By Joydeep Gupta, IANS,
Copenhagen : The global summit to tackle climate change collapsed in this Danish capital Thursday as host Denmark insisted on pushing its own “political declaration”, ignoring the pleas of the poor nations.
India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said: “The blame game will now start, but the developing countries are not to be blamed.”
With Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen refusing to show the environment minister of any developing country a draft of the political declaration he will present to the heads of state Thursday evening, the negotiators working to advance agreements on the Kyoto Protocol and long-term cooperative action to tackle climate change had little reason to go ahead — and those talks collapsed overnight too.
“We tried our best to make the Copenhagen summit a success, but the process is deeply flawed and there’s a huge trust deficit. There has been no sincere effort by the Danish government,” Ramesh said.
“We’ve repeatedly asked the Danes for the draft (political declaration). They have repeatedly promised to give it to us, but the promise has not been fulfilled. We’ve worked in good faith, but they are working to delay because they want to present it directly to the heads of state,” Ramesh said.
Condemning this “confusion and lack of clarity”, Ramesh said: “We want negotiations to continue. We don’t want a blame game. The text (for a draft treaty) can be finalised within two months. We’ve approached the US and other rich countries; we’re working with them.
“We’re also working very closely within the BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) which is now a reality. And of course we are coordinating with China on an hourly basis,” he said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will reach here Thursday evening and attend the gala dinner for heads of state, where another attempt to rescue the climate summit will be made.
Most ministers and delegates gathered here no longer expect anything more than a weak wishy-washy political declaration, which will do little to help tackle climate change that is already affecting people worldwide.
Manmohan Singh’s statement before he left for Copenhagen made it clear that India would stick to its stand that the Kyoto Protocol – the current global treaty to tackle climate change – must continue, though many rich countries want it buried.
“Climate change cannot be addressed by perpetuating the poverty of the developing countries,” the prime minister’s statement said.
Manmohan Singh offered that India could do more to move to a greener economy “provided there are credible arrangements to provide both additional financial support as well as technological transfers from developed to developing countries”.
While there may be some technology transfer issue, financing has been stuck in the talks here.
Ramesh informed that the prime minister would hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao Friday.
While most developing countries are together on climate negotiations, there are divisions that became clearer during the collapse Thursday.
The Alliance of Small Island States want stronger action to fight climate change which has started to drown their countries, and are unhappy that emerging economies have given no more than lip support to their stand.
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed told the media: “It is difficult to maintain political groupings that were formed in a different context”, referring to the Group of 77 countries that, together with China, negotiate at the climate talks as a bloc.
Nasheed admitted that the current situation at the summit was “very difficult, as we still don’t have text”, but added: “I don’t think this (situation) will continue once the heads of state take over.”
Others were making the same effort, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was understood to have invited a number of countries to draft a Copenhagen declaration, but there was grumbling about that too, because no developing country was on the guest list.