A blow to the global nuclear-power industry

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Chellaney

Fukushima blast shows nuclear is not the answer

Inherently risky, water-intensive and unreliable — we must admit we cannot depend on nuclear power

Brahma Chellaney
guardian.co.uk, 15 March 2011

The troubles of the Fukushima nuclear-power plant — and other reactors — in earthquake-hit Japan have dealt a severe blow to the global nuclear industry, a powerful cartel of less than a dozen major state-owned or state-guided firms that have been trumpeting a nuclear-power renaissance.

But the risks that seaside reactors like Fukushima face from natural disasters are well-known. Indeed, they became evident six years ago, when the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 inundated India’s second-largest nuclear complex, shutting down the Madras power station.

Many nuclear-power plants are located along coastlines, because they are highly water-intensive. Yet natural disasters such as storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis are becoming more common, owing to climate change, which will also cause a rise in ocean levels, making seaside reactors even more vulnerable.

For example, many nuclear-power plants located along the British coast are just a few metres above sea level. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused significant damage at the Turkey Point nuclear-power plant on Biscayne Bay, Florida, but, fortunately, not to any critical systems.

All energy generators, including coal- and gas-fired plants, make major demands on water resources. But nuclear power requires even more. Light-water reactors (LWRs) like those at Fukushima, which use water as a primary coolant, produce most of the world’s nuclear power. The huge quantities of local water that LWRs consume for their operations become hot-water outflows, which are pumped back into rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Because reactors located inland put serious strain on local freshwater resources — including greater damage to plant life and fish — water-stressed countries that are not landlocked try to find suitable seashore sites. But, whether located inland or on a coast, nuclear power is vulnerable to the likely effects of climate change.

As global warming brings about a rise in average temperatures and ocean levels, inland reactors will increasingly contribute to, and be affected by, water shortages. During the record-breaking 2003 heatwave in France, operations at 17 commercial nuclear reactors had to be scaled back or stopped because of rapidly rising temperatures in rivers and lakes. Spain’s reactor at Santa María de Garoña was shut for a week in July 2006 after high temperatures were recorded in the Ebro river.

Paradoxically, then, the very conditions that made it impossible for the nuclear industry to deliver full power in Europe in 2003 and 2006 created peak demand for electricity, as use of air-conditioning increased.

During the 2003 heat wave, Électricité de France, which operates 58 reactors — the majority on ecologically sensitive rivers such as the Loire — was compelled to buy power from neighboring countries on the European spot market. The state-owned EDF, which normally exports power, ended up paying 10 times the price of domestic power, incurring a financial cost of €300m.

Similarly, although the 2006 European heatwave was less intense, water and heat problems forced Germany, Spain, and France to take some nuclear power plants offline and reduce operations at others. Highlighting the vulnerability of nuclear power to environmental change or extreme-weather patterns, in 2006 plant operators in western Europe also secured exemptions from regulations that would have prevented them from discharging overheated water into natural ecosystems, affecting fisheries.

France likes to showcase its nuclear power industry, which supplies 78% of the country’s electricity. But such is the nuclear industry’s water intensity that EDF withdraws up to 19bn cubic metres of water per year from rivers and lakes, or roughly half of France’s total freshwater consumption. Freshwater scarcity is a growing international challenge, and the vast majority of countries are in no position to approve of such highly water-intensive inland-based energy systems.

Nuclear plants located by the sea do not face similar problems in hot conditions, because ocean waters do not heat up anywhere near as rapidly as rivers or lakes. And, because they rely on seawater, they cause no freshwater scarcity. But as Japan’s reactors have shown, coastal nuclear-power plants confront more serious dangers.

When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, the Madras reactor’s core could be kept in safe shutdown condition because the electrical systems had been ingeniously installed on higher ground than the plant itself. And, unlike Fukushima, which bore a direct impact, Madras was far away from the epicenter of the earthquake that unleashed the tsunami.

The central dilemma of nuclear power in an increasingly water-stressed world is that it is a water-guzzler, yet vulnerable to water. And, decades after Lewis L Strauss, chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Agency, claimed that nuclear power would become “too cheap to meter”, the nuclear industry everywhere still subsists on government subsidies.

While the appeal of nuclear power has declined considerably in the west, it has grown among the so-called “nuclear newcomers”, which brings with it new challenges, including concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons. Moreover, with nearly two-fifths of the world’s population living within 100km of a coastline, finding suitable seaside sites for initiation or expansion of a nuclear-power programme is no longer easy.

Fukushima is likely to stunt the appeal of nuclear power in a way similar to the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 did, not to mention the far more severe meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor in 1986. If the fallout from those incidents is a reliable guide, however, nuclear power’s advocates will eventually be back.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Fukushima nos recuerda las debilidades y amenazas de las centrales nucleares en el mundo

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Chellaney

TRIBUNA: BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Moraleja nuclear de Japón
Muchas centrales nucleares están situadas en las costas, porque necesitan una gran cantidad de agua. Sin embargo, los desastres naturales y el cambio climático hacen que resulten aún más vulnerables
BRAHMA CHELLANEY
El Pais, 17/03/2011

Los problemas de la central nuclear de Fukushima -y de otros reactores- en el noroeste de Japón han asestado un duro golpe a la industria nuclear mundial, poderoso cartel de menos de una docena de importantes empresas de propiedad u orientación estatal que han estado pregonando un renacimiento de la energía nuclear.

Pero ya se conocen perfectamente los riesgos que corren los reactores costeros, como el de Fukushima, a consecuencia de desastres naturales. De hecho, resultaron evidentes hace seis años, cuando el maremoto habido en el océano Índico en diciembre de 2004 inundó el segundo complejo nuclear en importancia de India, con lo que quedó desconectada la central eléctrica de Madrás.

Muchas centrales nucleares están situadas a lo largo de las costas, porque en ellas se utiliza una gran cantidad de agua. Sin embargo, desastres naturales como las tormentas, los huracanes y los maremotos están resultando más frecuentes a causa del cambio climático, que también causará una elevación del nivel de los océanos, con lo que los reactores costeros resultarán aún más vulnerables.

Por ejemplo, muchas centrales nucleares situadas a lo largo de la costa británica están a tan solo unos metros por encima del nivel del mar. En 1992, el huracán Andrew causó importantes daños en la central nuclear de Turkey Point, en la bahía de Biscayne (Florida), pero no así, por fortuna, a ninguno de los sistemas decisivos para su funcionamiento.

Todos los generadores de energía, incluidas las centrales alimentadas con carbón o gas, requieren grandes cantidades de recursos hídricos, pero la energía nuclear más aún. Los reactores de agua ligera, como los de Fukushima, que utilizan el agua como refrigerante primordial, son los que producen la mayor parte de la energía nuclear. Las enormes cantidades de agua local que dichos reactores consumen para sus operaciones pasan a ser corrientes de agua caliente, que se bombean a los ríos, los lagos y los océanos.

Como los reactores situados en zonas del interior ejercen una grave presión sobre los recursos de agua dulce, incluidos daños mayores a la vida vegetal y a los peces, los países que tienen litoral y padecen escasez de agua procuran buscar emplazamientos costeros adecuados, pero, ya tengan o no litoral, la energía nuclear es vulnerable a los probables efectos del cambio climático.

A medida que el calentamiento planetario provoque un aumento de las temperaturas medias y del nivel de los océanos, los reactores situados en el interior contribuirán cada vez más a la escasez de agua y resultarán afectados por ella. Durante la ola de calor sin precedentes de 2003 en Francia, hubo que reducir o detener las operaciones en 17 reactores nucleares comerciales a causa del rápido aumento de las temperaturas de los ríos y los lagos. En julio de 2006, hubo que desconectar el reactor de Santa María de Garoña (España) durante una semana, después de que se registraran altas temperaturas en el río Ebro.

Así, pues, las propias condiciones que en 2003 y 2006 impidieron a la industria nuclear suministrar toda la energía necesaria en Europa fueron, paradójicamente, las que crearon una demanda máxima de electricidad a causa de un aumento de la utilización del aire acondicionado.

De hecho, durante la ola de calor de 2003, Électricité de France, que tiene 58 reactores en funcionamiento -la mayoría de ellos en ríos ecológicamente delicados, como el Loira- se vio obligada a comprar electricidad a los países vecinos en el mercado europeo al contado. EDF, empresa de propiedad estatal que normalmente exporta electricidad, acabó pagándola a un precio 10 veces mayor, con un coste financiero de 300 millones de euros.

Asimismo, aunque la ola de calor europea de 2006 fue menos intensa, los problemas de agua y calor obligaron a España, Alemania y Francia a desconectar algunas centrales nucleares y reducir las operaciones de otras. En 2006 las empresas propietarias de centrales nucleares de Europa occidental consiguieron también exenciones para incumplir la reglamentación que les habría impedido descargar agua recalentada en los ecosistemas naturales, lo que afectó a la pesca.

Francia gusta de exhibir su industria de energía nuclear, que suministra el 78% de la electricidad del país, pero la intensidad del consumo de agua de dicha industria es tal, que EDF retira todos los años 19.000 millones de metros cúbicos de agua de los ríos y lagos, es decir, la mitad, aproximadamente, del consumo total de agua dulce de Francia. La escasez de agua dulce es una amenaza internacional cada vez mayor y la inmensa mayoría de los países no están en condiciones de aprobar el emplazamiento en el interior de semejantes sistemas energéticos que hacen un consumo tan elevado de agua.

Las centrales nucleares situadas junto al mar no afrontan problemas similares en situaciones de calor, porque el agua de los océanos no se calienta ni mucho menos con la misma rapidez que la de los ríos o los lagos y, al contar con el agua del mar, no provocan escasez de agua dulce, pero, como han demostrado los reactores del Japón, las centrales nucleares costeras afrontan peligros más graves.

Cuando el núcleo del reactor de Madrás resultó afectado por el maremoto del océano Índico, se pudo mantenerlo a salvo desconectado, porque se había tenido la previsión de instalar los sistemas eléctricos en un terreno más alto que la propia central y, a diferencia de lo ocurrido en Fukushima, que recibió un impacto directo, la central de Madrás estaba alejada del epicentro del terremoto que desencadenó el maremoto.

El dilema fundamental de la energía nuclear en un mundo cada vez más afectado por la escasez de agua es el de que necesita enormes cantidades de agua y, sin embargo, es vulnerable ante el agua y, decenios después de que Lewis L. Strauss, el presidente del Organismo de Energía Atómica de Estados Unidos, afirmara que la energía nuclear llegaría a ser “demasiado barata para medirla con contador”, la industria nuclear sigue subsistiendo en todas partes gracias a muníficas subvenciones estatales.

Aunque el atractivo de la energía nuclear ha disminuido considerablemente en Occidente, ha aumentado entre los llamados “recién llegados nucleares”, con el acompañamiento de nuevas amenazas, incluida la preocupación por la proliferación de armas nucleares. Además, cuando casi dos quintas partes de la población mundial viven a menos de 100 kilómetros de una costa, ya no resulta fácil encontrar emplazamientos costeros adecuados para iniciar o ampliar un programa de energía nuclear.

Es probable que lo sucedido en Fukushima afecte irremisiblemente a la energía nuclear de forma similar al accidente en la central de Three Mile Island en Pensilvania en 1979, por no hablar de la fusión, mucho más grave, del reactor de Chernóbil en 1986. Sin embargo, a juzgar por lo sucedido después de aquellos accidentes, los defensores de la energía nuclear acabarán volviendo a la carga.

India’s nuclear-reactor imports a giant scandal in the making

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Chellaney

The spectre of India’s Fukushimas

The creeping rot in the country’s nuclear power projects could see Japan’s troubles re-enacted on India’s shores

Brahma Chellaney
Mint, March 17, 2011

The controversial Indo-US nuclear deal was pushed through without building “the broadest possible national consensus” that the prime minister had promised. Now, the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan is helping to turn the spotlight on India’s nuclear safety and its moves to push through major reactor imports without a competitive bidding process.

These multibillion-dollar imports constitute a giant scandal in the making, with long-term safety implications. Take the plan to install 9,900 MW of nuclear-generated capacity at Jaitapur: Not only was the environmental impact assessment hurriedly approved, coercive efforts are also being made to acquire land to allow France’s Areva to build six reactors—none of these of a type operational anywhere. It is only after the serial incidents at Japan’s six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi plant that India’s nuclear chief has acknowledged the need for an earthquake- and tsunami-related safety evaluation of Areva’s reactor model. Why wasn’t this done before reserving Jaitapur for Areva?

To be sure, India must ramp up its electricity production from all energy sources. This does not preclude the need for safe and cost-competitive nuclear power. Yet the government is acquiring land, without any competitive bidding, on behalf of four chosen foreign vendors. A nuclear park has first been earmarked for each foreign firm and only then, once leverage has been undercut, have prices sought to be negotiated. The import contracts, while making France, Russia and the US major commercial beneficiaries, herald a monsoon of potential kickbacks for corrupt politicians. Such an unabashedly rigged process beats even the 2G telecom scandal.

Given this perversity, is it surprising that the costs of imported generating capacity will be almost double the $1.77 million per installed MW of new indigenous capacity? Worse still, the foreign vendors—in addition to their accident liability having been capped by special legislation—are being freed from the task of producing electricity at marketable rates. The reactors will be owned and operated by the state, with the Indian taxpayer bigheartedly subsidizing the high-priced electricity generated. For the foreign vendors, there is no downside risk—only profits to reap.

Yet for India, there is a clear risk that the nuclear deal, with $150 billion worth of total potential import contracts, could end up as the single largest money-making scheme ever unveiled. After all, contract-making, along with policy changes, serves as the main engine of big-bucks corruption—a situation that has fostered high import dependency and made India the only major exception in Asia to the continent’s model of export-driven economic growth.

India’s imported plants—the US-built Tarapur and the much-delayed, Russian-supplied Kundankulam—are located by the ocean, as are all the new nuclear parks. All the foreign-origin plants, including the planned imports, are light water reactors (LWRs). These, with their once-through cooling process, are the greatest water guzzlers in the world. Building LWRs inland in water-stressed India is thus not a viable option. But despite a large coastline, India has no suitable vacant seaside sites for LWRs. Building nuclear plants by the seashore thus means displacing residents and running into grassroots opposition, as symbolized by Jaitapur, Haripur and Mithi Virdi. And as the late-2004 Indian Ocean tsunami showed by inundating and shutting down the Madras Atomic Power Station, seaside reactors are vulnerable to natural disasters. This could be a serious concern going forward: A climate change-driven paradigm will not only make storms, hurricanes and tsunamis more frequent, but also lead to a rise in ocean levels, making seaside reactors even more vulnerable.

India’s transition from a largely indigenous capacity to a heavily import-based programme will mean dependence on foreign vendors even for critical safety-related replacement parts. India today boasts the world’s oldest operating Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) at Tarapur. General Electric, which built the Tarapur plant, also supplied the BWRs at the heart of the Fukushima crisis. With Germany now deciding to shut down all seven of its pre-1980 nuclear plants at least till June, India can expect to come under pressure for still operating the 1969-vintage Tarapur.

Yet such are nuclear power’s inherent risks that the Fukushima disaster centres on reactors that were shut down. The explosions in reactor buildings and fires at spent-fuel ponds there highlight two other dangers in India: The decision to build six or more reactors in close proximity at each park, and the discharged fuel accumulating at Tarapur for four decades because the US refuses to take it back or allow India to reprocess it.

The spectre of India’s own Fukushimas is also being raised by the planned import of four different types of LWR technology, which will make the country’s nuclear power programme the most diverse in the world. This diversity may obviate reliance on one supplier, but it will also make India’s safety responsibilities extremely complex and onerous, given the multiplicity of reactor designs already in place. After all, it takes a long time to create teams of experienced safety engineers for any reactor model.

Fukushima is a warning that India must not compromise on long-term nuclear safety. The country deserves transparency and open debate—an imperative underlined by the pervasive corruption, the creeping politicization of top nuclear officials, and the rise of the corporate nuclear lobby.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
Copyright:

The paradox of nuclear power: A water-guzzling technology, yet very vulnerable to water

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Chellaney

Japan’s Nuclear Morality Tale

Brahma Chellaney
Project Syndicate

The troubles of the Fukushima nuclear-power plant — and other reactors — in northeast Japan have dealt a severe blow to the global nuclear industry, a powerful cartel of less than a dozen major state-owned or state-guided firms that have been trumpeting a nuclear-power renaissance.

But the risks that seaside reactors like Fukushima face from natural disasters are well known. Indeed, they became evident six years ago, when the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 inundated India’s second-largest nuclear complex, shutting down the Madras power station.

Many nuclear-power plants are located along coastlines, because they are highly water-intensive. Yet natural disasters like storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis are becoming more common, owing to climate change, which will also cause a rise in ocean levels, making seaside reactors even more vulnerable.

For example, many nuclear-power plants located along the British coast are just a few meters above sea level. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused significant damage at the Turkey Point nuclear-power plant on Biscayne Bay, Florida, but, fortunately, not to any critical systems.

As global warming brings about a rise in average temperatures and ocean levels, inland reactors will increasingly contribute to, and be affected by, water shortages. During the record-breaking 2003 heat wave in France, operations at 17 commercial nuclear reactors had to be scaled back or stopped because of rapidly rising temperatures in rivers and lake. Spain’s reactor at Santa María de Garoña was shut for a week in July 2006 after high temperatures were recorded in the Ebro River.

Paradoxically, then, the very conditions that made it impossible for the nuclear industry to deliver full power in Europe in 2003 and 2006 created peak demand for electricity, owing to the increased use of air conditioning.

Indeed, during the 2003 heat wave, Électricité de France, which operates 58 reactors — the majority on ecologically sensitive rivers like the Loire — was compelled to buy power from neighboring countries on the European spot market. The state-owned EDF, which normally exports power, ended up paying 10 times the price of domestic power, incurring a financial cost of €300 million.

Similarly, although the 2006 European heat wave was less intense, water and heat problems forced Germany, Spain, and France to take some nuclear power plants offline and reduce operations at others. Highlighting the vulnerability of nuclear power to environmental change or extreme-weather patterns, in 2006 plant operators in Western Europe also secured exemptions from regulations that would have prevented them from discharging overheated water into natural ecosystems, affecting fisheries.

France likes to showcase its nuclear power industry, which supplies 78% of the country’s electricity. But such is the nuclear industry’s water intensity that EDF withdraws up to 19 billion cubic meters of water per year from rivers and lakes, or roughly half of France’s total freshwater consumption. Freshwater scarcity is a growing international challenge, and the vast majority of countries are in no position to approve of such highly water-intensive inland-based energy systems.

Nuclear plants located by the sea do not face similar problems in hot conditions, because ocean waters do not heat up anywhere near as rapidly as rivers or lakes. And, because they rely on seawater, they cause no freshwater scarcity. But, as Japan’s reactors have shown, coastal nuclear-power plants confront more serious dangers.

The central dilemma of nuclear power in an increasingly water-stressed world is that it is a water guzzler, yet vulnerable to water. And, decades after Lewis L. Strauss, the Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Agency, claimed that nuclear power would become “too cheap to meter,” the nuclear industry everywhere still subsists on munificent government subsidies.

While the appeal of nuclear power has declined considerably in the West, it has grown among the so-called “nuclear newcomers,” which brings with it new challenges, including concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons. Moreover, with nearly two-fifths of the world’s population living within 100 kilometers of a coastline, finding suitable seaside sites for initiation or expansion of a nuclear-power program is no longer easy.

Fukushima is likely to stunt the appeal of nuclear power in a way similar to the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, not to mention the far more severe meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor in 1986. If the fallout from those incidents is a reliable guide, however, nuclear power’s advocates will eventually be back.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India, and Japan (Harper Paperbacks, 2010) and Water: Asia’s New Battlefield (Georgetown University Press, 2011).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.

China’s Murky Hydropolitics

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Chellaney

Ties and Troubled Waters

China’s hydro-engineering projects in Tibet indicate it is fashioning water as a card against India

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, June 29, 2010

New evidence from China indicates that, as part of its planned diversion of the waters of the Brahmaputra, preparations are afoot to start work on the world’s biggest dam at the river’s so-called Great Bend, located at Tibet’s corner with northeastern India. The dam, by impounding water on a gargantuan scale, will generate, according to a latest map of planned dams put up on its Web site by the state-run Hydro China, 38,000 megawatts of power, or more than twice the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam. Such is its scale that this new dam will by itself produce the equivalent of 25 percent of India’s current electricity generation from all sources.

Water is becoming a key security issue in Sino-Indian relations and a potential source of enduring discord. China and India already are water-stressed economies. The spread of irrigated farming and water-intensive industries, together with the demands of a rising middle class, have led to a severe struggle for more water. Indeed, both countries have entered an era of perennial water scarcity, which before long is likely to equal, in terms of per capita availability, the water shortages found in the Middle East.

Rapid economic growth could slow in the face of acute scarcity if demand for water continues to grow at its current frantic pace, turning China and India — both food-sufficient countries by and large — into major importers, a development that would accentuate the global food crisis. Even though India has more arable land than China — 160.5 million hectares compared to 137.1 million hectares — the source of most major Indian rivers is Chinese-controlled Tibet. The Tibetan plateau’s vast glaciers, huge underground springs and high altitude make Tibet the world’s largest freshwater repository. Indeed, all of Asia’s major rivers, except the Ganges, originate in the Chinese-held Tibetan plateau. Even the Ganges’ main tributaries flow in from Tibet.

But China is now pursuing major inter-basin and inter-river water transfer projects on the Tibetan plateau, which threaten to diminish international-river flows into India and other co-riparian states. China’s opaquely pursued hydro-engineering projects in Tibet threaten the interests of India more than those of any other country. The greatest impact of the diversion of the Brahmaputra waters, however, would probably be borne by Bangladesh. The Brahmaputra is Bangladesh’s most-important river, and the Chinese diversion would mean environmental devastation of large parts of Bangladesh. In fact, China is presently pursuing a separate cascade of major dams on the Mekong, the Salween, the Brahmaputra and the Irtysh-Illy, pitting it in water disputes with most of its riparian neighbours — from Kazakhstan and Russia to India and the countries of Indochina Peninsula.

In March 2009, the chairman of the Tibetan regional government unveiled plans for major new dams on the Brahmaputra. A series of six big dams will come up in the upper-middle reaches of the Brahmaputra, to the southeast of Lhasa, with construction of the first — Zangmu — beginning in 2009 itself. As part of this cascade, four other new dams will come up downstream from Zangmu at Jiacha, Lengda, Zhongda and Langzhen. The sixth, at Jiexu, is upstream to Zangmu. This cascade is in addition to the more than a dozen smaller dams China already has built on the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, including at Yamdrok Tso, Pangduo, Nyingtri-Payi and Drikong.

The most ominous plan China is pursuing is the one to reroute a sizable chunk of the Brahmaputra waters northwards at the Great Bend, the point where the river makes a sharp turn to enter India, creating in the process a canyon larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon in the US. The rapid infrastructure work in this area is clearly geared at such water diversion and hydropower generation. In fact, a new Chinese State Grid map showing that the Great Bend area will soon be connected to the rest of China’s power supply is a pointer to the impending launch of work on the mammoth dam there — a scheme recently supported by leaders of China’s state-run hydropower industry, including Zhang Boting, the deputy general secretary of the Chinese Society for Hydropower Engineering.

Through its giant projects in Tibet, China is actually set to acquire the capability to fashion water as a political weapon against India. Such a weapon can be put to overt use in war or employed subtly in peacetime so that the level of cross-border water flows becomes a function of political concession.

With China determined to exploit its riparian dominance, New Delhi’s self-injurious acceptance of Tibet as part of China is becoming more apparent. Just as India has retreated to an increasingly defensive position territorially, with the spotlight on China’s Tibet-linked claim to Arunachal Pradesh than on Tibet’s status itself, New Delhi’s policy straitjacket precludes an Indian diplomatic campaign against Beijing’s dam-building projects. Accepting Tibet and the developments there as China’s “internal” affairs has proven a huge misstep that will continue to exact increasing costs. A bold, forward-looking leadership, though, can rectify any past mistake before it becomes too late.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

Asia’s Water Crisis: Strategic Implications

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Chellaney

Water emerges as a potential constraint on Asia’s rapid
growth

Brahma Chellaney

The Sunday Guardian, May 9, 2010

As the most-pressing resource, water holds the strategic
key to peace, public health and prosperity. With its availability coming under
pressure in many parts of the world due to greater industrial, agricultural and
household demands, water is likely to serve as the defining crisis of the
21st century. This is most evident when one looks at Asia, the world’s largest
continent.

In Asia, growing populations, rising affluence, changing
diets and the demands of development already are already putting strain on two
resources linked to climate change. One is energy, the main contributor to the
buildup of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the other is
water, whose availability will be seriously affected by climate change,
increasing the likelihood of water-related conflicts there, as the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.

The sharpening Asian competition over energy resources, driven
in part by high GDP growth rates and
in part by mercantilist attempts to
lock up supplies, has obscured the other danger — that water shortages
in much of Asia are
becoming a threat to rapid economic
modernization, prompting the
building of upstream
hydro-engineering projects on transnational rivers, with little concern for the
interests of co-riparian states. If water geopolitics were to spur
interstate tensions through reduced
water flows to neighboring countries, the Asian renaissance could stall in the
face of inter-riparian conflicts.

Today, no region better
illustrates the dangers of water wars in the future than Asia, which has less
fresh water — 3,920 cubic meters per person — than any other continent, according to a 2006 United Nations report. This fact often
gets obscured by the spotlight on the sharpening energy competition. Indeed, at
a time when the assertive pursuit of national interest has begun to replace ideology, idealism and
morality in international relations, there is a danger that
interstate conflict in Asia
in the coming years could be driven by competition not so much
over political influence as over
scarce resources.

The UN report has pointed
out that when the estimated reserves of lakes, rivers and groundwater are added
up, Asia has marginally less water
per person than Europe or Africa, one-quarter that of North America, nearly
one-tenth that of South America and 20 times less than Australia and Pacific
islands. Yet Asia is home to almost 60 percent
of the world’s population.

In Asia, two broad water-related effects of climate change
can be visualized. First, climate change is likely to intensify interstate and intrastate competition over water resources. That
in turn could trigger resource
conflicts within and between states,
and open new (or exacerbate existing)
political disputes. Second, the likely increased frequency of extreme weather
events like hurricanes, droughts and flooding, as well as the rise of ocean levels, are likely
to spur greater interstate and
intrastate migration — especially of
the poor and the vulnerable — from delta and coastal regions to the
hinterland. Such an influx of outsiders would socially swamp
inland areas, upsetting the existing fragile ethnic balance and provoking a backlash that strains internal and regional security. Through such
large-scale migration, the political stability and internal cohesion of some nations could be
undermined. In some cases, this could
even foster or strengthen conditions that could make the state dysfunctional.

In water-deficient
Asia, most societies are agrarian, and the
demand for water for farming is soaring. Asia’s
rapid industrialization and
urbanization, additionally, are boosting demand for water considerably.

Household water consumption
in Asia is also rising rapidly, but such is the water paucity that not
many Asians can aspire for the lifestyle of Americans, who daily use 400 liters
per person, or more than 2.5 times the average in Asia.
Agriculture, however, remains the major consumer of water. Some three-fourths of
all water withdrawals in Asia are for
agriculture.

Asis’s vast irrigation
systems helped usher in the Green Revolution. Today, irrigated croplands produce
60 percent of Asia’s rice, wheat and other
staple food grains. But in a new era of growing water shortages, the
water-intensive and wasteful nature of Asian irrigation practices are becoming
apparent, including the growing of rice in saturated paddy fields, old and
inefficient irrigation canals and the widespread use of electric and diesel
pumps to recklessly extract groundwater.

Add to this picture the
fast-rising demand for food in Asia. But to
grow more food will require more water — a resource now under the greatest
strain. Pollution, too, is threatening Asia’s
freshwater resources.

The spread of prosperity is
changing diets in Asia, with people tending to
eat less grain and more meat, dairy products and fruit as they rise to the
middle class. In China, for example, meat consumption
has doubled in the past 20 years and is expected to again double by 2035. A
shift from traditional rice and noodles to a meatier diet has helped double
East Asia’s “water footprint” for food
production since 1985, given the fact that it takes 12 times more water to grow
a kilogram of beef as compared to a kilogram of rice or wheat.

Take China and India, which
already are water-stressed economies. As China and India
gain economic heft, they are increasingly drawing international attention. The
two demographic titans are coming
into their own at the same time
in history, helping to highlight the
ongoing major shifts in global politics and economy. However, when one
examines natural endowments — such as arable land, water resources, mineral
deposits, hydrocarbons and wetlands — the picture that emerges is not exactly
gratifying for India and
China.

The two giants have entered
an era of perennial water shortages, which are likely to parallel, in terms of
per-capita water availability, the scarcity in the Middle
East before long. India and China
face the prospect that their rapid economic modernization may stall due to
inadequate water resources. This prospect would become a reality if their
industrial, agricultural and household demand for water continues to grow at the
present frenetic pace.

Water presents a unique
challenge. While countries can scour the world for oil, natural gas and
minerals to keep their economic machines humming, water cannot be secured
through international trade deals. Sustainable and integrated management of
national water resources is essential to prevent degradation, depletion and
pollution of water. To meet the gap between supply and demand, water
conservation, water efficiency, rainwater capture, water recycling and drip
irrigation would have to be embraced at national, provincial and local levels.

One can hope that advances in clean-water
technologies would materialize before water conflicts flare.
Low-cost, energy-efficient technologies for treating and
recycling water could emerge from the scientific progress on nanoparticles and
nanofibres and membrane bioreactors. But until that becomes a reality, Asian
states have little choice but to upgrade their antiquated irrigation systems and
adopt more water-efficient agricultural practices.

How to salvage climate change negotiations

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Chellaney

EARTH IN THE BALANCE

Confronting the Geopolitics of Climate Change

Brahma Chellaney

Project Syndicate

International climate-change negotiations are to be renewed this year. To be successful, they must heed the lessons of last December’s Copenhagen summit.

The first lesson is that climate change is a matter not only of science, but also of geopolitics. The expectation at Copenhagen that scientific research would trump geopolitics was misguided. Without an improved geopolitical strategy, there can be no effective fight against climate change.

The second lesson from Copenhagen is that to get a binding international agreement, there first must be a deal between the United States and China. These two countries are very dissimilar in many respects, but not in their carbon profiles: each accounts for between 22% and 24% of all human-generated greenhouse gases in the world. If a deal can be reached between the world’s two greatest polluting nations, which together are responsible for more than 46% of all greenhouse-gas emissions, an international accord on climate change would be easier to reach.

In Copenhagen, China cleverly deflected pressure by hiding behind small, poor countries and forging a negotiating alliance, known as the BASIC bloc, with three other major developing countries – India, Brazil, and South Africa. The BASIC bloc, however, is founded on political opportunism, and thus is unlikely to hold together for long. The carbon profiles of Brazil, India, South Africa, and China are wildly incongruent. For example, China’s per-capita carbon emissions are more than four times higher than India’s.

China rejects India’s argument that per-capita emission levels and historic contributions of greenhouse gases should form the objective criteria for carbon mitigation. China, as the factory to the world, wants a formula that marks down carbon intensity linked to export industries. As soon as the struggle to define criteria for mitigation action commences in future negotiations, this alliance will quickly unravel.

A third lesson from Copenhagen is the need for a more realistic agenda. Too much focus has been put on carbon cuts for nearly two decades, almost to the exclusion of other elements. It is now time to disaggregate the climate-change agenda into smaller, more manageable parts. After all, a lot can be done without a binding agreement that sets national targets on carbon cuts.

Consider energy efficiency, which can help bring one-quarter of all gains in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Energy inefficiency is a problem not only in the Third World, but also in the developed world. The US, for instance, belches out twice as much CO2 per capita as Japan, although the two countries have fairly similar per-capita incomes.

Furthermore, given that deforestation accounts for as much as 20% of the emission problem, carbon storage is as important as carbon cuts. Each hectare of rainforest, for example, stores 500 tons of CO2. Forest conservation and management thus are crucial to tackling climate change. In fact, to help lessen the impact of climate change, states need to strategically invest in ecological restoration – growing and preserving rainforests, building wetlands, and shielding species critical to our ecosystems.

The international community must also focus on stemming man-made environmental change. Environmental change is distinct from climate change, although there is a tendency on the part of some enthusiasts to blur the distinction and turn global warming into a blame-all phenomenon.

Man-made environmental change is caused by reckless land use, overgrazing, depletion and contamination of surface freshwater resources, overuse of groundwater, degradation of coastal ecosystems, inefficient or environmentally unsustainable irrigation practices, waste mismanagement, and the destruction of natural habitats. Such environmental change has no link to global warming. Yet, ultimately, it will contribute to climate variation and thus must be stopped.

As the international community’s experience since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change shows, it is easier to set global goals than to implement them. The non-binding political commitments reached in principle at Copenhagen already have run into controversy as well as varying interpretations, dimming the future of the so-called “Copenhagen Accord,” an ad hoc, face-saving agreement stitched together at the eleventh hour to cover up the summit’s failure. Only 55 of the 194 countries submitted their national action plans by the accord’s January 31 deadline.

The climate-change agenda has become so politically driven that important actors have tagged onto it all sorts of competing interests, economic and otherwise. That should not have been allowed to happen, but it has, and there can be no way forward unless and until we confront that fact.

You might also like to read more from Brahma Chellaney or return to our home page.

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Ensuring resource security: From a local problem to a global challenge

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Chellaney

Why Precious Is Strategic

Increasingly, ensuring resource security will go from being a local problem to a global problem

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, March 30, 2010

Water, food, energy and minerals are highly strategic resources. They are essential to human development and, in the case of water and food, to human survival. Food production is, meanwhile, closely intertwined with water and energy, while water and energy, for their part, are intimately linked to climate change. While the way we produce and consume energy makes up about two-thirds of all human-induced greenhouse gases, the availability of water resources will be directly affected by global warming.

Growing populations, rising affluence, changing diets and the demands of development have already, however, placed significant pressure upon these strategic resources. The global food system is already struggling to meet the present demand for food, yet the World Bank projects a rise of 50 per cent in global demand for food by 2030. To grow more food will require more water – a resource now also under great strain, as pollution is threatening the world’s freshwater resources.

The 2030 Water Resources Group, a consortium of private-social sector organisations, has pointed to a growing "water gap" in which global demand for water will be 40 per cent more than supply by 2030. Today, agriculture alone accounts for approximately 3,100 billion cubic metres or 71 per cent of global water withdrawals; by 2030, without water-efficiency gains, such withdrawals will increase to 4,500 billion m3. Water withdrawals by industry are projected to rise from 16 per cent of today’s global demand to 22 per cent in 2030, with the greatest growth in use coming from China, the world’s factory.

As for energy, the imperative to combat global warming goes against the current trends of rising consumption of energy, much of it produced with fossil fuel. Such is Asia’s appetite for energy that its share of global consumption is projected to almost double over the next 20 years – to about 48 per cent for oil and 22 per cent for natural gas. Yet, given its limited oil and gas reserves, Asia is particularly vulnerable to sudden supply shortage or disruption.

A further aspect regarding competition over resources is the intensification of resource geopolitics. Europe, for example, has worked hard to shape the direction of some of the Caspian Basin and Central Asian oil and gas pipelines because it has a stake in the issue of the routing. If Central Asian and Caspian Sea energy supplies are routed to the European market, that would help Europe diversify its imports and ease its dependence on Russia.

Within Asia, China has emerged as a key player in pipeline politics. Beijing has built its own pipeline to bring oil from Kazakhstan and is seeking two gas pipelines from Russia. These pipelines are a lynchpin of China’s strategy to diversify its imports away from over-reliance on the volatile Persian Gulf region, the current source of more than half of Chinese overseas purchases. In contrast, energy-poor India and Japan do not have a similar option. Lacking geographical contiguity with Central Asia and Iran, India will remain largely dependent on oil imports by sea from the Persian Gulf region.

China, with the world’s most resource-hungry economy, fears that in the event of a strategic confrontation, its economy could be held hostage by hostile naval forces through the interdiction of its oil imports. That same concern has prompted Beijing to build a strategic oil reserve, and China is now seeking to fashion two strategic corridors in southern Asia through which it could transfer Persian Gulf and African oil for its consumption by cutting the transportation distance and minimising its exposure to US-policed sea lanes.

The new Chinese-built port at Gwadar, Pakistan, represents China’s first strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea. Gwadar, at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, will link up with the Trans-Karakoram corridor to western China. China is also establishing a similar energy corridor through Myanmar.

The blunt and incontrovertible truth is that energy demands in Asia are beginning to influence strategic thinking and military planning. For some states, a rising dependence on oil imports has served to rationalise both a growing emphasis on maritime power and security as well as a desire to seek greater strategic space. Concerns over sealane safety and rising vulnerability to disruption of energy supplies are prompting some countries to explore avenues for joint cooperation in maritime security.

Water presents a unique challenge. While countries can scour the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep their economic machines humming, water cannot be secured through international trade deals. Sustainable and integrated management of national water resources is essential to prevent degradation, depletion and pollution of water. To meet the gap between supply and demand, water conservation, water efficiency, rainwater capture, water recycling and drip irrigation would have to be embraced at national, provincial and local levels.

One can hope that advances in clean-water technologies would materialise before water conflicts flare. Low-cost, energy-efficient technologies for treating and recycling water could emerge from the scientific progress on nanoparticles and nanofibres and membrane bioreactors.

The writer is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

Source: the Foresight Initiative.

India’s Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Chellaney

A radioactive Bill fraught with big risks

The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill seeks to burden the Indian taxpayer and encumber the rights of victims of any potential radioactive release from a foreign-built plant.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Hindu, March 13, 2010 [For full text of the Bill, click http://ow.ly/1jRas]

The government has finally released the text of its controversial nuclear-accident liability Bill. The text not only confirms the concerns expressed earlier over key elements of the proposed law, but also raises additional issues of worry.

What stands out in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill is the extent to which it goes to aid the business interests of the foreign reactor builders. In the process, the Bill seeks to financially burden the Indian taxpayer and encumber the rights of victims of any potential radioactive release from a foreign-built plant.

A special Indian law limiting liability in amount and in time has been sought by Washington for its nuclear-exporting firms, with the largest two, Westinghouse and General Electric (GE), set to win multibillion-dollar contracts to build several commercial nuclear power reactors. To forestall lawsuits filed against American suppliers in U.S. courts by victims of a nuclear catastrophe, Washington has also pressed for exclusive jurisdiction for Indian courts so that there will be no repeat of what happened after the Bhopal gas disaster. The Bill seeks to help out the U.S. firms on these counts, going at times even beyond what American law provides.

Under the Bill, the foreign reactor builder — however culpable it is for a nuclear accident — will be completely immune from any victim-initiated civil suit or criminal proceedings in an Indian court or in a court in its home country. The Bill actually turns the legal liability of a foreign reactor supplier for an accident into mere financial compensation — that too, pegged at a pittance and routed through the Indian state operator of the plant. Foreign suppliers will have no direct accident-related liability.

The foreign builders will bask under legal immunity because the Bill channels all legal liability to the Central Government. Clause 7 states the “Central Government shall be liable for nuclear damage in respect of a nuclear incident” when such liability exceeds the Rs.500-crore liability limit of the operator or where the accident occurs “in a nuclear installation owned by it [the Indian government].” The Union government will own all foreign-built reactors.

Indeed, the Bill creates a specious distinction between the operator and the government when both are fused in the Indian context. After all, it is the Indian state which will run all foreign-built plants through its operator, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL). Yet, throughout the Bill, the pretence of a U.S.-style separation between the operator and the government is maintained.

Under Clause 6, the maximum liability of the operator and the government combined has been set at “the rupee equivalent of 300 million special drawing rights (SDRs),” or Rs.2,087 crore ($458 million) — 23 times lower than the private-sector funds available under the equivalent U.S. law, the controversial Price-Anderson Act (labelled “Half-Price Anderson” by critics). Of this, the total liability of the operator has been limited to Rs.500 crore ($109 million). The Central government will be liable for damages in excess of Rs.500 crore but only up to Rs.2,087 crore.

In actual fact, all liability falls on the Indian taxpayer, whether it is the operator’s slice or the Central government’s portion. In contrast, the Price-Anderson system is without cost to the American taxpayer. In fact, the U.S., like Germany or Finland, has no cap on accident liability, with the U.S. Congress serving as the insurer of last resort.

The Indian state operator, the NPCIL, through a construction contract, can make the foreign builder legally responsible to pay compensation for an accident. But the amount payable by a foreign builder can only be up to the state operator’s own liability ceiling, which is a trifling Rs.500 crore ($109 million).

So, even if the accident were triggered by wilful negligence on the part of the foreign supplier and the consequences were catastrophic, all claims would have to be filed against the Indian state — with the NPCIL required to disburse the first Rs. 500 crore and the Central government the second portion up to Rs. 2,087 crore. The NPCIL could, in turn, try to recover its Rs. 500 crore from the foreign supplier. But for the Indian taxpayer, this is a lose-lose proposition.

That raises a fundamental question: What will it do to nuclear safety to grant foreign suppliers legal immunity upfront and to shift the liability to the Indian taxpayer?

Another key issue relates to the rights of victims. The Bill ensures that victims of a disaster involving a foreign-built reactor will not be able to sue the builder in its home country. Worse still, the Bill blocks the victims from suing the foreign supplier even in Indian courts.

Only the “operator shall have a right of recourse,” according to Clause 17. The state operator can sue the foreign supplier where “such right is expressly provided for in a contract in writing” and “the nuclear incident has resulted from the wilful act or gross negligence on the part of the supplier of the material, equipment or services, or of his employee.” But such a right of recourse can only be to meet the operator’s own small liability of Rs. 500 crore.

In fact, the Bill seriously shackles Indian courts. All nuclear-damage claims will be dealt with by a Claims Commissioner or a Nuclear Damage Claims Commission, and any award made “shall be final” and cannot be appealed in any court. “No civil court shall have jurisdiction to entertain any suit or proceedings in respect of any matter which the Claims Commissioner or the Commission, as the case may be, is empowered to adjudicate under this Act and no injunction shall be granted by any court or other authority in respect of any action taken or to be taken in pursuance of any power conferred by or under this Act,” according to Clause 35.

By contrast, the Price-Anderson Act permits economic (but not legal) channelling of liability, thereby allowing lawsuits and criminal proceedings against the reactor builder or any other party in U.S. courts. That is a key reason why the U.S. has not joined the Vienna or Paris convention — the two main international liability instruments. But the U.S. has become party to another convention it helped draft under the auspices of the IAEA — the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC), which is still not in force. The CSC, as the name suggests, is about compensation through an international fund, to be paid “supplementary” to the liability limit.

The Bill also limits liability in time, with Clause 18 stating: “The right to claim compensation for any nuclear damage caused by a nuclear incident shall extinguish if such claim is not made within a period of 10 years from the date of incident…” That provision was retained despite the Environment Ministry’s note of caution — revealed by this newspaper — that the 10-year time limit was untenable because damage to human health from a serious radioactive release “involves changes in DNAs, resulting in mutagenic and teratogenic changes, which take a long time to manifest.”

And although the Finance Ministry, in its comments on the Bill, had warned the proposed law would “expose the government to substantial liabilities for the failings of the private sector,” the Bill essentially seeks to give foreign reactor builders a free ride at the Indian taxpayer’s expense.

The Indian Bill, in effect, amounts to a huge hidden subsidy by protecting foreign reactor builders from the weight of the financial consequences of accidents. If the Bill is passed, the costs of doing business in India for foreign suppliers will be low but the assured profits will be high. To cover the maximum potential compensation payable for an accident, a foreign builder will need to take insurance for a mere Rs. 500 crore. What is more, the foreign builders are being freed from the task of producing electricity at marketable rates. The NPCIL will run the foreign-built reactors, with the state subsidising the high-priced electricity generated.

India is under no international obligation to pass such a law. In fact, efforts to create common international standards on liability and compensation since the Chernobyl disaster have made exceedingly slow progress. Yet the Bill’s accompanying “Statement of Objects and Reasons” creates the deceptive impression that the proposed law aims to bring India in line internationally. If anything, the Bill seeks to set a wrong international precedent by its mollycoddling of foreign suppliers.

To be sure, technological improvements in reactor-safety systems have significantly lowered the risks of a major nuclear accident. Yet nuclear technology remains intrinsically dangerous, and a single catastrophe anywhere in the world will impose colossal, long-term costs nationally and have a chilling effect on the global appeal of nuclear power. Given the nuclear safety and security issues that have been highlighted by recent incidents in India, accident liability is a matter demanding serious consideration.

The Bill attempts to set a new principle in international law: Profits are private, accident-related liabilities are all public. The government must answer the central question: In seeking to invite U.S. reactor builders, should a poor country rush to pass a special law that skews the business terms in their favour, gratuitously burdens the Indian taxpayer and ignores the lessons of the Bhopal gas disaster?

Keywords: Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, Brahma Chellaney, Bhopal gas disaster, U.S., India, General Electric, Westinghouse, NPCIL, CSC, IAEA

Learning from a failed summit

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Chellaney

Three lessons from Copenhagen

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times

The world now accepts that protecting our atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and even cyberspace — the "global commons" — is the responsibility of all countries. Enforcing that norm is proving the difficult part.

And nowhere is the difficulty greater than in two areas: shielding our atmosphere from the buildup of global-warming greenhouse gases; and preventing cybercrime.

Of these two challenges, combating climate change is proving most difficult to crack. The reason for that is not hard to seek: effectively combating climate change demands fundamental shifts in national policies and approaches, as well as lifestyle changes in the developed world. It is easier to visualize than to actually devise carbon standards that can protect the material and social benefits of continued economic growth in the developing world and also help shield prosperity in the developed countries.

International climate-change negotiations are to be renewed this year. To be successful, they must heed the lessons of Copenhagen.

The first lesson is that climate change is not just a matter of science but also a matter of geopolitics. Without improved geopolitics, there can be no real fight against climate change. The expectation at Copenhagen that scientific-research results would trump geopolitics was belied.

The need to focus on improving the geopolitics is also being highlighted by the damage, however limited, to the independence of scientific research. The credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has taken a beating since the Copenhagen summit, to the delight of climate-change skeptics. Just before Copenhagen we had "climate-gate," as the publication of damaging e-mail and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia became known, exposing highly politicized scientific research in the form of manipulated or suppressed data on human-driven climate change. After Copenhagen has came the IPCC’s own "glacier-gate" scandal over one of its key claims in a 2007 report.

The IPCC had to admit that its published claim that the Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rested not on peer-reviewed scientific research but on two 1999 magazine interviews with one glaciologist. The glaciologist’s assertion had been recycled in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group, World Wide Fund For Nature, and then enthusiastically picked up by the IPCC without any investigation. To IPCC’s acute mortification, the glaciologist went public after Copenhagen to say he had been misquoted in the magazine interviews.

To make matters worse, the coordinating lead author of the portion of the IPCC report, where the claim appeared, publicly acknowledged that the bogus claim had been intentionally incorporated to help put political pressure on Asian leaders.

The second lesson from Copenhagen is that to get an international deal, there first must be a deal between the U.S. and China. These two countries are very dissimilar, yet they have a similar carbon profile: Each contributes between 22 to 24 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gases in the world.

If a deal can be reached between the world’s two greatest polluting nations, which together are responsible for more than 46 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions, an international accord on climate change would be easier to reach. The United States and China, however, view the world in starkly different terms. The key point that has emerged from their latest diplomatic spats is China’s reluctance to subordinate domestic goals for larger international good, be it a climate-change regime or international efforts to put pressure scofflaw states. It also is unwilling to give up unfair practices, such as the gross undervaluation of the renminbi.

The Cold War undertones in U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent statement — likening the "information curtain" to the Iron Curtain — reflected an implicit admission that the central assumption guiding U.S. policy on China since the 1990s has gone awry: that assisting China’s economic rise would usher in political opening there. The strategy to use market forces and the Internet to open up a closed political system simply isn’t working. Indeed, the more economic power China has accumulated, the more adept it has become in extending censorship controls.

China strategically seems to bide its time until it can openly challenge the present U.S.-led global institutional structure, which has remained static since the mid-20th century. China accepts and supports parts of the existing order that serves its needs, such as the U.N. Security Council or the World Trade Organization. But it plays by its own rules when its interests do not mesh with the other parts.

In Copenhagen, China did everything to ensure no binding agreement emerged. To impede decision-making, it sent only a vice foreign minister to meetings set for the level of heads of government. It also used poor states as a front to obstruct progress through procedural wrangling.

Against that background, prospects of China and the U.S. cutting a deal on climate deal this year don’t look good. If anything, their disputes on trade, currency and security policies threaten to engender greater bilateral tensions and conflict.

A third lesson from Copenhagen, being reinforced by the present circumstances, is to have a more-realistic agenda. Too much focus has been put on carbon cuts for nearly two decades, almost to the exclusion of other elements. It is now time to disaggregate the climate-change agenda into smaller, more manageable parts. After all, a lot can be done without a binding agreement on carbon cuts through national targets.

Take energy efficiency, which can help bring a quarter of all gains in reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions. Energy inefficiency is a problem not only in the Third World, but also in the developed world. The U.S., for instance, belches out twice as much carbon dioxide per head as Japan, although the two countries have fairly similar per capita incomes.

Furthermore, given that deforestation accounts for as much as 20 percent of the emission problem, carbon storage is as important as carbon cuts. Each hectare of rain forest, for example, stores 500 tons of carbon dioxide. Forest conservation and management thus are important to tackle climate change. In fact, to help lessen the impact of climate change, states need to strategically invest in ecological restoration — growing and preserving rain forests, building wetlands and shielding species critical to our ecosystems

Man-made environmental change is caused by reckless land use, overgrazing, depletion and contamination of surface freshwater resources, overuse of groundwater, degradation of coastal ecosystems, inefficient or environmentally unsustainable irrigation systems, waste mismanagement, and the destruction of natural habitats, including mangroves and forests. Such environmental change has no link to global warming. Yet, ultimately, it will contribute to climate variation and thus must be stopped.

In fact, man-made environmental change is the main threat to the integrity of freshwater reserves in the world. Water shortages already are reaching critical proportions in several parts of the world. And this has a bearing on food security. This suggests that goals of food security increasingly will be difficult to achieve. The World Bank has projected the demand for food to rise 50 percent by 2030, even as the present global food system struggles to meet existing demand. Today, agriculture makes up more than two-thirds of all water withdrawals globally, while contributing 14 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions — about as much as running every car, ship and plane. To grow more food demands more water. But water availability already is coming under pressure in the most densely-populated parts of the world.

In that light, we need to focus as much on the water challenge as on the energy challenge. As the Global Trends 2025 report of the U.S. National Intelligence Council has warned that although strategic rivalries in the 21st century probably would center on issues related to trade, investment, technology innovation and acquisition, "increasing worries about resources — such as energy or even water — could easily put the focus back on territorial disputes or unresolved border issues. Asia is one region where the number of such border issues is particularly noteworthy."

Climate change and environmental change, given their implications for resource security and social and economic stability, are clearly threat multipliers. While continuing to search for a binding international agreement, the international community should also explore innovative approaches, such as global public-private partnership initiatives. As the international experience since the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change bears out, it is easier to set goals than to implement them. How many state parties to the Kyoto Protocol have faithfully implemented their obligations on carbon cuts under that treaty?

The political commitments reached in principle at Copenhagen already have run into controversy as well as into varying interpretations, marring their value. They also have created bad blood between the BASIC bloc of four leading developing countries and the broader grouping of developing nations known as the Group of 77 (G77). The smaller countries in the G77 accuse the BASIC bloc of China, India, Brazil and South Africa of acting unilaterally and opaquely in stitching together that nonbinding agreement with the U.S. in Copenhagen.

The "Copenhagen Accord," an ad hoc, face-saving agreement at the eleventh hour to cover up the summit failure, seeks to commit major developing countries to "implement mitigation actions," open to "international consultations and analysis."

Its future, however, is uncertain. Only 55 of the 194 countries submitted their national action plans on climate change by the January 31 deadline, forcing the U.N. to push back the deadline indefinitely.

The BASIC bloc indeed is a partnership founded on political opportunism and is unlikely to hold for long. The carbon profiles of Brazil, India, South Africa and China are hardly similar. China’s per capita carbon emissions are more than four times higher than India’s. It rejects India’s approach that per capita emission levels and historic contributions to the buildup of greenhouse gases should form the objective criteria for carbon mitigation. China, as the world’s back factory, wants a different formula that marks down carbon intensity linked to export industries. Once criteria for mitigation action are sought to be defined in future negotiations, this alliance will unravel quickly.

More broadly, the climate-change agenda has become so politically driven that all sorts of competing economic and other interests have been tagged on by important actors. Climate change should not be allowed to become a convenient peg on which to hang assorted national interests.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

The Japan Times: Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010

Stagecraft and Statecraft

Category Archives: Energy-Environment

A blow to the global nuclear-power industry

Fukushima nos recuerda las debilidades y amenazas de las centrales nucleares en el mundo

India’s nuclear-reactor imports a giant scandal in the making

The paradox of nuclear power: A water-guzzling technology, yet very vulnerable to water

China’s Murky Hydropolitics

Asia’s Water Crisis: Strategic Implications

How to salvage climate change negotiations

EARTH IN THE BALANCE

Confronting the Geopolitics of Climate Change

Brahma Chellaney

Ensuring resource security: From a local problem to a global challenge

India’s Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill

A radioactive Bill fraught with big risks

Learning from a failed summit