New Delhi: Amid the possibility of an increase in lawsuits following the Supreme Court's observation that climate change affects the constitutional guarantee of the right to equality, scientists have sought to correct inadequacies in the data through modeling to account for liability in such lawsuits. Has requested.
Attribution science determines the probability of occurrence of extreme weather due to climate change.
Environmental lawyers and field experts agree that evidence-based attribution science will be critical to climate litigation and will play a key role in limiting baseless lawsuits. “Attribution data has been critical in litigation,” said Supreme Court lawyer Prach Pratap. Because it is scientific in nature and it will definitely help support a case.,
The Supreme Court on April 18 said climate change affects the constitutional guarantee of right to equality by affecting clean environment and health.
“Without a clean environment, which is stable and unaffected by the vagaries of climate change, the right to life is not fully realised. The right to health (which is a part of the right to life under Article 21) is affected due to such factors There are air pollution, changes in vector-borne diseases, increase in temperature, drought, crop failure, reduction in food supply due to storms and floods,” the bench said. Shashank Pandey, research fellow, Vidhi Center for Legal Policy, New Delhi. Said, “Attribution will be the basic basis of claims. Under this new right all claims must be supported by scientific evidence, as seen in the recent European convention."Human rights (ECHR) judgments. There will otherwise be no restriction on the nature of the claims made."
The ECHR ruled against the Swiss government on 9 April, saying it had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to take adequate action to tackle climate change.
The Supreme Court judgment has also become relevant in the light of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report which has projected Asia to be the world's most disaster-prone region in 2023, bearing the brunt of weather, climate and water-related hazards. Extreme event attribution provides "a cleaner way to communicate the impacts of climate change," according to Mariam Zakaria, a researcher at the Grantha Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London, UK."Attribution determines whether and to what extent climate change – driven primarily by human activities via greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions – has increased the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events such as extreme waves, extreme rainfall and drought in the current climate. "has changed, compared to the climate before humans started warming the planet," she said.
The idea of featuring extreme weather was first discussed by climate scientist Miles Allen in a 2003 paper in the journal Nature. The European heat wave was the first event attribution study to be published that year. However, long-term climate change attribution results began to become available in the mid-1990s because the field had been made theoretically possible in the 1970s when Nobel laureate German Scientist Klaus Hasselmann put forward a model for climate change detection and attribution.
In India, attribution is still at an "early stage", said Arpita Mandal, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay."This is primarily due to India's widely varying, diverse and very complex climate system," Mandal explained. "However, with increasing extreme events in India and the increasing importance of the role of climate change, I think more Qualitative studies are necessary."He said the heat waves in 2023, 2022 and 2020 were attributed to climate change, while the 2018 Kerala floods could not be "unequivocally" attributed to climate change.
Mandal and his colleagues found that Kerala recorded "unprecedented" rainfall and floods in August 2018 in a 66-year period.
The incident affected 54 lakh people and took more than 400 lives.The 2005 drought in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra was a complex case study. Although rainfall alone cannot be attributed to climate change, the combined heat-warming effect of abnormally high temperatures and abnormally low rainfall can "clearly" be attributed to climate change, Mandal said. explained.
However, since there are only a handful of experts in this area of climate science, simply increasing the numbers "will not magically translate into more research because the limitations are typically of data and modeling," said Professor Krishna Achyuta Rao of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences. he said. Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi.
“The question is, do we have enough data from history, going back at least 50 years, to help us understand weather patterns and extremes and how they have changed now?” asked Rao, who has been involved in trait studies for about 25 years.The daily data needed for event attribution is not readily available and accessible, he said.
"Preparing data for this kind of work and making it useful and usable is a huge task. However, it is an exercise that does not seem to be a priority," Rao said.
The second issue he pointed to is the infrastructure required to do the modeling. “Attribution also uses climate models and an extensive model database which is again a resource-intensive business,” he said.I don't think we have the resources in India and that clearly has to be improved."
Rao, Mandal and Zakaria all three work for the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a voluntary global initiative run by scientists from the UK and the Netherlands.
The results of the rapid attribution study conducted in the wake of extreme weather events are released over the next few weeks. The WWA was formed in 2015 and has a worldwide database of heat waves, extreme rainfall, drought, floods, wildfires and There are over 50 attribution studies on cold.
Mondal acknowledged that he blames heat waves and climate change more than events like floods and droughts, which are compounded by on-the-ground human actions such as management of water resources.Zakaria said that attribution results should be supported or complemented with information on the vulnerabilities and risks of communities that may worsen the impacts of an extreme event. However, there are times when attribution does not provide any conclusive results Is.
Mondal said there could be a number of reasons for this, including a lack of scientific understanding of the physical processes that occur during extreme weather or a lack of reliable data.
However, he believes that attribution can also inform legal proceedings, climate adaptation strategies, and government action. He expects there to be more lawsuits based on attribution science in the future.Advocate Pratap welcomed the apex court's decision, saying structured reforms were needed and sometimes court cases could be the first step in that direction.
He said, "This decision will give a sense of empowerment to citizens to address the issue when they feel that their rights related to the impacts of climate change are being affected. I hope this empowers more people in a situation where climate change is a problem." is the root of." However, he expects "frivolous and luxury" lawsuits to increase.
“It's true that the first emotional reaction may be to blame climate change, but any report or news article that points to extreme weather will put Matt into perspective.A thin line has to be drawn. “Yet there are many cases where extreme weather is caused by climate change,” Pratap said.
Pandey believes that after issuing the judgment, the Supreme Court is "taking a very strict stance." It will be difficult to limit and determine the extent of adverse impacts of climate change, given that it has Therefore, any affected individual or community can directly claim their rights against the adverse effects of climate change.How courts interpret this right within environmental jurisprudence is something we will have to pay attention to,” he said.
Greenpeace India campaign manager Avinash Chanchal called for a stronger legal framework to tackle climate change.
“There is an urgent need to introduce a Climate Change Act that will integrate different laws and policies to protect our biodiversity and people,” Chancha said. “The Act should ensure clear targets and a legally binding energy Adequate provisions for adaptation to climate change impacts and setting timelines for building resilience among vulnerable communities should also be included, including mechanisms to hold polluting corporations accountable.,
Rao said, ultimately, the courts will look at the loss and how to quantify it. Here, the next stage of attribution, or end-to-end attribution, which is much more nuanced and sophisticated, will be helpful. He said, "For example, if a farmer's wheat crop yield went down by 30 per cent this year, So was it due to the heat wave or were there other factors? We don't need to be able to strengthen this multi-step attribution."
Attribution science determines the probability of occurrence of extreme weather due to climate change.
Environmental lawyers and field experts agree that evidence-based attribution science will be critical to climate litigation and will play a key role in limiting baseless lawsuits. “Attribution data has been critical in litigation,” said Supreme Court lawyer Prach Pratap. Because it is scientific in nature and it will definitely help support a case.,
The Supreme Court on April 18 said climate change affects the constitutional guarantee of right to equality by affecting clean environment and health.
“Without a clean environment, which is stable and unaffected by the vagaries of climate change, the right to life is not fully realised. The right to health (which is a part of the right to life under Article 21) is affected due to such factors There are air pollution, changes in vector-borne diseases, increase in temperature, drought, crop failure, reduction in food supply due to storms and floods,” the bench said. Shashank Pandey, research fellow, Vidhi Center for Legal Policy, New Delhi. Said, “Attribution will be the basic basis of claims. Under this new right all claims must be supported by scientific evidence, as seen in the recent European convention."Human rights (ECHR) judgments. There will otherwise be no restriction on the nature of the claims made."
The ECHR ruled against the Swiss government on 9 April, saying it had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to take adequate action to tackle climate change.
The Supreme Court judgment has also become relevant in the light of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report which has projected Asia to be the world's most disaster-prone region in 2023, bearing the brunt of weather, climate and water-related hazards. Extreme event attribution provides "a cleaner way to communicate the impacts of climate change," according to Mariam Zakaria, a researcher at the Grantha Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London, UK."Attribution determines whether and to what extent climate change – driven primarily by human activities via greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions – has increased the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events such as extreme waves, extreme rainfall and drought in the current climate. "has changed, compared to the climate before humans started warming the planet," she said.
The idea of featuring extreme weather was first discussed by climate scientist Miles Allen in a 2003 paper in the journal Nature. The European heat wave was the first event attribution study to be published that year. However, long-term climate change attribution results began to become available in the mid-1990s because the field had been made theoretically possible in the 1970s when Nobel laureate German Scientist Klaus Hasselmann put forward a model for climate change detection and attribution.
In India, attribution is still at an "early stage", said Arpita Mandal, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay."This is primarily due to India's widely varying, diverse and very complex climate system," Mandal explained. "However, with increasing extreme events in India and the increasing importance of the role of climate change, I think more Qualitative studies are necessary."He said the heat waves in 2023, 2022 and 2020 were attributed to climate change, while the 2018 Kerala floods could not be "unequivocally" attributed to climate change.
Mandal and his colleagues found that Kerala recorded "unprecedented" rainfall and floods in August 2018 in a 66-year period.
The incident affected 54 lakh people and took more than 400 lives.The 2005 drought in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra was a complex case study. Although rainfall alone cannot be attributed to climate change, the combined heat-warming effect of abnormally high temperatures and abnormally low rainfall can "clearly" be attributed to climate change, Mandal said. explained.
However, since there are only a handful of experts in this area of climate science, simply increasing the numbers "will not magically translate into more research because the limitations are typically of data and modeling," said Professor Krishna Achyuta Rao of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences. he said. Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi.
“The question is, do we have enough data from history, going back at least 50 years, to help us understand weather patterns and extremes and how they have changed now?” asked Rao, who has been involved in trait studies for about 25 years.The daily data needed for event attribution is not readily available and accessible, he said.
"Preparing data for this kind of work and making it useful and usable is a huge task. However, it is an exercise that does not seem to be a priority," Rao said.
The second issue he pointed to is the infrastructure required to do the modeling. “Attribution also uses climate models and an extensive model database which is again a resource-intensive business,” he said.I don't think we have the resources in India and that clearly has to be improved."
Rao, Mandal and Zakaria all three work for the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a voluntary global initiative run by scientists from the UK and the Netherlands.
The results of the rapid attribution study conducted in the wake of extreme weather events are released over the next few weeks. The WWA was formed in 2015 and has a worldwide database of heat waves, extreme rainfall, drought, floods, wildfires and There are over 50 attribution studies on cold.
Mondal acknowledged that he blames heat waves and climate change more than events like floods and droughts, which are compounded by on-the-ground human actions such as management of water resources.Zakaria said that attribution results should be supported or complemented with information on the vulnerabilities and risks of communities that may worsen the impacts of an extreme event. However, there are times when attribution does not provide any conclusive results Is.
Mondal said there could be a number of reasons for this, including a lack of scientific understanding of the physical processes that occur during extreme weather or a lack of reliable data.
However, he believes that attribution can also inform legal proceedings, climate adaptation strategies, and government action. He expects there to be more lawsuits based on attribution science in the future.Advocate Pratap welcomed the apex court's decision, saying structured reforms were needed and sometimes court cases could be the first step in that direction.
He said, "This decision will give a sense of empowerment to citizens to address the issue when they feel that their rights related to the impacts of climate change are being affected. I hope this empowers more people in a situation where climate change is a problem." is the root of." However, he expects "frivolous and luxury" lawsuits to increase.
“It's true that the first emotional reaction may be to blame climate change, but any report or news article that points to extreme weather will put Matt into perspective.A thin line has to be drawn. “Yet there are many cases where extreme weather is caused by climate change,” Pratap said.
Pandey believes that after issuing the judgment, the Supreme Court is "taking a very strict stance." It will be difficult to limit and determine the extent of adverse impacts of climate change, given that it has Therefore, any affected individual or community can directly claim their rights against the adverse effects of climate change.How courts interpret this right within environmental jurisprudence is something we will have to pay attention to,” he said.
Greenpeace India campaign manager Avinash Chanchal called for a stronger legal framework to tackle climate change.
“There is an urgent need to introduce a Climate Change Act that will integrate different laws and policies to protect our biodiversity and people,” Chancha said. “The Act should ensure clear targets and a legally binding energy Adequate provisions for adaptation to climate change impacts and setting timelines for building resilience among vulnerable communities should also be included, including mechanisms to hold polluting corporations accountable.,
Rao said, ultimately, the courts will look at the loss and how to quantify it. Here, the next stage of attribution, or end-to-end attribution, which is much more nuanced and sophisticated, will be helpful. He said, "For example, if a farmer's wheat crop yield went down by 30 per cent this year, So was it due to the heat wave or were there other factors? We don't need to be able to strengthen this multi-step attribution."
