by Praful Bidwai

Some international treaties and agreements are so incurably ineffectual, unequal or otherwise flawed that the world would be better off without them. The Copenhagen Accord signed last year was one such. A collusive arrangement between the United States and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China), later signed by 20-odd states, the Accord reversed some major gains made in the negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. These include assigning greater responsibility to the industrialised Northern countries than the developing South in combating climate change, defining time-bound quantitative targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and mandating North-to-South transfers of finance and technology.

Mercifully, the Accord was not adopted by the Copenhagen conference. It was condemned universally by environmentalists, by most climate scientists, and by many progressive governments. Signatory India didn’t even mention it in its climate-related actions officially reported to the UN. The Accord seemed destined to go into the dustbin of history.




Now, its main features have been resurrected in the Cancun Agreements (CA), just reached in Mexico. The CA are not only weak and inadequate, they are downright retrograde in some respects.






The CA have attracted a range of comments. Some observers have welcomed them for defending UN “multilateralism” and called them “forward-looking”, “a new beginning”, a necessary part of global “give-and-take”, and a prelude to an effective agreement, with binding emissions-reduction targets, to be negotiated in South Africa next year. But the crucial yet simple question is: Will the CA prevent catastrophic climate change? Do they mandate the 40 percent emissions cuts by the North necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 to 2 °C, the very maximum that Planet Earth can tolerate?




The answer is a resounding no. Under the CA, global temperatures are likely to rise by 3 to 4 °C or more, causing irreversible disruptions and breakdowns in the climate system, leading to ecological devastation, millions of deaths and colossal economic damage, thus threatening humanity’s survival. The CA are full of loopholes and ambiguities. They postpone major decisions (e.g. the legal form of commitments) to next year. They blur the distinction between the North, historically responsible for three-quarters of global emissions, and the South.




The CA turn the science-based process of setting country-specific emissions-reduction targets on its head and take a “bottom-up” approach: countries can set their targets at will. Instead of imposing emissions cuts of up to 40 percent on the North without carbon offsets and other loopholes, as is imperative, they allow it to do very little, without penalties. For instance, the US, the world’s worst polluter, has offered emissions cuts of a laughable 4 percent by 2020. The CA don’t even mention equitable access to global climate space, only “equitable access to sustainable development”.




At Cancun, there was no agreement on a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s sole legally binding climate agreement, whose first term expires in 2012. Under the Protocol, the industrialised countries must take on quantified emission limitations and financially support the developing countries’ climate-related actions and generation of technologies for low-carbon development. Instead, the CA create a single instrument for both North and South. This paves the way for abolishing the Kyoto Protocol—a demand made stridently by Japan, Russia, Canada and Australia. (The US isn’t even a signatory to the Protocol.)




Many Northern countries have failed to meet even their modest emissions-reduction targets (5.2 percent on average) under Kyoto’s first term, even allowing for the partly illusory cuts “achieved” through carbon trading instead of domestic reductions. Seventeen of the 41 have increased their emissions—some, by as much as 40 and 100 percent. According to the UN Environment Programme, there still remains a gap of 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions between the North’s pledges and the 44 million tonnes needed to limit global warming to 2 °C.




The CA also impose a system of international consultation and analysis for the voluntary domestic mitigation actions of the South even when they aren’t financially supported by the North. This violates the spirit of the Bali Action Plan (2007), which established a firewall between the North’s “commitments” (obligations) and the South’s “actions”. These actions must be measured, reported and verified only when supported by the North. The only North-South difference is the frequency of reporting: annual for the North, and once every two years for the South.




The Cancun Agreements create REDD (reduced emissions through deforestation and degradation), a market mechanism, ostensibly to promote forest conservation, thus commodifying forests. As forest and tribal activists have argued, this treats forests as mere stocks of carbon and doesn’t recognise the rights of forest-dwelling communities.




The CA establish a technology-sharing Mechanism to help vulnerable countries. But they don’t address the important issue of intellectual property rights (IPRs) or technology patenting. Who would fund the Technology Mechanism and to what extent much remains unclear.




The CA thus represent no forward movement on key issues. However, there is some progress in other areas, including adaptation to climate change, and establishing a $100 billion Green Climate Fund by 2020. But this is wholly inadequate for what’s actually needed for mitigation and adaptation in the South (estimated at $500-1,000 billion annually).




The Fund is a distant political objective. There is no clarity on where the money would come from and how it would be channelled. The developed countries have shown no indication yet that they are prepared to lose control over how the South spends climate-related funds.




Formally speaking, the CA does reaffirm multilateralism. But the agreements were reached through informal meetings and negotiations which initially involved a small number of countries (10 were assigned the task of recruiting about 50 states). The process was divisive. The most vulnerable countries were targeted and offered inducements to dilute their support for the Kyoto Protocol’s second term and other G-77 demands.




As the WikiLeaks cables show, the US and European Union used all manner of inducements to get small and vulnerable countries to sign on to the Copenhagen Accord as a condition for receiving assistance. They also worked hard on the BASIC countries, targeting their individual officials by seeking compromising intelligence on them and details such as credit card and frequent-flyer numbers. It would be a surprise if similar tactics weren’t used before and during Cancun.




The CA will greatly expand carbon trading—through REDD and the inclusion of the dubious technology of Carbon Capture and Storage under the Clean Development Mechanism. The CDM allows Southern projects to earn carbon credits and sell them to the North, which can evade reducing its own emissions.




Carbon trading is conceptually flawed. Using market mechanisms to combat climate change is totally irrational: no less than former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern admits that climate change represents history’s greatest market failure.




The CDM is a huge scandal, with unreasonable emissions allowances for Northern corporations and inappropriate Southern projects (like making a refrigerant gas—only to burn it to earn credits). Many projects violate the condition that they must be new, not business-as-usual: over 80 percent of the dams earning credits were already built or under construction before the CDM took effect.




Carbon trading has become a highly speculative activity, akin to sub-prime bank lending. It’s dominated by futures trading in presumed credits which may never materialise.




The Cancun Agreements are bad for the world, unfair to the South’s vulnerable people, and soft on the North. Of the promised “fast track” finance of $30 billion by 2012, the North has so far mobilised only $4.5 billion, according to World Resources Institute. A good chunk of Northern assistance will come from the private sector and take the form of loans or equity. Some of it won’t be new and additional funding, but will recycle existing aid flows.




Only tiny Bolivia had the courage to oppose the Cancun Agreements. Why did India sign them in violation of its own “non-negotiables”: namely, a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, accelerated financial support for the South, and technology transfer without IPR restrictions? The only explanation is, a combination of external pressure, and New Delhi’s shrewd calculation that the Agreements impose relatively light obligations on India—although they place even lighter ones on the North.




This speaks of an extremely cynical approach, and conforms to the worst-case scenario I discussed in my book An India That Can Say Yes: A Climate-Responsible Development Agenda for Copenhagen and Beyond, published a year ago. Put simply, India’s policy-makers are bent on retaining the option to raise the country’s emissions under the pretext of “development” and fighting poverty—in reality, to support elite consumption. Most of them will do anything and everything to resist any future climate-related restraint—including signing a climate deal that is disastrous for the world, and hence in the long term for India too.




There is another term for this approach. It’s called Shooting Yourself in the Foot.