The Hindu Business Line : Bali meet on climate ends on a tame note after high drama

With stagflation looming large over the economy, rising energy prices and food shortages, it would be a challenge not just to the US but others too to curb reliance on conventional energy in any great measure even in the next 20 years.

N. R. Krishnan

The just concluded UN Climate Conference in picturesque Bali (3-15 December) had all the catharsis of Greek drama. With Mr Yvo de Boer, the chief of the climate change secretariat, choking with emotion as stalemate stared in the face, Mr Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, making a last minute appeal to the delegates to arrive at a consensus and Ms Paula J. Dobriansky, the head of the US delegation, resigning herself to a consensus at the end, the conference had all the stuff for a modern day Sophocles to craft an epic. May be someone will some day.

With the major participants holding adversarial positions from the start, one expected little positive to come out of Bali. The European Union ( EU), with a new found ally in Australia under a freshly minted Prime Minister, was all for developed countries reducing their emissions of the global warming Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) by 25-40 per cent by the year 2020 and the developing countries to follow suit.

Naysayer role cut out

The US delegation had its naysayer role cut out with pleas for roping in the new emerging economic giants China and India into the discipline of GHG reductions. For their part, China and India would have none of it as GHG cuts simply meant energy cuts which in turn translated into stifled economic growth. Few UN conferences had ever begun with delegations arrayed against each other in such uncompromising positions. And to boot all this, there was the imposing presence of Mr Al Gore on the sidelines ready to rebuke his own country for its obstructionism.

The conference began against the backdrop of the Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and conflicting ideologies on how to control the change, by how much and, more importantly, by how much by each one.

Holding humans responsible for 90 per cent of the observed global temperature rise of 0.67 degree Celsius in the last 100 years through GHG build-up, the panel had reported that atmospheric concentration of GHGs had reached an alarming 405 ppm ( parts per million by volume) by 2005 and was growing at the rate of 2 ppm per year.

If the concentration exceeds 450 ppm, as would be the case by 2030 with business-as-usual, then that would trigger irreversible climate change with all its disastrous consequences of erratic rainfall, frequent floods and droughts, rise in sea levels threatening coastal habitats, increase in hurricane strength, loss of ice cover over the poles, loss of biodiversity, threat to food security and public health and above all social unrest and mass migration of populations.

The spectre of millions being rendered homeless and starving, mostly in Africa and Asia, loomed large over the gathering attended by delegates from 187 countries.

Major Emitters

Compounding the dire prognosis of the Intergovernmental Panel was the failure of the developed countries bound by mandatory GHG reductions under the Kyoto Protocol (1997). The reductions sought to be achieved by 2008-2012 worked out to an average of 5.2 per cent of the developed countries’ emissions in 1990. China and India which had no such targets set, had, in the meanwhile, emerged as major GHG emitters, thanks to their reliance on fossil fuels for economic growth. Little wonder that bringing these two powers under the discipline of both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol along with the US (which had refused to join the Convention as well as the Protocol despite being the world’s biggest emitter of GHGs) became an obsession with the EU and the UN.

Considerations of equity that necessitated exempting China and India from mandatory cuts in the first instance gave way to the convenient maxim of “common but differentiated responsibility” of everyone in protecting global climate.

Voluntary cuts

The conference began with consideration of a draft text outlining a roadmap prepared on the lines that global emissions should go down by 50 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050. While developed countries should lead the way, major developing country emitters such as China and India were also required to take on mandatory or voluntary cuts to do so. This meant a fresh protocol replacing Kyoto towards the framing of which negotiations would begin in 2008 and conclude in 2010. The new compact would become effective from 2012 when Kyoto would end.

The US, Canada and Japan promptly opposed the prescription of quantitative targets. China and India continued to hark back to the fact that they were newcomers to development and any cuts, voluntary or mandatory, would harm their development efforts and goals. They, along with the rest of G-77, laid stress on adaptation strategies to combat the adverse effects of climate change with substantial international assistance in the form of resources, funds as well as technologies. The ground was ready for a deadlock to set in.

What followed was high drama full of sulks, admonitions, appeals and, as is usual with UN conferences, midnight parleys. The hosts, Indonesia, did not want the meet to end barren of results. The isolation of US was complete with Mr Gore and Senator John Kerry pitching strongly for agreement and reminding the gathering that the Bush presidency would end in 2009 paving the way, hopefully, for a Democratic dispensation. In simple terms, the message was to ignore the protestations of the US delegation and forge ahead. Even Japan withdrew its reservations.

Sensing the inevitable, China and India agreed finally to take up mitigation efforts, though without any mandatory or voluntary commitments. However, they had to concede the point that the reductions resulting therefrom would be “measurable, reportable and verifiable”.

To conclude that the US had lost out totally in Bali or that the pleas of China and India went unheeded would be wrong. The ‘Bali Action Plan’ merely refers to the need for “deep cuts in global emissions” with no figures mentioned for the cuts nor any timeframe prescribed for the reductions to become effective. The avowed objective with which the conference began, that rich countries should cut their emissions up to 40 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 and global emissions to go down by 50 per cent by 2050, now finds place only as a part of the non-binding preamble to the Plan and not as its main feature. For China and India too, the omission of any quantitative reference to their needed GHG reductions as well as the recommendation to set up a global fund for financing adaptation measures in developing countries and technology transfer came as a relief.

To Copenhagen, next

The road to Copenhagen which will be the scene of the next UN climate meet in 2010 does not seem to be smooth given the background of Bali.

With stagflation looming large over the US economy, rising energy prices and food shortages, it would be a challenge not just to the US but others too to curb reliance on conventional energy in any great measure even in the next 20 years.

Further, given the poor experience of Overseas Development Assistance in the last two decades, it would be interesting to see how well those who clamour for the poor to join the global climate mitigation and adaptation efforts would respond to any appeal for contributions to the fund now proposed.

(The author is a former Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.)

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