16-30 APRIL, 2021 DownToEarthSCIENCEFORTNIGHTLY AND ENVIRONMENTON POLITICS OF FORTNIGHTLY DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH Subscriber copy, not for resale `60.00 AFRICA Inequitable global distribution of vaccines will only prolong the pandemic for every country AT RISK AT INDIA The government must revitalise public sector units to meet COVID-19 vaccine requirements 01Cover.indd 1 12/04/21 9:41 AM Advertisement 02JSES- Magazine Advt- Feb 2021- PDF.indd 2 09/04/21 12:32 PM SUNITA NARAIN \EDIT Zero-zero, net zero E HAVE seen furious activity on climate change in the first weeks of April in Delhi. No, I am not talking about action to fight climate change. I am talking about words and more words—much has been W written about the position that India must take or not take when it comes to declaring a net-zero goal. Much has been discussed in closed-door meetings on the same. John Kerry, the US climate envoy, was in town in the lead up to President Joe Biden’s climate leaders summit on April 22-23. He wanted to cajole and push us to act—say something big when the leaders meet. The good news is that climate change is back on the agenda. The bad news is that we are discussing the wrong things; we are in danger of once again losing the opportunity to drive home the need for ambition and equity in climate change action. Just consider the narrative in Delhi. It was not about the need to take stock of what has been done or not done to meet the Paris commitments—the voluntary targets countries have taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this decade; it was not about how minuscule, completely off track and inequitable the Paris targets are. It was not about the emission pathways countries are choosing to make drastic reductions as needed to avoid the climate change catastrophe. It was not about anything that matters. Instead, the entire discourse was distracted by the completely meaningless discussion on net-zero—it is widely accepted that Joe Biden will declare his country’s net-zero target for 2050 at the summit. The question was if, should and could India follow its net-zero date? Why do I say this is meaningless? Firstly, let’s be clear that there is no substance in the net-zero target that countries have declared. It is but an aspirational idea—something that they will work towards. Practically all the countries that have made the grandstanding declaration have no plans on how they will get to net-zero by 2050, or in the case of China, by 2060. So, it means nothing. It’s about the idea of getting there and the hope that some so-called disruptive technologies will get scaled up and be ready The fact that Joe for delivery when the date comes. Biden is not a Secondly, net-zero as an idea itself is flawed. It means that countries will emit more; climate denier is but they will mop up these emissions to say "net-net". How will they soak up the good news. But it emissions? Two methods: one, plant trees that will sequester carbon dioxide that we will is not enough continue to emit and two, take the carbon dioxide and pump it back into the ground— carbon capture and storage technologies. But there are still many unanswered questions about this approach; there are huge challenges in estimating the "tree-soak" and there are issues to sort with the set of technologies, fancifully called negative emission. So, it’s a scam—at least today—to talk about these as the real options going forward. You can argue that these so-called disruptive technologies will come and so we should not be rejecting this idea today. I would say yes, but our dependence on these still experimental technologies to save us will distract attention from what can and must be done today. That needs to be our conversation. Not net-zero. Thirdly, net-zero is intrinsically inequitable. It was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that had said global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide would need to fall by 45 per cent from the 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net-zero by 2050. Given the fact that there is a huge and completely disproportionate difference in the emissions of the old-developed world and now newly developed China and the rest of the world, it would be logical to say that if the world needs to be net-zero by 2050, then these countries needed to have already turned net-zero or do so by 2030. No later. Then it would provide space for countries like India—way below in the historical emissions and current emissions—to declare a net-zero goal by 2050. In today’s scenario, what could or should India do? Declare a net-zero goal by 2070? Twenty years after the US and Europe; 10 years after China. What does it even mean? As things stand today and when Joe Biden grandstands his country into the net-zero world of 2050—do not clap. Do not cheer. It is not enough. Not by a stretch. Only ask if his country will meet the Paris commitments—so ridiculously meagre—by 2025. The US has to be 26-28 per cent below its peak levels in 2005 by 2025. In fact, US greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 were higher than that at the end of 2016. We also need real ambition by 2030, not talk of 2050. The fact that Joe Biden is not a climate denier is good news. But it's not enough. Let’s not end up losing another decade squabbling over yet another chimera. Climate change is real. It is time we stood up to it. DTE @sunitanar DOWNTOEARTH.ORG.IN 16-30 APRIL 2021 DOWN TO EARTH 3 03Editors.indd 3 09/04/21 4:00 PM Down To Earth Founded in 1992 to arm you with knowledge critical to shaping a better world FOUNDER EDITOR Anil Agarwal Contents EDITOR Sunita Narain MANAGING EDITOR Richard Mahapatra ASSOCIATE EDITORS Vibha Varshney, S S Jeevan, Snigdha Das, Arnab Pratim Dutta (Multimedia) CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ajit Bajaj SUPPLEMENT EDITOR Sorit Gupto 30 REPORTING TEAM Ishan Kukreti, Akshit Sangomla, Africa is the other Banjot Kaur, Shagun Kapil continent after ASSISTANT EDITORS Aditya Misra, Rajit Sengupta Europe which is SUB EDITOR Dakshiani Palicha under a tight grip of WEB EDITORS Joyjeet Das, Rajat Ghai, Anshika Ravi, the COVID-19's Preetha Banerjee second wave. 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Printed at International Print-o-Pac Limited, B-204, 205, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase I, New Delhi-110020, India, and published at 41, Tughlakabad Institutional Area, New Delhi 110 062. 07 Digest 54 Book excerpt To subscribe, sms 'dte Subscribe' to 56070 Uttarakhand village uses Oonga explores the or visit www.downtoearth.org.in/subscribe technology to revive a spring human impact of FOR ADVERTISEMENTS Jyoti Ghosh environmental conflict [email protected] 12 Soil FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS The world’s 175-year-long 56 Opinion K C R Raja, [email protected] agricultural study has great Water assets built under insights about farming practices MGNREGA must suit the ground typologies 18 Warm start Despite prevalence of cold 58 Civil Lines La Niña conditions, spring and Mass poverty has returned to 16-30 APRIL, 2021 summer arrive early this year India after 45 years DownToEarthSCIENCEFORTNIGHTLY AND ENVIRONMENTON POLITICS OF FORTNIGHTLY DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH Subscriber copy, not for resale `60.00 AFRICA Inequitable global distribution of vaccines will only prolong the pandemic for every country 52 Patently absurd Will rights waiver make COVID-19 vaccines cheaper to produce? Probably not AT RISK AT INDIA The government must revitalise public sector units to meet COVID-19 vaccine requirements Cover design: Ajit Bajaj Cover photo: istock, Reuters 01Cover.indd 1 09/04/21 5:41 PM Down To Earth does not endorse the content of advertisements printed in the magazine. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi/New Delhi only. 04Contents+Credits.indd 4 12/04/21 10:12 AM Engage Nuclear is the answer This is in reference to the column “Why nuclear is still unclear” (16-31 March, 2021). The major obstacle faced by renewable energy is its low capacity factor (the ratio of actual electrical energy output of a system over a given period of time to the hypothetical maximum possible output). Since nuclear energy has the highest capacity factor of any other energy source, it clearly is the answer.