Manama Dialogue

Manama Dialogue

Subject – IR

Context – U.S. ‘committed’ to West Asia security

Concept –

• The Manama Dialogue is annually held in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain.
• Dozens of government officials, businessmen, international figures, economists and political and strategic thinkers from Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America and Europe meet in the Bahraini capital Manama to exchange views on regional security challenges.
• The conference, which coincided with the emergence of the Greek debt crisis and raised concern about the global economic recovery, served as a tool to uncover deep trends of geopolitics.
• Other objectives of the Summit include studying national, regional and international means of action, reviewing the intentions of major powers and discussing how to support development despite global financial difficulties.

Why coal usage under scanner?

Context: On the final day of the UN Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow, India’s Minister for Environment Bhupender Yadav read out a statement promising to “phase down” rather than “phase out” the use of coal. This caused many to raise questions about India’s commitment to tackling climate change.

Concept:

• Since carbon emissions are considered the main culprit in global warming, countries have been committing themselves to turning carbon neutral by various dates. One key way to achieve carbon neutrality, wherein countries compensate for their carbon emissions by capturing an equal amount of carbon from the atmosphere, is to reduce dependence on coal. Coal is the most polluting among fossil fuels, and hence, its use in particular has come under scrutiny.

India and Coal:

• Coal is used to meet over 70% of India’s electricity needs. Most of this coal comes from domestic mines. In FY 2020-21, India produced 716 million tonnes of coal, compared with 431 million tonnes a decade ago. Since FY 2018-19, domestic production has stagnated and has been unable to meet the rising domestic demand, leading to arise in imports.
• Most of the country’s coal production is limited to Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh with a total production of over 550 million tonnes, contributing to over 75% of the country’s total coal production.
• The Prime Minister promised to increase non-fossil fuel energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030, meet 50% energy needs from renewable sources and reduce carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes in a decade. According to an estimate by the Centre for Science and Environment, the promise to reduce emissions by 1 billion tonnes means that India would need to reduce its carbon output by 22% by 2030. India now meets about 12% of its electricity needs from renewable sources, and increasing it to 50% by 2030 will be difficult. While some renewable energy sources like solar are cheap, they are unreliable because of the intermittency problem. They thus require the use of storage batteries, which adds to the cost. It should be noted that many low-income countries with low savings may not even possess the capital required to invest in renewable energy. Further, the damage that coal causes to commonly owned resources like the environment is not factored into its cost.
• It should also be noted that per capita carbon emissions of countries such as India and China are still lower than those of many developed countries. According to World Bank data of 2018, India produces 1.8 metric tonnes of carbon emissions per capita against 15.2 metric tonnes produced by the U.S.