Durban talks peaked global distrust

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January 2, 2012, 12:00 pm 

By Ifham Nizam

India’s leading scientist and renowned environment activist, Dr. Sunita Narain says the Durban talks will go down in climate history as one where global distrust has peaked.

She strongly believes that building trust will be difficult in this increasingly divided and discordant atmosphere and in this situation, action on an issue as contested, as climate change will be impossible.

Furthermore, she says if the future agreement, which will be negotiated in the next two years, is not based on the underlying condition of equity in past and future carbon budgets, then this city of Durban will become famous for starting a new era of climate apartheid.

At the recently concluded, Durban talks, The Island Financial Review learns, the most interesting event was, India’s side event, organised by the country’s premier institution, the Centre for Science and Environment in association with the Ministry of environment and forests, had a packed hall listening to a panel.

The panel included the Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, CSE’s director general Dr. Sunita Narain and deputy director general Chandra Bhushan, Charles Di Leva from the World Bank and Ambuj Sagar from the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi. The subject of the discussion was ‘the imperative of equity in climate negotiations’. 

Speaking at the CoP17 side event, the minister made it clear that India will not compromise on the principles of equity and historical responsibility, which according to her, were the bulwarks on which all climate negotiations must rest.

She supported the contention made by Narain. Needles to say, Narain along with late CSE Chief, Anil Agarwal, did number of research on the climate change issue in the early nineties when many were least bothered about the topic Climate Change. Coming back to the side event in Durban in the evening, the Minister was of the strong view that India had a "right to grow".

After over 20 years of negotiations, Narain had pointed out, concrete consensus on climate was still eluding the world. The Cancun Agreement, according to her, was the latest debacle, where the burden had been shifted unjustly on to the developing world, without any concession on this critical right.

At Durban, India and China are being pilloried for their growing emissions and for being stumbling blocks to the negotiations, but the world is conveniently forgetting said Narain about the US emissions, which are still growing at four per cent.

Chandra Bhushan, who made a presentation on the CSE study on low-carbon growth, said that many industrial sectors in India had already achieved a high level of efficiency and low emission intensity. Even with a very ambitious mitigation programme, India will need the carbon space to grow

"I do not know how to start. I have heard people across the room carefully. I am from India and I represent 1.2 billion people. My country has a tiny per capita carbon footprint of 1.7 ton and our per capita GDP –Gross Domestic Product- is even lower," he added.

Bhushan says he was astonished and disturbed by the comments of Canada colleague who was pointing at India as to why, "We are against the roadmap. I am disturbed to find that a legally binding protocol to the Convention, negotiated just 14 years ago is now being junked in a cavalier manner. Countries which had signed and ratified it are walking away without even a polite goodbye. And yet, pointing at others.

I was also deeply moved listening to the comments of my colleagues and friends from the small island states. Our positions may be different, but their sentiments resonate with me very strongly. India has 600 islands which may be submerged, we have deltaic region in which millions of people live. We are absolutely at the forefront of the vulnerability of Climate Change."

Environment Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa expressed disappointment at the inability of the global community to meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.

Sri Lanka presented four main points at the conference held in Durban. Sri Lanka described the vulnerabilities faced by the country as a developing island nation due to the effects of climate change.

Yapa said that developed countries must take adequate responsibility for the damage caused to the environment by those countries historically.

The minister set out Sri Lanka’s actions to mitigate climate change including the planting of millions of trees under the Deyata Sevana programme in 2010 and 2011.

Explaining the difficulty in reaching an agreement, he said various differing stances taken by different countries and the purely self- serving and unprincipled stance of a number of wealthy, developed nations were extremely saddening.

The other members of the Sri Lankan delegation to the conference included Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera, Power and Energy Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka, the ministerial secretaries, officers in charge of the subject in the ministries, the secretary of the Central Environmental Authority, Chief Ministers for the Southern Province and the Central Province and the ministerial Secretaries.

More than 190 countries met for two weeks for the latest round of United Nations climate change negotiations. The aim of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to stop global warming by limiting global carbon emissions. The talks dragged on two days longer than expected, making this the longest UNFCCC meeting ever experienced.

At the end of the gruelling talks the world decided on the "Durban Platform for Enhanced Action". The two-page document commits all countries to cutting carbon for the first time. A "road map" will guide countries a legal deal to cut carbon in 2015, but it will only come into effect after 2020.

The EU and a few other developed countries have signed up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol that ends in 2013. This will ensure that there is still some form of legally binding treaty to cut carbon in place in the interim eight years before the new agreement comes into force at the end of 2020. However, most of the developing world and the US remain in voluntary agreements to cut carbon until 2020.

The world has agreed to help poor countries cope with climate change through a new Green Climate Fund that will hand out around £60 billion per annum from 2020. However, again the details of the agreement are very vague. All that has been decided is that a body will be set up to distribute and manage the funds. It is not yet clear how the money will be raised. Possible plans to raise fund from a tax on shipping or aviation have not been signed off.

A scheme to pay poor countries not to chop down trees, Reducing Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD) has barely moved forward in the meeting as again countries cannot decide how to raise the cash. There are concerns that money from carbon markets could make it too corrupt and that indigenous people will be pushed out. However, REDD remains on the table and will be developed over the next few years as part of the new deal alongside rules in the Kyoto Protocol to stop deforestation.

There is still a lot of work to do on the agreement. The next UNFCCC meeting in Qatar next year will start negotiations towards the 2015 deal, including the kind of targets each country will sign up to. There will also be discussion of carbon cuts for the EU and a few other countries under the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The rest of the world will be pushed to increase their targets to cut carbon through voluntary agreements before 2020 through civil society and political pressure.

India emerged as the villain, after Natarajan, refused to sign up a deal that would commit the developing world to a strong legal treaty. She was backed by China, who also seemed reluctant to cut carbon at home.

However, although the protests by the world’s second and third biggest carbon emitters claimed their concerns are based on "climate justice". They argue that they need to carry on emitting carbon to bring millions of people out of poverty over the next few decades.

The US was unusually quiet throughout the talks, but as the world’s biggest emitter made it clear they were also happy with a weak legal outcome.

The EU are painting themselves as the heroes of the hour for rescuing the talks from collapsing but it could be a bitter victory as the deal is so vague and fails to cut carbon fast enough.

The South Africans were criticised for letting the conference go into extra time for two days but ultimately it has been a success for them by achieving some sort of a deal.

The Climate Change Secretariat, have to play a key role. No doubt there is wealth of information, but happenings taking place at snail space. Needless, Sri Lanka has to learn more from her big brother, India when it comes to sticking to strong policies and initiatives with regard to climate change issues.