Ten youngsters, including environmental lawyers, doctoral students and IITians, are going on a month-long expedition starting January on electric-cum-solar powered vehicles to spread the message about clean and green living.

The group, which will traverse the length of the country from Chennai to Delhi, covering about 3,500 km, will be in Mumbai from January 17 to 21.

The climate awareness trip, starting on January 4 and sponsored by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, will include a stopover in 15 cities. The rallyists will also participate in around 50 events in these cities, reminding people about the threat of climate change, with the help of rock bands and Shiamak Davar’s dance troupe, where they will be joined by more climate change campaigners.

US rock band Solar Punch will also accompany the group.

“Climate change is going to affect our future. The decision makers of today won’t be around in 50 years’ time to see the effects of their inaction,” said Kartikeya Singh, executive director, Indian Youth Climate Network and one of the group members. “Hence we need to take the action required to ensure that our future will be bright, clean and green.”

Singh was officially sponsored by the Centre at the recent United Naitons’ climate change conference in Poznan, Poland. The Indian Youth Climate Network is a broad coalition of youth-oriented organisations concerned about climate change.

“We will also have Shiamak Davar’s Foundation choreographing climate-themed performances in key cities,” said Singh.

The group will post 50 video blogs with ‘climate solutions’ videos and weekly reports during the journey.

They will roll into Mumbai in their specially-designed solar and electric powered Reva vehicles on January 17 and visit several colleges here.

They plan to participate in the Mumbai Marathon, plant trees and hand out special solar lanterns in Dharavi in the city. “We will also participate in the Indian Institute of Technology tech fest,” said Singh. On their last day in the city they will meet climate experts including Nobel Peace Prize winner R.K. Pachauri.

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India wants the European Union and the American to take the same governmental initiative they took to resolve the financial crisis to enable technology transfer of cleaner technologies to tackle climate change.

“We are meeting in extraordinary time, which is referred to many as the great depression. But the bold responses by developed countries during these trying times have also highlighted two very relevant things from our perspective. Markets are important and cannot do all by themselves. Governments must take actions setting paradigm shift,” said M S Puri, joint secretary, Ministry of External Affairs at the meeting of all parties on Tuesday on Poznan.

“The existing cleaner technologies should receive faster technology dissemination in the widest possible way,” said Puri.

An inter-ministerial delegation from India consisting of representatives of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of External Affair, Ministry of Power, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Planning Commission and experts drawn from various governmental and other institutions are attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan.

Puri urged the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change (UNFCCC)
to set up a funding mechanism that would procure Intellectual Property Rights and make solar, wind and other such renewable technologies available to developing countries in an affordable manner that would also compensate innovators.

“A body under the UNFCC should be set up for finances and not the World Bank as it is then subject to the World bank discretion,” said R. Rashmi, joint secretary, Ministry of Environment and. Forests (MoEF), Government of India.

“We have the same stand as G77 and China on technology transfer and financial assistance, our views are similar,” said Rashmi.

Technology innovation centres should be built at the regional centre and the research should be disseminated to enable to get the to the grass root problems, for example solar technology.
The negotiations were aimed at identifying the specific elements of a shared vision for long-term cooperative action amongst the parties (countries) for transfer of technology and provision of financial resources to support actions for mitigation and adaptation in the times of melting glaciers, rising sea levels among others.
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“We cannot tackle climate change without Carbon Capture Storage (where the carbon is trapped and is buried in the ground at very high pressure) and nuclear technology for the time being,” said United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretary, Yu De Boer at the Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland.

One of the main issues on agenda at the conference is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) reforms, which basically aims at rich countries indirectly contributing to reduction of carbon emission by investing in low carbon technologies in developing countries.

“If the Carbon Capture Storage and Nuclear technology transfer will be eligible (in CDM projects) is not clear. Will that change? If it will be allowed in full or allowed in part is hard to say at this point of time,” said Boer.

However sources told HT that there was a move to include these two in CDM projects.
Environmental experts believe that this proposal to include carbon capture storage in Clean Development Mechanism shows the worlds’ reluctance to move away from their dependence on fossils fuels like coal and oil.

India which is one of the biggest recipients of CDM projects is not in favour to include these two in the CDM projects basket.

“India is not in favour of Carbon Capture and Storage as the environmental effects are not known. If it will leak and create further pollution, if it will explode and create another Bhopal gas tragedy,” said R R Rashmi joint secretary, Ministry of Environment and. Forests (MoEF), Government of India.

“If the safety is proved beyond doubt then we may consider using it. Also, the cost is not affordable for us. It will cost 30 per cent more than existing energy providers,” said Rashmi.
International Youth Delegates are opposed to it as well.
“Developing countries should not be used as a testing ground for potentially risky technology,” said International youth delegates.

India is almost mute on nuclear technology transfer. Rashmi said that India’s stand on nuclear transfer was not clear on it yet.

“If nuclear technology is transferred under CDM then the government will have to be transparent about it. So that is why they are avoiding. Also, India is hoping to get the technology through bilateral agreement. For instance there is an agreement between France ,” said an Indian official who did not wish to be named.
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A film on Climate Change titled ‘The age of Stupid’ stars the Bombay Dyeing head honcho Nusli Wadia’s younger son, Jeh Wadia with Oscar nominated star Pete Postlethwaite of the 1993 film “In the name of the Father’. The documentary film had a private screening in Poznan on the sidelights of the United Nations Climate Change Conference on Monday.

Directed and produced by documentary film maker Franny Armstrong of McLibel fame, the film takes us through the lives of six people living on the planet in peril. It took Armstrong four years to finish the film.

The film features Postlethwaite as a man living alone in a devastated world of 2055, looking back at ‘archive’ footage from 2008, asking “Why didn’t we stop climate change when we had a chance?”

It is advertised as the best documentary on climate change since ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

While Al Gore’s film reviews the scientific opinion on global warming, this film hits at the heart of consumerism.

“The film was produced independently by raising finances through shares from 228 people,” said Armstrong, “We call it ‘proud funding. These 228 persons contributed between 500 to 3,500 pounds,” said the 37-year-old London based documentary filmmaker.

The film features Wadia’s budget airline GoAir. The film opens with shots of Wadia and the aerial view of the Mumbai airport.

The film will be official released in theatres in the United Kingdom in February and a worldwide launch in March.

Mother Maureen and wife Celina too have guest appearances in the film.

“As it is the end of the world, might as well go for it,” says Armstrong when posed with difficult questions.

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There will be a change on the domestic environmental policy of the United States of America under the President elect Barrack Obama to save a ‘Planet in Peril’. However, there will be no change on US’s international stand that India and China need to cut down on carbon emissions, according to the US delegates at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan.

“Major economies like China and India and other emerging countries need to participate and need to contribute to the climate change efforts. We believe that the heart of the issue cannot only be addressed by developed countries, developing countries with huge growth need to contribute too. This has been the position of the Congress and they have been specific that there is a need for major emerging economies to contribute,’ said Dr Harlan Watson, U.S. Senior Climate Change negotiator at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Poznan.

“We are not talking about numbers,” added Watson.

Larry J Schweiger a member on the board of directors on the Alliance for Climate Protection, the organisation created by Al Gore to educate the US public on global warming said, “I think the Obama administration is setting a target of 35 per cent cut in the carbon emissions by 2020. We are pushing that the economic recovery package be invested in cleaner technology,”

Also, we are looking at a carbon trade program, whereby we can ratify and adopt the goal in time for the Copenhagen talks on Climate Change conference in 2009, said Schweiger.

Paul L Joffe, senior director of the US National Wildlife Federation said, “The Obama administration is staying in good taste by not interfering with the existing administration. The current delegation is in no position of record,”

Senator John Kerry will lead the Senate delegation to the UN’s climate meeting in Poznan.

“Senator Kerry will be arriving on Wednesday (November 10) and his brief is to tell the new administration and help the US Congress to understand what kind of steps China, India, South Africa and Brazil are already taking to produce clean energy,” said Joeff.

Nobody expects India to take the same steps. The new administration has not yet given specific about the significant changes, but the commitments will be different and not the same as Europe and US, said Joeff.

One of the goals of the US delegations sent by the Bush administration is to ensure that the Poznan negotiations conclude in such a way that all options open for the incoming Obama administration.

“There is no push from anybody to foreclose options,” said Watson.

More information can be obtained at http://unfccc.int

The IIJ invited journalists from Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Namibia, Nigeria and the Philippines to the UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan. You will find their features within the IIJ blog.

“The Poznan conference is taking place in the broader context of the current global financial crisis and impending recession,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “But we cannot allow this to detract from the fight against climate change.”

 Boer said, “The financial crisis will have an impact on climate change. You already are seeing around the world a number of wind energy projects being pushed back.”  The main threat to the climate protection agenda, de Boer said, is that investors will miss the ‘opportunity for green growth’ as power generation capacities are bolstered over the coming years, and that cheaper and dirtier power sources will be built instead.
 
According to the Indian delegate and member of The Energy Research Institute Prodipto Ghosh the financial crisis is helping the developing nations who now have a bigger say, “The G77 countries, China and the Suadis have a bigger say in the climate change negotiations with respect to carbon emissions, because of the financial crisis,” said Ghosh.
 
“Developing countries are saying that the EU and America have billions to dole out to bankrupt bankers, so why can’t they contribute more to combat climate change,” said K. Srinivas, a policy advisor for Greenpeace India.
 
The talks Poznan, mark the halfway point in a two-year process agreed at last year’s UN conference in Bali. The meeting is likely to clarify what countries are looking for on issues such as emission cuts and forest protection. The meeting is also likely to see a decision on the Adaptation fund. The fund was set up last year to help countries to cope with rising sea level, desertification, melting glaciers and floods among others. The Fund is still to start collecting or disbursing money.
 
“The focus of the fund has changed from helping least developed countries to help vulnerable communities,” said David Waskow of Oxfam America. This means that many developing countries like India with vulnerable communities will have access to the funds.
 
Ajay Mathur, a member of the Indian delegation in his presentation has said that all countries should make a contribution to the adaptation fund, said Srinivas. “However they are not legally committing to the amount,” said Srinivas.

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Control, adapt or flee, the question posed at the United Nations University at the Climate Change Conference in Poznan on Friday with respect to environmental refugees.

The United Nations University undertook the first ever people based study on climate change motivated migration. “There are 24 million environmental refugees today and the number will double in 2010″, said Dr Koko Warner of the United Nations University who undertook the study with a team of scientist.
Two per cent of the Asian population has been forced to migrate because of environmental changes according to the United Nation. India is the eighth largest receiver of migrants in the world in 2005 and the first in South Asia followed by Pakistan.

India will have to deal with internal refugees who are forced to move because of desertification or loss of ecosystem but illegal migration from Bangladesh which is hugely affected by the glaciers melting in Himalaya, riverbank erosion, flooding and desertification will cause regional tensions in India.

“India has started to build a fence along the border that it shares with Bangladesh. If the number of illegal migrants increases, then the regional security will be at threat. The recent Mumbai terror attacks have added to the problem,” said Francois Gemenne, who worked on the research.

Bangladesh is also affected by the dam that India is building on the Ganges which is contaminating fresh water sources and in turn is also motivating migration, noted the report. Entire countries may be forced to move due to climate change, said Gemenne.

Environmentally-motivated migration is expected to affect poorer people, more women, children and elderly, from more desperate environmental situations, and possibly less able to move far. “Environmental refugees will be different from economics migration and will not be able to return to their homeland,” said Gemenne.

An adaptation fund will be formed under United Nations Framework on Climate Change to help the most vulnerable communities. “The adaptation fund has a cash reserve of 300 million dollars,” said David Waskow of Oxfam America, a Non Governmental Organization working on Climate Change.

Photo: UN/Benoit Aquin

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In a large green expanse of 5000 square meters one hundred tones of maize (corn) – over half a million medium-sized loaves of bread – are being converted into 48 mega watts of energy every day. Agri-Capital, the biogas energy company in Konnern has 30 such biogas plants in Germany.

Europe and America in the rush to arrest their fossil fuel addictions are turning the breadbasket of the world into energy hubs. Corn, rapeseed, sugarcane, soya, palm oil and jatropha (a tough toxic shrub) are used to produce liquid transport fuels such as ethanol or bio diesel—and bio energy such as methane, which provide heat and power.

Agri- Capital produces biogas from a fermented mixture of maize and manure, which is fed into the national grid while the other 29 plants feed electricity into the grids.

The company with only three employees acquires corn from 10 farm stands in a radius of 10 kilometers in Konnern, about 193 km from Berlin. The price of corn is negotiated with the farmers. Depending on the price for corn, the company makes profits of over one Euro per mega watt of energy produced according to rough estimates by company officials.

Why is corn used and not domestic waste? Tobias Dollberg, project leader of Agri-Capital said, “This is because the efficiency of corn to produce energy is the higher than that of domestic waste.” he said, “Only three per cent of the area under corn cultivations in Germany is being used to fuel bio gas plants.”

While the developed nations provide subsidies to produce biogas and bio-fuel, developing countries are not far behind. The Indian government aims to plant 140,000 sq km of biofuel crops, Brazil about 1.2 million sq km, and about 4 million sq km of land is ready to be converted to biofuel crops like jatropha in Southern Africa.

While this may be marginally better for carbon emissions and energy security, it is proving dire for food prices.

About two years ago, land where maize is now being grown to make ethanol in the United States was being used as food. Also, America exports most of the world’s maize, its price has doubled in 10 months, and wheat has risen about 50 per cent.

Maize is used in the production of bread, soap toothpaste, chewing gum, cheese spreads, candies, breakfast cereals and also cattle feed.

The United Nations World Food Programme, which feeds about 90 million people mostly with US maize, predicts that 850 million people around the world are already undernourished. There will soon be more because the price of food aid has increased 20 per cent in just a year. Meanwhile, Indian food prices have risen 11 per cent in a year. South Africa has seen food-price rises of nearly 17 per cent.

The competition for grain between the millions who want be powered or mobile, and its two billion poorest people, simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue said Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute think tank, and author of the book Who Will Feed China?

It is not going to get any better, says Brown. The UN’s World Food Organisation predicts that demand for biofuels will grow by 170 per cent in the next three years. OECD, the club of the world’s 30 richest countries, suggested food-price rises of between 20 per cent and 50 per cent over the next decade.

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