Chinese walker

These days, one would be hard pressed to find anyone with access to the global media who is unaware of the rise of China. With growth rates averaging 10% a year since 1990, China`s economic performance has been nothing short of extraordinary, outshining even the Asian tigers that went before it. And while China has received the most column inches of all the emerging markets in recent years, India has also received significant attention, with the two countries frequently being compared and contrasted. While India has sometimes been described as a “lumbering elephant” to China`s “agile dragon”, India is also seen by some as more stable in its growth, given its strong democratic setup, wide base of education and focus on the more value-added service sector.

Such comparisons were at the back of our minds on a recent visit to India – as was the scale of the significant challenges these countries face before their full potential may be realised. India, like China, has seen the impact of economic surges coupled with expanding populations and the retreat of natural ecosystems. Indeed, as you head into Bangalore%26mdash;undergoing a major boom since the information technology sector took off in India%26mdash;there is much to remind you of boom cities in any emerging economy. Traffic crawls at a snail pace all day long. You can almost chew the air. The kites and other birds of prey that circle in the haze must be breathing in the equivalent of several hundred cigarettes a day. And the widespread poverty, although not as obvious as in other Indian cities like Delhi and Mumbai, is plain to see. But there is an excitement in the air, too, fuelled by the sense of momentum and, at least for some, opportunity.

Whatever their many differences, China and India share a desperate need to create and spread these growing opportunities. Despite being viewed enviously by pretty much the rest of the world, these countries also have vast marginalised populations living in varying degrees of poverty at the base of the global economic pyramid.

The homes and livelihoods of a million slum dwellers are threatened by development plans in Mumbai. These include the current development plans for Dharavi, Asia`s largest slum, and for Mumbai`s international airport (around which close to half a million people live in informal settlements). But these slum dwellers do not oppose redevelopment. Everyone in Dharavi wants improvements. They have invested in improvements which they could afford and manage, and they have high expectations that the state should also make similar investments. Those who live closest to the airport runways recognise that they will have to move. But they want to be consulted and involved in the design and implementation of the redevelopment and resettlement plans. The airport settlements have around 100,000 households, and thousands of local businesses.

This is not asking much. Official plans for developing Dharavi and the international airport acknowledge that they must rehouse or resettle the slum dwellers. So the issue is how this rehousing is organised – and for those that have to be resettled, the location chosen. Slum-dweller organizations have shown how they can be good partners in the design and management of such redevelopments. The federation of slum-dwellers living along the railway tracks in Mumbai worked with the Railway Authorities and state government of Maharashtra to move 20,000 households to allow improvements in the railway. Without conflicts. The households who moved did not have to be forced off their land; they packed up their belongings and moved on the designated day. The key here was that they had been involved in all aspects of the redevelopment: in deciding who was entitled to be included; how the process would be designed; helping to choose the site to where they were moved; when they were moved and with whom they moved. Their own community organizations – especially women`s savings groups – helped manage the settlements to which they moved. Savings groups formed by pavement dwellers are also working in partnership with the government to move to allow road and traffic improvements. So the community leadership at the airport and Dharavi ask a question: how can the same government that worked so closely with the communities and NGOs to produce this highly effective partnership in relocating households to improve the railways not use the same strategy for the airport and for Dharavi?

The slum dwellers in Dharavi and on the airport lands are not being involved in the redevelopment plans. But they offer both the private companies and the government agencies involved in these plans a real partnership. The involvement is not just agreeing with what the government wants, but a real partnership to produce what works for communities and gives the government solutions that are sustainable and viable. The government and private companies may see the participation of communities as delaying the development, as adding costs. But our experiences to date show that it can reduce costs and speed up implementation. If this offer of partnership is ignored, it will often force slum communities to fall back to the usual and easier options of protest. The slum dwellers have some easy ways to make their opposition felt. Two of Mumbai`s main railway lines run along Dharavi`s borders. These can easily be blocked – and this would bring chaos to Mumbai, as such a high proportion of the workforce relies on these railways to get to and from work. The airport runways can also be blocked – and the slum dweller federations will inform all the airlines that operate there as to when and where this will happen. We do not want to resort to this; we want a partnership in making both these development plans and other plans in Mumbai a success.

The redevelopment of Dharavi

On August 16, the day after India celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of its Independence, I found myself standing alongside Niraj Bajaj as we watched the figures on the electronic displays at Mumbai-based National Stock Exchange go from bad to worse%26mdash;and playfully calculate how much poorer he was as the head of one of India`s largest business houses as the global market correction roared through. Later the same day, on the other side of town, he chaired a session hosted by the Indian Merchants` Chamber%26mdash;of which he is president%26mdash;at which I gave the keynote speech. My simple message was not entirely comfortable: India faces a far bigger market convulsion before the country reaches its centenary.

In his introduction, Bajaj noted that the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) concept, which I launched in 1994, now offers a means of helping “India, Inc.” to come up with answers to the challenges that prime minister Manmohan Singh had raised in his Independence Day speech. Before explaining how the TBL approach can help, however, I stressed that the world`s second most populous country has now embarked on its third great liberation process since the end of the Second World War. And the third is likely to be greater than either the first and second taken together.

The first was the process of achieving liberation from British rule, finally achieved at horrendous cost in 1947 as the Partition process literally tore the country apart, the seismic aftershocks of which will probably still be shaping our world in 2047.

The second liberation saw the iron grip of the state gradually prized away from the levers of economic power, as India struggled to catch up with the processes of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation from 1991. Again, the shockwaves are still working their way through the country`s economy, but among the beneficiaries of the new order have been some of the leading business people I met during my week in Agra, Delhi and Mumbai.

And the third liberation? Well, if the first broke the stranglehold of the British and the second that of the state, the third will have to simultaneously achieve a “triple-whammy”%26mdash;breaking the stranglehold of poverty by bringing the benefits of a modern economy to the more than 250 million of India`s billion people trapped below the poverty line, while protecting the country`s natural environment.

Changing landscapes

Apart from the pollution and natural resource degradation that are such a striking feature of today`s India, there is also now the growing threat of climate change. This was underscored by the prime minister`s speech, in which he argued that economic, social, political and educational forms of empowerment are crucial to the nation`s future%26mdash;alongside effective efforts to tackle the growing range of environmental issues, notably global warming.

Like China, however, Indian leaders have often argued that global warming is not India`s problem, given that it “only” contributes a few percentage points of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Indeed, I heard a senior retired environmental official make exactly that point in Agra earlier in the week, at a business leaders programme organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

There I found the mood among the business leaders taking part was distinctly more engaged than it would have been a few short years back, which is just as well, since the country`s “second liberation” means that a growing share of the responsibility for tackling India`s sustainability (or rather unsustainability) issues will devolve to business. And one key factor in that changing mood has been the work of the CII-ITC Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Development.

ITC, which originally stood for the Imperial Tobacco Company, is a company that splits me down the middle. On the one hand, it is like an Indian version of the tobacco company Phillip Morris, though the proportion of its revenues derived from the sale of tobacco products has fallen to around 47%. On the other, ITC is increasingly well known for its extraordinary successes in such areas as social forestry.

In his speech at the CII event, its chairman Y.C. Deveshwar accepted that the company`s profile put it in a difficult place, but he stressed that ITC`s commitment to “achieving Triple Bottom Line benchmarks is key to our resolve to contribute to the national goal of sustainable and inclusive growth.” Among the achievements he reported were the facts that ITC has been a “water positive” company for five years in a row and “carbon positive” for the last two years. It also aims to achieve “zero solid waste,” having recycled over 90% of its solid waste during the past year.

Civil society

What has the response of responsible nations been in the face of climate change? At Heiligendamm this year, the G-8 group of industrialised nations agreed to take “strong and early action to tackle climate change in order to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, with a majority agreeing to “at least a halving of global emissions by 2050.”

It is an exciting time to be an Indian. Sixty years since independence, the country has shot to global prominence and is making its economic presence felt. It is now the fourth largest in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) and projected to be one of the three largest – along with China and the US – by 2032. Last year, India Inc. was the toast of Davos as its “Global India” campaign took the Alpine resort by storm, raising the rafters to Bollywood hits.

But India`s journey to freedom and opportunity is incomplete. Critics charge that a key area of our international policy remains in the dark ages – climate change.

“The World Toilet Summit was held in New Delhi on October 31,” read a text message sent to me by a colleague in Beijing. “According to the World Health Organisation, 2.6 billion people do not have access to %26lsquo;improved sanitation` – more than half of them in China and India.” My friend thought it was a joke, but in fact three years ago Beijing played host to the World Toilet Summit.

The World Toilet Organization (known as the WTO, but not to be confused with the World Trade Organization) chose the right location when it opted to hold its summit in India. India is the world`s most toilet-poor nation, even more so than China. It is hard to find a public toilet on the streets of New Delhi, but you see plenty of men standing against walls relieving themselves. In a sense, the state of a nation`s toilets reflects the state of its economy and society.

Hundreds of millions of Indians continue to live in poverty, with no access to adequate sanitation or domestic conveniences. An Indian government report, India: Addressing Energy Security and Climate Change, says 600 million Indians have no electricity – a figure equal to the combined populations of the EU and the US.

And China finds itself in similar circumstances. Speaking at an NGO workshop on climate change negotiations held in Beijing on November 18, Lu Xuedu, deputy director general at the Ministry of Science and Technology`s Office of Global Environmental Affairs, said that according to the UN standard of US$1 a day, China still has at least 200 million people living in poverty. “There`s a village by the Miyun Reservoir which I have visited three times,” said Lu. “The poverty there is appaling. Wangfujing [a major shopping street] in Beijing and the Bund in Shanghai do not give you the whole picture.” The Miyun Reservoir is less than 100 kilometres from central Beijing.

It is facts like these that have led India and China`s governments to refuse to commit to reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Professor Zou Ji, deputy dean at Remin University`s School of Environment and Natural Resources, is a member of China`s delegation to UN climate change talks. At one heated point at the COP11 climate-change negotiations in Montreal in 2005, he told delegates: “It cost tens of thousands of yuan for me to get here – enough to support a rural Chinese family for years. Why am I here? To represent the Chinese people. Come and see how many Chinese people do not have air-conditioning in summer or heating in winter . . . We need to improve the conditions they live in, and of course that will mean more emissions. These are essentials, not luxuries!”

But international calls for China and India to undertake emissions reductions are becoming stronger. On December 3, UN climate change talks will open in Bali. It is expected that the US and other developed countries will continue to put pressure on the world`s most populous developing nations. Even the ever-cautious UN has called for more action from China and India. On November 27, the UN Development Programme published its 2007/2008 Human Development Report, Fighting climate change: human solidarity in a divided world. The report recommends that developed countries reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by between 20% and 30% by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Major emitters among developing countries should aim for their emissions to peak by 2020, and to fall 20% by 2050.

This report was edited by Kevin Watkins, director of the UN’s Human Development Report Office, who reportedly said at a reporters` workshop held a month prior to publication: “We suggest rich countries take deep cuts of 80% from their present level of emissions and other countries (including India and China) take on targets as well. Rich countries should provide the finances for these countries to achieve their targets”

Sunita Narain, from India`s Centre for Science and Environment expressed surprise: “If the UN is saying this, it is a regressive stand.” Narain believes that developing countries should not be required to reduce emissions, but that developed countries should provide the funding framework for them to leapfrog to clean technologies.

As a Chinese journalist, I do not believe China and India should undertake to cut emissions at this stage. But the two nations should do their best to play a more constructive role.

In fact, the Chinese government has already taken a number of measures to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. As Lu Xuedu pointed out, the Chinese government has set a target of a 20% reduction in energy consumption per unit of GDP between 2006 and 2010 – equivalent to saving of 600 million tonnes of coal. “That would be unthinkable in some western countries, and it is not easy to achieve,” said Lu.

China was also the first developing country to publish a national plan of action on climate change – in June this year. For this reason, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, singled out China for praise at a press conference in November to mark the release of the fourth report from the International Panel on Climate Change.

The Chinese government in September launched a nationwide campaign to persuade citizens to reduce their emissions and energy usage. This is no doubt praiseworthy, but could China also ask some of its citizens – the rich, for instance – to make a greater contribution than just voluntary behavioural changes?

Both China and India have massive gaps between rich and poor, though the situation in India is even worse than in China. In New Delhi and Mumbai, skyscrapers contrast with slums, many cannot afford even to take a bus. Yet as a friend from Mumbai told me, the tycoon Mukesh Ambani is in the process of building a 27-storey mansion – with its first six storeys alone allocated for parking.

China has 345,000 residents with assets over US$1 million, according to October’s Merrill Lynch and Capgemini “Asia-Pacific Wealth Report”, second only to Japan — and up 7.8% on last year. India has 100,000 millionaires, up 20.5% on last year.

As the Human Development Report says, we live in a divided world. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, rich and poor nations have common but differentiated responsibilities. Is the same also true for the rich and poor citizens of developing nations?

Li Taige is a Beijing-based journalist. He obtained a masters degree in engineering from Sichuan University in 1997, and studied as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2003-2004.

Homepage photo by Saad.

Martin Wright: What`s the single thing that most needs to change in India?

Rajendra Pachauri: We need to change mindsets. As people become increasingly prosperous, they`re wanting to consume on the same opulent scale as the rich in developed countries. They`ve borrowed images of a western lifestyle. They`ve been conditioned to feel that the “Good Life” means a two- or three-car family, air-conditioned, energy-hungry homes, and so on. We need to shift that value system.

MW: So how do you change that? Is there a particularly “Indian” way?

RP: We really need someone like Gandhi, who practised what he preached! We`ve almost forgotten him now. But we need someone who can reignite that commitment, to bring to the fore all he was saying, and set it in today`s context. It`s even more relevant today than it was in his time.

MW: But meanwhile, what practical action can government take?

RP: It should use the market to move people in the right direction. So, those goods and services which impose an unsustainable impact on the ecosystem need to be taxed in a manner which reflects that. We need both regulations and market instruments. Regulations to make buildings and factories and appliances much more energy-efficient, for example. Higher taxation on inefficient cars, with greater support for public transport – particularly the railways, which urgently need modernising and expanding…

MW: There`s an argument that says such intervention will affect Indian competitiveness….

RP: Yes, but actions like this can actually make us more competitive! At present, a lot of our industry is highly energy intensive, and water intensive, too. These are resources which are coming under growing pressure. If we can learn to use natural resources more efficiently, the cost of production will come down, and so we`ll be able to compete more effectively in the world market. If India were to develop and use renewables and other sustainable technologies on a large scale, it would provide Indian companies with a huge global market. We`re already seeing that in sectors like wind energy, where Suzlon [Asia`s largest turbine manufacturer] has expanded very rapidly.

MW: You know more than most about the threat of climate change. How grave a threat is it to India?

RP: Oh, it`s immense – immense. We can expect more water shortages, more heat waves, floods and droughts… all these are serious enough in India as it is; climate change will make them more so – particularly for agriculture. Farmers are seeing the impact now. The wheat yields are already falling in the %26lsquo;granary of India` – in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

MW: Are people becoming more aware of the danger?

RP: Definitely. They can see the weather changing, and that`s shaping their perception. The IPCC reports on the likely impacts in India produced an explosion of interest in the media.

MW: So will the government shift its position and accept binding emissions targets?

RP: I doubt it – at least not until developed countries reduce their own emissions on a significant scale… But I think a reappraisal is in hand. The prime minister has set up a council on climate change which he himself is chairing, and that is hugely significant.

It`s important for people here in India to realise that you can`t have countries like ourselves and China, which will be major emitters of greenhouse gases in the future, continuing merrily on a different path to the rest of the world. We all need to be part of a larger effort. After all, we will both be severely affected by climate change.

MW: China and India are increasingly spoken of in the same breath by Western commentators concerned at their pace of growth. So do you think we`ll ever see a joint %26lsquo;Chindian` stance on global issues?

RP: At the moment we seem to be competing – particularly over energy resources in other countries. If we worked together more, it would be of substantial benefit – for ourselves, and for the rest of the world. We both have a large rural population, for example, so we`ve got to come up with a way to create sustainable energy solutions for rural areas. There`s ample opportunity for co-operation here. We need to exchange ideas, information, set up joint ventures… There`s not much of that happening – yet. But I know for a fact there`s a reappraisal of both countries` approaches underway. So we could see them taking [a more proactive attitude]. It`s just a matter of time.

MW: So are you optimistic about the future?

RP: Absolutely. Just now, there`s a window of opportunity for action. We must do the best we can to use it.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri is director-general of The Energy and Resources Institute. www.teriin.org

Martin Wright is the editor of Green Futures

One car gets 46 miles per gallon, features fancy accessories, and sports two engines with a combined 145 horsepower. The other car reportedly gets 54 miles per gallon, runs on a diminutive 30-horsepower engine, and is positively spartan in its interior trimmings. The first is a darling of the environmentally conscious. The latter is reviled as a climate wrecker. These two vehicles are the Toyota Prius and the newly unveiled Tata Nano, dubbed “the people`s car.” Is there a double standard?

Advertised as the world`s cheapest car, the Nano is a no-frills automobile designed by Indian conglomerate Tata to be affordable for millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of people who are newly joining the middle class in India and elsewhere in the developing world. Such mass sales might overwhelm halting efforts to ward off catastrophic climate change. As Indians (and others) join the love affair with the private automobile, many in the west are suddenly aghast at the prospect of Nano becoming a household term like Chevy or Mercedes. The German weekly Der Spiegel termed it an “eco-disaster.”

Indeed, transportation has the fastest growing carbon emissions of any economic sector. Proliferating numbers of automobiles are a key reason. More than 600 million passenger cars are now on the world`s roads, and each year some 67 million new ones roll out of manufacturing plants.

But amid the finger pointing, let`s remember who has driven the planet to the edge of the climate abyss. People in western countries and Japan%26mdash;less than 15% of the world`s population%26mdash;own two-thirds of all passenger and commercial motor vehicles in the world. Although they are rapidly expanding their fleets, India and China, with a third of the world`s population, so far account for only about 5% of vehicles. In 2005, China`s ratio of motor vehicles to population was at about the level the United States had reached some 90 years earlier. India`s ratio is less than half that of China.

Westerners not only have far more cars, but the distances they drive are also 3-4 times longer on average than those of Indians and Chinese. The US alone – where monster SUVs roam and driving is considered a birthright – claims about 44% of the world`s gasoline consumption. Fuel economy has stagnated for a quarter-century as cars grew larger, heavier, and more muscular. In New York, a Nano might be mistaken for a golf cart.

So if it`s true that Asia`s (and Latin America`s and Africa`s) teeming billions can`t indulge in the same reckless habits as westerners, then neither can Americans, Europeans, or Japanese. Delhi and Beijing know hypocrisy when they encounter it. Nonetheless, they have good reason to take action irrespective of what western countries say or do. Residents of many Asian cities are exposed to a lethal brew of sulphur and nitrogen oxides, particulates, and toxics from motor vehicles of all stripes. Breathable air is every bit as important as climate stability.

Leaner engines and cleaner fuels are essential. The Nano may well be a cleaner option than the highly polluting motorcycles, motor rickshaws, and diesel buses (and many of the western-designed cars) already clogging India`s roads. But the mass market that Tata is hoping for will render putative gains ephemeral.

All countries need to seriously rethink their transportation policies. Such an effort has to go far beyond the pursuit of alternative fuels and even beyond making cars more efficient. Denser cities and shorter distances reduce the overall need for motorised transportation and make public transit, biking, and walking more feasible. Those who will never be able to afford a car will have more options instead of being marginalised by the onslaught of private automobiles.

In a family, it is always convenient for a younger brother if their older sister is even worse behaved than they are. India is fortunate that China, its great economic rival across the Himalayas, draws so much attention for its soaring greenhouse-gas emissions, and for the fact that its cities are swathed in smog and its rivers are dying.

By comparison, India may appear to have a relatively clean bill of health. But in some respects, it lags well behind China. On Yale University`s environmental performance index, charting everything from pollution to biodiversity, China languishes in 104th place. Yet India is even lower, at 120th. Part of the reason for that, ironically, is not its surging economic growth, but its persistent poverty. India`s low scores on air quality owe much to the rural poor`s dependence on inefficient cookstoves burning wood or dung.

Poverty is not the whole explanation, however. India`s most intractable environmental problems lie in the mundane issue of water. China`s rivers are dying because of industrial pollution – India`s because of human pollution. Even the Yamuna River, which flows from the Himalayas down through Delhi, is to all intents and purposes dead once it rolls out of the capital, laden with 950 million gallons of sewage each day.

This is not for want of challenge, nor of attempted cure. As long ago as 1992, a retired Indian navy officer who had once sailed regattas on the Yamuna took his government to the Supreme Court, accusing it of preventing Hindus from performing ritual baths, as is their constitutional right. He won the case, and the Court ordered the water authority to treat all sewage flowing into the river. But since then, the city`s population has risen by 40%, and while new treatment plants have come on stream, half the sewage that goes into the river still does so untreated.

Similar problems arise in water supply, which has failed to keep pace with rising demands due to population and industrial growth. Shortages of electricity make public piped supplies erratic and unreliable; but at the same time the effective granting of free power in some states encourages excessive extraction by farmers and industry alike. This doesn`t encourage investment in storage and distribution systems. Climate change may eventually make the rainfall inadequate too, but currently there is plenty. It is wasted. China may not be a model of good water practice, but again, it would seem to be ahead of India here – which is ironic, given Indian engineers` growing experience in devising simple “rainwater harvesting” technologies.

India`s economic growth is accelerating to Chinese levels, and manufacturing is now expanding more rapidly even than services. Surya Sethi, the government`s principal energy adviser, is keen to differentiate its progress from China`s allegedly far dirtier variety: “China has grown faster than India, but has also consumed over 11 times the fossil fuels%26hellip;since 2002″. India, on the other hand, “has been delivering an 8% GDP growth with only 3.7% growth in its energy consumption”.

But if that growth is to be sustained, then unless efficiency improves dramatically, power generation capacity will need to double every five years, which will do little for sustainability. Policymakers in Delhi acknowledge that this will require tighter environmental controls, but the political bias remains clearly on the side of growth rather than the environment. The hope is that economic growth will bring higher tax revenues, which in turn will finance more public investment to deal with basic environmental issues such as water supply and sewerage. Meanwhile, however, the race is in danger of being lost.

India`s always sensitive to how it compares to China. If this sensitivity helps drive a stronger pursuit of sustainability, then competition, far from being odious, might be just what the country`s environment needs.

The Chindia factor

2007 brought %26lsquo;wild weather` to South Asia. The worst floods in living memory killed thousands and displaced over 20 million more. But they were just a taste of what awaits India as the planet heats up, say climate scientists.

Average summer rainfall across the subcontinent could increase by about 10%, largely because a warmer Indian Ocean will be able to hold more water. But it will be the wrong kind of rain and in the wrong place. It will fall less frequently, but much more fiercely; there will be fewer rainy days, but the number and intensity of destructive rains, such as those which triggered last summer`s floods, will increase.

Since rain-fed agriculture makes up 70% of farmed land, increased drought will have a devastating impact on India`s rural economy. It will struggle to feed its fast-growing population – expected to hit 1.5 billion by 2030. By the end of this century, crop yields could be 70% less than they are now, raising the prospect of mass starvation.

The misery will be compounded by sea levels, which are set to rise by at least 40 centimetres by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inundating vast areas, including some of India`s most densely populated cities, whose populations will be forced to migrate inland, or build defensive dykes. Already, islands and villages in the Bay of Bengal have been lost to sea-level rise, causing a drift of ecological refugees to Kolkata.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC [see "We need a new Gandhi"], last year warned that the rural poor, who make up 70% of India`s population, would have no choice but to migrate to larger towns and cities, compounding existing problems of inadequate urban infrastructure and burgeoning slum populations. Meanwhile, temperatures will increase all year round, with heat during the dry pre-monsoon months of April and May (already so high some years that they kill thousands), soaring to dangerous new levels.

Scientists are quick to acknowledge that predicting the Indian weather is a notoriously inexact science. A background report for the Stern Review admitted that current climate models fall short in this area, where ocean, atmosphere, land surface and mountains all interact. But that very unpredictability is in itself one of the most worrying aspects for India.

There`s a growing consensus, however, that one of the most severe effects will be on the glaciers of the Himalayas. Their meltwater currently supplies up to 85% of the flow of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Indus rivers. Latest IPCC estimates suggest that they may shrink to one-fifth of their volume within a few decades. Initially this will cause floods as the waters melt – and then a water crisis of unprecedented proportions as the rivers dry.

Analysts tell us that future wars will be fought around resources such as water. Seven of the world`s major river basins originate in the Himalayan and Tibetan plateaus. They are the source of water for 40% of humanity. China, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Burma all share these borders. If the rivers do run dry, a more serious cause of regional destabilisation can scarcely be imagined.

For the 700 million Indians who live on the land, climate change brings confusion and helplessness, as people lose their traditional capacity to %26lsquo;read` the weather and adjust accordingly. When the rains don`t come and when the natural world doesn`t behave as it should, societies which have survived by observing the world and adapting to it lose essential coping skills. Climate change, at a most profound level, disempowers by rendering traditional knowledge useless.

So how well is India planning for these multiple assaults from a changing climate? On a scale of 1 to 10, says Pachauri, India`s preparation stands at 0.5.

Terry Slavin is a freelance journalist based in London