February 23, 2010




Special to ‘Financial Chronicle’




by Praful Bidwai





In their communication to the UNFCCC secretariat on their proposed climate-related actions, neither China nor India even mentions the Accord. Despite having succeeded in excising all quantitative targets from its text and thus averted any climate-related obligations on themselves for the near future, India and China know the Accord has no UN status or political legitimacy.




It is incompatible with what the world needs to avert irreversible climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5 to 2 °C (above pre-industrial levels). This means global greenhouse emissions must peak by 2020. For this to happen, developed countries must cut their emissions by 40-45 percent within a decade and GHG atmospheric concentrations must at best rise marginally from the present level (380 ppm) or fall (to 350 ppm). Under the voluntary offers made by the developed countries at Copenhagen, their emissions will only decrease by 6-14 percent. Concentrations are likely to rise to 700 ppm and warming to 3.5-4 °C, spelling a catastrophe.




China and India behaved cynically at Copenhagen in bypassing the multilateral two-track negotiating process, anchored firmly in the objective of extending the Kyoto Protocol’s effectiveness beyond 2012. They now want the UNFCCC to resume the process and extend the Protocol, the world’s sole legally-binding climate agreement. But they have lost much leverage by promoting the Accord.




The controversy over a specific date for the vanishing of Himalayan glaciers in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has been seized upon by climate change-deniers and powerful industry groups. Although the error in relying on a non–peer-reviewed number is significant, it does not alter the conclusion that Himalayan glaciers are melting dangerously rapidly. Yet, it has dented the IPCC’s credibility in a minor way.




The UNFCCC process has plunged further into crisis with the resignation of executive secretary Yvo de Boer. He will quit just when the next major UNFCCC meeting begins end-May at Bonn. De Boer was no stickler for multilateralism or climate equity, and went along with the Copenhagen Accord. But he was experienced and got the different parties talking. His absence means that a strong initiative won’t be taken well before Bonn to get inter-sessional talks going to salvage the original UNFCCC process.




The climate remediation agenda has suffered a setback in the US with the walkout by BP America, Conoco-Phillips and Caterpillar from the Green Climate Action partnership supporting President Obama’s climate bill. This makes it near-certain that the bill won’t get passed this year. It is unrealistic to expect that the US will stop being a drag on the global negotiations, or that the European Union will seize the initiative after Copenhagen’s demoralising outcome.




India’s climate policy-making establishment is in turmoil. There was much dissonance in it before and during Copenhagen as negotiators were suddenly confronted with changes in the brief. Special climate envoy Shyam Saran has since resigned—largely because environment minister Jairam Ramesh has increasingly laid down the agenda, taking it towards “flexibility”, but away from environmental equity both globally and domestically. It is likely that the two principal negotiators, Chandrasekhar Dasgupta and Prodipto Ghosh, will quit. That only enlarges India’s climate-related challenge.




The challenge is also a good opportunity to rework India’s climate policy, in process and substance. India must develop a nuanced, complex, equity-driven dual approach. Globally, it must firmly hold down the developed countries to their historical obligations to cut emissions and the principle of North-South differentiated responsibility in financing developing countries’ mitigation, adaptation and technology development. India must also accept the Emerging Economies’ moral obligation to reduce the carbon- and emissions-intensity of their production, and later emissions too.




Domestically, India must do its utmost promote climate-responsible development and fulfil its obligations to the poor majority, which is highly vulnerable to climate change. This means vigorously exploiting the scope for reducing energy, water and materials intensity of production, construction and transportation, discouraging emissions-intensive luxury consumption, undertaking massive afforestation and water conservation, and embracing low-carbon development even while providing basic needs, including modern energy services, to the poor.




Devising this strategy will need more than official and scientific-technological inputs. It demands wide consultation with numerous stakeholders, including state and local governments; independent experts in climate- and energy-related fields; including water, renewables, mountain ecology, agriculture and forestry; social scientists; alternative development innovators; relief-oriented NGOs; and people’s movements representing those most vulnerable to climate change.




The present climate policy reference framework is hopelessly elitist and inadequate—with only one NGO representative in the 26-member official-heavy Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, 25 of whose members are from Delhi or its suburbs (the sole exception being Ratan Tata, from Mumbai).




This travesty must be abolished and replaced by a representative bottom-up consultation process. The Indian people have a survival-related stake in combating climate change. The government must not let them down.—end--