Jairam To Lay Foundations at Copenhagen

Jairam To Lay Foundations at Copenhagen

( Madan Menon Thottasseri)
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Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment made his presence at Copenhagen and his interaction with all groups proved that India has to play a constructive role for evolving an effective and equitable global treaty on emission cuts.

He reiterated that India's national voluntary domestic measures to tackle global warming are never open for international scrutiny and progress on these would be checked by country's Parliament. His mission at Copenhagen was focused on the various drafts of potential treaty from the Working Groups on Kyoto, the African group and Alliance of Island States (AOSIS) that have been circulating at the climate meet in Copenhagen. India had to draw attention to the basic Indian stand while participating proactively with all groups, India cannot deviate from the prefixed limits and cannot agree to any peaking of emission reductions mainly due to the fact that it will adversely affect generation and distribution of electricity in rural areas of the country, where there is a very huge shortage of power.

India has asserted that every individual has a right to an equal atmospheric space and feels the rich countries are trying to deny this to poorer populations of Asia and Africa. It says there cannot be an international treaty which creates a group of haves and have-nots.
India wants to facilitate a legally-binding deal and "has come here to play a constructive, facilitative, leadership role to ensure and effective and equitable agreement," Ramesh said.
The draft prepared by the Danish government, the host nation of climate negotiations contains a clause demanding that India and other emerging economies 'peak' their emissions by 2025, an issue on which India has strong reservations.

The minister highlighted that not only was India announcing voluntary target of reducing carbon intensity by 20 to 25 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020 it was also taking a "nationally accountable mitigation outcome," which means that implementation and progress on these domestic measures would be checked by Parliament, civil society and media. There is no place on Earth that has domestic MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification) as boisterous, intensive and aggressive as that in India," he said.

New Delhi has raised objections to a move it believes is intended to help rich countries get out of their commitments on emission cuts as negotiators from 193 countries struggled to find common ground at climate talks in the Copenhagen summit.

The formation of a new front of small island nations which floated their own draft is to be construed as a conspiracy to bracket developed and developing nations together by junking the 1997 Kyoto Protocol under which rich nations have to undertake legally-binding emission cuts.
The new draft follows the Danish proposal and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) document.

The un-cooked Danish Draft circulated at the start of summit was challenged by the G 77 group which included developing nations and the Basic Draft by Least Developed Countries and even Small Island States on the ground that it did not reflect their special susceptible issues to climate change. India has said it will not accept any changes or extension to the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only legally-binding document that imposes emission reduction targets on industrialised countries, excluding US.

Minister Ramesh stressed that all action supported by international finance was subject to MRV but unsupported action was exclusively India’s business.

The US Chief envoy, Todd Stern, told another press conference that the mitigation part of the draft text issued by the Chairman of the Ad Hoc Working Group for Long Term Cooperative Action, Michael Zammit Cutajar was "unbalanced" because it did impose sufficient emission mitigation obligations on developed nations.

Minister Ramesh expressed confidence about resolving the issue with the Americans stating that options like engaging in national communications once in two years but at the same time he emphasised that India would not make compromises on its previously stated positions including "peaking".

The “peaking” clause will adversely impact the development of backlogged rural electrification in India. There is no chance for any dilution of the previously-stated “red lines” drawn by India, the minister Ramesh said he had come here to play a constructive, facilitative, leadership role to ensure an effective and equitable agreement”. His comments is affirm as a direct answer to EU clashing with India with the contentious issue of making domestic commitments legally-binding and verifiable.

European Commission Director General Karl Falkenberger said that the EU expected India, China and other emerging economies to report on their national mitigation programmes, which would be incorporated in an international treaty.EU want India and China in a legally binding manner. He said “We need these contributions from everyone. We need them in a legally-binding manner from everyone. Differentiated commitments, we can accept, but it has to be verifiable”.

India objected this when with senior negotiator Chandrashekar Dasgupta commented that t Falkneberger’s position fell short of climate justice. Sensing a bid to “change the rules of the game”, he said India was “seeking climate adequacy and climate justice”.

Minister Ramesh spent day one at COP 15 meeting with his counterparts - environment minister of Algeria, Cherif Rahmani, US envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern, and UK Secretary of State for Environment Ed Miliband and Zhenhua Xie, Vice Minister, National Development and Reform Committee, and the Danish Environment Minister.He also had discussions with African group and Alliance of Island States (AOSIS).

Minister Ramesh expressly highlighted that he had a good meeting with Rahmani who was also chair of the African group, which is a subset of the G77, and there was a good chance of producing an integrated BASIC draft with the African group. He stressed that all action supported by international finance was subject to MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification) but unsupported action was exclusively India's business.

The Minister said that while India and China were co-ordinating very closely at Copenhagen, the two countries should not be compared in terms of emissions with China being number one and India being five. "We are not in the same boat," he said. The Minister should take care while explaining that India’s emissions comparatively less with that of China; no much importance is to be given as this is already commented by EU representatives themselves. India is not supposed to comment on this unnecessarily.

Personally I would like to suggest that India should take an initiative with China and think seriously for a close dialogue with Todd Stern again. We know his stand, that the United States has to remain steadfast in demanding certain commitments to curb emissions from developing nations, taking into account that all future increase in emissions of greenhouse gases in the coming decades is anticipated to come mainly from China , of course India too. Thus the draft plan has to be balanced as a whole with due application of futuristic judgment. India and China can afford to consider this point to some extent and can address it by slightly relaxing the unbending attitude, get along with U.S and pave the way for achieving a result.

If India reach in terms with U.S, then can jointly prevail on EU , AOSIS and African front within G 77 to win at Copenhagen.

Let Ramesh prevail on U.S first, then he can easily reach an accord with others so as to get Victory for India and the world.

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