India and China to eventually come under emission curbs

India and China to eventually come under emission curbs

Dec. 11: The world’s nations negotiating for years on strategies to combat climate change have agreed for the first time to work towards a new pact that would force all big polluters, including emerging economies such as India and China, to curb their greenhouse gas emission.

A UN climate change conference in Durban concluded this morning after negotiators from more than 190 countries agreed to consider a new document that would carry “legal force” and apply to both the industrialised countries and large emitters among emerging economies.

Any pact that covers all major greenhouse gas emitters within the same legal framework contrasts with the existing Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in 1997, which imposes legally binding cuts in emission only on industrialised countries, not on the developing countries.

The Durban conference agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol for a second period —from January 2013 to December 2017 — and decided that the new pact would be implemented from 2020 onwards.

But what implications the yet-to-be-negotiated pact would have on the greenhouse gas emission trajectories of India and other large emitters is unclear because negotiators also agreed to take into account India’s demand that the principle of “equity” should dictate future negotiations.

“The removal of this distinction between the industrialised countries and the developing countries is disturbing,” said Prodipto Ghosh, a former environment secretary and a former climate change negotiator for India.

If the principle of equity does get embedded in the actual text of the new pact, Ghosh said, there would be no constraints on our (economic) growth,” he told The Telegraph. But if the agreement considers merely the size of countries’ emissions, it could have some adverse impact.

The Durban outcome follows two weeks of gruelling negotiations which, at times, reflected the intensity of disagreement and, according to a Venezuelan delegate, even led to threats and coercion.

India’s environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan told the conference that she is “disturbed to find that a legally binding protocol... negotiated 14 years ago (the Kyoto Protocol) is now being junked in a cavalier manner”.

Natarajan said India was not happy with reopening the text, a Reuters report said. “But in the spirit of flexibility and accommodation shown by all, we have shown our flexibility.”

Venezuela’s climate envoy Claudia Salerno said she had received threats because of her objections to the draft texts, Reuters reported. “The most pathetic and the most lowest threat ... we are not going to have the Green Climate Fund” designed to help poor nations tackle global warming from emissions.

The conference delegates agreed to raise “the level of ambition” to work towards emissions management that would keep the average rise in global temperatures below 2°C in a bid to reduce the risk of catastrophic impacts of global warming and climate change caused by the greenhouse gas emission.

“India’s proposal on equity has been included in the work plan for the next conference,” said Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment, a non-government agency that has been tracking climate change negotiations for two decades.

In its argument on equity, India has asserted that its per capita greenhouse gas emission is much lower than those of several industrialised nations and that the emission gap must be bridged through “differentiated” responsibilities. In other words, the industrialised countries have to do a lot more than should be expected from the developing countries.

Both Narain and Ghosh cautioned that future negotiations are likely to prove tougher. India will have to ensure that equity is incorporated into future agreement,” Ghosh said.