The debate warms up

The Human Development Report (2007-08), released last week, has done what should have been attempted earlier: put the need to combat climate change at the centre of global economic endeavour. Among those that were holding out, first the European Union, then China and most recently the new leadership of Australia have fallen in line with the need to control and reduce carbon emissions to fight global warming. Now only the US stands out as the major polluter in the world which is still refusing to take on an international obligation to cut its carbon emissions. The foreword to the report states that limiting climate change "is a worthwhile insurance strategy for the world as a whole, including the richest countries". And it acknowledges that the most difficult policy challenges to be faced in adopting measures to combat climate change will be "distributional", that is determining how the burden will be shared between rich and poor countries, and also between those who created the problem and the rest. Stating that the current multilateral arrangements to combat climate change are inadequate, the report calls for a binding international commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Since the developing countries have to be a part of such an agreement, it must incorporate "provisions for finance and technology from rich nations that bear historical responsibility for climate change."

While such assertions in the HDR are welcome, the Planning Commission's deputy chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has rightly objected to the report's attempt to stipulate emission reduction milestones on the basis of over-all country emissions, and not on the basis of per capita emission. In that sense, the HDR has walked straight into the politics of climate change by adopting the viewpoint of the rich countries, and ignoring the viewpoint of countries like India. Any cap on the basis of total country emissions restricts a highly populous country like India's ability to grow, and will militate against reducing poverty. Indeed, the report gives the false impression of being fair by saying that the developed countries must reduce their emissions by 2050 by 80 per cent of what they committed under the Kyoto agreement, and developing countries must reduce theirs by 20 per cent. But so far ahead are the rich countries in their overall emissions that even after these reductions they will remain way ahead of countries like India. By 2050, India's population is likely to be five times that of the US but, according to the HDR formula, India will have to restrict emissions to less than a third of that allowed to the US. The hypocrisy and double standards are transparent.

The underlying message is that hard bargaining lies ahead as the world seeks to hammer out a new agreement on emission reduction to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires by 2012. Manmohan Singh did well to score some points at his last meeting with the heads of the G8 countries by saying that India is taking corrective action and that it will not cross the level of emissions in the rich countries. This has also struck a responsive chord in the head of the G8, Germany's Angela Merkel. The question at the forthcoming Bali meeting will be whether this foundation can be built upon. In that context, the HDR does not help arrive at a solution.