Op-Ed Contributors

Debate: Climate change

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-06 07:55

Suhit Sen: Progress begins with developed nations

The Copenhagen climate change conference was nothing if not farcical. The agreement that emerged there was an attempt by rich nations to duck their responsibilities. Unfortunately, there seems to be some disarray in the Southern camp, too.

To begin with, no progress was made in Copenhagen. If anything there was a good amount of regression. The chair and host, Denmark, did its utmost to procedurally undermine the conference by convening meetings between select groups of countries and producing drafts of agreements. There was the meeting between Brazil, South Africa India and China (the BASIC bloc) and the US that produced a draft that was presented before the plenary. The point is Copenhagen was a multilateral meeting of 193 countries.

Then there is the accord itself. Nothing in it comes close to ensuring that temperature rise will be limited to 2 C. In fact, if this accord is the template, rise in global temperatures could be closer to double.

But all this is behind us. What of the future? The Copenhagen Accord cannot possibly be the template for future negotiations because it contravenes several multilaterally accepted principles, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, on which any climate change agreement must be based.

Bluntly put, developed countries are historically responsible for causing climate change. So they must cut their emissions big time. Only they, not the developing nations, should undertake legally binding emissions cuts. They should provide funds and clean technologies to the developing nations, too, to help them pursue cleaner trajectories of development.

The BASIC bloc must once again lead the global South to defeat the developed world's divide-and-rule policy and ensure that the spirit of the existing agreements hovers over future negotiations.

Many in the West are now calling China, and to some extent India, the deal-breakers. This may be partly true because they agreed to get into a huddle. But, clearly, the US was the main deal-breaker. And the reason for that is simple. The US needs to cut emissions by 40-50 percent over the 1990 levels. It has not offered anything to the international community by way of hard numbers. It has not even ratified the Kyoto Protocol. All it has to show is the ludicrous reduction of 17 percent below 2005 levels that doesn't even look like getting to the finishing line.

For a while let's forget the problem of historical responsibility and a just global deal. The point is that if the US offers these numbers and seeks to pass on the burden of emissions to developing countries, the kind of global cuts we need won't happen and temperature rise will breach the minimal 2 C.

So, what appears to be happening is nothing, zilch. Climate change talks won't go anywhere because somewhere there will be a deadlock - even the more accommodative Europe has not delivered on commitments. Now that it has hardened its line, we are nowhere. And a bad deal for the developing countries won't halt climate change to the degree needed.

There are larger questions than just global negotiations and geopolitics and the North-South divide. Forget principles of fairness. There are civilizational issues involved. No political establishment in the US can get the kind of emission cuts needed, simply because there are powerful lobbies, especially those commanded by the energy and automobile lobbies, which will not let the US Senate pass 40-50 percent cuts over 1995.

There are even deeper problems. Lifestyles will have to undergo drastic change. But as George Bush Sr said at Rio de Janeiro more than a quarter of a century ago: The American way of life is not up for negotiation.