Can Poor Countries Afford To Go Green? : Daily Current Affairs

Date: 26/11/2022

Relevance: GS-3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment, Disaster and Disaster Management.

Key Phrases: Loss And Damage Fund, Cost Of Going Green, Mitigation Overshadowing Development, Sustainable Consumption, Fair Distribution Of Carbon Space As Global Commons.

Why in News?

Nearly 200 countries have pledged to set up a ‘loss and damage fund’ during the COP27 concluded recently in Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt to help vulnerable countries affected by climate change.
Although developing countries have welcomed the development, the developed nations however are not satisfied with the level of commitment that poor countries have shown towards cutting down greenhouse gas emissions and phasing out fossil fuels.

Cost of Climate Change Impact :

The cost of climate change impact is considerable to economies and with subsequent rise in temperature, the cost of not addressing climate change is likely to rise.
With a technological shift, there is a shift towards lower emission energy systems around the world and the cost of those technologies has decreased to the extent that they are now more or less cost competitive with coal-fired power plants.
Thus, it makes economic sense to invest in these technologies although the transition is difficult and costly at the initial stages.

Why the costs of the fight against climate change higher for developing countries?

The fight against climate change is much harder for them since much of the infrastructure is yet to be built in developing countries which is clearly difficult with the help of renewable energy.
Even the basic minimum, in terms of universal well-being, would require much higher levels of energy.
The developing world does not have the luxury of using fossil fuels in an unconstrained manner, which the developed world has had.

Need for transition towards a low carbon path:

If a high carbon path to development is chosen, the impacts of climate change would make development itself much less sustainable and would undermine the benefits sought from development.
If the health costs of coal-fired power plants are internalised, about half of coal-fired power plants today are not economically viable.
There are lots of reasons aside from climate change to accelerate this transition.
Therefore, the developing countries need more deliberate, purposeful and optimal utilisation of fossil fuels that will allow them to get moving to a low carbon future.
This is not going to be easy, but it is necessary as the developing world is much more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
They need to utilise their fair share of carbon to build resilience and create the means to transition to a non-fossil fuel future.

How can the developing countries reach the per capita income levels of developed countries with the use of renewable energy?

The belief regarding the renewable energy opportunities available becomes very relevant towards this goal.
If it is believed that there aren’t many opportunities, there will not be much deviation from a high-carbon path but the optimism towards presence of opportunities will deviate quite a lot from a high-carbon path.
The solution really lies in focusing on finding common ground between economic development and climate mitigation efforts.
Opportunities need to be searched in the renewable energy space and sustainable urbanisation.
- The cities have to be built around public transport and to some extent around walking and biking, to achieve lower emissions.

Idea of mitigation overshadowing development:

If the entire economy-wide transition is framed in the similar manner, it might end up in a situation where only that developmental options are looked for that have mitigation co-benefits also.
That would be dangerous and there are examples of serious trade-offs in agriculture.
For example, recommending restrictions related to providing irrigation to farmers because it would mean more energy, more emissions, etc. is a problem because irrigation leads to increased productivity, which improves the resilience of farmers.
Thus, it must be taken care that the idea of mitigation does not overshadow development.

Can the green technologies actually help cut down greenhouse gas emissions given the carbon footprint of many green technologies?

Analysis of the life cycle emissions of renewable energy sources has shown that they are less compared to fossil fuels.
However, the impact of factors such as battery materials, raw materials mining, etc. will be known only later as the use of green energy increases.
This is the nature of technology and innovations have to be made to address the issues.

Can traditional way of doing things help in curbing emissions?

There are arguments that favour restricting demand and going back to traditional ways of doing things, etc.
Although sustainable consumption must inform the choices people make, glorification of the traditional ways of doing things ignores the hardship this means for large sections, particularly women.

Fair distribution of carbon space as global commons:

The carbon space must be thought of as an example of the global commons whose fair distribution must be the starting point of the way in which these are utilised.
Policies for imposing caps on emissions must be designed with this understanding.
However, no high-income or even upper middle-income countries have been able to achieve high levels of human development without overshooting their fair share of the carbon space.
Thus, just being within its carbon space is going to be a challenge for India.
Fossil fuel use should be done only where it has the greatest welfare gains.
A tonne of fossil fuel use gives much greater welfare gains in poor countries where the use is lower.

Conclusion:

Poorer countries should try to limit emissions not just for global reasons, but because they will have all these other associated development benefits.
Limiting emissions is likely to be convergent with the goal of India becoming a more competitive economy in the future.
India needs to focus on the political agreement on the means of support to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon future.
It is a good approach to claim a large carbon space if it is needed, however, it should be tried as hard as possible to not utilise that claim.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. It is a good approach to claim a large carbon space if it is needed, however, it should be tried as hard as possible to not utilise that claim. Examine. (150 words).