India: Renewing The Solar Energy Pledge On World Environment Day

Today, June 5th is World Environment Day and this year's theme is Green Economy: Does it include you? According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), green economy is described as:

one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. In other words, we can think of a green economy as an economic environment that achieves low carbon emissions, resource efficiency and at the same time is socially inclusive.

World Environment Day 2012 Logo. Image Courtesy UNEP

Renewable Energy is one of the key sectors of a green economy. In India, growing concerns about energy security have led the government to commit to the development of renewable energy, with special focus on harnessing the abundantly available solar energy. In 2008, during the launch of India's National Action Plan on Climate Change, the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had stated:

Our vision is to make India’s economic development energy-efficient. Over a period of time, we must pioneer a graduated shift from economic activity based on fossil fuels to one based on non-fossil fuels and from reliance on non-renewable and depleting sources of energy to renewable sources of energy. In this strategy, the sun occupies centre-stage, as it should, being literally the original source of all energy. We will pool our scientific, technical and managerial talents, with sufficient financial resources, to develop solar energy as a source of abundant energy to power our economy and to transform the lives of our people.

In line with this aim, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, which was launched on the 11^th January, 2010 by the Prime Minister, has set an ambitious target of deploying 20,000 MW of grid connected solar power by 2022. Given that high cost is a key challenge in implementing solar projects, the solar mission aims to "reduce cost of solar power generation in the country through (i) long term policy; (ii) large scale deployment goals; (iii) aggressive R&D; and (iv) domestic production of critical raw materials, components and products, as a result to achieve grid tariff parity by 2022".

Solar Panels in Uttaranchal, India. Image by Barefoot Photographers of Tilonia. Used Under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

On 24th May 2012, the Union Minister of New & Renewable Energy Dr. Farooq Abdullah, while addressing the first meeting of the Solar Energy Industry Advisory Council (SEIAC) in New Delhi, called upon the industry leaders to invest in Solar Energy Projects in the country. He assured them of the full support of the Government in setting up solar projects based on both grid connected as well as off grid applications. At the same time, he asked industry leaders to respond favourably and positively to the incentives offered by the Government in this direction. The Minister said that India has a vast scope for developing solar energy applications as still many parts of rural India do not have access to grid connected electricity. He cited the example of high altitude places in Ladakh where solar energy has changed people’s lives.

Solar panels on the walls of Thiksay Monastery, Ladakh. Image by Jessie Hey. Used under CC BY2.0.

Mr. Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, blogged on the occasion of the World Environment Day. He wrote:

Despite being a power surplus state, Gujarat made great advances in solar energy. Our state was the earliest to come up with a solar policy. Just a few months ago, Gujarat dedicated to the nation 600 MW solar power to the nation along with Asia’s largest solar park at Charanka. Today, Gujarat produces 2/3^rd of the solar power in India.

One grassroot initiative that has been focusing on popularizing solar electrification in remote, rural areas since 1984, is the Barefoot College of Tilonia, the brainchild of Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy. In this TED video, Mr. Roy talks bout the Barefoot methodology. The Barefoot College essentially "trains a few members of the community to be ‘Barefoot Solar Engineers’ (BSEs)". These BSEs in turn install, repair and maintain solar lighting units within the community as well as train other community members.  The video below tells the story of the first women Barefoot Solar Engineers of Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Today, the Barefoot Solar Engineers are growing in numbers and can be found not only in India but in many countries around the world as can be seen on this map - truly a global movement.

On this World Environment Day, India is renewing its solar energy pledge - to bring down costs, scale up solar infrastructure, train more solar evangelists and perhaps spark a solar revolution.

This post was first published in Global Voices Online

The Many Faces Of Madness - A Film by Amar Kanwar & FES India

The Many Faces of Madness, a film made by Amar Kanwar & produced by Foundation for Ecological Security Anand, Gujarat, is an engaging short film that takes a look at ecological destruction and the appropriation of the Commons in India.

I'd like to express my thanks to the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) for giving me permission to share this informative film

Conflict of multiple objectives and the need to make trade-offs critical challenges in the management of Commons, says Jairam Ramesh

In the first post of the series, we saw what Shri Jairam Ramesh, India's Minister of Environment and Forests, had to say on the global commons (climate change) in his keynote address at the inaugural session of the 13th biennial IASC International Conference in Hyderabad. 

In this post we will look at what he had to say about the regional (rivers and aquifers) and local commons (management of forests).

Addressing the issue of regional commons, the Minister said:

Central to the management of regional commons, is the existence of multiplicity of objectives and the extent to which you are going to have tradeoffs amongst these objectives. Take a river basin for example. 20 years ago, the concept of a minimum environmental flow did not exist in our policy discourse. So, we planned a series of Hydel power projects, we planned a series of irrigation projects, we had a series of drinking water projects, and today we are finding that many of our important and ecologically sensitive river systems we do not have what now ecologists are coming to call as the minimum environmental flow. 

How do we deal with issues of minimum environmental flow when we have multiple pressures on the commons , when we have multiple pressures on the river systems. We have pressure from the need for developing Hydel projects, we have pressure for drinking water to reach a larger population, but at the same time, unless we are able to assure a minimum environmental flow in these rivers, the very ecological basis of having these regional commons gets lost. And this is an issue which is becoming increasingly important in the policy discourse. 

Shri Ramesh also took the opportunity to point out some of the challenging decisions that he has had to take recently in this regard. He said,

I have had to face severe opposition, on my decision to put a stop on Hydel projects in the upper reaches of the Ganga in the state of Uttarakhand. Even after much of the work had gone on, on some of these Hydel Projects. There was a Hydel project on which we had spent a 1000 Cr of Rs. and 40% of the work had already been done and I had to wage a battle for a year to get that project scrapped because had we continued with that project we would have interfered with the minimum environmental flow of the river Bhagirathi which has not just religious and cultural significance to most Indians but also ecological significance. These are the types of conflicts and tradeoffs that we have to make increasingly in the regional commons of which water is going to be the most important.

 On the issue of forest management (which he described as local commons), Shri Ramesh stated:

We have over 70 million hectares of Forest cover in our country, roughly 21 % of the geographical area and for the last 30-40 years, the theology of Forest planning has been that 1/3rd of India should come under forests. But I have asked for the last 19 months, what is the source of this theology? Where did this theology originate that 1/3rd of India should come under Forest cover. Till today, I have not got a satisfactory answer to this most basic of questions.

That’s why I think the time has come for us to make a radical shift in our approach from the preoccupation with the quantity of forests to a greater attention to the quality of forests.

Explaining why he felt that this shift was essential, the Minister said that given the various pressures on the land today, sticking to the ideology of trying to get 1/3rd of India under forest cover would not be very practical. According to him,

With 70 Million hectares of Forest cover, and 40% of it, open, degraded forests, the challenge before us is to  improve just the quality of forests, rather than chasing the mirage of bringing 1/3rd of India under Forests. We know, because of the demographic and the development pressure, that it is not going to be possible.

...the carbon sequestration potential of Indian forests was estimated to be roughly 10% for the mid 90s, but it has gone down because as the economic growth increases, as we sustain 8-9% growth, we will not be able to compensate for the loss of forest cover. Our estimate is that by 2020 the annual carbon sequestration potential of our Indian Forests would be somewhere between 6-7% of our annual greenhouse gas emissions. If we are able to even maintain the 6-7% range, that would be a major contribution.

Acknowledging that forests not only play an ecological role but a very critical social and economic role as well, Shri Ramesh admitted that often policy makers overlooked the latter functions of the forest and stated there was a need for a change in mindset in this respect. He stated

We know that not just ecologically, in terms of social and economic values, our forests play a very important role The people who have worked with Indian Forests know, that over 200 - 250 million Indians depend on forests for their livelihoods a fact which is very often forgotten by forest department. I hasten to add that I very much include myself and I think the challenge before us, in managing this huge local commons called the Indian Forests, is to recognise not just their ecological value to be brought into public discussion, but also the age-old economic and social functions our forests perform, which unfortunately over the years, our laws have not been able to recognise and enshrine; our challenge in managing the local commons lies in changing the mindset that we have had in managing the forests and recognising not just the quantity of forests, but the quality of forests, and also in recognising that forests have not just an ecological function but more importantly and fundamentally a very important social and economic function.

Climate Change Dialogue: Need a Variety of Approaches & Diverse, Context-based Solutions to Address Equity Issues, says Jairam Ramesh

In his keynote address at the recently concuded 13th biennial IASC International Conference in Hyderabad, Shri Jairam Ramesh, India's Minister of Environment and Forests, addressed a wide range of commons related issues - from the global (climate change) to regional (use of waters, management of rivers and aquifers) and the local (management of forests).

In the first post of the series, we look at what the Minister had to say on the global commons.

Talking about climate change, Shri Ramesh said that the lack of communication between negotiators and academics was something he found very frustrating. According to him,

All the interesting work on climate change is taking place in the academic world and the negotiators in their world of round brackets, square brackets, footnotes and distinctions, such fine distinctions of shall and will and could and should are completely oblivious to the work of Jeffrey Frankel at Harvard, Micheal Spence of Stanford, Shelling or Prof.Ostrom herself. I think this has been a great tragedy and one of things I have been involved in is to try and get the negotiating community to look at this whole academic literature that now exists in the climate change area because central to a successful negotiation is how do we address the issue of equity.

Touching upon the Cancun agreement, Shri Ramesh spoke about the need for an alternate way to define equitable access. He said that the traditional framework of equitable access to carbon space tended to conjure up a right to pollute but the issue was actually one of ensuring a decent quality of life and standard of living to the country's population. Hence the new emerging concept at Cancun was that of equitable access to sustainable development. However, instead of seeking that one  holy grail of a formula or framework that would ensure equitable access to sustainable development, (which  he felt would inevitably create a stalemate as it would be near impossible for 193 countries to agree), Shri Ramesh stated that the way forward was perhaps in devising a set of formulae, a  diverse variety of approaches and context-based solutions.

Talking about the need for an operational definition of sustainable development, and the need to focus not only on equality of access on an international scale but on domestic issues as well, Shri Ramesh stated:

First of all we have to define what sustainable development is and we owe the definition of sustainable development to Mr.Nitin Desai, who defined in the 5th planning commission 22 years ago as the ability of a generation to meet its consumption needs without endangering the ability of a future generation. That was the kind of definition for sustainable development, but now we have to give it operational meaning and work out a framework that ensures equitable access which looks at population, per capita income, and which also looks at internal issues of distribution because in a country like India which is rightly concerned about the equality of access on the international scale cannot be oblivious to differences of access internally. This is now a big issue that we as a country have to come to grip with. We are world leaders when it comes to talking about international inequality but somehow we feel shy of dealing with domestic inequality. The domestic inequality in access to sustainable development today is a very serious issue that policy makers and academics have to come to terms with.

He summed up his thoughts on the global commons as follows:

So, on the global commons issue, all I would say now, what Cancun did was to (revive) the multilateral process which had reached a dead-end in Copenhagen, and brought about a certain degree of consensus on some of the issues that were (eluding) the negotiators and one of the biggest issues is how do you define a global goal and how do you define equity in the achievement of this goal, but, without necessarily endangering the growth prospects of developing countries.