Both the Chinese government and the Tibetans are in agreement over the impending issues relating to the adverse impact of climate change on Tibet while the India-specific data on glacier melt is as yet inconclusive. There is, however, a difference of perception in Sino-Tibetan discourse over the capitalist model of economic development being undertaken by China which is at variance with the cultural practices of Tibetans, informed and regulated as they are with the Buddhist values of oneness with nature. Nomadism is also fundamental to the preservation of the ecology of Tibet.
Rivers are more than what Samuel T. Coleridge poetically expressed in Kubla Khan: ‘meandering with mazy motion’ and falling into the ‘sunless sea’. Rivers are life-givers, carrying a mystic and sacred quality about them. That they are oft described as being ‘mighty’—the mighty Amazon; the mighty Nile; the mighty Brahamaputra; the mighty Murray; the mighty Mississippi and Missouri—is hardly mystifying. Civilizations have grown around it and flourished. In contemporary politics the salience of rivers cannot be overlooked both in terms of being drivers of cooperation and conflict.
Like in the 1950s, the word ‘riparian’ is back again in the India–Pakistan lexicon, becoming this time intensely political, emotional and divisive. This development is both instructive and unsettling. It is instructive to note how the current water realties of the two countries, which have changed significantly since the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in 1960, will now determine the treaty's future. With growing populations, inadequate water management techniques and the impact of global warming, water resources are under pressure.
Climate change has acquired high priority in the United Kingdom's foreign policy. It has in recent years raised the issue of climate change at various international forums, such as G-8, the European Union and the UN Security Council. This article examines how and why climate change has become one of the core components of UK foreign policy, and in so doing analyses the interconnections between foreign policy and climate change, and interactions between domestic and international politics.
This research article examines the rationale for Iran, Pakistan, and India entering into a trade agreement to meet their economic, political, and strategic needs as well as the constraints and challenges that still hamper such an agreement from realizing its full potential. Using the gas pipeline project as a case study, the issues of energy security (as the independent variable) and of economic interdependence (as the dependent variable) highlight the importance of cooperation among these countries.
India is being subjected to increasing pressure from the developed countries to cut down on its carbon emissions on the grounds that it is the fifth largest consumer of energy. This comes even as there are forecasts that India's energy consumption will increase incrementally as it tries to address the challenges of its social and development goals by increasing and sustaining economic growth at around 8–10 per cent of its GDP.
Though global warming and climate change is a real concern and needs to be addressed, it is concerns over energy security that are driving the West's policy and debate on climate change. With the traditional oil and gas market changing in favour of the developing countries, the developed countries are concerned about retaining their preferential access to energy resources.
Climate change is hugely challenging. But there is an unmistakable straightforwardness to it – reduce emissions to reduce global warming. In many ways, this reflects the sum total of the paradoxes that define our reality and the contradictions and hypocrisy of coping and dealing with it. Climate change raises all the right concerns from effectively all the right quarters. But concerns require actions and that is where the debate starts, the positions get entrenched and more often than not words and gestures become hollow and empty.
The Road to Copenhagen in December 2009 has two visible signposts. One that reads, ‘The time for climate change action is now’, the other that warns, ‘The road is bumpy’. The first signpost expresses the apocalyptic language that the earth's rising temperatures are poised to set off irreversible consequences if concrete steps are not taken quickly. It suggests that the climate is nearing tipping point. The second signpost forewarns that arriving at a bold, equitable, and binding treaty will not be easy and that the politics of climate change will undermine the science of climate change.
That there is a freshwater crisis today is an irrefutable fact. That there is also a water policy that is in perpetual crisis is an equally undeniable fact. Continued population growth and the impact of global warming along with over-consumption, inadequate conservation, and wastage are putting enormous pressure on water resources. Water covers most of the planet but only 3 per cent is fresh water, of which a mere 1 per cent is readily accessible for human consumption. What it means is that less than 0.007 per cent of all the water on earth is available to drink.
