The historic Naz Foundation petition to the Delhi High Court actually began with a history lesson – of fetishism, perversion, fondling and fornication and the punishments thereof. Tellingly, the Christian and European side of the history is much more severe and restrictive than the Hindu Indian one. It only takes a visit to India’s most notorious temple to see that there is a history here of open discussion of sex. Section 377 of the 1860 Indian Penal Code, which criminalises “carnal relations against the natural order” is based on the English Sodomy Law. The embedded notion – sex is for procreation only and that other sex is “unnatural” -is very much a Judeo-Christian idea which still hold sway in Bible Belt America (cf Pro Life) and in the pronouncements of the current Pope and in several sects of Islam (itself Judeo-Christian) but is not a feature of mainstream Buddhism or Hinduism. This idea held sway in the early applications of the law, but quickly gave way to India’s need to control its population.

Some in India claim that gays are a decadent western import. India's ladyboys walk on the wild side - now they can do so legally. Will it make a fundamental difference to how society views its others?

The Delhi High Court Decision to exempt mutually consenting adults from section 377 is a major shift which has been compared to the Roe vs Wade case in America, where women won the right to choose an abortion. At the same time the ruling has opened the debate as to whether the civil rights process itself is an aspect of Westernisation. Extremists even argue that somehow homosexuality, and by definition, tolerance, is alien and that civil rights for minorities is an invasive, exotic way of thinking.

Those radicals who argue against the corrupting aspects of western notions such as democracy avail themselves of the internet, that most democratic of outside influences, to illustrate and promulgate their views. The paradox is vividly apparent in the case of Iraq and Iran. While the web gives activists in India an opportunity to pool intellectual resources and raise their game to the point where they often make a fool of the government – see the varying quality of the 377 case documents, this version of events does little to explain the particular history of the laws being fought. This applies not just for gay rights and sexuality, but equally to Forest Law. These were drafted around the same time, but in this case importing the commercial interests of the British Raj, with the conservation of forests predicated on the need for massive Timber extraction. In 2006, in a similar way, this legal regime was challenged, and ownership rights of India’s “original people” were re-asserted after more than130 years.

It is sad that 60 years after Independence, these relics of British rule still remain, but it is also joyous to see that India has the resources and will to remake itself, and to do so with dignity. Both the Gay and Forest Rights campaigns focused around the notion of human dignity, something central to the Gandhian ideal and the wave of decolonisation it triggered. To call this a western ideal is to ignore the History of Others - others who were also capable of understanding the value of human life. These values, asserted in the Indian Constitution, are now taking precedence over a painful legal legacy. Thus these legal changes are signs not of the dominance of western values, but of a growing sense of inner confidence and self-ownership.

Foolish people have argued that there is a choice between preventing the worst effects of climate change and adapting to unavoidable changes, despite compelling evidence, such as that produced at the latest meeting at Copenhagen that the majority cannot survive without drastic emissions reductions and even if we do, adapting to a lot of changes. While there is a very lively debate on mitigation, on reducing the amount of carbon in the air, the debates on adaptation have been sidelined, perhaps becuase they are seen as distracting from the serious task of saving the world – or perhaps saving the relatively rich English-speakers having the debate. Most measures supposedly designed to reduce carbon in the air also tend to have a horrible impact on the poor. Bio-fuels, which would allow a kind of business-as-usual in terms of running car on liquid fuels, are a prime example – large scale cultivation will disrupt food production. Indeed, the World Bank claims that 75% of last year’s food price spike was down to this very factor.

Another example is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) designed to get developing countries involved in  Carbon Trading. These are mitigation measures, this money might help adaptation as well, but, under the current system, it won’t.  India’s Center for Science and Environment has been very critical of CDM, which lets the rich buy all the cheap ways of reducing their carbon outputs, forcing the rest to pay more for this later. In addition, the complex process of obtaining carbon credits means it is only really suitable for big companies. So the money won’t go to helping the poor adapt, but will go to the big companies, who do most of the polluting in the first place.

Aided and abetted by consultants from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, business lobbies have managed to get environmental impact assessment laws diluted in India. Bribery and political influence from big companies is so widespread that several activists have been forced to send industrial water pollution samples to the US to get them processed, because no Indian laboratory dares to return results that would upset big business. Are we seriously going to direct more resources at this lobby in the hope that this will reduce emissions? And how exactly will this help the poor to adapt?

Alternatives will need to be fought for. The recent Forest Rights Act has made its way through Indian Parliament and is now being put into practice. It sets an interesting precedent by putting into law a framework of rights to underpin local democratic control of natural resources. This highlights one of the few advantages the poor have in terms of winning real adaptation concessions. Despite the tiny character of their landholdings,  due to their sheer numbers, they command control of a sizeable proportion of the land.

If you combine the recent findings about climate change with likely emissions reductions paths, you see that we little chance of making it through this crisis without taking some of the carbon back out of the air. The global carbon cycle suggests two main ways of doing this: put it into the sea, by seeding the oceans for instance, but the technology is not developed yet. Alternativey, you can put it into the land, either through minerals like Olivine, or through biomass, and turning it into charcoal (Biochar). It has been correctly observed that using charcoal as a global commercialised solution to climate change has the same effect as bio-fuels on displacing food production. However, dismissing biochar out of hand misses an important strategic point.

Oxfam and others argue that Human Rights should be put at the heart of the climate debates, particularly adaptation. However, they are somewhat more coy in public about the fact that rights are generally never given freely by the powerful, but forced as concessions from them by the struggles of others. But what on earth do the rich need the poor for? One area is to get access to land. Tata’s troubles in building a plant to manufacture the new Nano car illustrates that the poor will not give up control of what little land they have so easily. If the rich need to use land for getting carbon out of the air, and if the poor can prevent the rich  from doing so by thwarting their plans, perhaps this gives them leverage to demand more rights over their natural resources.

Despite biochar being criticised as an unreliable way to improve soil quality, there have been studies that show that used correctly it can be a useful input into organic agriculture, as well as offering a credible method for sinking carbon into the soil, especially when considered as a part of strategies to increase tree-cover overall. Can we afford to dismiss Biochar as an option because we fear the implications of its commercialisation? As a potential low cost-technology that the poor could implement to improve their land, and a possible source of some leverage on the rich in adaptation negotiations, it may be rash to dismiss it out of hand. With only $1Bn of the already pitiful $18Bn of adaptation funding having been paid out, current approaches to mobilising those resources are clearly not working. Can we afford to overlook the potential advantage the poor may have in the one resource they may control?

If the Indian Forest Rights model can be extended to support dryland organic agricultural practices within a democratised natural resource management framework, this actually creates a model where subsidy for mitigation, in the form of support of increased tree coverage and use of biochar might be used to build productive assets for the poor that may help them adapt. The experience of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India shows that productive use of subsidy is crucial to prevent the subsidy from undercutting the existing local economy, especially agriculture. Thus the issue of having a rights regime to protect access to the environment and thus local economic activity is crucial to any adaptation approach. There is almost no chance of realising such regimes unless the poor have some real leverage to exercise in order to get them.

 Anyone see any other leverage out there?