The Hindu Business Line : A new ambience

Though the joint statement issued at the end of the meeting between the G-8 developed countries and the five `outreach' developing nations (India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico) focuses on five broad areas, it is clear that the central message of the summit relates to the climate change issue, a subject on which there was little progress from the point of view of the developing world. Even so, it can perhaps be argued that the very fact that the five leaders of the developing world were able to put across forcefully the views of the poor two-thirds of humanity at such a gathering establishes the principle that the threat of global warming has to be fought jointly and fairly vis-à-vis the costs of the effort.

Among other things, the meeting reaffirmed the commitment of the participating nations to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and to its objectives "in accordance with our common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities." This, in fact, is the crux of the issue when seen through the eyes of the developing world, which has always felt that, as Planet Earth is today suffering the consequences of rapid economic growth in the developed part over the past 100 years, the rich should bear proportionately a larger part of the cost burden of controlling and preventing further adverse climate change. Indeed, a joint policy paper presented to the rich countries (the US, the UK, Japan, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and Canada) by the developing five stated unequivocally that the "greenhouse gas mitigation in developed countries is the key to addressing climate change given their responsibilities in causing it." The G-8 declaration said the emerging economies needed "to address the increase in their emissions by reducing the carbon intensity of their economic development." The debate is not as much about the reduction of carbon emissions, which is no doubt an important aspect of saving the planet's weather, as it is about funding associated technology, an area in which, as the principles of equity would suggest, those with the money should take the lead.

It is from this perspective that the US President, Mr George Bush's urging that nothing will happen on the climate front unless India and China `sit at the table' should be seen, the clear justification for the observation (not from Washington's point of view, of course) being the fact that the two nations together comprise a third of the planet's population. Even so, it is a matter of some relief that the US finally agreed to join the UN process to combat climate change, a shift which hopefully will translate into substantial contributions to upgrade technology and disseminate clean production processes to the poor part of the world, including the emerging economies.

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