The Cancun Climate Change Conference concluded on December 11 with a raft of “Cancun Agreements”. These have been hailed as significant if somewhat modest. The Indian delegation has received, Minister Jairam Ramesh has reportedly said, “Taalis abroad, but gaalis at home” for its role in promoting consensus and restoring trust, which had badly frayed at the controversy- ridden Copenhagen Climate Summit exactly a year ago. In a limited context, the Cancun meeting was indeed successful. A semblance of international consensus appears to have been achieved on the way forward, but only by a drastic lowering of sights on virtually all elements of the Bali mandate and, more importantly, by skirting the key issue in the multilateral negotiations, that is,delivery on the international and legally binding commitments assumed by developed, industrialised countries in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to undertake significant and absolute reductions in their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, subject to international compliance procedures. This applies as much to the United States as it does to other developed countries, since it has signed and ratified the UNFCCC. Its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol does not exempt it from its legal obligations under the Convention. The debate over the Kyoto Protocol is a red herring. The real objective of trashing the Protocol is to eviscerate the Convention itself. The former did not invent the distinction between developed and developing countries, which is proving to be so difficult to swallow for countries like the US, Japan, Canada or Australia. This distinction is fundamental to the Convention itself and its dilution, let alone elimination, will have profound impact on the developmental prospects of countries like India.
While acknowledging that they have historical responsibility for the bulk of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions in the earth’s atmosphere, which is what is causing global warming, the US and other developed countries argue that the current emissions’ trajectories of major emerging economies like China or India would neutralise their own emission reductions and hence climate change would continue to take place. This apparent mathematical logic appears to have convinced many within our own civil society and political ranks. Another, more compelling mathematical logic has been deliberately obscured. If we all agree that the rise in global average temperatures should not exceed say 2º centigrade by 2050, this corresponds to a certain stock of GHGs in the atmosphere. To reach that level, reduction in emissions required globally would have to be distributed over several countries. What the UNFCCC incorporated is a principle of equitable burden sharing in this respect rather than a symmetry of legal obligations. Developed countries took on a legal commitment to undertake absolute emissions reductions not only to meet the requirement of keeping global warming within scientifically determined acceptable levels, but also, and this is fundamental, to vacate atmospheric space sufficient to accommodate the rising emissions of developing countries, inevitable in the latter’s course of economic and social development. If developing countries were encouraged to take mitigation measures beyond their own capacities, then such measures would have to be enabled and supported by financial and technological transfers from developed countries. What is now taking place in the negotiations, through a familiar process of attrition, is the wholesale overturning of these fundamental provisions of the UNFCCC. This cannot but impact on our development prospects. Today, nearly 400 million Indians do not have access to commercial energy. If the distinction between developed and developing countries is blurred, or worse, eliminated, then a very limited carbon spectrum would be available to us to meet the massive energy hunger of our population. Certainly it is in India’s own interest to make a strategic shift to progressively increase the use of renewable and cleaner sources of energy to power its growth, but this can only be undertaken in a graduated manner and subject to the availability of scarce resources. What Cancun has confirmed is that emerging countries like India can neither expect any financial nor technology transfers to support domestic actions. Meeting any obligations we assume in a future Climate regime will come at the cost of meeting urgent and compelling developmental imperatives. The approach of developed countries is typical of other discriminatory regimes: we get to keep what we have because we got here first. You stay where you are because you are a latecomer. We should resist this.
India should insist that all parties to the UNFCCC meet their treaty obligations. If they cannot and wish to renegotiate the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol, then they should follow the legal procedures laid down to amend or abrogate them. We should not be complicit in a brazen attempt to trash the Convention even while reaffirming its principles and provisions. The US has made it clear that it no longer accepts its solemn obligation under the Convention to negotiate, multilaterally, international and legally binding commitments to reduce its GHG emissions. It says it will only commit itself to domestically generated targets that its Congress will legislate on. Further, these targets will not be subject to any international compliance procedures. Only international review and verification would be acceptable. In reality, this implies that if the US does not meet its own targets, there is nothing the rest of the world can do except to complain. Is it any wonder that developed countries, parties to the Kyoto Protocol, are so eager to abandon it, because the Protocol incorporates the higher level of legal commitment enshrined in the Convention and has a very strict compliance mechanism? The US has set a very low bar and has everyone else racing to the bottom to keep pace with it.
India’s objectives in the Climate negotiations are clear: One, the Climate regime emerging from these negotiations should incorporate significant, ambitious and legally enforceable emission reduction obligations on the part of developed countries, because India is one of the countries most vulnerable to global climate change. There is a global context to our own efforts which is frequently ignored. Whatever we do will achieve nothing unless paralleled by a robust multilateral regime.
Two, any Climate regime should enhance, not diminish, India’s growth prospects; and, three, the regime should support India’s own actions in meeting the twin and interrelated challenges of energy security and climate change. India has no reason to be defensive. It has taken several important initiatives in its National Action Plan on Climate Change, relying on its own resources. It has every right to expect that any actions beyond this threshold are entitled to international financial and technological support.
On these counts, a careful reassessment of where we are headed after Cancun may be in order.
The author is a former foreign secretary and is currently acting chairperson, RIS and senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research