Politics of climate change: Why India wants to support to IPCC now?

Barun S. Mitra

An edited version of this article titled “India should support a toothless IPCC”, appeared in the Wall Street Journal Asia, on 9 Feb 2010.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed his support for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its leader, Rajendra Pachauri, at a local energy conference in New Delhi, on Friday February 5. The move has surprised many observers, but it may prove to be politically astute.

The IPCC’s credibility is undoubtedly in tatters today. From climategate to glaciergate, Amazongate, natural-disaster gate, Chinagate and now Africagate, the floodgates of bad science have opened. Given all that, plus the much-publicized flap between Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Mr. Pachauri over the science behind “melting” Himalayan glaciers weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, it would superficially make sense for the government to jettison Mr. Pachauri as soon as possible—not back him.

But Delhi isn’t just backing him and the organization. At Friday’s annual flagship event of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)—which Mr. Pachauri has headed for almost 30 years—the Prime Minister offered to provide technical assistance through a newly established glacier research center. The government has also formed a network of scientific institutions to develop domestic science and research capacities on climate issues, the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment.

There can’t be any more effective way to demonstrate one’s lack of confidence in the U.N.’s premiere clearing house for climate science than to offer scientific assistance to the beleaguered IPCC. Under normal times, lesser mortals could hardly have dared to offer support to the omniscient IPCC. But these are extra-ordinary times!

So, today it is in the Indian government’s interest to perpetuate a weak IPCC and a toothless Mr. Pachauri at its helm. Given the recent scientific scandals, the IPCC is hardly in a position to influence Indian policy making. The group’s continued presence will be a constant reminder of its folly and lack of credibility. No one from the IPCC can again cavalierly dismiss their critics as promoting “voodoo science” or “vested interests,” as was Mr. Pachauri’s wont. By cementing a weak IPCC in place, the Indian government may appear to be a knight in shining armor before its own constituents, having subdued a potentially threatening international agency.

Mr. Pachari is now in his second term as the head of IPCC. He is not a climate scientist—or even a scientist at all. He is an able science administrator who has built his institute from scratch. Influential governments in the rich world probably accepted Mr. Pachauri not just for his redoubtable skill in institution-building, but also in the hope that by placing an Indian like him at the head of IPCC, he might be able to influence Indian policy. The Nobel Prize awarded to IPCC added a further coat of gloss.

That’s important because after all, if countries like China and India do not subscribe to any commitment to reducing emissions, developed countries’ best efforts will not have any significant impact. Having bought the idea of man-made global warming, rich countries had to try and ensure that developing countries fell in line. And it seems the hope among policy makers in the developed world was that Mr. Pachauri may be the man to deliver India to the altar of global warming.

But the real realpolitik of today’s democratic India is such that no one can dare to be blind to the developmental aspirations of the people, least of all the political leaders, who have to face the population at elections every few years. Even if some Indian elites and political leaders wanted to sell the future of the country by agreeing to some form of restrictions on energy usage—and thus on economic growth—in the fiercely competitive world of Indian politics they would stand no chance.

The IPCC was created as a way to make the world, particularly the poor, fall in line and support expensive climate-change initiatives by overwhelming them with the apparent authority of the world’s leading technical body on the subject, backed by alleged scientific consensus. This attempt was doomed to fail, primarily because scientific inquiry does not respect consensus, and orthodoxy is anathema to scientific progress. So the fall of IPCC was inevitable, and that seed was laid at the time of its conception, in the very nature in which IPCC was sought to be built.

There is some poetic justice in this whole drama. Countries like India, which were always apprehensive of institutions like the IPCC, now might prefer the shadow of that institution. They might believe that a weak IPCC will have to allow them to draw up their own science and pursue their own interests. The rich countries that gave birth to the idea of IPCC cannot afford to disown it without exposing their own underlying design. They could try and replace its head, in the hope that the new face might be able to rebuild the credibility of the institution. But having tested blood, there is no reason why the other set of countries will let the current advantage pass so easily.

The IPCC has been checkmated, as have so many other U.N. institutions before it. This is the inevitable consequence of the desire for global government under the misguided belief that ordinary people may not know what is in their own interest and for their own future. With the deepening of democratic ideals, people power can no longer be overturned so easily. The failure of the IPCC shows that sovereignty still lies with the people, not with the aspirants for global government.

Mr. Mitra is director of the Liberty Institute, an independent think tank in New Delhi.