The Hindu Business Line : Climate talks: Bonn voyage?

Climate talks, instead of bridging differences, are generating more dissent as they go along. The Bangkok meet turned out to be a non-event, and one wonders whether the next round in Bonn will turn out to be any better. Recent developments seem to buttress this feeling, says N. R. KRISHNAN.

Recent research forecasts that global warming may remain abated for the next ten years due to nature’s own mechanisms to correct the warming recorded so far.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,

Of cabbages and kings

And why the sea is boiling hot

And whether pigs have wings.”

— Lewis Carroll

The official-level Bangkok conference on climate change held in April, which aimed to further the process of finding a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, proved to be as contentious as its higher level precursor, the Bali Conference last December. Sharp differences between the EU and the US and between OECD countries, on one hand, and China and India, on the other, surfaced yet again, auguring poorly for the next conclave in Bonn, scheduled for June this year.

It’s time to examine why the climate talks are generating more dissent as they go along instead of bridging differences. Are we moving too fast in trying to set right a problem set in motion by the First Industrial Revolution 200 years ago? Worse still, are shifts in global economic balance driving the talks rather than a genuine desire to save the planet?

For all the fanfare it generated, the Kyoto Protocol of December, 1997 has not met with much success. Barring the EU — and that too thanks to the built-in provision in the Protocol enabling members of a regional economic integration organisation to offset one’s excess emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) by another’s savings — all other developed countries referred to as Annexe I countries in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are sure to renege on their obligations to meet their GHG reduction targets set for the first commitment period of the Protocol — 2008 to 2012.

Waning enthusiasm

Canada and Japan, in particular, have thrown in the towel with the former sensing a market for oil from its tar sands and proclaiming its territorial claims over the oil and gas rich Arctic.

Quite perversely, Canada sees a great economic opportunity in the melting of the Arctic ice which would open up the North Western Passage, a shipping lane linking Russia and east Asia with Canada’ major ports. Not to be outdone, Russia has laid claims to a huge chunk of the Arctic on the basis of its continental shelf extending far into the icy continent.

Japan, with its economic slowdown has little enthusiasm for GHG cuts which would translate themselves into energy cuts further worsening the economy.

Even that doughty champion of the climate cause, the EU, whose Cap and Trade emissions policy has not achieved the desired results, perceives any further tightening of the policy to be self-flagellation, bleeding the competitiveness of its ailing industry further. Already, proposals are flying in the EU conclaves to impose punitive climate duties on imports from sources (read China and India) exempt from mandatory GHG reduction.

Worse still, Europe is turning back to coal for its energy needs as evidenced by the fact that 50 new coal fired electricity generation plants will be commissioned over the next five years in Europe.

In Germany, the prognosis is that even with the prospect of renewables accounting for nearly 30 per cent of power by 2020, coal will be the mainstay of the country’s power requirements as its last nuclear plant would have been shut down by then. Britain whose coal industry was dealt a death blow by Mrs Thatcher is now importing coal from Russia, Australia, Colombia, South Africa and Indonesia.

Brainchild of EU

These developments were to guide the Bali talks and to relieve EU from much of its climate burden. The Action Plan adopted at Bali was the brainchild of the EU. It made no reference to the Kyoto Protocol thus reflecting EU’s position that an alternative was needed, particularly looking to the non-cooperation of the US and the exemption enjoyed by China and India from mandatory GHG reduction targets.

In an obvious reference to the US, the Action Plan adopted at Bali called upon “ …all developed country parties...” to consider “Measurable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions, including quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives.” Through this clever phraseology, EU paved the way to replace the Kyoto Protocol by a less stringent agreement and, at the same time, rope in the US.

China and India, which were not bound by any quantified reductions, were covered by an exhortation to all developing countries to adopt “Nationally appropriate mitigation actions…. in the context of sustainable development, supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity building, in a measurable, reportable and verifiable manner.”

Thus Bali was a diplomatic coup for the EU. Bangkok was supposed to build on Bali gains. But given the acrimony that marked the proceedings in Bali and an interval not long enough for the exchanges to be forgotten, the odds were long on Bangkok.

Sure enough, the Bangkok meet turned out to be a non-event much to the chagrin of the EU and the Climate Secretariat leaving one to wonder whether the next round in Bonn would turn out to be any better. Recent developments seem to buttress this feeling.

US stand uncertain

First, there’s much uncertainty surrounding the US stand. On April 18, President Bush announced that the US would strive to put an end to the growth of US carbon emissions by 2025. He expected that the US example would encourage China and India to announce their target years.

But interestingly enough, he did not spell out how the US would go about achieving its target. Already his efforts to promote corn-based ethanol as a significant gasoline blend have aroused worldwide criticism.

Again, while the US Senate would take up a laudable initiative in June this year to consider a Bill to cap carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the environmental watchdog of the US administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, has refused to bless California’s proposal to introduce a cap and trade system, a measure that enjoys the support of 16 other states on the ground that a single set of federal emission standards and not a plethora of state standards would serve the purpose better.

As for the new President US will have next year, all the candidates have professed their commitment to arrest global warming. However, it is a moot point how far campaign rhetoric would translate itself into policy and legislation.

China and India

What about China and India? There’s little to suggest that either of them would concede any fresh ground in Bonn. China is busy giving final touches to the Beijing Olympics in August and is distracted by global protests over its Tibet policy which threaten to derail the grand August event.

In the reckoning of the Chinese, climate can afford to wait. In the meanwhile, as a part of its ongoing economic programme, China is commissioning a coal-based power plant or two every week. In India, the report of the advisory group set up by the Prime Minister on Climate Change is expected in June. Whether the report would be available before the Bonn meeting or not is not clear.

It is a safe guess that India, snorting at the turn of events since Bali, is not likely to take up consideration of any GHG mitigation policy involving quantified targets. It would like to see more of qualitative and enabling measures for mitigation and, more importantly, adaptation measures.

Finally, an unwitting spanner has poked itself into the climate works. An article published recently in the prestigious scientific journal Nature may blunt the ardour of the climate activists in Bonn.

The article authored by Kiel University researchers forecasts that global warming may remain abated for the next ten years due to nature’s own mechanisms to correct the warming recorded so far.

It is true that that this would provide only a brief respite from the long-term trend of warming, but nonetheless it gives a little more time for everyone to pause and consider ways and means to combat warming that are just and equitable and, as we would see below, technologically feasible.

Technology gap

We began with the introspection whether we are too ambitious in trying to set right the wrongs of two centuries in the space of two decades.

It appears to be so. Central to the efforts to mitigate GHG emissions is the availability of technologies to economise on the energy intensity of growth, particularly its carbon intensity.

To translate the vision of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we need technologies that would reduce the energy intensity of GDP growth by one per cent every year for over a century.

In a recent paper published in Nature (April, 2008 ), Roger Pielke Jr., Tom Wigley and Christopher Green have cautioned that “such technological transformation will take many decades to complete, even if we start taking far more aggressive action on energy technology innovation today…Enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at acceptable levels.”

Lastly, those who talk glibly of carbon capture from power stations as the golden key to effect emission reductions need only go through the report, The Future of Coal, prepared by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to know the infant stage at which such efforts are today.

Climate statesmen must learn to hasten slowly.

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

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