Season of opportunity

The 12-day United Nations conference on climate change that began in Buenos Aires (Argentina) on December 6 assumes significance for several reasons. For one thing, it is the last such global meet before the Kyoto accord on reduction in greenhouse gases (GHGs) comes into force two months from now.

More importantly, it is expected to launch the process of evolving a successor to this accord when it expires after a short life span of seven years, in 2012.

Besides, it provides yet another opportunity to rope into the tent the US, the world's biggest polluter. Even if the US does not end its boycott of the Kyoto protocol at this late stage, the least the world expects from it is to fall in line, post-Kyoto.

However, conference deliberations so far offer little hope on this count. For, the US has steadfastly maintained the position that it has chosen a different path from Kyoto and will continue to focus on a domestic emissions programme that does not threaten economic growth.

This is despite a pressure on the US from developed and developing countries alike. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair is understood to have urged President Bush to relent. This pressure, of course, is going to mount further when the talks enter the higher level in the three-day ministerial meeting beginning today.

For India, however, more significant than the US stance is how to cope with the developed countries' demand that it, along with some other fast developing nations, should take on emission reduction commitments for the post-Kyoto era.

The industrialised countries are specifically focusing on what they call the three "developing giants"""China, India, and Brazil""for this purpose. Their main plea is that these economies are growing at record pace with none-too-clean technology.

In their reckoning, China is the second largest producer of the GHGs, next to the US, due to a coal-based industrial boom. Brazil is ranked sixth and India fifth, due partly to coal burning and partly to increased consumption of other fossil fuels.

Even the Chinese and Indian paddy fields, besides the lowly Indian buffalo, are termed as spewers of harmful gases.

Indeed, the developing countries were excluded from emission cut obligations in the Kyoto pact because any curbs on emissions at this stage would delay the emancipation of large numbers of people.

Not much seems to have changed since then, or is likely to change substantially in the next seven years, to lend credence to the developed countries' plea.

No doubt, even developing countries need to move towards cleaner development mechanisms, but the onus of paving the way for this lies on the rich countries which have grown with highly polluting technologies.

Instead of bullying the developing nations, the rich countries need to use the UN climate change forum for threshing out a package of financial incentives and technology transfers for the developing countries.

Buenos Aires will go down in history if this gathering manages to make a worthwhile beginning on this front.