A year later, no lessons learnt

Little seems to have been done by the State governments, past and present, in the area of disaster prevention, mitigation and management. Picture shows Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel rescuing a woman pilgrim during the floods.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-year-later-no-lessons-learnt/article6120397.ece

Uttarakhand is still in dire need of a development plan that is also sensitive to the fragile ecosystem that was crippled by the floods and landslides of 2013

Santosh Naudiyal stood on the verandah of a building in Rudraprayag last December while he narrated his story. On October 1, 1994, the night of the Rampur Tiraha massacre, Santosh and his friends boarded a bus to New Delhi to participate in a dharna to demand for a separate State of Uttarakhand. “We fought for it and today we have it,” he told me, pointing towards the Rudraprayag collectorate that stood shakily on sinking ground.

The June 16-17 deluge last year — one of the worst calamities the State has witnessed — resulted in flash floods and landslides. The situation was exacerbated by a defunct disaster management system, the result of the apathy of consecutive governments that have ruled the State.

This was not the Uttarakhand that Santosh and his friends had desired.

The floods and after

The deluge left Uttarakhand in shambles. Flash floods pummelled the Alaknanda, Bhagirathi, Mandakini, Gori Ganga, Pindar, and Kali rivers. According to official data, 4,190 people died in the disaster, more than 2,500 buildings were completely destroyed, and 2,070 roads and 145 bridges were damaged. However, numbers alone do not reveal the extent of loss.

In the weeks that followed, more than a lakh pilgrims and locals were evacuated from the disaster-hit areas: the Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri shrines, the Sikh pilgrimage site, Hemkund Sahib, and parts of Pithoragarh and Bageshwar districts. Only after rescue operations were over did the government shift focus to the locals.

It has been a year since the tragedy crippled the State; yet, sadly, locals continue to remain the government’s second priority. Rehabilitation of villagers is still incomplete. Locals continue to make trips to their tehsildars, patwaris, sub-divisional magistrates, and district magistrates for pending compensation issues, to appeal for the construction of safety walls and for the rebuilding of roads and bridges.

Last year, yatras to the four shrines and to Hemkund Sahib resumed. But with two months of inaction following the catastrophe, Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna’s exit was on the cards. Only after Harish Rawat replaced Mr. Bahuguna as the State’s new Chief Minister on Februrary 1 did the post-disaster reconstruction work gain momentum. However, the pace again slackened when elections assumed priority.

In a year, the blocked roads have been opened, some have been black-topped, some reconstructed. Broken bridges have been replaced with makeshift ones. Roads have been reconstructed, but by boring deeper into the mountains, already subject to constant erosion by the river flowing beside them. At some places, protection walls have been built; at others, debris from landslides has been left as it is, blocking the roads this monsoon season too. A biometric registration system has been introduced this year to keep track of the pilgrims, and the State Disaster Response Force has been deployed on the yatra routes. However, the meteorological equipment has not been upgraded since last year. Talks of establishing an early warning system began only recently.

An area prone to disasters

The June calamity apart, Uttarakhand has witnessed a number of disasters in the past — from earthquakes and landslides to flash floods. Yet, little seems to have been done by the State governments, past and present, in the area of disaster prevention, mitigation and management.

According to the State Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre’s (DMMC) records, in 1999, a major earthquake in Chamoli caused the deaths of 101 people. Another earthquake hit Uttarkashi in 1991 killing 768 people. Both earthquakes measured more than six on the Richter scale. “The State has not witnessed a major earthquake for more than 200 years,” the DMMC’s 2012 report stated. “This enhances seismic risk in the region.”

The Earthquake Risk Map of India places 13 districts in Uttarakhand under seismic zone IV (severe intensity zone) and V (very severe intensity zone). Despite this, several dams and roads have been constructed along fault lines, K.S. Valdiya, an eminent geologist and honorary Professor of Geodynamics at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, said in a discourse after the deluge.

According to the authorities, nothing more than regular training and awareness programmes are being conducted on disaster management in case of an earthquake.

The DMMC report also states that other than earthquakes, the State is vulnerable to hailstorms, cloudbursts, flash floods, forest fires, and avalanches. In 2012, a landslide in Ukhimath and flash floods in the Assi Ganga and the Bhagirathi rivers killed about a 100 people and caused extensive damage to livestock and property. A 2010 Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s report states that the 2010 monsoons affected 29.24 lakh people; 214 people lost their lives in the season. The report further states that between 2005 and 2009, 474 people across Uttarakhand lost their lives to various disasters.

What is perhaps lacking in Uttarakhand is an effective disaster management system. A combined effort needs to take place between the State Disaster Management department, the State Disaster Management Authority, the meteorological department, and other departments. If every agency continues to work towards disaster management in isolation, the death toll will only increase.

Redefining development

Bumper-to-bumper construction of hydroelectric power projects, buildings and roads, with little knowledge of the effects of such constructions in the region, continue at a reckless pace in the State’s current development framework.

Last year on August 13, the Supreme Court issued an order in which it directed the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to constitute an expert body to “assess whether the existing and ongoing/under-construction hydroelectric power projects have contributed to the environmental degradation and, if so, to what extent.” It also directed the MoEF and the State government to “not grant any further environmental clearance or forest clearance for any hydroelectric power project in the State of Uttarakhand, until further orders.”

The expert body, in its Chopra Committee Report, elucidated the adverse role played by the projects in worsening the disaster.

A Himalayan policy drafted by Shekhar Pathak, a historian from Uttarakhand, and Hemant Dhyani of Ganga Ahvaan, a movement for the conservation of the Ganga and the Himalayas, states that after witnessing calamities in the Uttarakhand region for almost four decades, it was clear that “all these calamities failed in fully sensitising the system, administrators, and policy makers.”

The draft of the policy, which is a part of the Chopra Committee Report submitted to the Supreme Court, suggests establishing micro hydel projects, solar projects, stopping illegal mining, strengthening Van Panchayats, and demarcating cultural eco-sensitive zones for the conservation of biodiversity, among other recommendations.

The State’s tourism sector has suffered a loss of about Rs. 12,000 crore following the calamity. A population of around 7 lakh, which was dependent on the earnings from religious tourism, has been affected. Lack of livelihood opportunities and safety concerns are resulting in migration from the affected areas. The State is in dire need of a fast-paced development plan that is also sensitive to the fragile ecosystem.

The missing momentum in development efforts coupled with a change in leadership and redevelopment plans implies that political will is necessary for the State to develop while addressing environmental concerns.

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Right Now We ‘Grossly Underestimate’ Economic Damage From Climate Change, New Paper Says

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/16/3449645/stern-updated-climate-model-economic/

Our current models “grossly underestimate” the economic damage that will be wrought by climate change, according to British climate change economist Lord Nicholas Stern. So he and a colleague just published a new preliminary paper that makes a few key updates.

Right now lots of mainstream climate research, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), relies on versions of the “DICE model” to project the damage climate change will do to the global economy in computer simulations. And so far, the modeling done by IPCC has predicted relatively modest hits to world economic production from climate change if global carbon emissions continue on a business-as-usual path. But the DICE model also has several well-known limitations, including an overly simplistic model of how the economy grows, too little attention to climate sensitivity, and too little attention to certain extreme risks. When Stern and Simon Dietz — colleagues at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change — retooled the model to address this issues, they found the modest hits ballooned into massive reductions within the next two centuries.

The updated analysis of economic growth itself didn’t change the business-as-usual path too dramatically. But when it was combined with the midrange numbers from Stern and Dietz’s updated climate sensitivity, the resulting projection shows global living standards peaking around 2150 and then dropping — leading to an overall collapse of almost two-thirds from where they would otherwise be in 2200 under the standard models. Incorporating the high-end climate sensitivity numbers and the possibilities of extreme risk, global living standards peak before 2100, then collapse down to or below where they were in 2005.

From there, Stern and Dietz determined that the price of carbon emissions should fall between $32 and $103 per metric ton in 2015, and should then rise to between $82 and $260 per metric ton by 2035.

Stern and Dietz’s updates to the DICE model focused on three areas:

A new model of how economies grow. The old DICE model looks at any point in time, measures the economy’s productive capacity, and then gauges how much climate change will dampen that productivity in that moment. But climate change can also reduce that productive capacity itself. Stronger storms can damageinfrastructure; sea level rise can force people to abandon homes, businesses or equipment; and climate damage can channel more investment into repairs and away from creating new capital. Stern and Dietz account for that, and the result is a double hit: at any given moment, the effects of climate change are reducing the economy’s ability to produce wealth, but they’re also but also reducing the economy’s overall capacity to produce wealth at future moments.

Considerations of higher climate sensitivity. Other factors in modeling climate change’s economic effects are what scientists call “tipping points” — moments when global warming kicks off feedback loops in the planetary ecology that cause the effects to speed up. Examples of tipping points include the polar ice melting in a way that result in sudden huge collapses rather than gradual melting; or melting permafrost in the northern hemisphere releasing underground methane that in turn speeds up global warming even more. (They can also include second-order social effects that damage economies: drought and food scarcity kicking off wars or mass refugee movements, for instance.) A lot of research suggests tipping points are a real threat, so climate sensitivity in the models should be high. But the DICE model assumes climate sensitivity is only modest. So Stern and Dietz also included a greater range of climate sensitivity metrics that reach higher.

Considerations of extreme risk. Another key issue in the modeling is how seriously to take unlikely-but-possible cases of extreme damage from unknown and unpredictable changes as the globe heats up. The models that DICE and IPCC rely upon take a relatively simplistic approach to estimating that risk, and thus the appropriate investments to avoid it. So Stern and Dietz took an updated approach to modeling the possibility of those extreme circumstances as well.

These limitations can deliver some ridiculous results. For instance, the traditional DICE model shows a global temperature rise of 18°C would only reduce the global economy by half. But scientists agree this is obviously wrong; such an extreme rise would almost certainly render the planet uninhabitable for humans.

“It is extremely important to understand the severe limitations of standard economic models, such as those cited in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which have made assumptions that simply do not reflect current knowledge about climate change and its potential impacts on the economy,” said Stern.

“Models that assume that catastrophic damages are not possible fail to take account of the magnitude of the issues and the implications of the science.”

Stern previously oversaw the creation of a landmark report for the British government, that calculated climate change could reduce the global economy by anywhere from 5 to 20 percent. Stern later concluded that report itself likely low-balled the risks, and he’s now working on an update that will likely be publishedthis September.

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Indian Heat Wave Claims Hundreds Of Lives

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/16/3449526/indian-heat-wave-death-toll/

The recent record-breaking heat wave that scorched much of India last week has claimed at least 169 lives in the state of Andhra Pradesh in the southeast of the country. In the state of Odisha to the north, officials announced Monday that the start of the school year would be delayed by at least 5 days in hopes that the current heatwave would break before students were crowded back into sweltering classrooms. The heatwave has, so far, claimed at least 26 lives in the state.

In Delhi, where temperatures topped 110°F for seven days straight, the death toll is uncertain, but as many as 79 of Delhi’s homeless may have succumbed to the extreme weather., according to the Centre of Holistic Development, a group working to end homelessness in the city.

The health impacts of the heat wave have been intensified by widespread and prolonged power outages limiting access to fans, AC and even water.

While extreme cold, like the Polar Vortex in the U.S. last winter, is often thought of as deadlier than extreme heat events, there is mounting evidence that as the climate changes, it is the heat, rather than the cold, that will claim the most lives. Scientists in the U.K., recently predicted that heat-related deaths in the country will rise by 257 percent by mid-century. For every 1°C rise in temperature, the researchers forecast a 2.1 percent increase in deaths. While a 1°C drop in temperature saw a similar 2 percent increase in mortality, the scientists noted that climate change is pushing the mercury up, not down. Cold weather-related deaths in the U.K. could thus be expected to decrease by 12 percent by the 2080s.

Hope for relief from the heat in India is on the horizon, as the monsoon rains are forecast to spread over much of the country this week. Monsoon rains made landfall in the western Indian city of Mumbai on Sunday.

The rains, which usually bring cooler weather starting around June 1, are late this year, prolonging the deadly heatwave and increasing the death toll.

The India Meteorological Department has predicted below average rains for the monsoon season this year. According to the department, there is a one in three chance that drought conditions will emerge later in the season. The monsoon usually runs from June to September. Eighty percent of the country’s precipitation falls during these months, intensifying the impacts of a poor monsoon season.

The increasing likelihood of the formation of the El Niño weather phenomenon also increases the chances of lower-than-average rainfall.

A weak monsoon could also affect India’s already fragile power supply as the country is heavily dependent on hydropower. Coal power also uses a great deal of water. In 2012, a weak monsoon season was partly responsible for a blackout that cut power to 600 million people.

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Three-Quarters Of World Bank-Backed Projects Still Don't Evaluate Climate Risks: Report

WASHINGTON -- The World Bank is still failing to take climate change into account as it makes decisions about the projects it finances, according to a new report from the nonprofit World Resources Institute. The impacts of climate change were only taken into consideration in a quarter of all projects the bank approved between January 2012 and June 2013.

World Resources Institute looked at a selection of projects that would reasonably be expected to undergo some sort of climate impact assessment. The World Bank has in recent years put a greater emphasis on climate change under its new president, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, and argued in a landmark 2013 report that climate change "could seriously undermine poverty alleviation in many regions." But as WRI's report finds, 75 percent of projects still include no assessment of climate risks.

For 88 percent of projects, there was no examination of their likely contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The Bank has been dinged for its continued involvement in projects that support coal-fired power plants, for example.

WRI found that a few of the projects the World Bank invested in would help countries adapt to the impacts of climate change, but said those projects "were the exception rather than the rule."

"The reality is, climate considerations are still something that has yet to make its way into the operational considerations they make," said Clifford Polycarp, deputy director of the sustainable finance program at WRI.

One example included in the report is an emergency infrastructure renewal project that the Bank supported in Cote d’Ivoire that would rehabilitate urban drainage systems and provide flood protections. The WRI report notes that while this seems like an area where future climate impacts should be taken into account, "the project design documents did not include any assessments that could shed light on the project area's vulnerability to climate change."

The report also cites an urban infrastructure project in China's Qingyang municipality that would construct and rehabilitate drainage and sewage systems. Report co-author Milap Patel notes that the appraisal documents for that project "are characterized by a complete lack of attention to climate change and its possible impacts."

Climate change is believed to pose a major risk to already vulnerable populations, and the report warns that the "impacts of climate change could derail countries' progress toward sustainable development."

The report proposes specific actions the Bank could take to improve its assessments of climate risks and other environmental and social concerns. For climate-related risks associated with a given project, the report suggests an assessment of the project's anticipated greenhouse gas emissions, an analysis of ways to cut the project's emissions, and consideration of potential alternatives that would produce lower greenhouse gases, among other steps.

While there is a directive from the head of the World Bank to consider climate change in its projects, Polycarp said that the incentives that drive decision-making at the regional and operational levels still don't prioritize climate. Nevertheless, Polycarp added that under its new climate policy director, Dr. Karin Kemper, the Bank has been starting to put in place new tools and processes for factoring climate into its initiatives.

A World Bank spokesman said that the Bank "welcomes constructive input on the work that we do."

"The WRI report is a useful contribution to our increased efforts to factor in climate change across our project portfolio. In this regard, we are making important progress," said the spokesman, adding that starting in July, the Bank will require all new projects funded by the International Development Association, its division that funds the world's poorest countries, to be screened for short- and long-term climate risks. The Bank is also introducing a greenhouse gas accounting program "that will, within a couple of years, cover all projects in all sectors," said the spokesman.

The WRI's president and CEO, Andrew Steer, joined the nonprofit from the World Bank, where he had served as the Bank's special envoy for climate change from 2010 to 2012. In an introduction to the report, Steer notes that there have been "missed opportunities to address climate impacts."

But he signaled optimism about the Bank's ability to shift. "The World Bank's willingness to adapt and experiment has been its historical strength," wrote Steer. "We are confident it will address the climate challenge with the same innovative spirit."

Article Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/world-bank-climate-change_n_5104895.html?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoku6zMcu%2FhmjTEU5z17OwuXaOyiokz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMTcBjMrnYDBceEJhqyQJxPr3DJNUN0ddxRhbkDQ%3D%3D

Complete Report: http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/Designed%20for%20the%20future_World%20Bank.pdf

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El Nino to coincide with monsoon: India Meteorological Department's Pune arm warns of poor rains

El Nino to coincide with monsoon: India Meteorological Department's Pune arm warns of poor rains 

 

PUNE: India should brace for a weak monsoon season as El Nino conditions are likely to develop, but before rains dry up, the ongoing wet spell will continue until June, weather scientists have forecast, casting a shadow on the rabi harvest and the planting of summer crops such as paddy 

This is not the official monsoon forecast of India Meteorological Department (IMD), but the outlook prepared by the Pune-based Regional Climate Centre, which is a part of IMD. Forecasters from Australia China, Korea and the US have issued El Nino warnings, but so far the Indian weather office has rubbished the concerns as western propaganda to rattle Indian markets. 

Monsoon outlook is indeed sensitive for the economy and the market. Although the country has sufficient stock of foodgrain, a negative monsoon adversely affects the entire economy. In 2009, when an El Nino severely disrupted monsoon rains, India saw a sudden burst of food inflation, which continued relentlessly for years, forcing the Reserve Bank of India to keep interest rates high despite persistent protests by industry. Weak rainfall in the country in 2009 raised global sugar prices to the highest in decades, and this year the price of the sweetener in India, the world's second-largest producer, is already rising. 

The forecast said weak El Nino conditions, which often disrupt rainfall in India, may develop by the middle of the year, coinciding with the June-September monsoon. "During the season April to June, wetter-than-normal conditions are likely over most parts of India, Afghanistan, north Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. However, during the season May to July, normal to drierthan-normal conditions are likely over most parts of South Asia except extreme north India, adjoining north Pakistan and  north Afghanistan," it said. 

"On the monthly scale, most of the countries of the region are likely to experience normal to wetter-than-normal conditions during the first three months and drier-than-normal conditions in July," it said. 

The Regional Climate Centre has suffixed a caveat to its forecast: "The long range forecasts presented here are currently experimental and are produced using techniques that have not been validated. The content is only for general information and its use is not intended to address particular requirements," it said. 
The Australian Weather Office, widely respected for its forecasts, said the outlook for El Nino had increased. "The El Nino-Southern Oscillation ( ENSO) remains neutral; however, the chance of an El Nino occurring later in 2014 has increased. Climate models indicate the Pacific is likely to warm in coming months, with ocean surface temperatures reaching El Nino thresholds during the southern hemisphere winter," it said in its weekly tropical climate update on Tuesday. 

North India has seen unusually high winter rainfall in 2014. This has damaged apple and almond orchards and raised concerns about the wheat harvest that gathers momentum in April. IMD's latest forecast says more rains are likely. "Rain/thundershowers would occur at many places over Jammu & Kashmir and at a few places over Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand from (April) 5th onwards," it said. 

Abinash Verma, director-general, Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), said, "El Nino will not affect Indian sugar production in 2014-15 significantly as most of the sugarcane is in irrigated areas. But if the reservoirs are not filled up then it will impact the sugarcane production in 2015-16 season. However, ISMA would like to watch the rainfall from the retreating monsoon also as it affects the yield and sucrose formation." 

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/33092700.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

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