No Breakthrough……. Heading to collapse?

No Breakthrough……. Heading to collapse?

(Madan Menon Thottasseri)

________________________________________________________________


There is no sign of breakthrough in the tough negotiations in climate change conference at Copenhagen.India has an apprehension that that the talks could collapse, but for a miracle.

There is a competition against time to knock-out a deal. India, Brazil, South Africa and China had issued a Joint statement on December 15, 2009 and condemned rich nations of trying to derail negotiations.

Jairam Ramesh, leading the Indian negotiators for working out some sort of a compromise to get developed nations commit to emission cuts and funds transfer to poor countries, said the talks were going “too slow”.

India is of opinion that if a compromise was not arrived at, negotiations to keep Kyoto Protocol alive beyond 2012 will continue into next year. Jairam Ramesh had said India was disappointed that developed nations were being unreasonable. Basic Bloc called on the developed countries to commit to legally-binding quantifiable targets and not to ignore or sideline the Kyoto Protocol.

The four ministers also elaborated on their own national voluntary mitigation programmes, and slammed the developed countries for offering "less than ambitious targets" in both technology transfer and finance as well as deliberately slowing down the process.On the issue of MRV Ramesh said there is "no greater MRV" than the Indian parliament, NGOs and India."Transparency and accountability is built into the Indian system," he said. Ministers of four countries had elaborated on the plans that they will be taking domestically to battle climate change.

The South African minister noted that developing countries remained vulnerable to water, food insecurity, health and infrastructure but had still decided to take on national voluntary targets to battle climate change even though it was not mandated in the UNFCCC.India's commitments include the pledge to reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels, to double renewable energy from 7 to 8 per cent by 2020, to ensure that 7 to 10 per cent of greenhouse gases will be sequestered by forest cover and to double in 10 years
The 3 million trees already planted.

India reiterated its stand that the national domestic measures will not be subject to Monitoring,
Reporting and Verification from overseas.

Even at the verge of collapse of the summit, main parties at Copenhagen have no consensus and are undivided on key issues. While India’s Jairam Ramesh was highlighting the stand against international scrutiny, UN Chief envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern was addressing a press briefing where he stressed the need for all major emerging economies to report their national actions in an international treaty.

"So far what we have seen is a derailment of the mandate agreed in 2007," Buyelwa Sonjica, the environment minister of South Africa, read out a part of the BASIC statement, noting that there had been constant efforts to "renegotiate key principles". "We will not accept the demise of the Kyoto protocol: She added.

The overall climate negotiations are moving under two tracks – the first track is Long Term Cooperation Action (LCA) under Bali Action Plan that requires parties to produce a legally binding treaty before the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.The second track is the extension of the Kyoto Protocol into the second commitment period from 2013 to 2018 where developed countries will have to take binding cuts.Any how U.S is not a party to the Protocol.

The Basic Bloc and African group within G 77 want the developed countries to make mitigation pledges under the second commitment period from 2013-2018 but the European Union, Australia, Japan, Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) want a document broader than the existing Protocol that puts obligations on the United States and on emerging economies.

The European Union is still adament and has categorically stated that it prefers a single agreement that “goes beyond Kyoto”, following protest by environment ministers of BASIC countries and Africa that negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol were being ignored. “We prefer a single agreement,” Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for environment, told journalists.

As the developing nations suspect that that EU is trying to move away from Kyoto Protocol to get out of their commitments, the Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said, “We are not at any level trying to elude the level of our binding commitments. Its not that we’re try to weaken the binding of our targets“. Instead they want legally-binding economy wide targets that should cover all developed countries and need commitments to actions from the emerging economies as well , he remarked. EU also noted that it had always been a strong supporter of Kyoto having set up emissions trading system and invested in Clean Development Mechanism with 80 per cent of the of 23 billions Euros in CDM projects coming from the bloc.

Denmark's Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard has formed five small groups to sort out the five "crunch issues" at this summit, as she put it: Improving the targets to be set by developed countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) that are causing climate change;

* The mitigation actions of developing countries;
* The long-term finance to be provided by rich nations so that poor countries can cope with climate change effects;
* How to deal with emissions caused by the aviation and shipping industries; and
* Special circumstances of some countries (such as Russia) in relation to mitigation.

Each group is co-chaired by a minister from a developed and a developing country in an effort to sort out the main problem, the anger of developing countries at what they see as the foot-dragging of industrialised nations.

Desperately India had made it clear that there would be no treaty at this summit while s he said: "This conference must make it clear that negotiations towards legally binding treaties will continue in 2010".

Hedegaard accepted that there was a "discrepancy between citizens' concerns and calls for action and what they hear coming out of our conference".

She claimed that there had been progress, "but it's very clear that ministers have to work very hard in the next 48 hours. There are many major obstacles."

UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer also said: "We've seen significant progress but we haven't seen enough; there's enormous ground to be covered."

Referring to representatives of 192 countries gathered here, de Boer added: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. We've brought 192 horses to water."

His words reflected the frustration as the climate summit threatened to collapse repeatedly during intense closed-door negotiating sessions, with rich nations sticking to their point that they would not do anything more to avert climate change unless emerging economies agreed to international inspections of their own actions.

This was rejected once again by India, China, Brazil and South Africa, whose environment ministers shared a podium to indicate that their BASIC group was now a reality.

Ramesh had said: "We are coordinating between ourselves on the hour and we are continuing to resist pressure to hijack this conference."

Indian Initiatives:
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has said that there have been some developments in the three provisions of the draft prepared under LCA track, which India presently finds "unacceptable".

This comes following a brief halt of the proceedings by the Africa group and the BASIC countries.
Noting that the three disputed provisions have come from the Alliance of Small Island States, Ramesh said he had met with ministers of several AOSIS nations including Bermuda, Grenada, Barbados and would also be meeting the Maldives later.

India had suggested alternative formulations and our objections to para 3, para 4 and para 8 in writing to Michael Cutajar",who is heading LCA. As per the draft Article 3 calls on all parties to reduce the emission cuts by 50, 85 or 90 per cent by 2050.

Article 4 calls on all parties to “peak” knowing that fact that that developing nations will do it later than developed countries. Article 8 calls for a comprehensive review of the implementation of mitigation obligations with the first one in 2016.

Stressing that para 3, 4, 8 have been presented without alternatives, India had cautioned that 3, 4, 8 are red lines as far as India is concerned. India clearly informed that find problems not only with the drafting but also with the ideas!.

It is to be noted that article 3 also deals with the limit to temperature rise and puts options of two degree Celsius and 1.5 Celsius. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) are fighting to change the temperature limit from 2 degree Celsius to 1.5 degree Celsius, and also to place more obligations on emerging economies.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that several of these island states would go sink or face catastrophic consequences due to rising sea level even if temperature rise was limited to 2 degree Celsius.

The minister also noted that India's opposition to 3, 4 and 8 had also been taken up by the developed nations and intimated to UK as they have considerable influence over AOSIS countries. Australian Environment Minister Peggy Wong is also informed.
India wants to treat AOSIS as an important entity. Of course cannot take them grantedbut can take note of their grievances.

India's opposition to the three provisions was supported by the BASIC countries and several nations in the G77, especially Saudi Arabia.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~