch is needed from highly polluting coal and petroleum to cleaner and renewable power sources.
China has announced carbon neutrality by 2060, Japan and South Korea by 2050, but India is yet to announce a target.
The acceleration of hazards of nature should prompt countries to advance those targets, ideally by a decade.
Budget - A vital step should be explicitly including policies for climate mitigation in the government budget.
Specifically, growth targets should include timelines for switching to cleaner energy.
The government needs to launch a major campaign to mobilise climate finance.
Adaptation - Even if major economies speed up climate mitigation, catastrophes like Uttarakhand will become more frequent due to the accumulated carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
So, climate adaptation needs to be a priority.
India’s Central and State governments must increase allocations for risk reduction.
E.g. better defences against floods, agricultural innovations to withstand droughts
What is the way forward?
Sustainable growth depends on timely climate action.
For that to happen, policymaking needs to connect the dots between carbon emissions, atmospheric warming, melting glaciers, extreme floods and storms.
Unless climate change is tagged as a primary cause, climate action will continue to falter.
Events like Uttarakhand and Texas should be treated as lessons for urgent climate action.
