The air is hotting up on climate change negotiations between developing countries, such as India and China, and the developed world, with the government now preparing to tell US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later this week that “developing countries are already doing so much on this issue, if the developed world wants more, it must now take the lead”.
Clinton arrives in India tomorrow for a five-day visit, which includes talks with the government on key issues like climate change, the Doha trade talks and nuclear issues. The Obama administration has already identified climate change negotiations as the next big debate it must undertake with key developing countries like India and China so as to press the conclusion of a global agreement.
Shyam Saran, India’s top climate change negotiator and the Prime Minister’s special envoy, told Business Standard that his team was preparing to tell Clinton that the US, “which has acknowledged its historic responsibility of being the world’s largest polluter, must now lead the developed world to target a reduction in emissions, both in the short and the long term, by agreeing to much larger financial flows and technology transfers to developing countries.”
On its part, Saran said, developing countries were ready to deviate from its strategy of “business as usual” on its own carbon emissions. He would not quantify the commitment if developed countries did not set out a comprehensive strategy to meet their own.
With US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia Robert Blake telling reporters on the eve of Clinton’s visit in Washington that “there is a big opportunity for India to pursue a clean energy path,” Saran accepted the ongoing negotiations were “intensely political” in nature.
“India wants to do something about climate change, but it also wants the developed world to achieve the ambitious targets it has set for itself... These negotiations are not only technical, but also political, since there is an increasing global anxiety about climate change,” Saran said.
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So as the global debate warms up around the “polluter pays” principle in the run up to the UN-sponsored climate summit in Copenhagen in December — whether the developed world should pay and how much, for emissions it has been spewing into the atmosphere for several decades — a controversy is already raging within India over the government’s decision to acquiesce to a demand by the world’s major economies (G-8 countries, plus India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, South Korea and Mexico) at a forum in L’Aquila, Italy, last week that a global rise in temperatures must be capped at 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels.
The current temperature rise above the pre-industrial level is estimated to be 0.8 degrees.
“There is no question of accepting any limitations at the cost of the country’s economic and social development,” Saran said, adding, “In fact, it was publicly recognised at L’Aquila that any action by developing countries must be subject to the overriding priority of poverty eradication.”
At L’Aquila, the developed world refused to abide by earlier commitments to cut emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, at the 1990 levels, but pushed the target to 80 per cent by 2050.
Developing countries want the developed world not only to cut emissions, Saran said, but also want them to commit themselves to contribute at least 1 per cent of their GDP, amounting to about $200-250 billion annually, towards a common fund.