The setting was apt for Alliance Francaise Pune’s Night of Ideas on Thursday evening. The panelists — Aseem Srivastava, Sanyogita Sarin, Dr Chirag Dhara, Ashok Sreenivasan and Sanskriti Menon — sat under a tree, while the audience comprising conscientious citizens sat on the steps surrounded by bushes and trees.
An annual event by the French institute, the discussion in Pune revolved around ‘Climate Change and Inequalities’. Dr Dhara, who was the moderator for the session, drew the audience’s attention to the global crisis which is anthropogenic induced or human induced. The physicist and climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology added that the crisis has neither been caused by everyone equally, nor are its impacts experienced equally.
“The increasing extreme heat waves, both in length and intensity and extreme rainfall events, these are some of the manifestations of climate change. Those of us who have the luxury of living in high rise apartments or living and studying in temperature-controlled environment, a heat wave or a massive flooding event, could be inconvenient. But it’s a survivability issue for those people who are constructing these buildings or installing those ACs, farmers working in fields or street dwellers. The point here is that climate change affects people differently depending on the kinds of social and economic inequalities. Inequalities come in various forms — gender, generational, across species,” said Dr Dhara.
Cities vs hinterland
Srivastava, who teaches at Ashoka University, linked Mahatma Gandhi’s beliefs and teachings with French revolution. Addressing the question on structural inequities that exist between countries in the realm of climate change, he said, “In Hind Swaraj, Gandhiji said ‘Money makes a man helpless’. One of the hallmarks of Hind Swaraj as a text is that it is dismissive of modernity as a whole. By modernity, Gandhi understands that at its heart are three ideals of French revolution — Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. But what is not voiced openly is the fourth ideal – Prosperity. There are structural conditions of capitalist modernity that affect climate change and the hidden agenda of modernity is endless growth.”
One proposition that is obvious to researchers is the connection between climate change and rising inequality, climate change works as a force multiplier for inequality whichever way you look – income, wealth across countries, within countries, across towns and cities, across genders.
Quoting from a paper published as a part of proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, USA Srivastava, who is a trained economist and ecological thinker, says, “The paper says that there is a parabolic relationship between growth and temperatures. That is to say, cool countries tend to benefit from global warming and warm or tropical countries tend to lose. There is an inbuilt bias in the way the world is set up. There is a bias in furthering the geographical and meteorological differences in the world when it comes to rising temperatures.”
The second conclusion that the paper draws is the opposite of the first statement. “It says, ‘inequality is one of the drivers of climate change’. Consider a situation where everybody has same income and wealth, and then imagine another situation in which inequality gets worse across income and wealth over time. And, then everybody is affected by air pollution. What do the wealthy do? We roll up our car windows, turn up our ACs, we buy air purifiers and so on...in other words, we recede into green bubble. We find ways to escape problem instead of solving it. The poor, on the other hand, are marginalised to an extent where they are indifferent to climate, air, water when it comes to question of their survival. Both the poor and rich are alienated from the natural world,” he points out.
Srivastava adds that there is a growing metropolisation of wealth and income in a handful of cities in developing countries. India is still a land of 600,000 villages. But they are not a part of everyday imagination.
Efficient consumption
Building on the structural inequalities, Srinivasan says that when it comes to India’s energy consumption levels on international level, on per capita basis, we are very low. “We consume 1/3rd energy levels of the global average. That makes us on par with sub Saharan African countries. But we come across inequities internally, that is within different parts of the country — vis-a-vis Delhi and Bihar. In a given year, an average Delhi resident consumes 10 times more energy than a person in Bihar does,” says Srinivasan.
Coming to energy expended in cooking food, the bulk of the country uses solid fuel —cowdung cake, biofuel, agricultural waste. These are some of the largest sources of air pollution and health hazards. “There have been attempts to address this issue by introducing LPG, clean cooking stoves and so on. But none of the solutions has really taken off thus far,” he says, adding, “The challenge before India is how do you make sure that those citizens who do not have access to clean energy forms without necessarily over drawing on the natural, ecological resources that we have. The only way out broadly speaking, is to encourage efficient consumption, and discourage what can be termed as luxuries. This can be done only when the country has minimum level of consumption.”
What the youth want
A student of Std XI at The Orbis School, Sarin became an early champion of environment conservation. “My dad did not grow up in an economically privileged background. So from a very early age, I was told to be careful about not wasting water or electricity. I never really pinpointed it that I am interested in environment conservation. As I read more about climate change, I started understanding the gravity of the situation that we are in. That really led to my interest. Last August, I was selected to be a part of SEK City Elite Scholarship Programme. It was conducted by IVL, Swedish Environmental Research Institute. We were a group of 20 students selected amongst 500 applicants from India and China,” said Sarin.
In Sweden, where she was for two weeks, Sarin was taught about what Sweden is doing to become a pioneer in environmental sustainability. “We were taught about sustainable development in terms of urban planning. We were also taken to municipal corporation of the city of Bolania in Sweden. The biggest takeaway was how connected and involved the citizens are with the programme. In India, I think, there is a direct disconnect between what the citizens want and what the government plans in terms of environmental conservation,” she added.
When it comes to her peers and classmates, the student says that not many are concerned about climate justice, when they should be. “The major culprit is our education system. Our education system is focussed on marks and I think none of my peers are going to talk about climate change and climate justice if it doesn’t help in how they write their question paper,” Sarin pointed out, adding, “If we want youth to be a part of the movement of climate justice in India, then we should change the education system. We should not be so mark-oriented but get interested in what the subject matter is.”
Sanskriti Menon, who is the programme director for Centre for Environment Education, while applauding Sarin’s forthright views, pointed out, “I fully agree that the educational system is oriented towards marks. But there is a lot more content on environment in syllabi than what it was even 15 years ago. I think the last curriculum exercise which happened in 2005 brought in a lot of curriculum material, methods different from what they were earlier. The expectation that parents have is that students should get a job after getting an education. This endless economic growth is weighed in against basic needs, and the education system becomes a reflection of this. While it becomes a victim of the larger scenario, it is also the place where change can happen.”
