Climate in Campaign: Last and Least?

Karnataka has been reeling under an acute water crisis since mid-February. It brought to the fore the impact of land use change and environment degradation, climate change, and La Nina among other issues.

The images of the poor collecting water leaking from a pipe in a drain or the viral but unverified claim that residents of an apartment used mall washrooms after running out of water started to have an impact. The state government responded by seizing and rationing private tankers and brought a rule to allow the sale of treated wastewater. But then came March 16 and the Election Commission announced the schedule of the Lok Sabha elections. The demands of civic groups for long-term solutions to the water crisis have been drowned in the din of electioneering.

At the other end of the country, environmentalist Sonam Wangchuk held a 21-day fast and slept outdoors in the -10°C temperature of Ladakh demanding statutory measures to protect the fragile ecology of the Himalayas. The fast ended on March 26 with no assurance from the Centre.

With campaigning by vote seekers growing louder across the country, the issues related to the environment and climate change got lost in the cacophony. They hardly found any mention in the speeches by the leaders in the election rallies so far. The politicians have remained unmoved even after the Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling on March 21, stated that people have a right to protection from the impacts of climate change. The apex court said: "Without a clean environment which is stable and unimpacted by the vagaries of climate change, the right to life is not fully realised."

The Union government’s own report on India’s climate vulnerability has warned that 29 states are staring at crises. "Even the relatively less vulnerable states have high vulnerability scores," it said, based on a ranking system developed with a predominant focus on socio-economic drivers, livelihood, biophysical and institutional factors.

The Lancet's 2023 Report of the Countdown on Health and Climate Change has warned that heat-related deaths of people have increased by 85 per cent between 1997 and 2022 and are set to increase by over 370 per cent by 2050s.

However, such imminent threats could not trigger a political debate or make climate change a core issue in the campaigns of the major parties for the parliamentary elections.

Be it the threat posed by hydroelectric projects to the fragile ecology of Arunachal Pradesh, or the annual flood of Assam, or the frequent cyclonic storms and prolonged rainfall affecting farmers and the salt pan workers in Gujarat, or the mining menace in Chhattisgarh – such issues remain on the backburner every election season in India and the current one is not an exception.

In Madhya Pradesh, the political parties have so far avoided raising the issues of air pollution and degradation of biodiversity caused by unregulated mining, or heatwaves even as temperatures soared to 49°C in some places. In Kerala, both the BJP and the Congress are focussing on the bribery allegations against the ruling left government. The plight of the residents of the coastal areas, the encroachments of water bodies, and even a 1040-day stir against illegal mining have gone unnoticed in electioneering. So has the degradation of lakes in Hyderabad.

Both the ruling BJP and its principal challenger Congress have dedicated the last chapters of their manifestos for the current elections to the issues related to the protection of the environment and climate change.

A study of poll manifestos between 1952 and 2022 by the Centre for Policy Research noted that the socio-economic backwardness of the majority of the population prompted parties to prioritise welfare and development in their promises. Though environmental issues have been gaining space over the years, their links to food security, health, livelihood, and quality of life are still missing.

However, the manifestos themselves have not been taken seriously enough to hold the ruling party accountable for its promises. An analysis published by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) stated that over half of the promises made in the 2019 elections were falsifiable with the UPA (68 per cent) ahead of the NDA (56 per cent).

Experts believe this should change. "For a civically active populace that expects accountability from the people it chooses, manifestos are one of the most potent tools to benchmark the promises of political parties as they present written intentions and plans of action. They help channel civic concerns to leadership," said Ovee Karwa, a co-author of the ORF analysis and fellow at CPC Analytics.

In its judgment, the apex court listed air pollution, vector-borne diseases, rising temperatures, droughts, food shortages linked to crop failure, storms, and flooding as major threats posed by climate change. Activists hope that this will help the beginning of a new era where the judiciary can nudge the government to walk its talk on such issues.

“Political leaders cannot run away from the fact that degradation of nature and environment will also impact their own lives and wellbeing,” Nandakumar Pawar, who heads the environment group Sagar Shakti, said. “The environment protection has to be the highest priority as under the guise of development, we are losing nature,” Pawar said, arguing that the political leaders must be held accountable to voters for the protection of the environment and nature under their constituencies.

India lacks a national-level 'green party’, or a political entity dedicated to environmental concerns, Godfrey Pimenta of Watchdog Foundation said. “Regardless of political attention, it is evident that environmental issues intricately connect with our daily lives.”

“As we have learned in our primary schools, most of us are aware of the need to protect nature to protect ourselves, but in practice, most of us fail and politicians lead in this,” said NatConnect Foundation director B N Kumar, who has initiated the idea to make nature a part of the election manifestos.

”Politicians look for short-term gains in projects at the cost of the environment without realising that it affects their own voters. For instance, you take the experience of Chardham Highway and reckless development killing mangroves, floodplains, and wetlands in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). “Despite recurring floods and landslides, we do not learn lessons,” he said.

In its judgment, the apex court listed air pollution, vector-borne diseases, rising temperatures, droughts, food shortages linked to crop failure, storms, and flooding as major threats posed by climate change. Activists hope that this will help the beginning of a new era where the judiciary can nudge the government to walk its talk on such issues.

(With inputs from Sumir Karmakar, Mrityunjay Bose, S N V Sudhir, Satish Jha, Arjun Raghunath and Umesh Singh, DHNS)