Poor joke on carbon credits
NGO Transfers Indian Farmers Green Points To British Globetrotters
Nitin Sethi | TNN
New Delhi: This is eco-logic gone perverse. Now, if a UK citizen flies to India on a holiday to see the Taj Mahal, he can cleanse himself of the guilt of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from burning fuel by convincing farmer families in India to stop using diesel pump sets and instead take to pumping water manually. And there is money to be made for some in the process, though not by the farmers.
The farmer, who anyway emits about 10 times less GHGs than a UK citizen, needs to pump the water along with his family for three years using a treadle pump water pumps that use foot-power to draw water to ensure that the tourist is relieved of the guilt of having pushed the world a bit closer to climate change calamities.
Climate Care, a UK-based agency, has signed up with an Indian NGO, IDEI, to induce farmers to buy treadle pumps. The two then calculate the volume of diesel emissions avoided by the poor farmer investing in this pump and sell those saved emissions as carbon certificates to UK citizens planning to fly all around the globe. The money earned from the certificates doesnt go to the farmers. It ends up with the NGO to further market its pumps.
However, Suresh Subramanium of IDEI defended the project. If carbon funds were not there, we would have added the marketing cost to the price of the treadle pumps, making them costlier. Human labour is used on farms anyway, so whats wrong if its used here too, he asked.
Climate Cares website explains, One person man, woman or even child can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles… Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself.
This is the equivalent of rich countries shoving their garbage on developing countries to clean cheaply, said Sunita Narain, director of Centre for Science and Environment. It is symptomatic of what is happening to the carbon business. One cannot make out who is really benefiting while the developed countries continue to emit GHGs not wanting to alter their lifestyles. In case of afforestation and carbon credits, you fly around the world and make some poor African plant a tree in his backyard to clean up the air, she added.
The benefits of such projects should go to people who undertake such changes in their lifestyles, said Ashutosh Pandey of Emergent Ventures India one of the biggest carbon market experts in India.
The carbon credit mechanism was created to help developed countries offset their emissions by paying people in developing countries to shift to cleaner technologies. But critics have globally begun to argue against the actual ecological and economic benefit of such projects. Michael Buick of Climate Care said, The project is helping create a sustainable market for treadle pumps which generate income for the farmers. The carbon market, it seems is getting wedged between the creation of a sustainable market for guilt cleansing and the need for sustainable development.
Publication:Times of India Mumbai; Date:Sep 20, 2007; Section:Times Nation; Page Number:15
URL : http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDA3LzA5LzIwI0FyMDE1MDA=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom