 Hello, you're watching People's Dispatch and today we're going to be talking about issue that hasn't received as much attention as it should because of the recent conflict and crisis around Ukraine. This is the latest IPCC report that is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the various impact, the various kinds of impact that climate change is likely to have that it is having already and what lies ahead for humanity, not just in the few coming years, but also the decades to come. So to talk more about this we have with us D. Raghunandhan at the Delhi Science Forum and the All India People Science Network. Thank you so much Shagu for joining us. So first of all, I just wanted to ask you about could you actually situate this report? I understand it's part of a larger process in which such reports are regularly released. So what exactly was this report and what was its focus before we get into some of its more concrete statements and points? Very briefly, the IPCC studies and that presents assessment reports in a cycle of roughly six years. So once every six years the IPCC releases what are called their latest assessment reports and the assessment reports come in three parts and they are released in three volumes. The first volume is on the science of climate change, the physics, the thermodynamics, what is happening, how much is temperature going up, why is it going up, what is happening to it, what's happening in the oceans and what's happening and etc. The second part is on impacts. Knowing the science of climate change, what kind of impacts do we see, how much is sea level rising, how much is temperature going up, what is the effect on agriculture etc., which will then guide nations to adaptation activities, how to adapt to these changes, how to tackle them etc. The third volume is to do with mitigation, that is how do you control the emissions which lead to climate change and that sets the targets for countries as well as for the climate summits that you have, which set targets for the world and for individual nations about how much they should reduce their emissions by in order to meet targets and to prevent the impacts from being too high. So this is the second volume on impacts and the third volume on mitigation etc. is still to come, that will be another three, four months. Right and the first volume I believe came out right before the COP26 summit. The first volume came up just before Glasgow summit and of course had a big influence on the summit since that's the driver in the sense because that tells you where do we stand today. Right, right. So in that case could you just take us through actually what are the key you know the highlights so to speak of this report because we have seen media reports which say that you know delay means death, Antonia Gutierrez the UN Secretary General has called it a code read. So what are the significant aspects that this report talks about which give rise to such cause for concern? Yeah, the first thing that I'll say is this cycle of the assessment reports starting with the first one before Glasgow did not have the shock and awe effect that IPCC assessment reports usually have because this cycle was preceded by three special reports released by IPCC, one on the cryosphere and the oceans, the other on changes in the land, land use, deforestation, desertification and so on. And the third and perhaps the most important of these was on the 1.5 degree Celsius target which now seems to have emerged as the global target whereas before Glasgow. By 1.5 cc you mean an increase in 1.5 cc from pre-industrial era temperatures. So the target at Paris was the world will try and see that temperatures should be restricted temperature rise due to climate change would be restricted to under 2 degrees Celsius that is 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise would be the maximum but the Paris agreement added that the world would also try to see that temperature rise is restricted well below 2 degrees Celsius hopefully to 1.5 Celsius. Now it looks as if since Glasgow 1.5 degrees Celsius has become the target it's no longer 2 degrees Celsius although the reason for this is that the special reports on 1.5 Celsius and the Glasgow summit have opined that even temperature rise of 1.5 triggers such serious impacts of climate change and impacts on agriculture sea level rise etc that it would become intolerable for the people on earth to allow temperatures to rise beyond 1.5. This is one aspect the second aspect is that experts who have looked at the numbers say that if you look at the present state of play what each country is doing what they have promised to do including at Glasgow is such that it is almost impossible to reach 1.5 and that you are inevitably looking at 2 degrees Celsius. So there is a sharp contradiction here it looks as if the science is telling you that 1.5 really should not be exceeded but everything we are doing is ensuring that 1.5 will be exceeded and unfortunately what the present volume 2 of the IPCC report on impacts and vulnerability is also telling us is that impacts at 1.5 degrees Celsius will be so much that the chance of making changes and adaptations to account for and to tackle temperature rise of 1.5 will be so severe that if temperature rise goes beyond 1.5 towards 2 Celsius it may be beyond the adaptive capacity of human communities. I think that if you ask me is the headline of this second report which says that in several spheres exceeding 1.5 will make adaptation almost impossible and that changes would have become irreversible. For example in the Arctic for example in permafrost regions in mountain regions where beyond certain altitudes life would not be possible under present conditions animals certain plants etc would not be able to grow at 20,000 feet as they do now because the temperature would be too high to do that. Similarly on the coasts 1.5 degrees Celsius itself would create so much sea level rise that coastal communities would find it very difficult and that if temperature rises beyond 1.5 you may have no alternative other than to evacuate the coastal regions because capacity to be able to cope with this sea level rise would have gone beyond ability to resist or to cope. So I think the one aspect of this report relating to what countries can do and how they can design their programs to cope or to adapt to these various impacts on climate change. This report has been quite different from the earlier assessment reports even up to the fifth assessment report in the sense that this report takes a completely different or new approach to how adaptation should be looked at and how actions for adaptation should be looked at. Let me illustrate this by saying that in previous reports you would get information about rainfall will decrease by so much, agricultural production may go down by so much, sea level rise may rise by so much which gives rise to an approach which says okay if sea level rise is going up by this much let us build a wall and prevent the sea from coming in. So it is a unidimensional problem which seems to invite unidimensional solutions. Now what this report does very differently from the earlier ones which is why reading it you read the report you have to read the report very differently from earlier reports and it triggers thoughts about actions very differently from earlier ones. This report essentially says look climate impacts are actually multi-dimensional impacts and they sit on top of other impacts that human activity is doing. For example sea level rise the sea level rises at the same time if there are extreme rainfall events which lead to urban flooding, urban flooding will get compounded by seawater coming in it gets added to by accumulated excess rainwater but it also gets added to by drainage from cities having been blocked by unplanned construction, poorly designed urban development, drainage systems which are 100 years old and designed for different patterns of rainfall than they are now. So there are multiple factors and therefore if you address the problem only by what this report calls hard engineering solutions. I will build a wall I will do this somewhere it is not going to solve the problem because these are multi-dimensional problems which call for interdisciplinary thinking and multi-dimensional approaches to tackle the problem especially including and this report emphasizes this repeatedly the aspect of equity that is a solution that is offered may tackle the problem technically but the question is does it tackle the differential impact on the rich and the poor on the urban and the rural and is it worth it to adopt solutions which may tackle the problem in a technical manner but do not address the equity. Dimension and it gives specific examples like the sea level rise that I quoted or air pollution in the cities. Today you have got the Delhi government and the Supreme Court putting a machine which supposedly sucks out the pollution from the air its nonsense but it also invites this idea that you can have one technical problem which will solve which will give you the solution. What is required is a solution that deals with climate effects of pollution, deals with local air pollution and health aspects which also deals with the differential impact of pollution on the rich and the poor and if you talk about it in terms of mass transport versus personalized transport it also addresses the issue of equity of energy access between the rich and the poor and that is the way adaptation solutions absolutely should be talked about and I think that has been the very important lesson from this report but which unfortunately due to our short attention span most I think media coverage has missed. Of course in this context one of the key issues is also in terms of say what we saw at Glasgow we saw of course a variety of commitments people talking about various leaders came and said that by such and such year they'll reach net zero emissions etc etc but with the kind of commitments that we saw in Glasgow and the kind of steps that have been are being taken do we see the possibility of say even a two degree being capped even at a two degree rise in temperature is really the question. So yes this is the contradiction that we are facing which is that science is telling us this report telling us about the impacts that if we allow temperature rise to go above 1.5 we are going to face intolerable and perhaps irreversible changes in climate as well as in terms of their impacts on the ground regarding change of habitat regarding sea level rise regarding impacts on species on biodiversity etc. This is a genuine contradiction and we are facing it and we will be I am sure discussing this in two or three months time when volume three of the assessment report comes out and talks about mitigation but I think to return to the earlier point we were discussing this volume which is about adaptation see all the discussion in the summits at Paris or Glasgow really is about mitigation that is about controlling the emissions because that is the only one where there is an obligation under the framework convention on climate change which obliges countries to adhere to certain targets which are worked out during these summits and which set global targets but on adaptation there are no targets nobody is bound to do anything but the problem is that countries societies will have to cope with these changes now you are not committed to UN agency you do not have to satisfy the Americans or the Chinese or anybody about how you are coping with it you have to convince your own people and the problem is I find particularly in India India has been doing whatever it has done solely on mitigation and largely to satisfy the international community it is not even to satisfy a domestic constituency or to meet domestic pressures it is to keep the Americans and the Europeans and the environmental community those who are concerned about climate change is to appease them in that sense to say yes India is not part of this problem we have not caused this problem but we want to be part of the solution and we are making major contributions to see that temperature rise does not go beyond control however India is among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of impacts of climate change this report itself has a color coded map which shows regions of the world the deeper the red the most impact those countries feel and India is colored the deepest red along with a few other countries in roughly similar latitudes in Africa and South America and Asia so India is one of the worst affected countries now this is something India has to deal with India has to deal with it domestically and India has to deal with it internationally in the sense that it is in India's vital interests to ensure that the Americans the Europeans the advanced countries adopt the stiffest possible targets to reduce emissions so that the impact on India is reduced this is the way in which the island nations the least developed countries approach the climate summits Paris Glasgow they approach them saying this is an existential problem for us unless you the developed countries reduce your emissions we are dying and therefore they put the maximum pressure on the developed countries India however plays a geopolitical game it does not want to offend the developed countries it does not want to put too much pressure on them lest they put pressure on you if you put pressure on the Americans the fear in India is they will put more pressure on you saying do this so we play a juggling game we promise as much as we think we can but we let them off the hook I think this has been a strategic error on India's part from the beginning we are as affected as the island states and the least developed countries it is an existential problem for us also and we should have put pressure on them so in answer to your question there are two parts one is India should change its strategy in negotiations to put pressure on the developed countries to raise ambitions and if that calls for India to also raise its ambitions a little bit we should be game to do so that is one part and the second part however which India has not addressed at all is what are we doing to cope with the changes that are taking place and which are going to take place in the coming years thank you so much for talking to us I think a lot of the concerns you raised about India are faced by many countries in the global south as well to varying degrees and your point about how each country needs to plan internally create its own sort of strategies and programs internally is a very valid point as well thank you so much