Will it be a drought or a flood- We do not know what to prepare for?

Not long before…Indian farmer was always sure of the season, the rains, the crop- summers used to be hot, winters.. chilly, and it used to rain during rainy season. NO MORE. Last year alone, we faced a series of natural calamities; the Cyclone Aila, drought in many states, followed by the devastating flash floods in Southern India. All these catastrophes cost us thousands of human lives along with colossal loss of natural and manmade property.  We can’t ignore these early signs of climate change anymore; We must act now – to save our nation and the globe from bigger tragedies.

The Copenhagen Summit was a collective failure of leadership and was unable to reach a binding deal on how to deal with global warming and therefore was hardly a success story for anyone, including India. Efforts are on… to rekindle the fire… of a fair, ambitious and binding global deal to limit global warming to 2 degree centigrade. While the Indian populace copes with the drastic changes in the climatic pattern and its adverse effects, Indian government has been participating in various global meetings that have been held, post the disastrous meeting in Copenhagen.

The journey so far has not been very encouraging. In early April, negotiators met in Bonn, Germany, to draft a possible agreement that could be signed at the meet scheduled in December 2010 in Mexico. This was followed by the US-convened meeting of the Major Economies Forum in Washington. The next weekend, China, Brazil, South Africa and India met in Cape Town to come up with a common position on negotiations. This was followed by the meeting of 45 environment ministers in the castle of St Petersburg for another talk. This is proposed to culminate in the meeting of the subsidiary bodies to the climate convention in early June, again in Bonn. And the Talk Cycle continues….

The Copenhagen Accord, in its current form, doesn’t address the problem at all; there are hardly any commitments to reduce emission or to set targets for rich countries. It gets all the more depressing because these countries don’t even want to discuss the Kyoto Protocol or the long term Cooperative Agreement. Which clearly means that the tough emission reduction is totally off agenda and this accord will give legitimate license to rich countries- to do what they think is possible, to pledge their support, THUS, TO LEGITIMIZE THE RIGHT TO POLLUTE.

The Copenhagen Accord can’t in any manner be termed as a climate change agreement. What should India do in this changed framework to answer the poor farmer who sits baffled by the temperamental weather?