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ENVIRONMENT: INDIA WARMS UP TO COPENHAGEN

Neeta Lal

IPS, October 5, 2009

With the clock ticking away on the United Nations Framework for Climate Change Committee (UNFCCC) summit in Copenhagen in December, the fractiousness between the developed and the developing nations on who ought to do more to control climate change is getting increasingly strident.

With 190 nations poised to forge a momentous agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol -- an international environment treaty that establishes legally binding commitment for the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHGs) – there is still no unanimity on how to spread out GHG emission curbs. The amount of financial support and clean technology rich nations should transfer to the poorer ones to help them cope with the cataclysmic effects of rising temperatures is also nebulous.

The urgency to save the planet is lost on no one. Science has proven beyond doubt that the ramifications of rising global temperatures can greatly imperil life on earth. The world needs to keep emissions levels pegged low to help push the planet off the precipice of global warming. Rainfall patterns and agricultural activity -- already hostage to nature’s caprices – are getting seriously impacted, hitting millions of farmers around the world to further diminish the world’s already shrinking granaries.

India -- a prominent player of the Group of 77 countries that have a common negotiating plank – has based its climate change stand on two clear principles.

First, that the current stock of GHGs in the atmosphere is the cumulative result of emissions over 150 to 200 years for which the developed nations are entirely responsible. It is only fair, therefore, that the major emission cuts should also come from them.

Second, the UNFCCC outlines the principle of equity, according to which every individual in the world should have equal share of total emissions. India’s argument is that since its annual per capita emissions are way below the world average (1.9 tons), eclipsed by China’s 3.9 tons and the United States’s 24.3 tons, why should it be pressured further to whittle down its emissions?

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