Minister for environment & forests Jairam Ramesh said he felt ?vindicated? by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) goof-up on the life of Himalayan glaciers. In an exclusive interview with FE, the minister said India would soon have a well-equipped national agency for climate change assessment, as the UN body has proven unequal to the task.
?My ministry brought out a discussion paper on glaciers after it was found that major divergence of views existed between Indian scientists and the IPCC,? he said. The new agency would be ?an Indian IPCC?, the minister said. He added that the UN body, with its biases, seems incapable of original and genuine research, in addition to being insensitive to regional realities.
Under the weight of indigenously researched evidence and commentaries, IPCC on Wednesday accepted that it had made a mistake in holding an alarmist view that Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035. Ramesh said the new national agency would have a pan-IIT network as its backbone. The minister believes IPCC has debased itself into being a mere aggregator of available literature.
The minister said the new national climate research body would be formed out of the fledgling Indian Network for Comprehensive Climatic Change Assessment (INCCCA). Once full-fledged, the new body would comprise 250 scientists from diverse disciplines and would leverage resources to produce a series of annual assessments for different sectors, the first by November 2010. The minister added that he would discuss the modalities for setting up INCCCA with the top research institutions of the country at IIT-Mumbai on March 12.
In a virtual rebuttal of the IPCC?s 2007 assessment on Himalayan glaciers, the ministry?s discussion paper said it was premature to conjecture that ?the Himalayan glaciers are retreating abnormally because of global warming.? Essentially, the discussion paper authored by Geological Survey of India former deputy director-general VK Raina said 150 years of data on 25 glaciers in the region would reveal that ?regional and local geomorphic features have had as much influence on the snout fluctuations as climate parameters?.
It said that over the last century, different glaciers have behaved in contrasting ways. While most were retreating, some like Siachen were advancing, and in some cases–Gangotri, for instance–the retreat has lately been decelerating.
The minister added: ?People who speak with a great deal of certainty that science has shown (something) are not right. There is a great deal of probability. One has to be a little more cautious. But one thing that needs to be recognised is that global warming is a reality and we have to mount a creative response–which is rooted in our interest rather than one influenced by international negotiations.?
In a statement, the Geneva-based IPCC said on Wednesday that the conclusion in its fourth assessment report about Himalayan glaciers was based on ?poorly substantiated estimates of the rate of recession and date of disappearance of Himalayan glaciers?. Regretting the mistake, it said, ?Clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.?
Ramesh said, ?The whole Himalayan glacier episode has shown that we need to have our own scientific capacity, which is networked globally. But you need a critical mass of local people looking at climate change in terms of sectors and regions. They should also be designing appropriate interventions to deal with that.?