 Hello, you're watching People's Dispatch. 2022 is coming to an end. It's been an eventful year, of course. There's been the Russia-Ukraine war, a number of crises on the economic front, on the front of technology, a lot of people struggling for food. But one of the news items that has remained continuously in the headlines throughout the year we've read about, we've seen TV channels, in newspaper reports, even in fiction, is that of climate change. Now, climate change is nothing new, something we've been talking about for years now, but this year was one of those that brought the urgency to the fore, because of a series of natural disasters, as well as the COP 27 summit that took place in Egypt. But even now, there's sometimes a lot of lack of clarity as to what it means. Sometimes people get the impression that it's something that's really far away. So to explain and decipher all this, we have with us D. Raghunathan of the Delhi Science Forum and the All India People Science Network. Thank you so much for speaking to us. Raghunathan, first of all, I think the question I wanted to pose was really about this year, what has been, what have been some of the major, say, insights that scientific research has provided us through reports, through analysis, through studies. At the end of 2022, where are we, broadly, with our understanding of how climate change is impacting the world? Broadly speaking, we have had a series of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not exactly during 2022, but in the lead up to the previous COP in Glasgow. There was the sixth assessment report of the IPCC and three special reports of the IPCC, one on the target of 1.5 degrees C, one on sea level rise, and one on the oceans, et cetera, the ice caps and glaciers on the cryosphere. All these have essentially told us that climate change is getting worse at a much faster rate than had earlier been thought of. Second, it has told us that the last shreds of uncertainty about climate change, and you would perhaps know that in each successive report of the IPCC, the level of uncertainty about predictions has been coming down, and we are getting more and more certain. Now, the conclusion is it is beyond any doubt. Third, linked to the earlier one is that extreme weather events, as you said in your intro, this we have witnessed in the last few years dramatically. Cold spells in North America, heat waves in Europe, floods in Europe, forest fires across North America and in Europe, and of course extreme rainfall and cyclones around the Indian subcontinent. These are witnessed more frequently and with greater ferocity. So clearly, climate change is getting worse, but equally, the measures required to counter climate change, that is to reduce emissions to a point where we can come closer to the target of restricting temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to 1.5 Celsius. These measures are not keeping pace. We are very far behind where the target should be. There is a very thin silver lining to this cloud, which is that after the revisions upward of all the countries targets at Glasgow COP26, we have slightly reduced the gap, but it is unfortunately very little. We are expected to have the global emissions by 2030. We are very far away from that. There is a large shortfall close to 15 gigatons and unless the big developed countries, European Union as a block, the United States as a block and for this purpose, we have to consider China. Also as being a major contributor without home, no global target can be achieved. If these three big emitting nations don't substantially reduce their emissions quickly and by quickly, I mean virtually immediately, there is no way of reaching the target of having global emissions by 2030 and if that doesn't happen, then your targets of 1.5 or 2 degrees are not going to be achievable. So we have two phenomena simultaneously. One is climate change is getting worse, much faster than we thought and secondly, global measures to control emissions are not taking place as fast as we require. In this context also quickly wanted to talk about the present, the aspect you mentioned about disasters, natural phenomena of various kind which are not part of the norm so to speak. You mentioned the various types of forest fires and cyclones etc. Are we also increasingly or not increasingly, are we also really under equipped to deal with the impact of this because this is one of the issues that has come up. We'll talk about loss and damage of course later but currently based on what's happening right now, how are countries placed when it comes to having to deal with the disasters that are taking place here and now? So in this, I would like to divide my answer in two parts. One is the developing world as a whole. In the developing world as a whole, particularly in the most vulnerable island states, in the least developed countries, particularly in Africa and in our neighborhood countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, we've seen the huge damage done by the floods in Pakistan. Bangladesh continues to suffer from sea level rise in the Delta region which is getting worse by the year. These countries have virtually no ability in terms of technical capabilities and more so in terms of financial abilities to be able to withstand these impacts, to reduce their force of the impacts and to build resilience to this and that is why we'll come to that. I'm sure the question of loss and damage etc. arises but I am even more concerned about India. See, we have long approached the international negotiations as a kind of a foreign policy bargaining venue where you go there, there's a treaty and you work on the language in such a way that pressure is not put on India and you come away happy if that happens. But India should be talking in the global negotiations more like the island states and the least developed countries because we are among the top 7 worst affected regions of the world. For us also, this is an existential crisis by pretending that the international negotiations have nothing to do with the impacts on India on the one hand and secondly, all the domestic discussion is also taking place only around reducing emissions, meeting our targets at Paris and Glasgow and so on. We are neglecting the huge impacts that are taking place in India. I've already mentioned some of the extreme weather which has led to landslides, floods and urban flooding has become a major problem. Urban infrastructure needs to be very urgently upgraded. Hostile erosion is taking place very fast, likely to affect more than 300 million people living on the Indian coasts. These are major problems even apart from the impacts on agriculture. We know very well the crisis of the apple growing regions in Himachal Pradesh but there is evidence in the past 2-3 years that even the main agriculture crop producing areas in Punjab and Haryana have suffered losses due to changing in weather patterns due to delays in onset of winter etc and there is no sign that the government in India is taking any of these seriously. Absolutely. And there is actually I guess a global phenomenon also because we talk about the climate as though it is something we face and often not think about the impact for instance on food production which is probably one of the ways in which globally we are going to be hit the most. Absolutely. We have not looked at this seriously at all even though in the technology missions set up in the previous government one of the 8 missions was the National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture. But all these technology missions including the one on sustainable agriculture have been completely starved of funds no serious political backing they have remained as a few small lab scale pilot projects conducted by some institutions there is no taking of these programs to the field to build climate resilience drought resistant crops saline resistant crops etc or changing agronomic practices which are needed in order to meet the threat of climate change we have seen no field action whatsoever and it is not surprising because you cannot have field action unless you have studied the problem come to some conclusion and have a prescription with which to go forward we have not done those exercises either. Absolutely. In the context let us go to Sharmal Sheikh in Egypt or go back to Sharmal Sheikh in Egypt where COP 27 was held a very interesting summit there was of course on the one hand what has been called a historic agreement on the loss and damage fund although the details are still very sketchy and unclear on the other hand there was increasing focus on the fact that you know the 100 billion dollars that was promised by countries of the global north was never delivered in fact even some of the claims they made what they delivered were exposed is probably a bit fraudulent or as an exaggeration so a few couple of months after one month after COP 27 how do we see you know what the you know how do we see funding right now in the coming years for the issue of dealing with climate change at a global level purely at a personal level I have long believed that the issue of loss and damage has been overplayed by the developing countries on the one hand the most vulnerable countries the island nations the LDCs etc and corresponding to that by the US and the European Union the developed world what I mean by that is even before the loss and damage issue came up in such a big way there was the adaptation fund and there was the issue of funding by the developed countries to the developing countries to meet the challenges of climate change to meet their mitigation targets to help them in technology and finance to reduce then the issue of loss and damage came up in a big way and it was made to look as if there is the previously committed funds for mitigation and adaptation and there is a loss and damage fund over and above that this was the logic in which the discussions on loss and damage proceeded ideologically it's it's fine it sounds good just as if I were to say that developed countries owe developing countries a debt for colonization nobody is going to argue with that it's a correct demand but you really think that the developed countries are tomorrow going to step up and say yes we will pay 500 billion dollars every year as reparation for colonials so the loss and damage issue I think has been a misleading issue which has come up and I said whatever money the developed countries are going to pay to developing countries is coming out of the same kitty you can call it what you want adaptation fund mitigation fund loss and damage fund it's the same amount of money they had earlier promised 100 billion dollars and now if you expect that loss and damage is going to be 30 40 50 billion dollars more than the when they have not even come anywhere near 20 billion out of that 100 billion I still continue to see loss and damage as a non-starter if you like there's only the same pool of money that's going to come and we have seen also very distressingly you pointed out that the developed countries are nowhere near target that they had earlier said forget about new targets of loss and damage etc now with the war in Ukraine has come up the US and its European allies have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in armaments and in backing Ukraine in the war against Russia without backing an eyelid while at the same time they say it's very difficult for us to find the money for climate etc even though the world including their own countries are being ravaged by climate change so I believe if we are realistic and look at the world in terms of what it is that the haves will continue to deny the have nots what they deserve and will spend whatever money they have in pursuing their own interests whether it is on climate or whether it is on geopolitics like it's happening in Ukraine I'm afraid this is the stark reality that we are facing today. But Nandilas Ragu I believe you would agree that loss and damage and such similar initiatives offer that matter reform of financial institutions these continue to be crucial agenda points for the global south to push it negotiations like this sure I absolutely agree it's worth to push it's worth making the point of what it is but at the same time we in the global south should also understand the reality and ask for what we think we can get it's great if we get an agreement in principle for reparations but if that aspiration does not translate into money or if it is used by the developed world as a bargaining chip we will give you money for loss and damage don't ask us to reduce emissions which is what they are doing ease off on the pressure that you are putting on us to reduce emissions we will give you money for loss and damage knowing full well that they will save money it's going to cost them money to reduce emissions and they will get away with paying some amount of money which is less than what it's going to cost them to reduce emissions thereby giving themselves an alibi I think that's what we need to protect ourselves against thank you much Ragu for talking to us for giving us an idea of where we stand today with climate change hopefully 2023 brings us some better news at least although the prognosis is not very bright but thank you so much for talking to us and we will come back to you soon with other issues my pleasure that's all your time, thank you for watching People's Dispatch