US turns climate deal spoiler; India negotiates hard

New Delhi: The negotiations at various levels seem to be grinding into a logjam with US determined not to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. The US negotiators fought hard at different forums within the UN talks to block any progress on industrialised countries' commitments to reduce emissions in the mid-term under the second phase of Kyoto Protocol.

India stood steadfast in demanding that the rich countries put up their offers in terms of hard numbers for emission reductions over 2012-2020 under the existing protocol.

But, US and many other developed countries seemed determined to do away with the Kyoto Protocol entirely.

This is not the first time that US has voiced its opposition to the Kyoto Protocol which demands quantified targets from rich countries.

US had not signed on to Kyoto earlier and it continues to oppose the only tool the global treaty has for making measurable and comparable reductions in the dangerous greenhouse gases.

The protocol is also seen by a select band of industrialised countries such as US and Japan as a wall of differentiation constructed in the convention.

The parent treaty – UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – lays most of the burden of mitigation on the industrialised countries that caused it in the first place.

The Kyoto Protocol activates this principle of burden sharing into hard actions and targets. The protocol in its first phase sets fixed percentages by which countries reduce their emissions by 2012 below 1990 levels.

Many of the industrialised countries have not moved on a trajectory to achieve the targets for 2012. Part of the discussions in the UN talks have been to set a higher level targets for the second phase of Kyoto Protocol between 2012-2020.

But the US, not keen to take on any commitments in the mid-term, has always shown interest in disbanding with Kyoto Protocol and instead taking on a series of actions that are decided by countries on their own – say energy efficiency targets – and merely presented to the UN forum.

India and developing countries have pointed out that would make the targets incomparable and render it impossible to figure out if any significant reductions have been made in emissions to prevent a climate calamity.

Other industrialised countries too have so far shown little interest in offering credible and robust targets for the second phase of the protocol.

The offers so far on the table from the industrialised countries, if implemented, would only bring in reductions in the range of 11-18% by 2020 below 1990 levels.

India and other developing countries have demanded that the industrialised countries follow the recommendations of the UN climate science panel – IPCC – and take cuts in the range of 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 which would put the world on a trajectory to avoid temperatures reaching dangerous levels in the decades to come.

Differences galore

Differences between the rich and the developing countries turned into entrenched battle lines at the climate negotiations in Bangkok, with the EU backing the contentious proposal of the US to do away with the Kyoto Protocol – the compact that binds industrialised nations to emission reduction targets under the UN convention.

While the US, which has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, has always suggested its demise as the only way forward, the EU had so far not displayed such an inclination.

The coming together of industrialised countries in the Thai capital signalled a renewed and vigorous attempt to get emerging economies, including India, to take on a set of internationally binding emission reduction targets without financial or technical compensation to cover for the economic costs of achieving them.

India led the charge along with other key developing countries against the move at the Bangkok meet.

The convention at present demands commitments only from industrialised countries to reduce their historically disproportionate emission levels. The protocol turns these commitments into hard targets to be achieved in fixed time.

While India and other developing countries have demanded for last two years that the negotiations, as agreed upon under the Bali Action Plan in 2007, only look to enhance the commitments under Kyoto Protocol and the mother convention, industrialised nations made it clear in Bangkok that they wanted to alter the convention and the protocol in order to corner India and other large developing countries into taking commitments.

The US wants another omnibus agreement or protocol which locks India, China, Brazil and South Africa into taking emission control targets.

EU too has wanted action from the four to be brought under international scanner but had so far not shown too keen an interest in altering the existing protocol's basic structure which is under review for second phase of commitment levels.

But at the Bangkok meet, EU made a tactical shift and said it would prefer a new single "instrument" which binds countries from both sides of the spectrum – the industrialised and the developing – into a single regime. Interestingly, it also wants pieces of the earlier protocol that are to its advantage to be chopped into the new deal.

India and others pointed out at the meet that the existing convention and the understanding achieved by all countries at Bali in 2007 differentiates between "commitments" of the rich countries and the "actions" of the rest.

They also pointed out that the actions of the developing countries, as per existing convention and decisions, is to be undertaken only when enabled by finances and technology transfer from the industrialised countries.

A single regime as proposed by EU and US will break the equity-based differences enshrined in the convention and force the larger developing countries with much lower per capita emissions to be treated at par with the countries responsible for the historical responsibility of GHG emissions.