Brij Gopal
Professor, School for Environmental Sciences, JNU, Delhi
His work lies in muddy waters. Countries like India has not even begun to study the impact of climate change on ponds, rivers and lakes and Prof Brij Gopal is one of the few scientists who have attempted to get to the bottom of it all. “With the increase in CO2 and rising temperature, the solubility of oxygen decreases in water, leading to a fall in the quality of water,” explains Gopal.His work for the IPCC chapter on ‘Ecosystems, their properties, goods and services’ relied on work done by scientists of developed countries and a few South-East Asian countries. Their studies showed that even a degree rise in temperature could make some species of fish disappear and also cause proliferation of invasive weeds.
Coastal zones and low-lying areas are particularly vulnerable to climate change and with over one billion people relying on fish as their main protein source, especially in developing countries, the consequences could be grave. “It is difficult to distinguish between impacts of human activity like throwing pollutants into a lake and the change as a result of climate change,” said Gopal.
According to him, it requires systematic, long-term study to determine these facts. The developed nations do these experiments in controlled conditions in the lab.Gopal, a professor at the School for Environmental Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, has contributed to several governmental policy papers which he unfortunately admits “mostly lie on paper”.
The last such report done for the government was on the Yamuna, recommending several measures to preserve and restore its floodplains. It is the policy-implications of his science that fascinates him. “What should be the regulatory mechanism to preserve floodplains? These are questions on which a country like India needs clarity,” he says.
—Sonu Jain

... contd.