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SRI LANKA: Climate Change Worse Than Civil War - UN Expert
By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Apr 24 (IPS) - As the world prepares for yet another ‘scary'
report by the United Nations panel on global warming and climate change, a
Sri Lankan specialist in the group says Tamil rebels and government troops
are actually fighting over land due to be submerged as sea-levels rise.
''A major part of Jaffna and other northern areas (of Sri Lanka) will be submerged when the sea-level rises. So people are fighting and dying over areas that may soon not be there,'' Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, vice-chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told IPS in an interview.
Jaffna, seat of a revolt for an independent homeland for minority Tamils,
lies on the northern tip of the island. Northern and eastern coastal
areas, both claimed by the rebels as traditional Tamil homelands, are
vulnerable to submersion as they are flatter than other coastal areas.
The vulnerability of the north and east was highlighted during the Dec.
26, 2004 Asian tsunami when these areas bore the brunt of the damage
caused by the killer waves that hit the island, following an undersea
earthquake off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island.
Munasinghe, known internationally for his work on energy and sustainable
development, says climate change in Sri Lanka will have dire consequences
on water, agriculture, health and the coast. "Already there are early
signs of the impact which would assume serious proportions by 2025," he
said. "But unfortunately if the developed world doesn't do anything to
mitigate the impact, there's little Sri Lanka can do."
IPCC is releasing the third volume of its 4th assessment report in Bangkok
on May 4. Since the first one came out in 2001, IPCC reports have been
closely scrutinised by policymakers across the world, but action has been
painfully slow in tackling the problem of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and
carbon dioxide emissions that are said to cause global warming.
The biggest culprits are the United States and Europe through their
fossil fuel industry and its powerful lobbies.
Providing a peek review of the forthcoming report Munasinghe, a former
World Bank who has advised several Sri Lankan governments on energy
issues, said among the key messages would be the need to take immediate
action to mitigate or reduce GHGs.
The report will also focus on the methods and technologies to make this
early start and provide clear signals to industry to develop the
technologies to make such a change. "Industrialised countries should lead
the way as they are the biggest polluters," he said, adding that the
Europeans clearly recognised these concerns earlier this year. "Thus there
is now some action in the developed countries," he said.
The IPCC vice-chairman is frustrated at the general apathy of countries in
dealing with global warming despite the fact that some of the best experts
in the world prepare the reports on global warming. The latest one has
contributions from 3,000 scientists.
"No one takes it seriously because it is something that does not happen
today or tomorrow. The biggest culprits are the rich countries...so it's
difficult to take action," he said, adding that one of the weaknesses in
the campaign is the inability of scientists to translate their jargon into
language that is understood by everyone, including politicians.
The world response to global warming has been very slow. When IPCC's first
report, released in 1990, provided scientific evidence to show the
existence of GHGs that can alter the climate, the public was sceptical.
The second report dealt with the impact of GHGs, the impact on humans and
need for mitigation.
The third report in 2001 focussed on vulnerability and adapting to
situations. It said even if there were zero emissions, what is already in
the atmosphere would cause global warming and impact mostly on tropical
countries, and thereby the poor. Experts say even in rich countries it is
the poor that are affected by global warming - as the impact of Hurricane
Katrina in the U.S. has shown.
More than 80 percent of the emissions that cause climate change come from
rich countries with lifestyles and development that cause the problems.
The per capita emissions of countries like India or China, despite being
large, are a mere 1/30th or 1/40th of what is emitted by the U.S. or
Europe.
Munasinghe says his argument, made during a presentation at the Earth
Summit in Rio in 1992, that there is a strong need for integrating climate
change and longer term issues into sustainable development strategies has
become a reality today. "Sustainable development is the way out...
starting with the industrial nations," he said.
In the Sri Lankan scenario, population shifts where the country would have
a bigger aging population in 20 years will exacerbate the problem since
health is one area where the impact would be high.
"Remember malnutrition and disease affects mostly children and older
people. An aging population means there would be fewer people to carry the
burden as well and all these would be vulnerable. Productivity will get
affected because there are fewer young people," he said.
Sri Lanka expects that over the next two decades the sea-level will rise
by half a metre with dry areas becoming drier and wet areas becoming
wetter, leading to floods in some areas and drought in others.
Earlier this month, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of IPCC, said at a press
conference in New Delhi that up to 60 million coastal people in the
low-lying areas of South Asia could be displaced by global warming by the
end of the 21st century.
Especially vulnerable, said Pachauri, are the coastal metropolises of
Mumbai and Kolkata which are already showing signs of strain on their
drainage systems and infrastructure.
India could be most seriously affected by scantier rainfall and by glacier
melt in the Himalayas which supply the river systems on which agriculture
depends, Pachauri said, adding that glacier melt could also seriously
affect China.
According to Pachauri the impact of global warming on India, where almost
700 million people are dependent on agriculture, would be really serious
and trigger mass migration of rural communities to urban areas in search
of alternate livelihoods.
The most frightening prospect for Sri Lanka is also in agriculture. ‘'We
have done some studies with the meteorological department which show
higher temperatures and less water,'' said Munasinghe. ''This will result
in paddy farming output falling by 20-30 percent in the next 20 to 30
years. The output will begin to drop gradually over the next few years.''
The other issue is that of equity, says Munasinghe, in the wet zone where
the hill country is filled with tea bushes - the tea crop will increase
making those workers well off. While paddy is cultivated mostly by
farmer-families in which the cost of production is much higher than the
selling price, tea workers are assured of their monthly wages even if tea
companies find production costs higher than selling prices. Tea is
generally a profitable crop.
He says in the hotter areas mosquitoes will be more rampant and even move
into the more hilly areas. Thus the incidence of vector-borne diseases
like malaria and dengue in endemic areas could increase in addition to
diseases triggered by poor quality water that accompanies droughts.
(END/2007)
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