A Burning Apocalypse for Earth?

Mumbai and Delhi are ranked 7^th and 8^th in British risk consultancy Maplecroft's fifth annual 'Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas 2013'. By 2070, according to the study, an estimated 11.4 million people and assets worth $1.3 trillion would be at peril in Mumbai due to climatic extremes. For decades, India’s collective conscious has been, to a great extent, defined by the enduring charm of that mythical utopia called Bollywood. Hundreds of thousands flock to the metropolis squeezed into trains every year hoping to escape struggle and squalor forever. However, a greater and speedier exodus may not be far if the powers that be have their way. And this power is not the state. Numerous studies and experts in recent times have rung alarm bells that unless we act now, Mumbai would be among the earliest scalps of global warming.

On one hand, surging concrete density of the city is causing solar radiation to get absorbed faster especially in last 2 decades causing something called the urban heat island effect (UHI). In this, rising concrete structures and greater green house gas (GHG) emissions is causing city temperatures to rise consistently. Increased temperatures form low-level ozone from volatile organic compounds and nitrous oxides which already exist in the air due to pollutants from factories. The circulation of this warm air with the cooler air from nearby rural areas will cause extreme weather patterns, says Subimal Ghosh, an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering from IIT Bombay. An OECD study in 2010 in which Ghosh contributed predicted more intense Asian summer monsoon causing excessive rainfall and flooding in Mumbai. Also, the mean average temperature of Mumbai would rise by 3.6 degree Celcius, further exacerbating the severe rainfall and flooding effect by 2070. Would anyone who was in Mumbai during the July 25, 2005 rainfall flooding in Mumbai want their children to face a similar and even more harrowing nightmare again?

Fen Montaigne, a climate change expert at Yale University, has warned that the present way of life would make Karachiand Delhi’s temperatures soar beyond limits of human endurance by end of this century. And to all those who think everyone could afford ACs and refrigerators by then, here’s the reality check – it’s the explosion of ACs and refrigeration systems in India, most of which still emit harmful aerosols and GHGs which will be biggest contributor to this unliveable temperature in our cities. But Mumbai would be hit hardest andearliest. As per Stan Cox, scientist and author of Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World, around 2030 or just after, due to 40% of energy in Mumbai used in air conditioning which emits the above gases, “scary feedback loops” will be created and surging oil, gas and coal use will cause brown sulphurous cloud formation in the Arabian Sea creating unusually large storms. This can surely cause a storm Sandy like situation which killed hundreds in the US recently.

Not just India, hit Google and you’ll be drowned by the amount of credible, peer reviewed research stating that almost all the developing world, where populations beehive in the tropical regions near the coasts, will witness minor ‘Mayan Apocalypses’ within this century. As yet another year approaches and the majority of global population is on a shopping spree for the Holiday season amid cold and snow, a warming planet would be the last thing on their mind. How many of us remember that just recently, another UNFCCC meet was held in Doha, Qatar, which was the 18^th annual edition of the global climate change conference? While the symbolic implications of the fact that Doha is the highest carbon emitter per capita on the planet had environmentalists sneering from across the globe, the event still held hope of squeezing out a clear agreement on charting out a legally binding treaty to curb global carbon emissions. And, we were not disappointed since post the media frenzy and then the anti climax at Copenhagen 3 years ago which yielded ‘voluntary commitments’ (read nothing ), Doha offered another labyrinthine mazeof words and terminologies paving no way on the ground.

The developed countries especially the US maintain their status quo that developing countries must also take binding commitments. Reason? China is now the world’s largest GHG emitter and India is 3^rd. The other 3 are US(2), Russia (4) and Japan (5). While China, India and Russia, being developing nations, are not mandated to cut emissions as per Kyoto Protocol, the only existing legally binding treaty to curb carbon emissions, US never signed the treaty and Japan has refused to sign the treaty’s second phase beginning January 2013. Thus, only 15% of global GHG emissions are covered under the Kyoto Protocol beginning 2013. While the ancient Mayans may have been proven wrong, it just might be that either they got the date wrong or we misinterpreted their ancient texts. How? A few numbers can explain.

All global climate negotiations in the last 15 years are based on the premise that restricting global average temperature rise to 2° Celsius would avoid runaway effects of climate change. We have already raised the average annual temperature of the planet by 0.8° Celsius leaving us with a 1.2 °C window. And what has 0.8 °C done. One third of the Arctic ocean sea ice is gone. Oceans are already 30% more acidic resulting in warm air over them holding more water which can create greater intensity cyclones and storm surges some of which are already flooding and wreaking havoc in coastal cities across the globe. Most importantly, many island nations, who have lived in peace and harmony both with nature and other nations are about to be gobbled up by the sea within decades. Simply put, millions will not have a country to live in by the 2^nd half of this century because their lands will be under water. Numerous experts like MIT’s Kerry Emanuel, former World Bank Chief Biodiversity Advisor Thomas Lovejoy and Nasa scientist James Hansen have categorically stated that the 2 °C limit won’t suffice because of what has mother nature thrown at us for a mercury surge of just 0.8 °C.

Some scary numbers highlighted by data compiled by the Guardian newspaper state that in 2000, the Earth had a total capacity of 886 gigatons of carbon dioxide and equivalent emissions to be put in the atmosphere by 2050 to keep the temperature rise below 2 °C. Now we have already added an estimated 383 gigatons of CO2 in the 12 years from 2001-2012. That leaves us with a credit of just 503 gigatons for the remaining 38 years till2050. Can we do it? Yes we can, atleast technically and physically. Will we do it? I doubt. Why? Because that requires reigning in the sources of biggest emitters on the planet – the oil and gas behemoths.

According to the UK based investment advisory Carbon Tracker, top 5 oil companies by revenue made $137 billion in profits last year, more than twice than Microsoft, Google and Apple put together. Here comes the scary part. While the Earth’s carbon credit is just 500 gigatons to avoid a destructive climate change cycle, the oil and gas giants have 2795 gigatons of fossil fuel reservewhich is shown as $20 trillion in assets in their financial books. And this is not taking into account China’s oil and gas reserves which remain largely unknown. If most of that fossil fuel is not allowed to get burnt, it will mean nearly $20 trillion in asset writedowns for these companies resulting in a sureshot global recession or worse - depression. This will affect large swathes of developed country populations who invest in the capital markets. And since nearly a billion people in developing countries are dependent directly or indirectly on their exports to developed countries, this will mean rampant unemployment and civil unrest in them. Thus, observing from the lens of current economic models, it appears a tough choice between economic hardships for 1/6^th of global population mostly in the middle class OR a near wipe out for around 10% of human race by the end of the century.

However, the solutions to avoid either of the above scenarios lie in the details of how we should change the way we live albeit some tough choices and consequences will have to be endured by certain sections of the global middle and upper classes for some years. A simple example will be shifting subsidies and incentives from oil, gas and coal towards renewables and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) – the most volatile political issue in the developed world. But, the pivot upon which a rescue can still be salvaged depends on execution of an unprecedented political and public will – in essence, the greatest sustained paradigm shift unforeseen in all of history.

(the most feasible solutions to curb emissions, continue growth and save our planet will be followed in my next article).  

(thanks to my friend Anupam for valuable insights into the writing of this piece)  

Technovation Depravity De-mystified

Eureka!! While the Kepler Space telescope gave Nasa and its associate scientists and astronomers yet another chance to utter the most popular word in Greek with the discovery of the first ever solar system closest to ours in terms of its star and the distances of its planets from the same, spare a moment for Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, the first man to walk on the moon who eventually went to his heavenly abode a month and a half back and the first ever female US astronaut respectively who lost her life to pancreatic cancer around 4 months ago. Ride did more to popularise science among young children and create more and better science teachers than arguably any other NASA alumnus till date. By the way, just a few days before her demise, a moment of pride came for us when Sahyadri, the 3^rd and last of the indigenously developed 1^st generation stealth frigates was commissioned in the Indian Navy (that’s another matter that the stealth frigate project started 15 years ago and Sahyadri alone took 9 years to build). However, I won’t beat about the bush and come to the issue. While for the developed world and our elder brother China (ever heard hindi chini bhai bhai), technology development news stories are like daily morning breakfast, our score barely reaches a dozen when it comes to indigenous technology development.         

Defence technology, without doubt, constitutes the greatest investment in all kinds of technology for any nation worldwide but herein we top the list. Not in technology development but in being the biggest technology beggar (read buyer) in the world. India is the world’s largest arms and weapons importer consisting of all the kinds of weapons and support technology and systems. In the 2012 budget, the government has targeted a total defence spend of $38 billion (up from $35 billion last year) an overwhelming majority of which consists of making up for increased salaries and personnel benefits coupled with arms and weapons procurement from outside. China corresponding defence spend was over $105 billion last year out of which, $6 billion was on defence R&D but this figure, as per numerous defence experts from India and the US, may by higher. To what extent has the People’s Liberation Army (the official name of Chinese military)  has reaped the benefits of higher R&D spend is laid bare by the fact that it recently unveiled the J-20 5th-generation fighter aircraft, an antiship ballistic missile, and the stealthy, catamaran-hulled Houbei-class fast missile boat. At the same time we are at just over $1.5 billion in defence R&D spend. For a more noble comparison, US’s total defence R&D spending last year was $76 billion, twice of India’s total defence spending targeted for financial year 2012-13!!

Moving from defence barracks to civilian turf, we are still languishing in muddy waters. India’s total R&D spend stands close to $40 billion as per a recent report by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Out of this, apart from the ignominiously low spending done on basic sciences, remaining is mostly divided between the pharmaceutical and automotive sectors in the country. While this is definitely a positive sign, it must not be forgotten that some of these companies are foreign giants who have set up their R&D facilities in India. Again, in the private sector, pharma stands out with nearly $2 billion in R&D spend.

But the flip side is that the above sectors mostly spend on developing consumer based product technology and technology in non-consumer based product sectors such as energy, infrastructure, agriculture and information and communication technologies is almost negligible. One example being that almost all heavy machinery and construction equipment used in the manufacturing plants in India and employed in the massive real estate boom in the country respectively is almost entirely German, Japanese or US made. Try and recall one Indian private company that manufactures power plant and energy related equipment using indigenously developed technology except Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (for nuclear, atomic and space R&D, read below). When it comes to soft skills, that’s all we have. Skills. When it comes to developing out own software products be it OS based or internet based, we happily hide behind the veil of our IT industry which is in real terms, an IT services industry and not a product development industry. There is no doubt that many IT, automotive and electrical/electronic firms, mostly foreign, have their running R&D centres in India but herein lies the catch. The output of that research, which means patents filed for that technical innovation, occurs in the homelands of the parent companies. One statistic can highlight this fact. A research study conducted by scholars in IIM Ahmedabad states that the total value of imported R&D from India to the US stood at around $430 million in 2006 while in 2010, it nearly quadrupled to $1.7 billion. In fact, as per Zinnov (2011b), the total market for R&D outsourcing in India stood at $11.8 billion in 2010, the IIM A paper states “although China may have more number of foreign R&D Centres, she exports far less R&D and testing services to the US”  as compared to India.

To put it in perspective, the core purpose of R&D is the socio economic development of a nation. Now, R&D centres of foreign firms, which by the way far outnumber similar setups by Indian companies, provide employment opportunities to Indian researchers and PhDs, the fruits are enjoyed by the developed nations abroad. From software to hardware, from automobiles to electronics, the patents filed outside after using cheap Indian talent are then converted into products and sold across the globe as brands at prices far outweighing the pockets of 80% of the Indian masses (barring pirated software which, being the biggest heartache to the developed world proprietary software industry, is available cheaply in India). Without being jingoistic, parallels can be drawn how the British colonialism destroyed the flourishing cloth dying and cotton weaving industry in many cities of India and at the same time, exported cheap minerals to UK which were then exported back to India and sold at exhorbitant prices to the select elite at that time while the farmers, mine workers and cotton weavers gradually perished in the hundreds of millions.  

But, coming back to the present, this hidden irony behind Indian technological and applied sciences R&D can largely be attributed to a rotten patenting process in the country which simply does not have enough workforce to process patent applications which is a extremely skilful exercise. As per a report presented in the Rajya Sabha in October 2008 by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce, a patent examiner in India handles 214 applications every year. The same number is only 90 in the European Patent Office, 97 in the United States Patent Trade Office and 88 in China. In 2010, China received 391,177 invention patent applications. Since China has a little above 5000 employees in its Patent office, a simple calculation would reveal 78.23 patent applications being processed per examiner. The Chinese office granted 135,110 invention patents in 2010, a little above 27 per examiner. While in India in 2009, our patent office received 36,812 applications and during the period 2008/09, made 16,061 grants. This comes out to 245 applications processed per examiner and just about 107 grants. Any lay man can ascertain the quality and accuracy of the patent processing office and its officials!! The enormity of the discrepancies that might lie in indentifying and rewarding the most important sources of socio-economic development of the country can be eye-popping. The icing on the cake is so colossal that it covers the entire salty cake. Just a small figure of an over 80,000 backlog of patent applications.  

Turning the page to institutional R&D promoted by non – profit organisations and government funded institutions, India lags far behind the dragon and South East Asian economies like South Korea. The biggest organisation in India for conducting original R&D, Centre for Scientific and Industrial research (CSIR), under which 39 national laboratories come, the Achilles heel is the peanuts awarded to these national laboratories when it comes to funding for what is their very objective of existence - R&D. The total allocated budget for CSIR in the financial year 2011-12 was Rs.3300 crore or around $650 million ($1.6 billion in PPP terms). For comparison, Alstom, the US company which manufactures power plant and electrical equipment and supplies to most Indian power utilities spends a little over $1 billion on R&D per year. Also, the R&D budget of National Science Foundation, US’s equivalent of CSIR, was $7.5 billion for the financial year 2011-12, 0.5% of US GDP. For India, CSIR’s budget is just 0.06% of India’s GDP.

However, there are bright spots slowly rising above the horizon. To augment R&D across all sectors of the economy, the weighted deduction on expenditure incurred on in-house R&D has been enhanced from 150 per cent to 200 per cent. Similarly, weighted deduction on payments made to national laboratories, research associations, colleges, universities and other institutions, for scientific research has been enhanced from 125 per cent to 175 per cent. As per the Union Budget 2010-2011, the income from such approved research association is exempt from tax. In 2010, the government  declared to set up a state backed VC fund for R&D in life critical sectors such as pharma with an initial corpus of $2.14 billion to expedite the drug discovery process and enhance the number of new drugs being discovered manifold.

But, such initiatives are pittance when it comes to massive investments in technology needed in core sectors such as energy, agriculture, heavy machinery and material science. This has percolated backwards to the first link of the entire R7D value chain, i.e the education sector at the school level to cuh an extent that the mountain of challenges is only growing higher. As per the results of a recent survey conducted across hundreds of schools in the Metros of India, the number of students wanting to take up commerce at a higher level of education has risen almost three-fold as one moves from classes six to eight to 11 and 12 in the last few years. While astronauts like Sally Ride go on to become educators to spur the next generation of scientists in the developed world, teachers in India are forced due to poor pays and in adequate recognition (owing to the vestiges of the colonial era) to teach in coaching institutes and private tution centres. More than 70% of science and engineering graduates from non IT stream end up being the part of the largest educated private labour force in the world – the Indian IT/ITES space. Hundreds of millions, though continue to live in an India where the fruits of R&D conducted 200 years back like electricity and water supply have never been tasted. 

      

Accepting the Gift of the Mighty 'Ra'

Let us pause for a moment and look at our lives. At ourselves. And I’m not being spiritual or religious here. From a very materialistic point of view, there is no doubt that the way we live our lives is defined by the way we harness energy especially electrical power. The houses we live in are made of concrete, brick and wood made in cement factories and brick kilns using thermal and chemical energy. The food we cook and eat today uses water and fuel which is either wood or gas energy, the clothes we wear are made in mills running on electrical power and the means of transportation we use all run on chemical converted electrical energy. Thus, every aspect of our life today, more than ever in human history, is defined by the way and to the extent that we consume electrical energy.

But, how many of us, in the flow of our daily lives, get time to think the question - where does this power come from? Most of the power that drives our life today globally (more than 75%) comes from burning fossil fuels viz coal and oil. And well, it won’t take more than half an hour of Google search to reveal that not only are these fuel sources the biggest source of global warming and climate change in the last few decades, but also that this fuel will run out in the future. Though, it won’t happen in our lifetimes, but if we do care about our coming generations, we must start to think about changing the way we consume energy so that we can continue with the way we live and the road doesn’t end for many millennia to come. Well, the answer greets us every day but we have been too busy to notice. The sun remains the greatest source of energy on the planet but it is so ironic that despite possessing all the necessary knowledge about how to use solar energy to meet all our energy needs, globally, solar energy doesn’t form even 5% of all our energy consumption. And when it comes to our country India, its a classic case of missing the bus and the train.

India remains one of the top five nations when it comes to overall solar radiation and the intensity of solar radiation incident on our land area. It simply means we have more than enough sunshine round the year in many places which if not wasted, can light up almost the entire country. So, the question is – why haven’t we done it? Firstly, the coal based power industry continues to run on steroids with the financially bleeding electricity boards (yup, the ones that provide us electricity in our homes, factories and offices) continuing to provide cheap electricity to us that is partly subsidised by the governments (off course for vote bank). The remaining losses to the electricity boards happen courtesy massive transmission and distribution losses (almost 35% in India) and theft of electricity due to zillions of illegal connections and faulty meters. Secondly, while the cost of setting up a solar power plant is higher at present, scores of studies have shown these costs can be brought down once economies of scale are achieved and this will directly result in the prices of solar power coming down as well. While currently, the prices at which solar power is being sold by solar power producers to the state distribution companies is around Rs.7-9 per kWh as against Rs. 3-4 for coal based power, it has been estimated that if the government can support the solar power sector for the initial few years in terms of subsidies (instead of giving wasteful subsidies to distribution companies), the cost of solar power could come down to the level of coal within 5 years. Thirdly, the myth that the land areas required for solar power are much more than coal based power continue to plague the sector. A recent study by two professors from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore published in the journal Current Science shows that of the total waste and uncultivable land area in India, only 4.1% is required for solar power to meet the country’s entire power needs by 2070. Yes, not just 5-10% needs but the entire power requirement of India can be met by solar if only certain flaws in the system can be set right.

Hence, it all boils down to certain things. All state governments will have to find a way to divert the massive subsidies paid to the financially crippled state electricity distribution companies to the solar producers in terms of higher tariffs in the initial 5-10 years of operation so that in these 5-10 years, economies of scale can be achieved and the costs of power production can come down to the level of coal. Then, it is critical, that massive initiatives are launched and current programmes expedited to bring about private players in transmission and distribution businesses to stop the rampant T&D looses and electricity theft in the country. This singlehandedly can drastically reduce the financial losses of the distribution companies. Finally, central and state governments must make much larger targets (upto 100,000 MW production capacity and above by 2040) and award projects to solar power producers through open transparent auctions.

But, that doesn’t mean that we as individual consumers can get away by lambasting the government and continuing with business as usual. The single greatest fact (PLEASE READ FOLLOWING VERY CAREFULLY) that will come as a shocker to most of us is that as compared to a diesel generator that runs our offices, homes and markets during power cuts, a roof top solar power installation costs 30-35% less over a 10 year usage cycle. In most of the housing societies and commercial buildings today, the costs of power backup for diesel run generators is in excess of Rs.13 per kWh (especially after the recent diesel price hike) whereas for a rooftop solar installation, it is not be more than Rs.9-Rs.10. And we continue to pay more to our society owners and office landlords when a little bit of awareness can result in greater profits for everyone. According to a study, it has been estimated that if only the government can subsidise roof top solar power equipment for the equipment producers (instead of subsidising diesel as is done today) by just 30% of cost of production, then roof top solar can actually replace diesel run generators across industrial, commercial and housing establishments in most parts of India within 15 years.

And I must point out that some critics and even some experts point out that solar energy is only available during the day and during rainy and cloudy skies it becomes useless. If we do a bit of googling, we’ll come to know that battery storage solutions are available which can easily charge invertors and other chargeable electricity solutions that can run during night time and cloudy days. It is only in places where rainfall is extreme where there would be a problem in relying on roof top solar systems during monsoons. In essence, we, as aware members of the society, need to find some time out of our ‘busy’ schedules and push for finding out as to how can we shift towards the more cheap and mush more sustainable path of solar energy driven development which can improve the overall profits and economic efficiency of individuals like us and the nation as a whole. We can’t miss the train this time else the ticket might become too expensive in the future.         

And for the sake of those still racking their brains at the title of this blog post, ‘Ra’ is Egyptian name for the Sun God that was used during the time of the Pharaoh kings who built the pyramids

I owe this article to my dear friend Anupam who inspired me to try and start writing again 

Demographics without a Dividend

There are some common issues highlighted in almost all political, corporate and intellectual discourse in India regarding the economic growth and development of the nation. On one hand, while it is a general consensus that India’s greatest advantage viz-a-viz its peers in the developing countries’ bracket is the world’s highest working age population,  on the other, almost everyone agrees that we need massive investments in education, infrastructure and healthcare to uplift millions out of poverty. However, there is one critical factor at the base of these two issues which, till around 15 years back was prevalent in government policy as well as general educated discourse but has disappeared since then. It is our burgeoning population and the high population growth rate which, if not controlled immediately, can derail the country’s dream of inclusive growth and poverty alleviation forever. There are some concrete reasons behind this argument.   

As per the latest census results, the population of the country in the decade 2001 to 2011 grew by around 18.2% in absolute terms while it grew at around 18.5% in the previous decade. Now, India’s population in 1991 was 85 crore and it was almost 100 crore by 2001. Now, it stands at 120 crore. We have added 20 crore people in the last 10 years while we added 15 crore in the previous ten. In essence, we have added more than the total population of USA in the last twenty years. Here comes the worst part. Among the thirty largest nations in terms of land area, we have the highest area density of population, almost twice that of China’s. Now, for all the proponents of the so called ‘demographic dividend’, the only way a population can feed itself and live a bare minimum life standard as per UN standards is if there is a bread earner in every household. Despite India’s family oriented structure, even if we assume a very rough estimate of 6-7 persons per household, we require atleast a working population of 17-18 crore. Herein lies the reality check.

Agriculture, which already somehow sustains 700 million in the country at life standards way below minimum UN benchmarks, is already suffering from extra labour wherein, beyond a point, a standard hectare of agricultural land cannot employ more than a certain number of labourers. Our agriculture suffers from an economic concept called ‘disguised unemployment’. In simple terms, it means that employing more labour beyond a threshold can only be achieved if you do not employ tractors and other machines to do manual work. But the total productivity of that increased labour would still remain below that what could have been achieved by less labour and more capital investment in technology. Thus, the only option is to transfer this excess labour to manufacturing and construction industries. But that’s where the Pandora’s Box is fully opened.

Construction and manufacturing are capital intensive sectors which can only achieve high employment levels if massive plants are built and huge infrastructure projects are initiated. But such money can only come from foreign direct investment and opening up of the sectors to private investment. And that’s where the twist in the tale arrives. Advancement of technology in the developed world (mostly western nations) has enabled foreign companies to possess latest technology and automated factories wherein manual work is restricted to a certain number beyond which the plant or factory would go for a loss (similar to what happens in agriculture as described above). Thus, while India has slowly opened up its manufacturing and construction sectors to foreign and private investment in the last two decades, the deployment of capital intensive technology by foreign companies has led to all private players within India as well going for the same technology which enhances productivity and lets them compete in the market place. This has limited the total number of workers that can be employed by any manufacturing plant or construction site of a standard size. For example, the total number of direct employees in Tata Motors’ manufacturing facilities in India put together were around 85,000 till the mid 1980s but has reduced to around 45,000 now.

The solution to this issue as promulgated by some experts that there should be more and more number of manufacturing facilities set up in the coming decades so as to absorb the massive youth population brings into the limelight one of the most critical development issues facing India today. We must remember that the one factor that is fixed permanently is the total land area we have. So, increasing number of manufacturing plants, roads, real estate projects and railways is fast gobbling up cultivable land. As per estimates, by 2025, the total per capita agricultural land area in India will be reduced to less than 0.1 hectares while the most alarming figure is that the while per capita agricultural land area remained at around 0.64 hectares in 1950-51 (population then was 360 million), it has nosedived to 0.22 hectare by 2008-09 when the population was 1.2 billion. And, if the population grows at the current rate, we will have 1.5 billion to feed by 2025 as against 1 billion in 2000, with per capita agri land area plummeting to 0.15 hectares. So, as per experts, the only solution lies in increasing the productivity of agriculture around 2.5 times in the next 10 years. Also, if we consider a shift in the dietary patterns of our population especially the middle class from wheat and rice towards vegetables, fruits and non vegetarian diets, it will require greater capital and technology investment by the government to provide incentives to farmers to grow fruits and vegetables and feed for livestock. The sustaining high food inflation rates in the last few years, low levels of agricultural R&D spend coupled with rotten governance in rural areas makes increasing agri-productivity to 2.5 times a task beyond Herculian capacities.

Coming back to employment, the much glorified services sector is already constrained by its very nature to provide employment beyond a certain figure. Despite the fact that growth in the IT/IT services space and the financial sector has provided jobs to around 2.5 million youth in the last ten years, services sector jobs require a certain level of skill set which requires an individual to atleast have diploma level qualifications. There were roughly 400,000 engineers churned out by our engineering colleges last year and this figure increases by about 15% every year. And this is in addition to the 2 million arts, humanities and basic science graduates and diploma holders annually produced by non vocational courses in the country. Thus, number of college graduates every year is almost equal to the numbers which have found employment in organised services sector in the last ten years. Most end up doing part time or temporary jobs in the retail and construction related industries and the few unfortunate ones are absorbed by increasing crime and movements like Naxalism.

The only solution to this colossal challenge is a government policy in collaboration with industry and NGOs/NPOs on three fronts. Firstly, central and state governments led population control and family planning programmes must be initiated which promote the concept of having one child or at maximum two. These programmes must be run in collaboration with banks and NGOs to educate adults and rural youth which incentivises young married couples to rewards and better insurance and housing/auto loan schemes if they have just one or maximum two children. This will especially work wonders in the rural areas.

Secondly, there must be massive public and incentives for private investment in creating capacity based on current technology as in agriculture and food processing industries which have the capacity to create millions of new jobs in rural areas. Its a known fact proven through numerous economic and demographic studies that greater financial security and possibility of jobs for rural youth result in them marrying late and having lesser number of children as the age old concept of children contributing as bread earners for the entire family is done away with. Thus, in other words, not just for poverty alleviation but also for controlling population growth aret, we need another revolution in our agriculture much greater in impact than the Green Revolution (to be discussed in another blog post soon).

Thirdly, there is a pressing need to include chapters and topics on demographics and ill effects of population growth in India in the primary school syllabi especially in local language school boards since there is vast evidence proving that more than 85% of primary school children in Tier 2 cities and below study in state language boards. This will prepare the youth for better family planning in the future. That is also where the effective implementation of the Right to Education Act 2009 comes into the picture. As more and more students are able to attain better quality education with a syllabi in sync with modern realities, that can go a long way in reducing the population growth arte to below 1% in the coming decades.      

However, as we have already produced more than 10 million in each of the last 3 decades, we might face a bleak scenario beyond 2040 that probably very few experts have dwelled upon in recent times. Assuming that the population growth rates go below 1 percent by 2030 and there are more and more single or at max dual child families in the country, it will pose the harrowing new challenge of taking care of the elderly who were born in after 1960. In rural India, it’ll be a huge challenge with one or two young people with not such huge family incomes (since even by 2040, real household incomes in rural India at present rates would not grow beyond 15% at current rates) taking care of 2-4 elders per household, That’s where the need for taking initiatives right now by the Centre in conjunction with the states to launch a huge social security program for the elderly across rural and urban India belonging to Below Poverty Line (BPL) households which can be in terms of cash transfers along with free medical insurance is a must. But despite above issues (which need to tackled through financial and social security penetration), there is no doubt that at present level of technological penetration and decreasing per capita land, population growth rate reduction measures must be the primary aim of our government and Parliament. Else, we might be pushing a large part of India into an abyss where generations might be lost forever.  

  

Where's good ol' Science??

The last fortnight had full of red letter days for the global scientific community and national scientific achievements. While the bedlam of noises following the discovery of the “God particle” or the Higgs Boson, by the European organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) contained more energy than that used up in the Large Hadron Collider, which was used to smash protons that culminated in the discovery, there was an equally thunderous announcement to the world by the People’s Republic Of China of their first ever manual docking manoeuvre being achieved in space with the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft carrying the first Chinese female astronaut docking with the Tiangong 1 space orbiting module. This mission is part of China’s proposed space station, targeted to be complete by 2020 which will make China the third nation to possess such capability after USA and Russia. However, there was another piece of news about the dragon that largely missed the limelight wherein the Jiaolong, a state owned research submersible will make the record of reaching a depth of 7,000 metres in Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean on Earth. It will be the deepest a state owned and a research submersible has ever gone. Interestingly though, its not the deepest man has gone in the ocean.

Now, while I leave it to the reader to find out whom and when man has been to the deepest part of the ocean (which is much deeper than what the Chinese sub achieved), there was another depth to which somebody went just a week before the above. It was the cynosure of media circus for 3-4 days In India. It was Mahi (not Dhoni), a 5 year old girl who fell in a 70 feet deep borewell in Khaow village of Manesar district, Haryana. It took 85 hours before her corpse could be brought out. While it was another disgraceful example of gross civil negligence by all of us (we, the people), the media made us forget it soon and continued on its hollow sensationalistic schmaltz. While god may give peace to Mahi’s soul, let me ask a question. How many of you can guess the two names hidden in the term Higgs boson? Well, one is Peter Higgs, the British particle physicist who promulgated the theory behind the particle’s existence back in 1964. The other name is Bose, (BOSon) after Satyendra Nath Bose. Still Stumped? The legend late Satyendra Nath Bose is a famous particle physicist from India who along with Albert Einstein gave the famous Bose-Einstein Statistics which describe the discrete energy states of a collection of indistinguishable particles. The name ‘boson’ was given by none other than physicist Paul Dirac in honour of S N Bose. However, in free India, the story of Indian science and Indian scientists surpasses any Shakespearean tragedy.

The multitude of problems facing Indian science is deep rooted and can be explained by understanding the entire perspective first. Indian science is not product based or IT based technological innovation. However, even technology development from scratch is only fathomable if there is an infrastructure and promotion from the government for research in basic sciences which can then be put to develop newer technologies. It is basic sciences and technology development from the scratch. Firstly, the biggest problem plaguing Indian science is the lack of funding for hard core research from both the governments as well as the private sector. India, in total put only a little above $10 billion for R&D last year which is miniscule as compared to USA’s $405 billion (ranked 1 in the world) and China’s $140 billion (please see my previous article on blog “The Indian LSD deficiency Syndrome”). Out of this, around $1.5 billion went for defence R&D and about the same on product R&D used by the public and private sector companies for launching new and upgraded products while basic sciences had to make ends meet with the remaining crumbs.

The Indian Science Congress, that recently completed 99 years, has become the platform for enchanting lofty goals for science R&D by respective PMs in India but the 5year jinx continues. In 2003, the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared to increase science and technology R&D in the country to 2% of GDP by the end of the 10^th 5 year plan (2002-2007). Then in January 2007, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh further postponed the achieving date of the same target till the end of the 11^th plan (2007-2012) which is about to end and the train remains at the same station, 10 years late already. While the dragon has leapt over to 1.5% of GDP equivalent for R&D, Uncle Sam remains at the pinnacle with 2.8% (please see previous article “The Indian LSD Deficiency Syndrome”)

Then comes the variable which is one of the prime indicators of the potential of a nation’s scientific clout, the number of PhDs being produced annually and the number of cited research papers authored by scientists and researchers. The number of PhDs produced stands hopelessly low as compared to China and way behind that of USA and Germany. The number of PhDs produced by India reduced a staggering 18.5% in 2008-09 to around 10700 from 17800 in the year 2004-05. At the same time, China produced the highest number in the world at over 50000. Also, among the number of PhDs produced, science and science related PhDs were just around 8000 in 2008-09 which is far less than the near 20,000 churned out by China. Herein lies a deep gutter sucking everything in courtesy the draconian devil called Indian bureaucracy. The fact that the Indian bureaucratic system still runs on archaic British era laws and is guided by Soviet style socialism has squandered six decades when we could have covered a lot of ground.

Firstly, even smaller targets like getting new equipment for labs etc. entails a long process comprising clearing proposals with committees and tender notifications to giving contracts and getting deliveries which take from months to years until the egos of each and every head in between are not satisfied. Often, larger expenditures like setting up a new lab or complex within an institute take eons as it requires the written approval from the concerned department of a central or state government ministry. Secondly, each and every enthusiastic researcher in the state run labs and research institutes barring a handful of premier institutes has to face the ignominy of being a junior in the initial years since future funding and approval and appraisal of thesis directly is in the hands of the senior professors who until and unless themselves get pay hikes or promotions, never allow a ‘junior’ to progress. Thirdly, the overall autonomy of many of these research facilities is only on paper as for any moderate to high expenditure projects, the institute’s management is at the mercy of the whims and fancies of the concerned department which comes under a certain ministry (read ‘politicians and bureaucrats rule the roost’).

However, the Achilles heel of basic science in India is the compartmentalization of higher education wherein, an engineering graduate can never dream of majoring in Organic Chemistry also at the undergraduate or postgraduate level simply because in most cases, the separate discipline is just not available in an institute or it is not possible as per the course structure of the concerned institute. There are colleges which provide either arts or science or commerce degrees and very few universities have quality multidisciplinary course structure available. And once we go to professional course like engineering, management and medicine, they only make you to cram up books and books in one particular field. Interdisciplinary study and research (an entire article on this will follow soon on my blog) simply is non-existent in India. Imagine a mathematics graduate simultaneously graduating in biology as well!!

Well, in essence, we can be sure of not producing the next generation of the likes of Ramanujan (mathematician), Sir CV Raman (Nobel laureate in Physics), Satyendranath Bose, Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose (inventor of crescograph), Dr. Hargobind Khurana (studied in India and then did research in USA) and Dr. Subramanian Chandrasekhar (Nobel laureate in Physics) until and unless we clear the malaise that is our own creation. It is critical for using the knowledge created within our borders to reap fruits for taking out millions of poor Indians from the Abyss they have been languishing in for generations. By the way, thinking about abyss reminds me of The Abyss, a sci-fi flick directed by James Cameron (director of Titanic and Avatar) who also happens to be the joint world record holder of reaching the maximum depth in the Ocean when he achieved this feat in March this year to reach the bottom of Mariana Trench in his sub Deepsea Challenger. The first time man went was in 1960 when US Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Swiss Oceanographer Jacques Piccard went there in a bathyscaphe called the Trieste.

Corrigendum: In my previous post "The Indian LSD Deficiency Syndrome", the total R&D spend by China last year has been incorrectly mentioned to be around US$110 billion when it actually $140 billion.  

The Indian LSD Deficiency Syndrome

“We choose to go to the moon...” These words are not a part of some motivational sermon but the beginning of an episode in human history that culminated in arguably the greatest feat achieved by mankind. These words are a part of the historic speech delivered on May 25, 1961 by then US President John F Kennedy to a special joint session of the US Congress. It laid the foundation stone of the Apollo Program, the techno-scientific project headed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to put man on the moon. At that time, there was no available technology or planned project on paper to achieve such a target and it was still largely in the realms of science fiction. Those were the heydays of the Cold War and just 4 years ago, in 1957, the Soviet Union had given the Americans the Sputnik shock by sending the first ever man made satellite into space. Quickly followed by Yuri Gagarin’s historic first human flight in space, Americans were left reeling in humiliation and fear of space weapons and technological supremacy by the Soviets.

However, going to the moon was till then still considered a near impossible technological feat. That’s wherein lies the story of the unprecedented efforts put in by a nation and a vast group of humans that surpassed all previous feats achieved in science. Within 8 years, comprising 400,000 people involving scientists, engineers, supervisors, managers, doctors and manufacturing workers, coupled with the greatest burst of technological creativity ever seen in history, “a giant leap for mankind” was achieved when astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. The project cost over US $25 billion or US $180 billion in today’s dollars, the most for any single project ever. (it was on an average 42% of India’s total GDP in the 1960s). The Apollo Program, till date, stands as the greatest feat in science and technology ever achieved and the only other scientific projects that come close in scope and size are the building of the Panama Canal and the Manhattan Project (the development of the first atomic bomb in the 1940s).

However, the greatest achievement of the Apollo Program, which many experts from different fields believe was not the lunar landings but what happened as a spin off the program. How many of us know that the first integrated circuit, the progenitor of the entire ICT industry which was developed by Texas Instruments was funded by the NASA Apollo Program for use in space based computing applications? (all IT engineers in India must thank NASA) The entire concept of the modern day artificial hearts and cellphones is a spin-off of the Apollo era computers and communication technologies developed by NASA and its associated scientists. A simple technology used in millions of homes on the planet today, the microwave oven is a sacred relic of the space program. Would you believe me if I tell you that even the modern day golf clubs and the rim of our spectacles are all vestiges of the materials research done under the aegis of Apollo and other NASA space programs? And, well, most of this was made possible because of one gigantic project executed within 11 years – the Apollo. However, let me cut short this lethargically slow history lesson and come to the point. From our washrooms to classrooms, from banks to cinema halls and from offices to sports grounds, the technologies that have seamlessly integrated themselves into our quotidian existence is a direct consequence of massive capital and human investments made in R&D. (Research and Development – sorry if I forgot to mention its Indian translation is jugaad”). But as things stand, the country with the single greatest potential to provide the human capital for many coming generations of scientists and researchers, our own “Incredible India” stands languishing in the ‘glorious’ company of Middle Eastern and sub - Saharan African nations when it comes to scientific and technological research and development.

Ever since the dawn of economic liberalisation in India, the Gen X and Gen Y (frankly they sound like the names of human chromosomes that determine the sex of an unborn child) has reaped the fruits of wealth generation with growing incomes, better living standards, better technological adoption in daily life and higher consumption levels (did I mention that the per capita consumption of staple food such as wheat and rice has reduced by nearly 40% in the lower middle and lower classes in the country). Anyways, so how was this incredible India made possible? Surely, through taking a leaf out of the scientific histories of USA, UK and Germany, the three beacons of scientific development in the industrial world and investing heavily in scientific and technological development which would have resulted in better products and services for the majority of the populace. Hell no... We surpassed our peers in the western world and reinvented the word ‘innovation’ itself. We opened our doors to buying foreign technology developed in the industrial world which was then used by our government enterprises and private sector to exploit our scarce natural resources already acquired from the government mostly at dirt cheap rates (read “2G spectrum and coal mines”). The burgeoning middle class, (myself included) blinded by the onslaught of new products and having disposable incomes earned from working mostly in the IT and financial services industries using technologies developed in the west, has happily improved their life standards and wealth while the majority of India (read 800 million poor Indians) bask in the ‘glory’ of Neolithic Age life styles courtesy a complete policy paralysis to unleash indigenously developed technology for the millions languishing in darkness almost literally.

Be it the energy or construction sectors where most of the heavy machinery used is based on technology bought or acquired through royalty from Germany, USA and Japan. Come to consumer based products, form refrigerators to air conditioners, from cars to computers and from thermometers to mobile phones, everything is based on technology developed in a foreign land. Our institutes of higher education especially in the technical domain continue to serve as hubs of “jugaad” with a complete lack of an institutional framework to promote individual’s original research and innovation. Every budding engineer and technical graduate continues to copy everything from computer codes to engineering designs to entire model specifications readily available on the internet. And thanks to a ‘level playing field’ for each one of us (read Indian education system), the consequences are better marks at the cost of a complete lack of a repertoire of technical and scientific knowledge. (thanks to Larry and Sergey, Google hai naa).

Well, let me stop India bashing like the Englishmen and the Australians did on their cricket pitches and take a bird’s eye view of the entire scene. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh recently stressed on the urgent need to promote R&D in basic sciences especially in the fields of agriculture, energy, materials, healthcare and space. After all, the home grown and developed variety of rice, the Basmati was patented by a US firm and is now available in India at much higher prices courtesy a fledgling system of patent applications, assessment and grant. In fact, till 2005, a product patent regime was not even available in the country. The PM aptly said that we need to invest heavily in R&D in our government and industry R&D facilities but herein comes the good old enemy in the form of economic vagaries. I remember a conversation with the CFO of one of the biggest infrastructure firms in India in Mumbai some months back when he said that until and unless the per capita GDP of the country reaches a certain figure (he did not mention the figure), there is no way we have the capacity to invest heavily in R&D because of lack of capital and adequate funding. He may be right but the conversation ended before I could ask that how come China has been able to gain the second rank globally in the last decade in terms of R&D spend at US $130 billion second only to USA’s $405 billion. We stand at a rather proud 14^th or 15^th globally at $10 billion, complimenting our ranks in most of the games at the Olympics. Except our pharmaceutical industry, which has taken some solid strides in the R&D aspect and come out with newer molecules with increasing frequency, Indian academia and industry continues to bite the dust at the end while others have gone far ahead. While rural India continues to use ploughs used since the 15^th century and fertilisers developed by Indian companies continue to deteriorate the soil fertility in the long run, millions of tonnes of foodgrains gets rotten annually due to lack of adequately equipped food processing and storage facilities. And all this on top of the fact that Indian farmers use expensive seeds developed by foreign firms. And I don’t even want to get started on the use of every single medical diagnostic and drug delivery system developed by firms like GE.      

Coming to the doyen of Indian industry, the IT sector, when was the last time an Indian firm came up with an Indian developed software product (sorry to Infosys but I just remembered Finacle). Most of us are not even aware that we are not a software industry but a software services industry. Anyways, to bring my monologue to a rather light end, I’d use the famous dialogue by one of Hollywood’s most famous drug addicts Dennis Hopper in one of my favourite movies Speed – “Pop quiz hotshot” and ask you - Where did one of the most famous database software products in the world, Oracle, come from?... It was originally conceptualised as part of a project of the CIA in which Oracle founder Larry Ellison worked. And to all Google and Wikipedia aficionados, Bhuvan is there to give you a run for your money. And if you don’t know what I’m blabbering about, I’m not referring to Aamir Khan’s character in the movie Lagaan but India’s indigenously built satellite based 3D mapping application Bhuvan, similar to Google Earth and Wikimapia. And guess who developed it? None of the Indian IT companies sadly but the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

And please somebody try to unravel the secret behind the title of my article above...

Rio - How we lost another chance to save Earth

He was a silent witness to Edward and Bella’s honeymoon. While he might have blessed that sanctimonious tryst between a vampire and a blonde, he definitely would have winced at the appalling spectacle of an august congregation turning into a filthy orgy. For Christ the Redeemer himself silently sighed at the ingenuity of intellectual myopia displayed by a vast majority of delegates at Rio+20, the recently culminated global sustainability summit at Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil. The outcome of the summit that was touted by many scientists and environmental experts as the greatest chance for global policymakers and corporates to chart out a sustainable path for global economic and social development can be summed up by a statement by Sha Zukang, the Secretary General of the conference – “This is an outcome in which no one is happy. Our job is to make everyone equally unhappy. Equally unhappy means equally happy.” 

The most pertinent question that arises from the above summary presented by Mr. Zukang is that how come a conference that is aimed to bring about ground level legally binding actionable measures to bring about changes in the way energy is used and consumption patterns are altered towards use of renewable and eco friendly resources can be termed as a platform to satiate everyone’s whims and fancies. While organisations from varied fields have been partners to the rhetoric that sustainable development is panacea to all of the world’s problems, behind this facade, the actions are clear testimony that the words green, sustainable development and renewable energy are anathema. $50 billion have been pledged by the corporate world to a UN supported programme to provide energy to the entire world by 2030. Let’s turn back a few chapters to Rio’s cousin Copenhagen, the 15^th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and $100 billion were pledged by the developed world then to the developing countries for that latter to gain access to renewable and clean energy technologies by 2025. Today, that pledge remains but only as a footnote in global climate negotiations. In fact, the Copenhagen Accord itself is biting dust somewhere. Kyoto Protocol, the only beacon of hope for the world till now, is itself about to live out its useful life but no successor is in sight. Thus, Rio was yet another platform for the global political and economic heavyweights to show that long term planning and concrete steps can become the order of the day. But, in order to keep everyone (un)happy, yet another opportunity has been squandered.

Initially, it was hoped by environmentalists and experts that the Summit would finally result in a legally binding multilateral treaty which would in the long term attain 3 objectives: Firstly, fossil fuel use would progressively be reduced and renewable energy production and use would be promoted and implemented strictly both by governments across the globe. Secondly, Poverty alleviation will models will not be based on the premise that poverty can be eliminated through massive levels of GDP growth rates which can only be achieved through incessant burning of fossil fuels. Thirdly, the world’s oceans which still contain a vast majority of all living species (see my previous article) will be preserved at all costs and desertification which is destroying arable land and enhancing net carbon emissions will be stopped through measures like re-forestation etc. which will be initiated on a priority basis.

This is what has actually been achieved in Rio. The 49 page outcome paper which has been named the “Future We Want”, has one of the major statements that the Summit as a whole agreed “to set up a process to create a high level forum on sustainable development and made decisions to establish Sustainable Development Goals.” Well, if after 20 years since the first sustainable development summit was held in Rio, we are still at a stage to set up a process to create a forum on sustainable development, it speaks volumes about what have we achieved in the last 20 years and where are we heading. If the Rio+20 Summit itself cannot be termed as a high level forum for making critical decisions for the future of mankind, nothing else can. Also, the talk about establishing Sustainable Development Goals, a term which appears to be in cahoots with the Millennium Development Goals, is just a facade to hide the inability of the delegates to reach any concrete conclusion. The single biggest farce in the entire document is that there is no standard all encompassing definition of sustainable development used to direct any further action plan. While the terms ‘sustainable development’, ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘sustained growth’ have been used interchangeably, there is no mention anywhere as to how and by when will fossil fuels be reduced even by a certain percentage and how will renewable energy projects be implemented on a massive scale. 

However, the biggest fallacy in this entire endeavour lies in the way the words ‘poverty alleviation’ has been used as a shield by governments, corporations and individuals to continue supporting business as usual way of life which in effect means, growing use of fossil fuels, mass consumption of products and services produced using these fossil fuels to spur economic growth and thus the cycle will continue unabated. India and China, regrettably, did not come up with any proactive or innovative formula to achieve poverty alleviation through eco-friendly ways and continued to emphasise that under the principle of equity with common but differentiated responsibilities, they want the developed world to do its part in implementing a sustainable way of life and also aid developing countries in granting access to finance and technology so that the latter can shift towards an economic growth model based on clean technologies. While China, who definitely displayed leadership role during the summit by expounding that it was taking giant strides to ensure a sustainable future for itself and is ready to help other developing countries as well, it was the only country to term the final document as “comprehensive positive and balanced”. And it was in order to make the document balanced that the word ‘positive’ as stated above was lost in translation. The Chinese chief of the preparatory committee for the conference clearly stated that the importance of the final text lies in the fact that it propounds “countries adopt sustainable development strategies which are appropriate to their national conditions, rather than making such strategies inflexible.” Well, there is not an iota of doubt in the fact that national conditions as stated above (read a strong and power wielding oil, coal and gas lobbies) will never allow for the epochal shift from fossil fuels to clean and green energy resources. Thus, while poverty alleviation can definitely happen through business as usual, it will only push us towards extinction much faster.

And when it comes to saving our oceans and seas, there was virtually no mention of a future course of action on saving the nearly 98% of all species present on earth that thrive in the waters and on whom, millions of humans living in the coastal communities across the globe depend (see my previous article). While there was talk of creating an international authority to protect the waters not coming under national jurisdictions 20 years ago, we were still talking about creating an authority but by when and how are not clear at all. Similarly, in order to put a leash on rampant desertification that is gobbling up arable land and destroying large swathes of biodiversity and ecosystems at a rapid pace there are only pledges for funding to promote reforestation and stop future deforestation but again the schematics and specifics are not present. The word ‘reaffirm’ has been used 59 times in the 49 page final text. Amazingly, we are still reaffirming the need for sustainable development without even being clear on what the term means for different stakeholders, reaffirming the need to create a forum for future negotiations which is exactly what happened 20 years ago in the first summit and reaffirming the need for poverty alleviation but without any concrete commitment by developed nations to provide funding or technology help to poor nations. While the overall pledges for funding stand at $513 billion by all parties put together for a total of 693 projects, the details as to how this funding will be generated, how will it be channelized and how will it be used at the ground level will be ‘negotiated’ in the future as usual.

As one article very aptly put it, the biggest achievement of Rio+20 (termed Rio+20 -40 by many activists) was that “this conference was a conference to decide to have more conferences”.

Rio+20 – 20 years of Hollow Concern

From June 20-22, world leaders from different fields have congregated in the city of Rio de Janeiro for the Rio+20 Earth Summit to discuss and decide on the future of the planet. The word sustainability has been a part of common man’s lexicon for nearly the last 2 decades but the fact that nobody can still define how and what exactly does sustainable development means in the macro sense shows the micro and utilitarian approach followed by a vast majority of the masses. Coming to the issue of utility, I’ll cite an anecdote which is directly related to the point at stake here.

The other day, I was embroiled in an animated conversation with an old friend regarding the power woes in the country and the significance of individuals’ efforts to promote and expand the use of renewable energy. However, the discussion veered in the direction of a rather indirectly related issue of endangered species. And I was stunned to hear that according to him, the premise on which the objectives to initiate the efforts to preserve an endangered species should be based on the future utility or use of that species to humans. In layman terms, he explained his reasoning with the following example – In case of tigers, the question of whether to preserve the tiger in India or not should be based on whether if the tiger will not be there in the future, is it going to affect our quotidian existence in any way? (Of course the Indian tiger or cheetah, in the absolute biological sense of the word, already went extinct in the 1960s in India and the current species are only some closely genetically linked brothers/sisters of the original Indian cheetah).

However, before I tackle the question of whether the decision to save a species should be based on its future utility or not, there is a concrete body of literature available that clearly highlights the fact that if measures on war footing are not taken in the near future to save hundreds of thousands of endangered species, the entire ecological balance of the planet could be disturbed forever which will be detrimental to the survival of Homo Sapiens themselves. Marine ecosystems have been severely damaged due to excessive fishing and to a lesser extent by oil spills and dredging. Despite a target of a maximum of 4.02 billion kW days set in 2002 for the global fishing industry (kW days is defined as the engine power of fishing vessel in kilowatts multiplied by the no of days the vessel was engaged in fishing activities), fishing capacity clocked 4.4 billion kW days in 2011, nearly 10% more than the maximum limit. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a US $23 billion industry annually which is larger than the total value of the entire Indian fishing industry (that doesn’t mean we can happily devour the fish curry in the restaurants we visit next time).  Only 7.2% of world’s territorial waters and barely 1.6% of the planet’s oceans come under maritime protection laws while as per the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) Report, 20,000 marine species are currently under the scanner for fear of extinction. The permanent destruction of the Great Barrier Reef near Australia and the near extinction of the whale (courtesy a continued permission on whaling by governments like Japan which has sounded the death knell for this largest creature on Earth) are some stand out examples of the precariousness of the situation. In essence, entire fishing and marine biodiversity faces an alarming risk of permanent damage thereby destroying the entire fishing and marine industries upon which, millions living in coastal areas of the world are dependent.

Coming to land, there is absolutely no doubt that the little has been done on the ground except hollow promises since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Total primary forest cover globally has gone down by 740 million acres (300 million hectares) in the last 20 years which is larger than the size of Argentina. Average Carbon emissions in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million (ppm) has increased from 358 ppm to 394 ppm by April 2012. The total area coming under the deserts or near desertification has increased drastically in the last century and as per latest UN estimates, the rate of desertification is only speeding up. The world’s largest desert, the Sahara in Africa, is currently expanding at a harrowing rate of 48 km/year in the southward direction gobbling up the rain forests of Central and Eastern Africa which provide employment and livelihood to nearly half the continent. More than 1.2 billion people currently are at future risk of expanding deserts which already cover close to 1/3^rd of the world’s land area. The causes behind this are the usual suspects of excessive cropping, over grazing, improper irrigation and worst of all, deforestation. It is a common estimate that the entire land area of Rajasthan, Delhi and Haryana will be a desert by the end of second half of the 21^st century due to the eastward and North eastward expansion of the Thar desert and the ensuing water crisis could result in nearly 2/3rds of the population without access to clean water (thankfully the entire species of the tigers will not survive to see the day to enjoy the desert safari).

Regrettably, for the past 2 decades, the efforts to tackle the trio of global warming, desertification and biodiversity loss have only been made on paper while the ground reality blatantly describes the story of gross neglect under the garb of the oft repeated term “equity under common but differentiated responsibilities”. This essentially means that the developed world will carry major responsibility for the current malaise since their actions over the last 2 centuries have been the major contributor to global warming and bio diversity loss and thus while all developing countries will be treated at par in terms of benefits and solutions applied in the future, the responsibilities to carry out these actions will mainly lie on the shoulders of the developed countries. This is nothing new but the same old rhetoric that has dragged on since the entire climate change and global warming issue came to the fore front. If Rio really wants to achieve something different and concrete, it will have to make the nations of the world sign a legally binding commitment to bring the free oceans of the world under a global authority to protect their over exploitation while at the same time, enhance technology transfer from the developed to the developing world for eco-friendly implementation of daily practices and to create prohibited areas both in water as well as across land geographies where endangered species can be preserved and protected. 

Coming back to my friends’ question of the long term utility of saving endangered species to the human race, more than half of the world’s population is dependent on non-vegetarian diets for their survival while nearly 90% of the coastal populations are dependent on fishing for subsistence. The entire leather goods industry (which I must admit should cease to exist) globally is dependent on the replenishment of land species they exploit which are fast depleting.  As per the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species which is the most comprehensive and cited list by various global organisations, more than 40% of all species on the planet are at the risk of extinction. The pharmaceutical industry is dependent on the existence of many animals, plants and marine species for maintaining their value chains in the long run. By the way, before I end, I must mention that the oft hated oil lobby was not present in person anywhere in the ongoing summit except that its presence was palpable in the entire 238 paragraph official text of the Rio+20 Summit for under the section of energy, there is a major emphasis on more renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, but then it eloquently brings what it calls "cleaner fossil fuels technologies" into the mix. Can we hear oil, Petrol, gas and coal getting patronised again?

Regrettably and alarmingly, the global community has gone nowhere when it comes to action on the ground. 190 countries, about to sign the text as the final document (which again only talks about voluntary commitments), in the last 20- years have been able to ‘acknowledge’, ‘recognise’ and express ‘deep concern’ about world’s environment crises. Thus, if no hard steps are initiated in Rio and the current farce continues, there is no doubt that we will remain the dominant species on the planet for millennia to come.