The 53-page negotiating text, released by the UN climate change secretariat for the talks beginning in Bonn next week for thrashing out a treaty on tackling global warming, intended to be inked in Copenhagen in December, leaves no one fully satisfied—as might have been expected from such a preparatory document, especially given the yawning gap that exists even now between the positions of the rich and poor countries. The negotiating text has peeved the developing countries in particular, as it offers little choice to them but to take on mandatory cuts in harmful gas emission while giving a lot of leeway to the developed countries for heading towards near-elimination of their emissions by mid-century. This is the important change from what was adopted in the Kyoto Protocol 13 years ago, when countries like India and China did not have to make any commitments. For the developing countries, the draft limits the options to either curtailing their emissions from the current baseline by 15-30 per cent by 2020, or reducing them by 25 per cent from 2000 levels by 2050. Since the developing countries, for which goals like economic development, poverty alleviation and food security have overriding priority, are unlikely to agree to any of these options, a consensus on the basis of this draft seems highly doubtful.
The document is of course a draft that is to be suitably amended following negotiations, but that does not make much difference as far as the developing nations are concerned. For, any changes they ask for would have to be paid back in the form of concessions on other fronts. The developed countries are already talking of measures like a carbon tax on imports from countries that do not have mandatory emission cuts, and sectoral targets for binding emission or energy reduction by selected industries in all the countries. That will hurt exports from the developing countries, and hit growth.
On the positive side, the text envisages giving some weight to a nation’s population trends, access to low-carbon energy supply and economic development while establishing carbon dioxide emission limits — which can favour the poor and populous countries — but it falls short of mooting any formula for doing so. Also, on the positive side, it talks of an insurance system and venture-capital funds to help countries adapt to extreme weather events and risks to crop production and food security. But, at the same time, it stipulates giving the right to the wealthy countries contributing to these adaptation funds to monitor the use of this money.
The note serves the useful purpose of collating the pledges already made by the industrialised countries to cut emissions in the post-Kyoto era for everyone to see where each country stands on its commitment to preserve the climate. The European Union, for instance, has offered to cut gas output by 30 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, but with the rider that other countries should follow suit. US President Barack Obama, on the other hand, has proposed merely reverting to the 1990 level during the same period while Australia has offered a 25 per cent cut from the 2000 level. This, coupled with the emerging countries’ reluctance to take on binding commitments in the near run, can provide the EU a reason to renege from, or dilute, its commitment. All these signal the arduous nature of the task that the climate change negotiators face in the run-up to the forthcoming 15th conference of the parties (COP-15) at Copenhagen, with political mandates to finalise the successor to the Kyoto protocol that expires in 2012. These ministers, hopefully, will realise that result-oriented action on stemming global warming cannot wait any longer and that businesses the world over are eagerly awaiting the outcome of this meet to know their obligations before deciding on fresh investments in production and technologies.
