Flashing amber, not green

The climate change talks made no progress at Bonn

The latest round of talks for thrashing out a successor to the Kyoto accord on climate change, on the basis of the new text circulated by the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), ended in Bonn on Friday and saw an unexpected, if subtle, shift in the US stand which could change the course of these negotiations. Refusing yet again to fall in line with the Kyoto process, the US has now called for another agreement on this issue which ropes in all countries, regardless of their economic level, in the joint effort to combat global warming. Its plea got some support from at least four other countries — Australia, Costa Rica, Japan and Tuvalu — which additionally have called for different proposals for an alternative to the Kyoto protocol, set to expire in 2012.

The US argument is that the developing countries should commit to taking actions to reduce their emissions, but without being penalised for failing to do so. For the least developed countries, the US proposes the provision of funds to meet their climate change obligations, without indicating where these funds would come from. Though the US has stopped short of calling the proposed developing country obligations non-mandatory, that is what they are. If that be the case, there would seem little reason for the developing countries to turn down the proposal. But the apprehension is that this move is meant, albeit tacitly, to water down the industrialised countries’ responsibility for emission reduction by transferring some of their burden on to the developing countries. The misgivings on this count emanate from the fact that most developed countries have either refrained from putting on the table their intentions for post-Kyoto emission reduction, or have indicated numbers lower than even the missed Kyoto targets. The over-riding priority for the developing countries is to achieve economic development and thereby to alleviate poverty, and this would mean that their emission levels will continue to swell for many years hence. This brings to the fore the significance of the transfer of clean technologies, and the provision of funds for their adoption by the poor nations.

On this, the developed countries make the right noises but do not back these up by making any firm financial commitments. Unless suitable mechanisms for raising the funds and routing them to the developing countries are put in place, it is futile to expect these countries to deliver at the cost of growth. Countries like India, which have their own national plans for promoting clean development, need also to be encouraged to expand these plans through liberal assistance.