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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Sweet Surrender by Chandrashekhar Dasgupta

Sweet Surrender by Chandrashekhar Dasgupta

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published Published on Jan 16, 2011   modified Modified on Jan 16, 2011

At the Cancun climate change conference in December 2010, Jairam Ramesh, Union minister for environment and forests, raised the white flag of surrender when, departing from the prepared text, he declared, “all countries, we believe, must take on binding commitments under appropriate legal forms”. The minister thus signalled that India will give in to pressures from developed countries to convert its voluntary, nationally-determined mitigation actions into internationally-binding commitments in an “appropriate” legal form.

Facing a barrage of criticism at home, Ramesh sought refuge in verbal gymnastics, claiming that his call for “binding commitments in an appropriate legal form” did not amount to agreeing to a “legally-binding commitment”. However, his real intentions were revealed in a document that has not received the attention it deserves in India. At the pre-Cancun discussions, Ramesh circulated a ten-point paper on “international consultation and analysis” to facilitate “transparency and accountability” for the actions of all countries, including developing countries. A “transparency” requirement is unobjectionable and was generally agreed at Copenhagen last year. However, “accountability” was a new requirement, added by Ramesh. International “accountability” implies nothing less than an internationally- binding commitment. The environment minister’s call for a “binding commitment” at Cancun was not a slip of the tongue; it was part of a premeditated strategy.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol draw a clear distinction between the respective obligations of developed and developing countries. Since developed countries are primarily responsible for causing climate change, the protocol lays down binding emission reduction commitments for each developed country party. Quite appropriately, developing countries are not required to accept such commitments. Their mitigation actions are of a purely voluntary nature and they are not accountable to any international authority, except in regard to projects that receive financial support from such an authority.

India’s national action plan on climate change comprises comprehensive and ambitious measures that it has adopted voluntarily. The government is accountable to the Parliament with respect to these measures — not to any international authority. As the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has stated, India is not a part of the problem of climate change, but it is prepared to be a part of the solution. India is prepared to do whatever it can to mitigate climate change without compromising its overriding priorities of economic and social development and poverty eradication. These voluntary actions must not be converted into legally-binding international commitments. The prime minister himself emphasized this point at Copenhagen last year. Ramesh, however, seems determined to execute a policy U-turn.

Nor is this the only issue on which he has turned India’s policy on its head. Since the beginning of the climate change negotiations, India has been a powerful advocate of the principle that every human being has an equal right of access to the global atmospheric resource. In other words, if global carbon dioxide emissions are to be capped, it must be on the basis of equal per capita accumulated emissions for each country. Developed countries cannot insist that poorer countries must restrict their per capita emissions — and per capita consumption of hydrocarbon fuels — to a fraction of that of affluent countries. Climate stabilization must not be achieved on the basis of perpetuating the wide disparity in living standards between developed and developing countries.

Ramesh has repeatedly tried to dilute or discard this principle. Thus, in his pre-Cancun paper, he proposed that the frequency of the international consultation and review procedure should differentiate between countries not on the basis of whether they are developed or developing countries but on the basis of their gross (as opposed to per capita) emissions. This would have created a new category of “major emitters” in the climate regime — encompassing developed countries with high per capita emissions, together with India and other populous developing countries with low levels of per capita emissions. This would have effectively undermined the per capita principle. Fortunately, Ramesh’s proposal was rejected by other developing countries. Undeterred by this setback, the minister dropped India’s demand for equal per capita access to the global atmospheric resource and replaced it with a meaningless formulation calling for “equitable access to sustainable development”. This was incorporated in the Cancun accord, dealing a heavy blow to any meaningful interpretation of the principle of equity.

It is mystifying why Ramesh chose to circulate, on his own initiative, a set of proposals for “international consultation and analysis” — a demand of developed countries, spearheaded by the United States of America. Indeed, Washington had threatened to block progress on all other questions unless developing countries fell in with its ideas on “international consultation and analysis”. It would have been normal, in these circumstances, for the US to circulate a paper on the subject and for developing countries to propose suitable amendments in order to protect their national interests. Instead, to applause from the affluent countries, it was an Indian minister who presented details of an American proposal — details which actually exceeded requirements formally voiced by the Americans. While the US called only for “transparency” in its public statements, Ramesh offered them “accountability” as well. Similarly, though the Americans would have dearly liked to create a new category of “major emitters” on the basis of gross emissions, they had refrained from raising this demand officially. Ramesh chose to come to their assistance — at India’s cost.

It is conceivable that the minister acted in the context of India’s overall relations with the US. Cultivating closer ties with Washington is, after all, one of the central features of India’s foreign policy. This would have made sense if — and only if — Ramesh had shaped his detailed proposals in a manner consistent with India’s vital national interests. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

In the first place, he should have insisted that the sole aim of “international consultation and analysis” should be to promote transparency of reporting, that is, collecting and estimating emissions data. Ramesh gratuitously added the element of “accountability”, which would have converted India’s voluntary mitigation actions to a binding international commitment.

In the context of “accountability”, “international consultation and analysis” might cover questions of adequacy of implementation (that is, the extent to which India’s national action plans are actually implemented) and even questions regarding the adequacy of its targets (that is, whether India should revise its national plans in light of the observations of international “experts”). This is a crucially important question because developed countries, in particular, the European community, are calling on developing countries to cut down their emissions after a “peaking” year around 2020. This demand would impose serious constraints on consumption of hydrocarbon fuels — coal, oil and gas — in the following decade. The implications for India’s development and poverty eradication programmes do not need to be spelled out.

Second, Ramesh failed to insist that data made available in the process of “international consultation and analysis” and the resulting “experts” report, must not be used for the purpose of imposing trade restrictive measures on developing countries on the pretext of advancing climate change mitigation. Pending US legislation calls for such trade restrictive measures and there is a rising demand for similar unilateral protectionist measures in Europe. India should ensure that “international consultation and analysis” on climate change are not abused to furnish a pretext for trade restrictive measures against emerging economies.

India must ensure that the outcome of the negotiations does not unjustly constrain its energy options or facilitate disguised protectionism directed against emerging economies. Its development prospects will be imperilled if it fails to bring its climate change policy back on track.

The author is a retired ambassador with long experience of climate change negotiations

The Telegraph, 17 January, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110117/jsp/opinion/story_13451487.jsp


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