CARBON FOOTPRINT
As the global temperature is on a rise due to global warming, the issue of climate change is indeed a ‘hot’ topic among the climate scientists and policy-makers worldwide. Claiming anthropogenic emissions as the primary cause of the prevailing climate change, every human activity is now under heavy scrutiny. Reportedly, India is the world’s third biggest greenhouse emitter and thus it needs to bat for some serious mitigation actions to curb its contribution to global warming. Among others, mining is one of the fundamental activities which caters to the supply of raw materials to other basic industries and fulfils most of the energy needs of the human race and is believed to be a major contributor to the anthropogenic emissions.Mining itself utilizes enormous amount of energy in form of electricity and fuels for machineries. Moreover, it adds to concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in form of CH4 emissions, gases due to blasting, from mineral processing plants and many more. Thus emissions from mining cannot be neglected, since it contributes significantly to the bludgeoning global warming.
The blooming industrialization and the advent of technological up-gradations brought with it a whirlpool of environmental hazards posing serious threat to mankind as well as nature. Among the plethora of these deleterious impacts, the echo of global warming lasted a little longer so as to make the public take notice of it and become more concerned about its consequences. It is very common now-a-days to mention global warming along with climate change, even though the latter is a much broader phenomenon. Where climate change encompasses changes in all attributes relating to climate such as surface temperature, precipitation, winds, ocean currents etc., global warming is the phenomenon of rising Earth’s surface temperature over past recent years [1]. With the onset of the 21st century, the climate scientist around the globe ascertained that global warming is happening and is rising at an alarming rate. Moreover, climatic studies provides evidence that global warming is a consequence of release and accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities [2]. It led the scientists to assess the potential impacts of this bludgeoning catastrophe, such as doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, increase of global temperature in the range of 1.5o to 4.5oC and its unequal distribution throughout the globe and also the rise of sea level by 0.3 – 0.5m [3].
It is evident that global warming has become the major threat of the century and so the incessant emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Therefore it is the need of the hour for the public to be aware of the science, potential impacts, key challenges and solutions pertaining to climate change. Serving the purpose to supply public with a myriad of information about the prevailing threat, several independent research institutes/ organizations have cropped up in the past recent years, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Carbon Offset Research and Education (CORE), Global Change Research Information Office (GCRIO), Climate Strategies, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many others [4].
Treading along the path of imparting all the relevant information about climate change, by assessing its scientific basis, impacts and future risks, adaptation and appropriate mitigation, is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). IPCC was setup in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to carry out research and prepare assessment reports for governments at all levels to develop policies related to climate [5]. Starting from 1990, the IPCC has published 5 assessments reports till date. According to their latest and the fifth assessment report it is concluded that last 3 decades are likely to be the warmest period with global temperature rise of 0.6 + 0.2 oC. Adding to the misery, the atmospheric concentrations of major GHGs have increased to an unprecedented levels. CO2 levels have increased by 40% since the pre-industrial times. It is qualified that the concentrations of CO2, CH4 and N2O have increased due to human activities and were found to be 391 ppm, 1803 ppb and 324 ppb for the year 2011
CARBON FOOTPRINT
It is now quite evident that the trending global warming menace is a consequence of the reckless anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Therefore, in order to curb it we need to keep a track of these emissions. So, the countries worldwide are now preparing “Greenhouse Gas Inventory” to delineate a detailed account of total CO2 and other major greenhouse gases emitted by them as a result of various anthropogenic activities. This estimation of approximate values of CO2 emissions along with few major greenhouse gases is referred to as Carbon Footprint.
Carbon Footprint is a rudimentary concept which is yet to evolve into a fully developed stage. Therefore, it is still an equivocal process having no exact academic definition. Nevertheless, it is a new buzzword, gaining tremendous popularity and inciting debates worldwide on its appropriate definition and use. This has led to various definitions and suggestions for Carbon Footprint, with the most widely used one has been given by Wiedmann and Minx (2008). According to their proposition, Carbon footprint is a measure of the exclusive total amount of carbon dioxide emissions that is directly and indirectly caused by an activity or is accumulated over the life stages of life [7]. The concept of Carbon Footprint derives from the concept of Ecological Footprint raised by Wackernagel and Rees in 1996. However, with increasing global concern of climate change, it has been developed into an independent concept with extended scopes. Other major definitions include:
•Carbon Trust (2007): A technique for identifying and measuring the individual greenhouse gas emissions from each activity within a supply chain process step and the framework for attributing these to each output product [8].
•Larsen & Hertiwch (2009): The lifecycle GHG emissions caused by the production of the goods and services consumed by a geographically-defined population or activity, independent of whether the GHG emissions occur inside or outside the geographical borders of the population or activity of interest [9].
•Peters (2010): The ‘carbon footprint’ of a functional unit is the climate impact under a specified metric that considers all relevant emission sources, sinks, and storage in both consumption and production within the specified spatial and temporal system boundary [10].
REPORTING OF CARBON FOOTPRINT
As the need for calculating Carbon footprint grew, it paved way for an international platform, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to report the GHG inventory prepared by different countries. Under the programme of UNFCCC, different countries signed the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty which aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Till date, 195 countries have signed the treaty and participated to control their respective carbon emissions and are referred to as the “Parties to the convention”. According to the protocol, different countries have a varying level of responsibility towards limiting their emissions. The developed countries have a legal binding to report and take immediate steps to check their emissions within the specific limit, whereas the developing nations are required to report their total emissions but are not compelled to check these. Moreover, it is proposed that the developed nations must provide the developing countries with appropriate technological assistance to reduce their emissions .
