Climate Change Summit and Conspiracies Against Developing nations

Climate Change Summit and Conspiracies Against Developing nations
(Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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India’s accountability is in respect of the voluntary proposal of reduction in emission intensity is better than China. This is the affirmative comment of a U.S senator as if he is an authority of certifying for the intensity of the announcements in the midst of opposition for the same from various corners. He said “they have put the language on the table that’s actually stronger than China’s with respect to the accountability and the measuring” in an interview with the BBC News Channel. The senator is John Kerry who is also the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs.

Kerry is a key architect of the Kerry-Boxer bill in the US Congress that aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 83 per cent by 2050 and 20 per cent over the next decade from 2005 levels.
Kerry said the recent emission cut announcements made by China and India is a result of US President Barack Obama's personal talks with the leaders of these two countries. While Obama went to Beijing in November,2009 , the Indian Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh was in the US soon thereafter on the first State Visit of Barack Obama’s Presidency."If the President had not had the conversations that he had when he was in China, I don't think that he would have come to the point of making a decision to do 17 per cent reduction and I don't think China would have followed a day later with its decision," Kerry said.


India has decided to offer a reduction in carbon emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 over 2005 levels. Kerry also believes that Copenhagen will come out with a political agreement that will have mandatory reductions that people will agree to. "I believe it will come up with a prompt start to those reductions at the beginning of next year or so. It will also come up with a financing mechanism that will provide funding to some of the less-developed countries to assist them to be part of the solution wherein we can transfer technology," the Senator said. However, he noted that it won't be the final treaty language.


He opinioned that a political agreement to which each of the heads of state sign up to with a prompt beginning with transparency and verification will be acceptable for the time being, which can be much more easily translated into the treaty language over the course of the next months," he said.


Additionally if China and India and other developed countries have stepped up with mandatory reduction target that is going to help Senators and Congressmen to be able to say okay, now we're moving down a global path," he added.

Delegates were converging for the grand finale of two years of tough, sometimes bitter negotiations on a climate change treaty, as UN officials calculated that pledges offered in the last few weeks to reduce greenhouse gases put the world within reach of keeping global warming under control.

Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate official, said Sunday on the eve of the 192-nation conference that despite unprecedented unity and concessions, industrial countries and emerging nations need to dig deeper. "Time is up," de Boer said. "Over the next two weeks governments have to deliver."

Finance - billions of dollars immediately and hundreds of billions of dollars annually within a decade - was emerging as the key to unblocking an agreement that would bind the global community to a sweeping plan to combat climate change. Nations also must need to commit to larger emission reductions, de Boer said.

South Africa on Sunday became the latest country to announce an emissions target. It said over the next 10 years it would reduce emissions by 34 percent from "business as usual," the level they would reach under ordinary circumstances. By 2025 that figure would peak at 42 percent, effectively leveling off and thereafter begin to decline. "This makes South Africa one of the stars of the negotiations," said the environmental group Greenpeace.


President Barack Obama's decision to attend the conclusion of the two-week conference, after phone consultations with other heads of state, was taken as a signal that an agreement was getting closer. He had originally planned for an hours-long stopover in the Danish capital this week en-route to his way to Oslo, where he will be receiving his Nobel Prize.

All countries together should emit no more than 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2020 to avoid the worst consequences of a warming world, the report said.

Computing the high end of all commitments publicly announced so far, the report said emissions will total some 46 billion tons annually in 2020. Emissions today are about 47 billion tons.US position as a radical change from the former administration under George W. Bush. A year ago "we had a position that this issue was not essential and not critical," he said, calling the shift staggering. "Think about how long it takes for a major country to fundamentally change its position, and this is a miraculously short period of rapid change," he said.
Delegates from several developing countries, however, were less optimistic, and were concerned that the major powers were cutting a deal behind the scenes that could betray the interests of poorer nations

Going by the latest draft proposal from host country Denmark, there is an attempt to instead talk of a date when emerging economies will peak their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. That is not acceptable to India, China or any developing country, many of whom have got together to table an alternate draft that envisages industrialised countries reducing their GHG emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020.

Setting the stage for two weeks of intense negotiations at the climate summit here, India, China and the rest of the Group of 77 countries have decided to reject attempts to sneak in proposals through the backdoor — something that countries like Australia and Denmark have tried to do in recent past — and urged for transparency in the process of negotiations.

The G-77 held a coordination meeting here this evening to decide their joint plan of action to ensure a fair and equitable outcome from Copenhagen.

Sources in India’s negotiating team told The Indian Express that developing nations expressed their discomfiture with certain countries trying to run a parallel track of negotiations by circulating a couple of draft proposals before the start of the summit with the aim of leading the course of talks in a particular direction. “The proposals have to come from within the negotiations. There have been attempts in the recent past to hijack the agenda of the Copenhagen summit and the developing countries are not ready to let that happen,” said an official. “Whatever proposals have to be made, let them be made through the official channel by submitting it at the CoP, followed by a thorough discussion on each one of them,” he said.
The reference was clearly to proposals from Australia and Denmark, which were circulated in the run-up to Copenhagen — both of which, in different ways, tried to dilute the basic tenets of the Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC by refusing to make the fundamental distinction between developing and developed countries in the climate debate.

The Australian proposal wanted every country — both developed and developing — to state what they wanted to do on the climate front and then agree to be legally bound by that commitment. This was a clever extension of the principle of NAMAs (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) — introduced in the Bali Action Plan — to the rich world as well.
Under the clearly-enunciated principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, the developed countries have to take targeted cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. The NAMAs apply only to the developing countries, and are not legally binding.

Just weeks ahead of the Copenhagen summit, Denmark informally circulated a proposal to participating countries wanting major emerging economies like India and China to set 2025 as the year when their emissions would peak. Additionally, it wanted every country, regardless of their current levels of emissions, to reduce their emissions by half by the year 2050.

Both these proposals have been rejected by India as unacceptable. The G-77 and China today agreed, and decided to oppose any such move during the negotiations.

The group also sought clarity on the mandate of the Heads of States meeting scheduled at the end of the conference, in which a galaxy of world leaders including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President Barack Obama will participate. It wanted to know whether the Heads of States meeting would follow the track of the negotiations or would come up with its own agenda.

The group also reaffirmed its faith in the Kyoto Protocol and decided to resist any attempt to replace it with a new treaty. It has decided to let the Copenhagen conference know of its views on the opening day tomorrow on this issue.

Meanwhile, buoyed by the turn of the events in the last few days, with China, India and the US making encouraging announcements, UNFCCC executive secretary Yve do Boer said Copenhagen was already on its way to becoming the turning point in international response to climate change.

Never in 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together,” de Boer told reporters on the eve of the anxiously-awaited climate change conference

Actually conspiracies started at CHOGM in the last month, even though it was an opportunity to discuss on the Climate Talks to be held at Copenhagen. Common wealth group consisting wealthy nations like U.K, Canada and Australia and also the planet’s tiny island states as well had a special summit on Climate ahead of the global summit at Copenhagen, and the Britain's Queen Elizabeth, who heads the group had said "On this, the eve of the U.N. Copenhagen summit on climate change, the Common Wealth has an opportunity to lead once more,"

In the last month, the spirit shown by Denmark in 60 th Anniversary of the Common Wealth Heads of Govt. Meetings(CHOGM), held at Port of Spain was mistook by country like India that they are only mustering nations for wider participation and attendance for Climate Talks. In fact Lokke Rasmussen(Danish P.M) did lot of ground work for being smart in connivance with countries like Australia. There were reports when Australian P.M- Kevin Rudd complimented Denmark and said “The clock is ticking to Copenhagen ... we believe that the political goodwill and resolve exists to secure a comprehensive agreement at Copenhagen”.

t is also to be noted in CHOGM , U.N Chief Ban Ki-Moon had stated that while the Climate Summit talk will not be resulting for an an instant approval of a detailed Treaty, the wording of the ‘Commonwealth Declaration”(at CHOGM) would be ‘operationally binding’( ie.tentatively as a uniform rule applicable to all commonwealth nations),and lead fast to a definite treaty.He had said then that the agreement to lay foundation for such a legally binding accord is now ‘within reach’

At CHOGM, Our P.M Man Mohan Singh had reiterated that there is no justification to club the developed nations with developing nations like India as historically industrial nations were responsible for the present crises on climate change affairs. It will not be acceptable to India to stunt the economic development or the considerably reduce the competitiveness by imposing legally binding emission reduction guidelines at par with that of the developed nations. With the idea that we should have to avoid any lowering of sights, he had said that we should not pre-empt the Copenhagen negotiating process and Whatever time is still available to us before the High Level segment meets from December 16, it should be used to achieve as much convergence as possible. However, if the consensus is that only a political document is feasible, then we must make certain that the post-Copenhagen process continues to work on the Bali mandate and the UNFCC continues to be the international template for global climate action.”

Now Australia tries to thrust certain stipulations as an extension of the NAMAS (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) — introduced in the Bali Action Plan, which is originally applicable only to rich and developed nations. Denmark being a host nation is expected to maintain more restraint and should not facilitate for underground lobbying.

It is evident that by announcing emission cutting announcements U.S, China and India have established that the three will rule the world for all good causes and jointly take the mantle wherein a global consensus is needed and steer all nations to come forward with positive participation. I wish that all other nations especially one of the rich nations, Australia will not resort to any idea of outsmarting by muddling of unified efforts and deliberations.

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