People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

Developed World Jettisoning Kyoto Commitments

TENS of thousands of people who had gathered in Copenhagen, braving sub-zero temperatures and icy cold polar winds hoping to pressurise the nearly 120 world leaders and representatives of 193 countries to announce tangible and concrete proposals to contain the rise in global temperatures that will spell disaster for humanity, had to return sorely disappointed. Protesters from all across the world had converged to convey a simple message that there is not much time left to lose to protect our planet from devastation caused by climate change. Amongst the plethora of posters and pamphlets distributed, urging the leaders to take decisive action, there was one telling hoarding that anticipated the disappointment. This showed a dishevelled President Obama, who is by now known more for his speeches than action, bemoaning some time in the future that the USA could have prevented a disastrous climate change but it did not.

As reported in these columns last week from Copenhagen, the developed countries put up a concerted effort to jettison the entire United Nations framework to combat climate change that painfully evolved over the last two decades. The United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, adopted in 1992 at Rio De Janeiro and coming into effect from 1994, envisaged at the thirteenth COP (Conference of Parties) in Bali in 2007 to launch �a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the convention through long term cooperative action, now up to and beyond 2012, in order to reach an agreed outcome and adopt a decision� at COP 15 in Copenhagen in December 2009.

This, however, was not to be --- ironically in the very city where Shakespeare's Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, once posed his famous �To be or not to be.� Instead of moving forward on the Bali line of action, a thoroughly compromised document finally emerged called the Copenhagen Accord. This terminology is misleading. This document was neither adopted by the COP nor was it decided to be announced as a declaration. The outcome was a sterile statement saying, �The Conference of the Parties, takes note of the Copenhagen Accord of 18^th December 2009.� The only saving grace of the Copenhagen summit is that the process has not been aborted and it will continue to meet next year in Mexico through which time negotiations are to continue. But the formulations of this accord dangerously open up new windows that can completely jettison the United Nations Framework.

The first of these windows, that have been opened up, is aimed to negate the very fundamental underpinning of these negotiations so far, viz recognising the fact that the developed countries have historically contributed the most in damaging global climate, and they should bear the greater burden of correcting this trajectory. From this emerged the concept of �common but differentiated responsibilities.� In a not so clever nuance, President Obama, speaking at the summit, changed this by announcing �common but differentiated response.� In one stroke, he attempted to change the so far established understanding that while the developed countries will adhere to legally binding targets of green house emissions, the developing countries will undertake such non-binding responsibilities, keeping in mind their respective levels of social and economic development and poverty eradication requirements.

The Copenhagen Accord talks of a universal �deep cuts in global emissions� and that all countries should �cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognising that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries....� This negates the targets advanced in Bali as well as a review of the achievement of the targets put out by the Kyoto protocol. The Kyoto protocol had envisaged a five per cent emission reduction by the developed countries with 1990 as its base, by 2012. Far from reaching this target, already by now the developed countries as a whole have increased their emission levels by around 10 per cent since 1990, the USA alone by a whopping 17 per cent. President Obama grandiosely declared at the summit that the USA would reduce its emission levels by 17 per cent in 2025 compared to the 2005 levels. This, when converted for a comparison with the 1990 levels, as the Kyoto protocol envisaged, would mean a mere reduction of three per cent. This is far too inadequate to contain global temperatures, to rise at levels below two degrees Celsius.

Further, the Kyoto protocol envisaged legally binding penalties for countries that have violated the reduction targets. There are some developed countries that have transgressed these targets by as much as 40 per cent. These legally binding targets and penalties have been given the go bye by opening the window for �further guidelines adopted by the Conference of Parties.� Thus the coming year is crucial in ensuring that the Kyoto protocol is not jettisoned and in its place a new protocol or guidelines are imposed which speak of universal commitments by all, nullifying the so far accepted parameters of common but differentiated responsibilities. This is already sought to be operationalised by circulating two appendices, one for the developed countries and another for others, to voluntarily declare their levels of reduction, thus negating the legally binding mandatory levels for the former. The effort to impose a common and undifferentiated responsibility must be strongly resisted during the course of this year leading up to COP 16 in Mexico in 2010.

The second window that has been opened up for negating the framework, concerns the obligation of the developed countries to provide adequate financial resources to the developing countries for what is called �mitigation and adoption.� Accepting their �historical responsibility� in damaging global climate in the past, the developed countries were obliged to fund such efforts in the developing countries through the state exchequer. This commitment is now being negated by making such transfer of resources conditional on the adherence to domestic plans of action declared by individual developing countries. The Copenhagen Accord says, �In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries commit to a goal of mobilising jointly US $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multinational, including alternative sources of finance.� In other words, state funding by developed countries is to be abandoned in return for resources being raised from the market. Clearly, in times of a global recession such raising of resources would be virtually impossible. The developed countries thus seek to escape from their previously agreed obligations. During the course of the coming year, this window that has been opened, needs to be closed.

The third window that has been opened up, relates to an international mechanism to measure, report and verify (MRV) the domestically declared action plans by developing countries. This is dangerous in the sense that, once it is internationally accepted, the USA, for instance, can, in accordance with its existing laws, impose trade and other sanctions on any country that they declare as not adhering to their domestic action plan. The world is witness to the fact of blatant lies having been passed off as scientific assessments by the USA (as was the case with the weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's Iraq). Similar steps can be taken by the USA to target specific countries. Faced with a stiff resistance by the developing countries this has now been redrafted to state that the developing countries �will communicate information on the implementation of their actions through national communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines that will ensure that national sovereignty is respected.� These guidelines are to be defined in the course of this year. The window that has been opened to convert the �consultations and analysis� into MRVs must be closed during the course of this year. Soon after the Copenhagen summit, a spokesman of the Obama administration, Axelrod, publicly stated that this accord has provided the �legal framework� to virtually catch India and China by the collar on the implementation of their domestically declared voluntary plans of action on climate change.

The fourth window that has been opened up, is to lead to the negation of the commitment to transfer technology to the developing countries without the obligations of the international property rights (IPR) regime. This has now been redrafted to read �in order to enhance action on development and transfer of technology we decided to establish a Technology Mechanism to accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation that will be guided by a country driven approach and be based on national circumstances and priorities.� Thus the developed world wants to escape from its own previously agreed responsibility on this issue of transfer of technology and make these conditional upon action taken. Of course, there is no mention of exempting the IPR.

Thus, what emerges from Copenhagen is an undisguised effort by the developed world to negate the very understanding of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change and to jettison their commitments and responsibilities as contained in the Kyoto protocol and the Bali plan of action. While the ongoing negotiations will continue, the course of the coming year leading to COP 16 in Mexico will establish if the world is able to arrive at a consensus on tackling climate change and limiting the rise in global temperatures to below 2 degrees, and to ensure that the developed countries part with their due share and obligations.

In this effort, an important element that played a crucial role in resisting the efforts of the developed world to jettison the entire process at Copenhagen was the unity of the four �emerging economies� --- India, China, Brazil and South Africa, or the BASIC. This needs to be strengthened along with the other developing countries of the G77 during the course of this year in order to resist the pressures of the developed countries. Such resistance is important to ensure that the process of climate change is tackled with the need for necessary justice and equality. In today's world for instance, the per capita carbon emissions in the USA is 20 times larger than in India. Justice and equality demand that every human being on this planet must have an equal share of carbon space. This can only be ensured if the developing countries together put up a firm resistance to the continued pillage of the global climate by the developed countries.

The coming year must see the convergence of concentrated and concerted efforts by the developing countries to achieve such a world order on climate change. This is imperative to save our planet Earth. The reluctance or refusal of the developed countries to do so was dramatically summed up by Hugo Chavez. Exposing the predatory character of capitalism and imperialism, he said ---- if climate were a bank or a financial institution then the West would have bailed it out and saved it!