Climate change threatens the roof of the world

• Source: Global Times
• [22:16 August 30 2009]
• Comments

CD: Some of the current difficulties of cooperation are to do with the state of knowledge and the sharing of data and scientific information.

Munasinghe: The sharing of information is also a question of mutual trust. If you look at other watershed or riparian questions, the US-Mexico agreement on the Rio Grande, or some of the European agreements, you find that countries that have not seen eye-to-eye on many issues have managed to work things out.

The point is that if the technical people agree on a win-win outcome, you get some agreement – even if it is a partial agreement that both sides can agree to. In data sharing, where for example you have to reveal the minimum amount of water you need, you expose your vulnerability; if you are doing an agreement on, say, energy sharing, you have to give out information on your petroleum supplies and so on.

I don't think that these are state secrets, so sharing information is not going to be such a big handicap as to inhibit cooperation.

The more important point is that once you have a sharing agreement and you adapt your development path to the assumption that a given amount of resources – a certain water or energy flow is going to be available – you become vulnerable to the possibility that the other party might renege on you. For that you have to have a firm agreement and an agreed framework of a win-win outcome, so that if you try to damage the other person, you damage yourself – you cut off your nose to spite your face.

CD: What role do you see for the peoples of the region? How can their interests be defended when they are threatened by political and economic elites?

Munasinghe: Unless the poor help themselves nobody else will. The rich will continue to consume and their efforts to mitigate and to help the poor will be less than what are required. There will be efforts, but not enough.

The poor have to be empowered to help themselves, and I think that this is such a tough situation that they will. It could result in some instability, because shortage of water and shortage of food are major trigger points. I don't know what one could do to bring about the empowerment, but it will have to happen. Otherwise governments will not move, because governments tend to be dominated by elites who are less directly affected.

CD: What means do they have to gain this empowerment?

Munasinghe: Information is going to be a very important factor. Most of the poor historically have adjusted to climatic and other changing conditions, but the climate-change phenomenon will move the boundaries of, for instance, drought or floods outside their normal experience, so that the traditional knowledge they have will be less effective.

A person in a village might say, "I remember we had this kind of drought in my grandfather's time." But the droughts we will have will be three times as severe. That's why we need information.

I think we have to start with the next generation. We have to make them much more computer literate. The traditional way of doing things will have to change or people will not have the kinds of information that is part of empowerment. It will help them adapt at the local level and if they are able to manage local land and water resources, that's a major part of development.

But then how are they to influence the bigger, higher-level decisions that are taken at the center – the dam building or building power lines? That is going to be harder. The governance structures and the electoral processes will also have to change.

Climate change has a local manifestation, but is a global phenomenon. The scientific community has an obligation to translate the scientific information that we have on a global scale to a regional and a local level.

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