The road to Paris

After two weeks of jawboning, the Lima climate change meet seems to have achieved precious little. Both the developing and the developed world camps have claimed victories, an indication of how wishy-washy the final declaration is. Differences have merely been papered over, with the developed world getting away without making any worthwhile commitments on finance and technology transfer. The can of contentious issues has been kicked down the road, perhaps all the way to Paris where the next major meet takes place in December 2015. India claims satisfaction over the reinsertion of the Kyoto Protocol principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR), something for which it has rightly and steadfastly fought over the years. CBDR — which essentially means that developed countries should cut back more on carbon emissions than the rest because they are responsible for the centuries-old stock of industrial pollutants — has come under attack in climate change meets since 2009. It also implicitly means that poorer countries’ right to the atmosphere should not be prematurely curtailed before they meet certain developmental goals. To have the phrase back at the Lima draft would, at first glance, seem like a major victory.

But the issue is not so straightforward. The Lima declaration underscores “commitment to reaching an ambitious agreement in 2015 that reflects the principle of CBDR…in the light of different national circumstances”. The second part has been interpreted to mean that the developed-developing binary is now a fluid one, subject to context. This ties in well with the recent US-China emissions reductions deal under which China will ensure that its emissions peak by 2030. China, by far the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, followed by the US and India, cannot flog its developing country status for all time to come; its “circumstances” have indeed changed. Besides, the phraseology leaves CBDR delightfully vague for the rich countries, allowing them to get away without making emission commitments when the next pact is finally hammered out.

India’s developmental indicators suggest that it is nowhere near attracting the changed “circumstances” tag. Yet, when it repeatedly argues that its right to the atmosphere is non-negotiable, it does not sound convincing. CBDR is an unexceptionable principle, but the fact is that the developing world accounts for two-third of incremental emissions, even if the rich countries have created all the stock. Kyoto needs to be updated to fit the new reality. India must break out of the ‘stuck record’ syndrome and show the way next year, displaying some of its recent élan in multilateral forums. It can float a new principle, carbon budgeting, which implies assessing the right of respective countries to the atmosphere by taking both stocks and flows into account. That means reworking each country’s right to the atmosphere. For India to argue that the emissions intensity of its growth cannot be pared is to negate the prospects created by renewable energy. Development can be a much cleaner process than what the world has seen so far.

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