Dubious agenda at Durban

It is not surprising that the Conference of Parties (COP 17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that began in Durban, South Africa, on Monday, has not been heralded with the hype that preceded earlier conferences, such as the one in Copenhagen (COP 15) in 2009.

The greens seem to have lost their appetite for baying for action and bashing both the developed economies (read US) and the emerging ones (China and India, in particular) for clinging steadfastly to climate unfriendly positions. Events of the last year on the economic front, particularly in the US and in the EU, have dampened spirits and made the background to the Durban negotiations sombre.

Little has changed in the US in the last year by way of economic recovery, despite valiant efforts of the Obama Administration. Unemployment in the US continues to reign high, welfare lines have lengthened, Wall Street is under siege and the pre-eminence of the greenbacks as international currency has come under threat.

Across the Atlantic, northern members of the EU (England, France and Germany) wonder if measures to bail out their bankrupt southern brethren will succeed or prove wasteful, with awful consequences for their own and international financial markets. Small wonder, the mood in the North is anything but upbeat.

What of the newly-emerging economic giants of the South? With the slowing down of the US economy, China's exports to the US are fast declining and, with it, China's industrial production. China's confidence in the safety of holding its trade surpluses in dollar reserves has been shaken.

One precipitate step of China or a big oil exporter like Saudi Arabia switching a good part of its dollar reserves to other currencies is all that is required for the US economy to go under. The Indian economy, though relatively immune to adverse global patterns, is battling its own slew of problems — rising inflation, falling FDI and increased payments for imports. Its normally robust growth forecasts are constantly being corrected downward.

KYOTO PROTOCOL

Financial flows from the developed countries into the Climate Green Fund, transfer of green technologies to the developing countries with its tangle of Intellectual Property Rights of the transferor and, above all, the issue of continuance of the Kyoto Protocol to bind developed countries with greenhouse gases emission reduction targets beyond 2012 provide a veritable minefield on the path of the Durban negotiators.

Take, for instance, the insistence of developing countries on the continuance of the Kyoto Protocol. This Protocol binds the developed countries (responsible for the historical build-up of GHGs in the atmosphere because of industrialisation since the 1770s) to adhere to quantified time-bound reductions in emission of these gases. The first commitment period under the Protocol is set to expire in 2012.

Given their inability to honour the reductions, countries other than those of the EU — such as Japan, Canada, Australia and Russia — are reluctant to usher in a second commitment period and would like to see the Protocol given a decent burial.

The US never became a party to the Protocol on the specious ground that it did not apply to new emerging economies such as China and India which, since the 1990s, have accounted for a significant portion of Green House Gases (GHGs) emitted globally. Emerging industrial economies, like the BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), have never wavered in their stand that as their industrialisation began only in the last few decades, they had contributed nothing to the historical build-up of GHGs and, hence, ought to be exempt from any reductions.

They point to the distinction drawn in the UNFCCC between developed countries and developing ones in the matter of their responsibilities to initiate GHG reductions — an irrefutable argument upheld in the Climate Action Plan agreed to at Bali in 2007, and reiterated in COP 16 (2010) at Cancun.

TIME-BOUND CUTS

The continuance of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 is surely going to be the key issue in the Durban conference. In a Joint Statement issued at the end of the Ninth BASIC Ministerial Meeting in Beijing recently, (November 1, 2011), it was emphasised that “the Kyoto Protocol is the cornerstone of the climate regime and its second commitment period is an essential priority for the success of the Durban Conference.”

The BASIC group is insisting on a firm commitment by the developed countries to continue with Kyoto beyond 2012, with no obligation falling on the developing countries.

Contrast the above stand with the firm assertion made by Ms Connie Hedegaard, Commissioner for Climate Action in the EU, in her article published on November 28, 2011, in one of India's national newspapers.

She writes: “The EU is open to a second Kyoto commitment period on the condition that the environmental integrity of Kyoto is improved and Durban agrees on a clear roadmap and timeline for finalising this framework within the next few years and applying it no later than 2020.”

What does the EU Commissioner imply by the phrase “environmental integrity of Kyoto”? To her, this means, clearly, that all countries — those already covered by Kyoto Protocol and those outside its present pale — should share the burden of emission reductions by agreeing to a timetable for reductions, notwithstanding the provisions of the UNFCCC.

Going by the announcements made by China and India to reduce the emission intensities of their GDP growth (note, not absolute emissions), Ms Hedegaard's words seem to imply that these intensity reductions should follow a timetable.

Further, Ms Hedegaard says these reductions should be enshrined in a legally-binding instrument, like a protocol, discussions on which should be completed and a decision adopted “no later than the end of 2015”, so that they become part of a revised Kyoto Protocol “no later than 2020”. The EU is clearly trying to force the hands of the new emerging economies to begin discussions on such a legal regime at Durban by holding the threat of reneging on the Kyoto Protocol if they do not. To what extent the EU demand will be conceded by BASIC is a moot point. The Bali Action Plan desired that the appropriate action to reduce emissions that developing countries would take should be “measurable, reportable and verifiable”.

At any rate, the Bali Plan recognises the distinction drawn in the UNFCCC between the responsibilities of the two groups of countries which is now sought to be blurred by the EU, by raising a new ground of “environmental integrity” of the Kyoto Protocol.

How can a Protocol adopted under a Convention override the provisions of the Convention itself, which exempts the developing countries from time-bound emission cuts?

Developed economies are keen to put emerging ones in the disadvantaged position in which they find themselves today by enforcing time-bound emission cuts. Their motive is anything but altruistic.

(The author is a Former Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in )

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