By Joydeep Gupta, IANS
Bali (Indonesia) : The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that is organising a two-week global summit here from Monday does not expect developing countries to commit to legally binding caps on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Though GHGs – mainly carbon dioxide – have led to dangerous levels of global warming already, it would “not be feasible for developing countries to make legally binding commitments to cap their emissions if they are to eradicate poverty”, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said here Sunday on the eve of the summit.
Instead, the Bali Summit will prepare a “detailed roadmap” to combat climate change in various ways, de Boer said – mitigation of global warming by controlling GHG emissions, adaptation to climate change that is now present and inevitable and funding mechanisms on how all this is to be done.
Climate change was now on top of the international agenda because scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had given a clear signal on how the earth was warming up and what the implications were, de Boer pointed out. “Now it is up to the politicians to answer the questions posed by the scientists.”
The UNFCCC chief hoped that that Bali Summit would lead to a formal decision to launch climate change negotiations for the period beyond 2012, when the current Kyoto Protocol comes to an end. He wanted 2009 to be the deadline to conclude negotiations.
A major fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change is likely to be launched during the Bali Summit. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) will probably administer it, de Boer said, “after it had been decided that the fund will be run on the principle of one country one vote as developing nations wanted”.
The 12-day UN conference, which will see participation from 180 countries, will seek to replace the Kyoto climate pact that had committed 36 largest developed countries to drastically cut the gases that cause global warming.
Also at the negotiating table will be decreasing farm output and water availability as well as increasing frequency of droughts, floods and storms, for all of which climate change is blamed.
Mario D’Souza, research associate at the Centre for Science and Environment, told IANS: “India will be under immense pressure at Bali because developed countries want it to make mandatory emission cuts along with China and Brazil. It will be interesting to see how India responds to the pressure.”
Individual countries will hold hard negotiations on issues such as a commitment to cap GHG emissions that warm the earth’s atmosphere to carbon trading as well as financing technologies that reduce GHG emissions.
Most countries keenly await India’s position as potential GHG emissions by New Delhi and Beijing in the 21st century can lead to a disastrous level of global warming as their economies accelerate.
India and other developing countries were not asked to make any mandatory cuts in GHG emissions when the Kyoto Protocol – the first global treaty to combat climate change – was finalised in 1997.
But as the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012, developing countries like India, China, Brazil and South Africa are being told to make a commitment to cap their GHG emissions after 2012.
India has not finalised a position paper for the Bali conference. The Prime Minister’s Task Force on Climate Change rejected a draft prepared by officials because it did not contain any information on what India planned to do.
But India is expected to take the position first articulated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the G-8 summit in Germany in June – New Delhi will never exceed the per capita GHG emissions of developed countries.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, strongly reiterated the view last week, saying it was the only way the principle of equity in the global warming debate could be addressed.
India’s position has been strengthened by the refusal of the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol. The US has a per capita GHG emission of about 20 tonnes per year while it is less than a tonne in India.
India’s position has been further strengthened by the failure of many European nations to live up to the commitments they made in Kyoto. UNFCCC recently declared that GHG emissions from most European nations had been at an all-time high in the last 10 years.
Given this situation, many developing countries, led by India, wonder why they are being asked to cap GHG emissions – a move that could have a potentially serious impact on their economic progress – when it is the developed countries that have emitted almost all the extra GHG in the earth’s atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Age in the mid-18th century.
This debate is likely to reach its crescendo in the next two weeks here.
The summit will also discuss an equally important issue – how to adapt to the climate change that has started and is now known to be inevitable since GHG stay in the atmosphere for more than 100 years after they are emitted.
This is also a potential area of contention. Developing countries argue that they should be paid to take adaptation measures necessitated by a problem created by developed countries though the impact is now being felt most strongly in the tropics and sub-tropics where most countries are developing ones.
But multilateral funding mechanisms are likely to help developing countries in this area with grants and soft loans, the details of which will be worked out at the Bali negotiations.
Developing countries also want free transfer of new technologies needed to combat climate change and to adapt to it, an issue that may bring their position into conflict with the intellectual property rights regime.
Once again, heated debate in this area is expected at the summit.
Some developing countries, India included, have started making a lot of money through the carbon trading mechanism, by which a firm that uses less than its quota of GHG emissions can sell the balance to another company exceeding its quota. The negotiators attending the summit are expected to make a number of recommendations to change this trading mechanism as well.
(Joydeep Gupta can be contacted at [email protected])