The global negotiations, under way in Poznan (Poland) on working out a successor to the Kyoto protocol on climate change that expires in 2012, have been strategically mistimed, and it would be a surprise if they delivered any satisfactory build-up to the final Copenhagen conference scheduled for a year from now. The backdrop is that the record of the rich countries since Kyoto has been poor—instead of cutting back on emissions, using 1990 as a base year, they have increased emissions by about 15 per cent. The long-term goals now being talked about, for 2050, do not have proper milestones marked for intervening years, even as efforts continue to move away from the two fundamental principles of equal per capita entitlement and polluter-must-pay. The timing of the conference is another negative, because the US, which as the world’s largest polluter has to play the key role in any post-Kyoto emission reduction programme, is in transition with a new administration waiting to take charge. Many other countries, adversely hit by the economic crisis as they are, are wary of making concrete commitments at this stage.
President-elect Barack Obama has proposed plans for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and this marks an important departure for a country that had chosen to walk away from the Kyoto agreement. Mr Obama’s offer to cut US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and to reduce them further by 80 per cent by 2050, is an improvement on whatever President Bush would have put on the table, but it is also not good enough. Had the US participated in the Kyoto effort, it would have had to resort to a cut of 7 per cent from the 1990 level, by 2012, whereas Mr Obama is now offering the 1990 level by 2020—or a significant slide back from the Kyoto target in terms of both target year and level of pollution.
The issue of funding clean development efforts is clouded by the economic downturn. Going by UN estimates, the developing countries will need at least $300 billion annually to support their clean development. That kind of money is a pipedream; even the climate change adaptation fund, set up last year, is virtually a non-starter so far. Since a part of the financial burden will have to be borne by the polluting industry, the corporate sector has become circumspect. That explains why over 150 global investors and companies have chosen to circulate a joint statement at the Poznan meet, drawing attention to the economic impact of climate policies on their costs and investments.
The Poznan talks can, at best, dwell on issues of a technical nature without taking concrete decisions, and that is what seems to be happening. Contentious issues like emission reduction targets, financing mechanisms and technology transfer will have to wait for subsequent deliberations. Countries like India and China, on which the developed countries want to impose mandatory emission cuts, too, can do little more than re-state their well-articulated on all these issues. The only real purpose that Poznan can hope to serve is to come up with a more efficient alternative to the carbon trading-based clean development mechanism, and an acceptable system of technology transfer to the developing countries.