ToxicsWatch, Journal of Earth, Science, Economy and Justice

In the backdrop of environmental and human disasters in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima, there is a compulsion to think about the water footprint of 14, 500 nuclear weapons, 2, 000 nuclear tests and 495 nuclear reactors. Within India, the water footprint of 23 nuclear reactors in eight nuclear plants is yet to be factored in. The nuclear plant in Narora, Bulandsahar, Uttar Pradesh and the upcoming nuclear plant in Rooppur, Pabna, Bangladesh poses a threat to the residents of Ganga river basin.

UNDP’s report of 1994 introduced a new concept of human security, which equates security with people rather than territories, with development rather than arms. It recognised that water faces biggest environmental threat. It regards water scarcity as a factor in ethnic strife and political tension. It referred to the silent emergencies caused by polluted water and degraded land which puts lives and livelihoods at risk.

UNDP’s special report of 2022 on human security underlined that natural systems provide food and water provide besides ecosystem services such as watershed protection, and climate control. But in 123 countries an increase in wealth between 1990 and 2014 has been accompanied by a decline in natural capital. It recognises that cyberwarfare can disrupt electricity grids and water system.

The simile of water flow for data flow for creating data grid and water grid is remniscent of Marx’s observation regarding capitalism’s tendency towards centralisation, which ultimately overpowers the centrefugal forces of competition. Digitalisation and centralisation of data seems to entail colonisation of the ecological space and human space.  

UN Convention on Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses came into force in August 2014 after the ratification by 36 countries. None of the countries in the Himalayan watershed have ratified it because of Article 7 of the Convention which requires that States “take all appropriate measures to prevent the causing of significant harm” to other States sharing an international watercourse in the upstream and downstream. The interests of upstream and downstream States do no seem to converge as far as exploitation of the water is concerned. The definition of the watercourse in the Convention is quite parochial.      

The idea of water grid by linking rivers was rejected by Prof. S. R. Hashim headed National Commission on Integrated Water Resources Development Plan in 1999. But it too re-birth because of Supreme Court’s orders in 2003 and 2012. The proposal of diversion of some 39 rivers for Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) project, the world’s biggest project is likely to give birth to water security issues because “international watercourses” like Ganga, Kosi, Mechi and Brahmaputra are involved. It can adversely impact relations with Nepal, Bangladesh and China. Under Indo-Bangladesh treaty on sharing of Ganga waters, Ganga is deemed a deficit river but as part of the ILR project it is presented as a surplus river by National Water Development Agency (NWDA), an agency whose only mandate is to link major Himalayan rivers and Peninsular rivers at any environmental and human cost. The economic rationality of ILR like projects is contrary to water cycle and biological cycle because NWDA holds that there are “surplus” rivers, “deficit” rivers and water which goes o the sea is wasted. This assumption is unscientific and contrary to folk wisdom. It treats rivers as pipelines which can be twisted, mutilated and diverted for the ILR project. The project entails re-writing the geography of South Asia. It is caught in a time warp. The data on which the project is based from the 1970s. It ignores the fact that Himalayan rivers are unpredictable. This pre-climate crisis era project does not factor in green house gas emissions due to colossal land use change. The project is unfolding despite opposition from several states. It gives birth to myriad gnawing human security concerns.     

Disregarding the approach of the UNDP, UNFCCC and the G-77 group of countries, which focuses on human security, some members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) has been unsuccessfully attempting to establish a natural security narrative for climate crisis. UNSC failed to do in 2007, 2011 and 2020 and 2021 because of opposition from Russia, China, India and G-77 countries. The natural security narrative emerged out of a report entitled “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change”, from a US government-funded national security think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses. The Military Advisory Board and the study team that authored the report received briefings from the U.S. and U.K. intelligence community, climate scientists, and business and state leaders. The US military report recommended, "Military planning should view climate change as a threat to the balance of energy access, water supplies, and a healthy environment, and it should require a response." There are attempts underway to pursue this narrative despite failure at the UNSC. In February 2023, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting took the position that "Water security is a national security issue." NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly has published a draft report entitled “Turning The Tide: Addressing the Impact of Water Insecurity on Allied Security” in May 2024.    

International financial institutions (IFIs) like World Bank Group has been promoting contradictory and inconsistent projects wherein they consider river water quality improvement projects to be different from water quantity projects like dams. These institutions do not recognise that when the flow of water in the river is depleted, water quality deteriorates. Such projects are a threat to water security in particular and the river basins in general.

The disasters in the Himalayas and Western Ghats remind that water has memory. It never forgets itS course. The military people, economists and technocrats remain deaf to the message from the rivers. The solution lies in adopting genuine river basin and watershed based approach beyond parochial anthropocentric nation-state framework, which normalises and naturalises financialization and monetisation of natural wealth.          

Dr. Gopal Krishna's lecture at a webinar on "Security at Crossroads: Land, Food, Water" organised by the Calcutta Research Group (CRG) on 13th August 2024.  The other speakers were: Dr. Rajendran Narayanan, a Data Scientist who teaches at Azim Premji University and Dr. Meenakshi Nair Ambujam, a post-doctoral fellow affiliated with the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. The webinar was chaired and moderated by Prof. Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury Professor, Department of Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata.

The event details to the first webinar of the series "Security at Crossroads" is at http://www.mcrg.ac.in/Security_Studies/Security_Studies_Webinars.asp and the video link is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO91sIHSYH4

It has to be read with the Report of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts published on 25 October 2022. The report is available at: https://unfccc.int/documents/609162

The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage adopted at the 19th Conference of Parties (COP-19) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2013 promotes the implementation of approaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts. The mechanism is established under the UNFCCC to assist developing countries that are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate crisis by enhancing knowledge and understanding of comprehensive risk management approaches to address loss and damage, strengthening dialogue, coordination, coherence and synergies among relevant stakeholders and enhancing action and support, including finance, technology and capacity-building. This is being done to implement Article 8 of the Paris Agreement adopted at COP 21 of the UNFCCC. 

The Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism guides the implementation of those functions through its work plan, and with the support of thematic expert groups. The current work plan has five strategic work streams, addressing loss and damage associated with climate change impacts. In compliance with its mandate the Executive Committee has developed initiatives, such as the Fiji Clearing House for Risk Transfer that connects experts and those looking for risk transfer solutions in order to build tailor-made responses.

The recent origin of "loss and damage" can be traced in the Report of COP-13 held in Bali, Indonesia in December 2007 published in March 2008 when Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 at COP-3 was still in force. The report is available at: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2007/cop13/eng/06a01.pdf

The concept of "loss and damage" is essentially modeled on 1963 Brussels Supplementary Convention on Third Party Liability from Nuclear Energy, which could not be incorporated in the text of the UNFCCC in 1992 when it was adopted and signed was signed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the Earth Summit n Rio de Janeiro. It entered into force in 1994. The COP-1 was held in Berlin in 1995. The journey of climate law from Berlin to Sharm-El Sheikh has been incomplete without the provision for liability of some 40 rich countries for the loss and damage caused by their "dangerous interference with the climate system". 

The text addressing loss and damage due to climate crisis is likely to be finalized before the conclusion of the COP-27 on 18 November. 

Gopal Krishna

Some 24 members of the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) and 55 countries of the African Group (AG) comprising 54℅+17℅=71 ℅ of world population have been excluded from unjust 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This situation creates a compelling logic for adoption of the third commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol for post 2020 period because the 37 countries failed to comply with it with impunity. 

The COP 26 negotiators suffers from poverty of imagination under the influence of corporations which have made nation states subservient to their naked lust for profit at any cost. These 37 countries played a notorious role in killing the Kyoto Protocol and replacing it with a non-binding treaty. 

Let us recall how at COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015, the Parties to the UNFCCC reached a voluntary agreement (Paris Agreement) to combat climate crisis. The Paris Agreement was framed pursuant to Washington Declaration that envisaged extinction of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) principle. Developing countries were made to agree to undermining of CBDR principle using donor' influence over them. 

The key polluters paid lip service instead of actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future. The trend of insincerity continues to envelope COP26. The key polluters would like people to forget that they failed to meet the targets for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012) that required them to reduce emissions of the six main greenhouse gases, namely, Carbon dioxide (CO2); Methane (CH4); Nitrous oxide (N2O); Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs); Perfluorocarbons (PFCs); and Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). 

Under the Protocol, limit was imposed on the maximum amount of emissions (measured as the equivalent in carbon dioxide) that a Party may emit over a commitment period in order to comply with its emissions target, country’s assigned amount. The individual targets for 36 countries included in Annex B to the Kyoto Protocol for the first commitment period and their emissions targets included EU, US, Canada, Japan, Croatia, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Ukraine, Australia. US did not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. In December 2011, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol effective from December 2012.

The Protocol had extended the 1992 UNFCCC that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part one) global warming is occurring and (part two) that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997. It had entered into force in February 2005. 

As a consequence of the insincerity of the key polluters, the 36 countries global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010.

Their insincerity became more pronounced during the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2013-2020). The 37 countries that had binding targets included Australia, the European Union (and its then 28 member states, now 27), Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine did not put into legal force the targets under the second commitment period. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia  did not take targets in the second commitment period. Canada had withdrawn from the Protocol in 2012 and USA did not ratify it. 

In a stark demonstration of the dishonesty and insincerity of the 37 highly polluting countries, the Doha Amendment to Kyoto Protocol for the second commitment period entered into force only 31 December 2020 on the expiry of second commitment period, making all talk of combating climate crisis by these 37 countries even under Paris Agreement totally untrustworthy. 

In a clear illustration of how international law is just a declaration of pious intentions, Paris Agreement entered into force in November 2016 within 6 months of its adoption, prior to the entry of force of the second commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. In effect, it is crystal clear that Washington Declaration was aimed at killing the Kyoto Protocol. There was no need for non-binding Paris Agreement, there was a requirement

It is high time for the G-79 (LDMC + AG) and G-77 (134 counties) to unsign the Paris Agreement, and demand amendment of the Kyoto Protocol for the third commitment period. 

The Paris Agreement suffers from poverty of ambition to combat climate crisis. It must be realised that Paris Agreement cannot keep global temperature rise below 2° C above pre-industrial levels. It suffers from poverty of competence to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5° C. It will never make finance flows consistent with a low GHG emissions and climate-resilient pathway. Unless the entire focus is brought on the “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) of the 37 countries in pursuance the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol, there cannot be climate justice. 

It may be recalled that the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) that met for the first time along with COP 22 of UNFCCC in Marrakesh in November 2016 was as uninspiring as the COP21. It revealed that jargons like 'climate neutrality' are inconsequential. 

The Paris Agreement is an exercise in linguistic sleight of hand with regard to binding commitments vis-a-vis economy-wide reduction targets. 

It is increasingly evident that market-based approaches involving carbon pricing, monetisation and claims of transferal of mitigation outcomes are simply an exercise in fishing in the troubled waters.

The Warsaw International Mechanism, on a cooperative and facilitative basis with respect to loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate crisis is an exercise in verbal gymnastics. 

The Financial Mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund (GCF) do not serve the cause of combating climate crisis and international cooperation on climate-safe technology development and transfer. 

The Paris Agreement's transparency and accounting system must be seen in the context of right to anonymity extracted by the transnational investors. 

No effort at combating "dangerous interference in the atmosphere", the polite word for war on mother earth can succeed unless these efforts are conducted along side the efforts of the UN's Open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. 

It may be recollected that at its 26th session, on 26 June 2014, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 26/9 by which it decided “to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, whose mandate shall be to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.”

The open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEIGWG) has had seven sessions so far.  Ahead of the seventh session, the Permanent Mission of Ecuador, on behalf of the Chairmanship of the OEIGWG, released a third revised draft legally binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The third revised draft served as the basis for State-led negotiations during the seventh session, which took place from 25 to 29 October 2021.

In such a backdrop, G-79 and G-77 countries must act prior to the “global stocktake” and put in place the  framework for the third commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol. These countries must combine their efforts with work underway for a binding treaty for regulating TNCs and other business enterprises for making them subservient to interest of climate and communities. There can be no climate solution without regulation of TNCs who have hijacked national governments in general and in the 37 countries in particular. 

The proposed third commitment period of Kyoto Protocol under UNFCCC must factor in the role of weapon manufacturers including nuclear weapon owners who are the biggest polluters, they constitute an unacknowledged cause of climate crisis. 

It has come to light that Pentagon budget makes USA, a bigger polluter than 140 countries combined. US military is the largest emitter of green house fases. It may be recalled that it was US government managed to incorporate fake climate solution-carbon trade in the Kyoto Protocol. The dilution of Protocol was conceded by EU and others to keep USA as a party to the Protocol. USA became a party to the Protocol but subsequent to the dilution it unsigned the treaty. By doing so it boycotted both the first and the second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol. LDMC and AG must reject fake solutions to the crisis. The EU should recall and re-adopt it's original position against carbon trade. 

In order to combat climate crisis, to begin with weapon owners and the 37 countries must be made to ratify the UN treaty on prohibition of nuclear weapons which came into force from January 2021. 

Gopal Krishna

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The author is a law and public policy researcher has been tracking and critiquing climate negotiations since 1999.