With little or no progress during the first week of Climate Change negotiations at COP27 ongoing at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, a sense of despondency and disillusionment is apparent among the delegates representing the most vulnerable countries (which are the least responsible for things coming to this pass) from the global south.
With rich countries, the historical polluters, especially the United States, continuing to find ways to delay and derail any reasonable climate action, South Asian delegates have begun to talk about reviving South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) for combating Climate Change.
“We need to revive SAARC. We need to revive regional cooperation on climate change as we face similar challenges with respect to Climate Change. We are in it together and we must face it together,” declared Romina Khurshid Alam, Minister of State and Member of National Assembly of Pakistan, in an emotional intervention at a side event on global goal on adaptation on November 9. This year’s monsoon-season floods left a trail of devastation in Pakistan, leading to more than 1,700 deaths, impacting over 33 million people, and leaving behind damage estimated at around $15 billion.
Alam’s intervention found resonance among delegates from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka — all countries which are yet to recover from unprecedented floods and a deadly heatwave in South Asia, which saw the highest temperatures recorded in 122 years in parts of the region. Meanwhile, melting glaciers are changing the hydrology of the entire Hindu Kush Himalayan region and its eight countries. Report after report in recent times have predicted that extreme weather events, including water scarcity and declining crop yield will affect over 800 million people in South Asia by 2050. Floods alone could cost the region $215 billion every year by 2030. Internal climate migrants in the region could number up to 40 million by 2050 while erratic monsoons risk driving drought in some parts of India, and devastating floods in others.
Incidentally, this is not the first time the idea of SAARC countries co-operating on climate action has been mooted. The Fourteenth SAARC Summit (New Delhi, April 2007) expressed ‘deep concern’ over the global Climate Change. As a follow up action, the New Delhi Declaration called for pursuing climate resilient development in South Asia. At the twenty-ninth session of the SAARC Council of Ministers (New Delhi, December 2007), the issue of Climate Change, particularly the increasing vulnerability of the region due to environmental degradation and Climate Change were discussed. The ministers felt that given all vulnerabilities, inadequate means and limited capacities, there is a need to ensure rapid social and economic development, and make SAARC Climate Change resilient.
This resulted in the three-year SAARC Action Plan on Climate Change in 2008, which identified seven thematic areas of co-operation, among which adaptation, mitigation, and management of impacts and risk deal with Climate Change-related security risks. The accompanying SAARC Environment Ministers Dhaka Declaration on Climate Change stressed for the first time that ‘Climate Change is substantively the result of the greenhouse gas emissions by the developed world for over two centuries’ and called for international financial support. This demand evolved into a strident call to rich and developed countries for compensation, and reparations for ‘loss and damage’, that is finally on the agenda of COP27.
In 2010, following the Thimphu Statement on Climate Change, SAARC established an expert group on Climate Change to ensure policy direction and guidance for regional co-operation. However, the twists and turns in geopolitics of the region, the emergence of China as a dominant player, and fresh tensions between India and Pakistan eroded years of diplomatic work, and since the last summit in 2014, SAARC is yet to reconvene.
With the growing realisation that Climate Change knows no borders, neither does air pollution nor ground water, the call for revival of SAARC for co-operation on climate action, especially in the areas of disaster risk reduction, Climate Change adaptation and mitigation, is not only timely but also critical for the survival of its citizens. Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh has suggested that the SAARC revival on climate action should begin with small and meaningful steps while avoiding ‘conversation-stoppers’ at all costs.
The region has a history of several large projects executed by intergovernmental and civil society institutions like the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the Asian Development Bank, among others. In 2019, the South Asia Hydromet Forum, a regional initiative launched by the World Bank that brings together nine hydrological and meteorological agencies from all eight South Asian countries and Myanmar, agreed on a regional strategy to modernise hydromet services in South Asia, improve knowledge sharing and capacity-building, laying the groundwork for collaboration towards a climate resilient South Asia.
Then there is the Green Grids Initiative-One Sun One World One Grid (GGI-OSOWOG) launched by India at COP26, to create an interconnected global power grid. It imagines renewable energy from solar, wind, and water flowing “across continents, countries and communities” from where it is abundant to where it is needed.
Clearly, to tackle the unfolding climate and economic emergencies that impact the shared future of the eight nations, maybe it is indeed time for SAARC to reinvent itself as the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation on Climate Change.
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