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Govt accepts climate shift

The Copenhagen Accord on climate change marks a shift from a government pledge to Parliament, environment minister Jairam Ramesh accepted today, but asserted that this would not compromise India’s sovereignty.

Ramesh had committed to Parliament before leaving for the UN climate summit in Copenhagen earlier this month that India would only provide information about its domestic actions to curb greenhouse emission to the international community.

But the accord crafted on Friday by a group from 28 countries to salvage the summit from possible collapse suggests that the developing countries should be prepared for “international consultations and analysis” on their promised actions.

This appears to deviate from India’s stance that domestic actions not supported by foreign finance or technology would not be available for international review.

“I plead guilty. Yes, I have moved from the word ‘information’ to ‘consultations and analysis’. I am not getting into an argument on that. There has been a shift,” Ramesh said today in Parliament.

“But we have nothing to fear. Our sovereignty has not been eroded,” Ramesh said. India would ensure that any consultation or analysis on emission-curbing actions would not be intrusive, he said.

The BJP’s Arun Jaitley, who was more aggressive than the CPM’s Sitaram Yechury, said the shift proved the government was suffering from the “Sharm el-Shaikh syndrome”. He was referring to the joint statement in Egypt with Pakistan earlier this year that the Opposition felt had yielded too much ground to the neighbour.

Climate policy analysts have cautioned, as reported by The Telegraph on Monday, that negotiations in the coming months would determine whether India can ensure that its sovereignty supersedes consultations.

Large greenhouse gas emitters such as India and China have come under intense pressure from Europe and the US to agree to accept international scrutiny of their domestic emission-curbing actions.

Explaining the compulsions under which this was done during the climate summit, Ramesh said India, Brazil, China and South Africa — the BASIC group — had jointly, successfully resisted much stronger language that had been proposed by the US.

“We resisted (US suggestions) for almost 36 hours,” Ramesh said. The US wanted the words “review”, “scrutiny”, or “verification”. The BASIC group rejected all three. The US delegation then asked for “assessment” which was also rejected.

The BASIC delegations then pitched “international consultations and analysis with clearly defined guidelines to ensure that National Sovereignty is respected”. “We’re happy this was accepted by the US,” Ramesh said.

The Copenhagen Accord is expected to be translated into a legally binding treaty through negotiations during 2010. Ramesh said India and the other BASIC countries had made it clear that action on climate change should be under the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Bali Action Plan of 2007.

The Kyoto Protocol imposes legally binding emission reductions on industrialised countries, but not on developing countries. But under the Bali Action Plan, developing countries are expected to take on emission-curbing actions with the help of finance and technology from the industrialised countries.

Several industrialised countries want to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new treaty that imposes actions on all countries. “We won’t let the Kyoto Protocol die. We won’t let the Bali Action Plan die,” Ramesh said.