 "Narendra Modi, Barack Obama")
If there was one overarching imprint on the Paris climate change negotiations, it was of the diplomatic heft that the US enjoys. The last hours of the talks, when the US was faced with the challenge of removing a phrase it didn't like in the final agreement, it was left to the European Union to walk across the aisle to convince everyone to not oppose the changes the US demanded. The European Union, once hailed as the climate change leader of the world, was canvassing the developing country bloc to accept an agreement that was discordantly against its own non-negotiable position wanting a strict legally-binding protocol and not a loosely-bound agreement that the Paris outcome eventually became.
That is a mere cherry of an anecdote that the Malaysian negotiator and the chief spokesperson of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group, Gurdial Singh Nijar, revealed in a candid interview to the Third World Network, an observer group at the negotiations. The US imprint is more explicitly visible in the results that 196 countries approved eventually at Paris on December 12.
Days after the agreement, several Indian commentators, including diplomats and environmentalists who have watched or participated in the climate negotiations for years, have almost universally recognised some consequences of the agreement. The fundamental nature of the balance of responsibilities between developed and developing world has changed under the new agreement. The scientific basis of using a country's cumulative emissions and not just the current or future emissions to apportion responsibilities has been done away with in the Paris agreement. The agreement requires a bottoms-up voluntary effort and will live by trust between nations or die for the lack of it over the next decade.
All these decisions went almost exactly as the US desired and were supported by the European Union. In the future, trust would be built in the new regime by developed countries continuing to do more than the rest of the world in the fight against climate change, though the agreement requires so of them in rather meek words. That's a tough task considering countries have quite blatantly broken legally-binding climate obligations for a decade-and-a-half now and that the requirement now is to do much more than ever before to reach the goal set in the agreement - keeping the rise in temperature to below 2 degree Celsius, preferably below 1.5 degree Celsius, by the turn of the century.
But, as in all legal documents, details matter. The agreement reads, "Each party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive Nationally Determined Contributions (climate actions) that it intends to achieve. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions." As the Third World Network rightly catches the fine print it analyses, "This means that there is an obligation to take the measures necessary, with the aim of achieving the emissions reduction target, but not to achieve the target itself (emphasis added)."
This is again the US imprint requiring that no targets of any nature in the agreement be binding on the countries and that they be only indicative, while the processes are legally-binding.
Yet, an overwhelming level of global political leadership and other experts have hailed the agreement as paradigm-shifting and giving a new thrust to the climate battle. They side-step the fact that a paradigm existed since 1992 - the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change - but it failed as the developed countries decided to fail it. The new agreement will work for the developed countries only if emerging economies are willing to bear some of the historic burden besides the responsibility for the developing world's current and future greenhouse gas emissions. This fight over shifting burden will continue as the agreement's rules and modalities get sketched by 2020 and as countries are asked to revisit their climate action targets in 2018 and then in 2024.
India's stand
Consequently, the Indian government's claims that climate justice and concerns about curtailing luxurious lifestyles of the developed world have been anchored in the agreement strain facts towards fiction and are pyrrhic if proclaimed as trophies of victory. These phrases find mention in the most irrelevant ways in essentially inoperable parts of the agreement as face-saving nougats from France to carry home.
These demands were of fundamental nature and they stood in absolute opposition to what the US' diplomatic army, its allies and the EU came looking for at Paris. Considering India had given up on these ideas at Copenhagen and Cancun talks in 2009-10, no keen observer of the talks believed India would secure these at Paris, unless it made others aware that India was willing to stand alone if required. One of the two countries had to lose on these counts. India did. In reality, negotiators understood the mandate was to drive the terms of the new agreement somewhat closer to these ideas without standing up and out alone.
Many commentators talked of whether China would ditch India at the talks or not after a bilateral agreement with the US. It did for most parts. In fact, the Africa group of nations too stood alongside on most occasions. But ultimately, if a country did not stand up for its own fundamental ideas, it would be fool-hardy to expect others to do so for it.
The Indian team faced a tough challenge in the battle of attrition at Paris. It was mandated to act positive and not be perceived as a blocker, and yet the team's mandate was not to grab new ground but to hold existing lines as far as possible. Much credit goes to the diplomatic creativity and tenacity of the relatively small frontline Indian negotiating team in doing so to the extent it did.
This inherent contradiction in the Indian position accommodated the US for things less fundamental as well at times. Many of such compromises are owed to the political decisions taken in the last few days of negotiations between ministers and heads of states, including those between US President Barack Obama, secretary of state John Kerry with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar. Take the case of allowing a line in the agreement that will limit foreign funding for clean coal technologies and investments in future years, or giving up on differentiation between developed and developing countries in the compliance mechanism.
But in the face of the inherent contradiction, the political limits drawn for the team and the heavy fire from the opposition, India's negotiating team achieved tremendous short-term gains by maintaining a credible wall of differentiation between developed and developing countries. In the long run, one would have to wait and see if the "enduring" Paris agreement really endures the strain of shifting burden or the stress builds up to revise the pact yet again in a decade.
