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The
National Action Plan on Climate Change reiterated the need for
stepping up action against irreversible Climate Change. Given the
diverse nature and interlinkages with socio-economic and political
nature, the climate change deserves a better deal. The NAPCC is a
good attempt but it falls short. It fails to give clear direction and
means to achieve a climate resilient society. In an attempt to
mainstream these concerns few Civil Societies working on Climate
Change under the CANSA Network met at Indian Social Institute, New
Delhi and threshed out recommendations after consultation on the
various opportunities for building up the regions resilience.
Civil
Society Resolution
We,
the civil societies, as active partners in Climate Change adhere to
these tenets and suggestions:
I.
Overarching Principles:
Reiterate
the broad principle encapsulated in the National Action Plan and work
towards
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Shift in emphasis from a centralized
production model to a decentralized/democratic production model.
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Joint effort - not withstanding the
obligation of developed countries, India alongwith its regional
partners must deploy its own resources for both mitigation and
adaptation, and both need to go hand in hand.
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Protecting lives and livelihood of people in
India and the regions through sustainable development and take
cognizance that economic growth will not be just sufficient.
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Synergy of market led investments alongwith
employment of public resource to combat climate change.
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Decoupling of Growth and Climate change for
sustainable solution.
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Differentiated responsibilities and
cognizance of historical obligations in a equitable manner
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Secure and safer technology use options.
Apply the “Precautionary Principle” especially in situations where
there are high risks of ecological/social costs, such as use of GMO
technology in agriculture or big dams and big hydropower projects or
Carbon, Capture and Storage for power plants, or large scale deployment
of bio-fuels.
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Strengthening and utilizing the traditional
knowledge systems and practices in dealing with climate change
alongside modern science and technologies.
II.
Specific Demands on Mitigation and Adaptation
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Paradigm shift in emphasis from “Centralised
Energy systems” to de-centralised energy systems and a policy
supporting the same. There are clear advantages from the decentralized
system which is evident from:
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Reduced Losses
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Increased efficiency
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Reduced infrastructure cost
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Better quality
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Rural development and livelihood generation
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Inclusive growth and energy secure
communities
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Potentially more democratic systems with
participation of the people at all levels
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Enhanced Energy use Efficiency and energy
modesty at domestic and commercial usage.
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Introduction of Legislation and deterrence
to promote innovations towards energy efficiency and phase out wasteful
uses and practices. Specifically, the government should implement
progressive and mandatory energy efficiency standards cutting across
all energy applications in the country with clear time lines.
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Incentivise energy use efficiency through
broader approaches like
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Reforms in the banking sector to ensure
that energy efficiency projects are made bankable
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Needs substantive government investment to
promote efficiency, especially in enabling the small and medium
enterprises sector to change over from energy inefficient production
and products to efficient ones
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Regulatory systems to implement and monitor
efficiency
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Trading of efficiency certificates
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Substantial reduction in Transmission and
Distribution Losses are reduced to a maximum of 10% by 2012
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Improvement of plant load factor to at least
85-90%, which needs to be achieved not later than 2012.
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Curbing of mis-use of electricity: Related
to efficiency, is the current policy of unrealistic pricing system
especially in the electricity sector. This is one of the causes for
huge quantum of electricity being mis-used. Hence, it is imperative
that we have in place, a dual pricing mechanism, which is based on the
usage and consumption patterns and specially with regard to “free
electricity”, it should be strictly on the basis of “farm sized based
pricing policy”.
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Increasing the energy mix: India has very
high potentials for Renewable Energy, which currently forms only 4% of
the energy mix in the country.
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Instituting a National Portfolio Standard:
While some states have in place renewable energy portfolio standards
which specify a certain quantum of renewable energy uptake in the
state, a number of them do not have and further more, there is no
national portfolio standards either. (25% of total installed capacity
by 2020).
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Rationalise the reneweable energy caps:
Further, only a few states have put in place a special tariff scheme
for renewable energy (feed in tariff) and in the case of solar energy,
the feed in tariff scheme sets a upper cap of 50 MW only
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Repeal of Bio-Energy Policy and removal of
blending commitments. On bio-energy, however, we would like state that,
we support only very small scale, farm and community level tapping of
bio-based energy sources for use within communities to facilitating
their energy sovereignty and not for export outside the communities. Hence,
we also demand the repeal of the national bio-fuel policy 2008, for the
reason that it has targets for bio-fuel blending, which is unacceptable
and must be dropped.
On
Large Power Plants and Dams:
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Follow International Guidelines for larget
power and dam projects: We demand that the deployment of large scale
projects of coal, hydro and nuclear power are made only after all
viable alternatives of reduction of T&D losses, energy
efficiency, demand side management (including peak hour demand
management) and renewable energy have been explored, implemented and
exhausted and after a comprehensive cost benefit analysis in full
participation with the people. For large hydro power projects, the
planning and decision making process should follow the guidelines of
the World Commission on Dams (http://www.dams.org/report/).
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Rigorous EIA on Power Projects:
Historically, Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) has proved inadequate to
accurately measure social and environmental impacts of large
conventional power projects (Coal, Hydro and Nuclear). Therefore, their
deployment must be done only after a rigorous and proper assessment of
all risks and costs. This would involve:
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considerable strengthening of the
Environment and Social Impact Assessment regulations that have remained
largely on paper and the assessments are unaccountable and pathetic
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Extensive stake-holder consultation right
from the stage of beginning of project formulation.
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The EIA and SIA should be formulated in full
consultation with the local people. The EIA should include an
assessment of the potential contribution of the project to the green
ground gas emissions during its entire life cycle, right till the stage
of decommissioning.
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Full EIA and SIA should be available to the
local people in the language and manner they can understand, at least
two months before the public hearing date
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The public hearings should be conducted by
an independence panel, which would also certify to what extent the EIA
and project proponent have addressed the issues raised at the public
hearing and what next steps are required, including a new or improved
EIA and fresh public hearings.
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If the public hearing committee finds that
EIA has been incomplete or doctored, or giving wrong, biased or
tendentious information, the independent panel can order black listing
of and stoppage of payments to such EIA consultants.
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There should be a legally mandatory
committee for each project in which at least 50% of members should be
from the local area, for monitoring and ensuring that the EIA-SIA is
implemented as required, pari passu with the
project and when that is not the case, the committee has the power to
order stoppage of construction till the EIA-SIA implementation catches
up. Such committee should also continue to function during the project
operation.
ADAPTATION
ISSUES
Water
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The approach towards water must not be a
purely targeting an increase in the resource base, in any case not
through more large projects. Equity and access to water for all through
rights based regime must be a central plank for any plans that the
government implements.
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In this light, suitable changes must be made
to the National Water Policy. For the formulation of a new NWP, a
detailed participatory exercise should be started immediately. The
NAPCC recommends such review only in consultation with states, but this
process has to start from the people and would have to be aimed at a
new NWP.
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Stop the ongoing destruction and neglect of
natural, local and traditional water harvesting systems (including
tanks, wetlands, johads, flowing rivers) and rehabilitate the systems
that have been already destroyed, create new systems were possible, as
first priority when going for new developments
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Emphasise on groundwater recharge and
rainwater harvesting strategies. Groundwater is India’s water lifeline
and that lifeline can be sustained only through direct recharge where
appropriate and through protection, rejuvenation and creation of local
water systems.
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Make available adequate funds in the budget
to maintain the existing water related infrastructure rather than
spending money on new schemes. For example, there is a need to ensure
that dams and canals do not get silted up quickly and therefore there
is a need to make adequate investments for catchment area treatment of
existing large, medium and small dams. Similarly maintenance of the
canal infrastructure to ensure optimum use of created infrastructure
should be given first allocation of available resources. To ensure that
all this actually gets done in a transparent way and accountable way,
the governance in water sector will have to be changed so that the
local people have decisive say in planning, decision making,
implementation and operation of the systems.
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To ensure proper and optimum functioning of
the existing and under construction reservoirs in the interest of the
people, each reservoir should have a reservoir operation committee, in
which at least 50% members should come from the local communities. As a
first step in this direction, the reservoir operation rules and actual
reservoir operation details (inflows, outflows, levels, capacities,
anticipated inflows) should all be made public on daily basis for each
large dam in India.
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Similarly for embankments, canals,
pipelines, and other related water infrastructure. Such committees
should be formed right from planning stage of the projects and they
should be statutory bodies with powers to make necessary mandatory
orders with respect to the functioning of the projects.
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While considering new storage requirements,
the priorities should be in following order:
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for ensuring sustainable use of created
capacities, e.g. arresting siltation.
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For ensuring optimum use of the created
capacities, in large number of cases it has been found that huge
quantities of water remain unused till the next monsoon arrives
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For groundwater recharge
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For creating local water systems through
tanks, lakes, wetlands, watershed development and so on
Only
after all this has been shown to be exhausted in a credible way,
should a larger project in any basin be considered.
It has
to be believed that the Climate change problem has been created by
the over exploitation of the natural resources for the economic
purposes. For this, the core of the plan of action should feature
sustainability. The action plan should be developed in the paradigm
of sustainable usage of the resources and this will create a future
which will be equitable, fair and climate resilient.
October
2008
(These
recommendations are part of the larger documents titled “Draft
Recommendation to the Government for strengthening the National
Action Plan on Climate Change”,
held at New Delhi during September 25-26, 2008, in response to the
National Action Plan on Climate Change)
Endorsed
by the Trade
and Climate Change Team, Centad.
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