"India was a big loser at Durban climate talks"

Praful Bidwai is a noted Indian journalist, political analyst and activist. OneWorld spoke to him at a conference hosted by Council for Social Development in New Delhi, where he  presented a lecture on the recently concluded Durban climate summit and the crisis unfolding at climate negotiation tables.

OneWorld: The Durban talks have been officially claimed as a win for India and the principle of climate equity. What is your viewpoint on this?

Praful Bidwai: I don’t think it was a success at all. I think it was a disastrous failure. The final Durban declaration, the so called Durban Platform for Enhanced Action doesn’t even mention the word 'equity' or the principal of Common But Differentiated Desponsibilities (CBDR). The Indian official claim that they won on the equity agenda, is completely false. What actually happened was that India had to agree to a very ambivalent final verdict which makes it obligatory among all nations big or small whether they are developed or not and their culpability for contributing to climate change. All of them are going to be made to accept binding commitments by 2015.

This is a big setback for India but more important it is a setback for the whole world because Durban postponed making deep emission cuts beyond 2020. Infact, cuts in greenhouse gases emission are absolutely essential before 2020. Unless the world is able to make its total emissions peak by 2020 and thereafter make them fall steeply by 6% or so a year, we will move towards a global warming of the order of 3 - 5 degree Celsius. The scientists tell us that maximum global warming over pre-industrial temperature that the Earth can cope is 1.5-2 degree Celsius at the most. At 3 degrees Celsius global warming, a number of tipping points will be crossed and then the remedial actions become useless. At 4 degree Celsius warming, Britain's best scientist says that only 10% of world's population will survive. 

These are grim outcomes and Durban has made them likelier than ever before.

Secondly, the idea of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) is a principle that is enshrined in the climate convention since 1992. All the countries have a common obligation to protect the climate. That obligation is not equal. The countries more responsible for climate change must accept larger responsibilities to take the lead. Those who are least responsible for climate change i.e. the poor countries; especially the small islands or the least developed countries will not have an obligation. 

This principle has been negated in the Durban agreement, because Durban agreement does not even mention CBDR or equity. Instead it says that all countries will have to accept binding obligation emission cuts - which are not specifically mentioned. 

These are very unequal kinds of arrangements where a poor country like Tuvalu is being made to impose cuts on its emissions perhaps to the same extent as the developed countries like Canada, France, Britain or Australia. This of course is unfair and then I think Durban outcome is a setback to the cause of climate protection or fighting climate change. We have seen such setbacks especially after Copenhagen which also undermined CBDR and failed to impose deep and early emission cuts on developed countries.

OW: Why was India not able to forge the equity clause at Durban despite a marked presence backed by the Brazil South Africa India China (BASIC) nations?

PB: The Indian position was guided by an obsession with not having to accept any climate obligations in the future. India claims to be just another developing country but that nobody is prepared to buy in the world because once India forms a block called BASIC, it allowed itself to be equated with China and it never calculated the price to be paid for being equated with China. It is well known that China is the bigger emitter; everybody knows that China is growing at a breakneck pace; its emissions have increased 10% last year as opposed to the world's average of 6%. China's emissions have been rising almost 5 times faster over the last 20 years than the global average. If India is getting equated with China, it will be under increasing burden to accept obligations. May be not immediately, but in 2020 or later. Of course India doesn't want that. 

The official stated position of the government of India was that “We will not accept any climate obligations other than that our per capita emission will never exceed that of the developed countries.” 

If now India fails to anticipate then there would be enormous pressure on the BASIC group from the developing countries themselves. Just before Durban climate talks, the European Union changed its goal posts. It made extensions in the Kyoto Protocol - world’s sole legally binding agreement - conditional upon all countries agreeing by 2015 to accept binding obligations. 

Once that happened, the European Union formed a block with the least developed countries and small island states and they together compose more than half of the world's nations. That was a very powerful block which then imposed pressure on the BASIC group to agree for a universally binding treaty. The BASIC group did not resist. Instead it tried to join hands with the US and finally we have this horrible outcome. 

I think India is big loser in this and what India should have done, was to build a good relationship with the poorest of the developing countries by offering them with technological and financial assistance in adapting to climate change. And at the same time making offers for the future restrictions on its own emissions, rather than saying that we will accept nothing. These obligations can be lowered and could have come later than those for the developed countries.

OW: You have said the outcome of the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action is akin to “climate apartheid”. What is its implication for the Kyoto Protocol?

PB: Kyoto Protocol is on life support for the last few years. It is the only agreement which has any legal force in the world and it imposes emission reduction obligations only on the developed countries. The developed countries have been resisting its extension beyond 2012 -  when its first period expires. They have now agreed to extend it but in four years from 2013 to 2017, but without accepting obligations for deep emission reductions. So we will have a very dilute version of Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

Somebody call this a ‘zombie agreement’ which will stagger till 2017 and then replaced by the new agreement which buries the whole principle on which the Kyoto Protocol is based. 

OW: The Green Climate Fund has been identified to channel resources for climate action to developing countries. What would be its funding sources, given that major donors are hit by the recession?

PB: There were two promises made at Cancun and Copenhagen by the developed nations. First, that they would make upto $30 billion in so called ‘fast start finance’, available to the poor countries by 2012. But, much of that amount has not been materialised. 

The second promise they made at Cancun in 2010 was, there would be Green Climate Fund to the extent of 100 billion dollars per year. But as of now the Green Climate Fund is just a shell. No country has put money into it, nothing has been decided on how much money developed and not developed countries should put in. There is no clarity whether it will be over and above the existing aid flows and other forms of assistance between the North and the South. 

The developing countries demanded that they should have a majority of the seats in the governing body for the fund that has got equal representation. But that’s not good enough. The developed countries still want to get The World Bank – under their control and management - to govern and run the Green Climate Fund although The World Bank has been a major contributor to climate change. It has supported fossil fuel projects all over the world and continues to do so. It is not an agency that you can trust to take the right plan for climate action. 

Besides, we must remember that the world will need around $500 billion to $1000 billion a year if it wants to take effective action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. So even if the whole money i.e the promised $100 billion materialises, it will still be a small fraction of what is necessary. It’s too late and too little. 

OW: In your latest book The Politics of Climate Change and the Global Crisis, you say India can either aid or obstruct the fight against climate change. Would you like to elaborate?

PB:  there are two ways in which India matters. First, it is a large country and the world’s fourth biggest emitter. So, whether it takes climate action in good time, reduces carbon intensity and the amount of carbon that goes into a unit of GDP, do matter. Whether India will adopt a low-carbon development in the future will make a huge impact on its 1.2 billion population. If it fails to take any action, it could obstruct the whole global fight. Even with domestic inaction and by building more and more coal fired power plants as we are doing. Over and above the existing power capacity, India has about 2.5 times more capacity in the pipeline. This way we will impede the fight against climate change.

In the second sense, India can play a role in global negotiations which can aid the outcome under which the CBDR is respected and to say the rich countries make sincere, deep and early emission cuts for others to follow. Or India can obstruct the deal as in Copenhagen where it signed an accord to make a transition from climate change obligations based on science – restricting global warming to 2degrees Celsius and that emission must stabilise by 2020 and fall thereafter - to pledges for arbitrary voluntary cuts, which have no meaning in law.

The UNEP report published in late 2011 showed that the world is 20-30% short of the emission cuts necessary and this will lead to 3-4 degrees global warming. And we know that even those pledges are full of loopholes in the way they define their ambition, their cuts, and their range. The loopholes are so big that they exceed the sum total of their own reductions commitments. In short, they end up doing nothing, thus, transferring the whole burden to the poor and vulnerable nations.

We must realise that the more they squat in the global climate space, the less space is available to the developing countries for their own development and the greater the burden on them to undertake emission cuts at a very early stage of their industrialisation, which is grossly iniquitous.

That is the kind of outcome that Copenhagen accord brought about, Cancun carried forward and Durban has now sealed. So, we have seen a progressive degeneration of the climate negotiation process. The new Durban platform will, in all probabilities, dilute the obligations of the richest countries. They will not imposing fines for nations exceeding their emissions under Kyoto protocol. For example, Canada has exceeded the emissions by 30%, Australia by 40% and they are going to get away with no penalty at all. Let alone paying a penalty, Canada is threatening of walking away from the Kyoto protocol! This is simply lawless conduct!

OW: Is there an alternative to the current growth model that you have suggested?

PB:  Yes, there is. We can do few things very effectively and at an early stage. One, is enhancing energy efficiency and reducing the use of fossil fuels for unit of productions in a number of spheres. The scope for energy efficiency improves and increases from 30-40-50%. What we saw in the case of CFLs which saved 70% of electricity compared to incandescent lamp can be extended further if you go in for maintaining Light Emitting Diodes which are even more efficient source of lighting than CFLs. Similar initiatives can be taken in industry, power generation and agriculture, which accounts for bulk of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Second, we must promote renewable sources of energy in a very aggressive and big way. I argued and I tried to show that there is actually renewable energy revolution taking place in the world, where prices, costs of renewables are falling rapidly and there use is increasing. The wind energy for 20 years has been the fastest expanding energy source which is around 30-40% every year. Photovoltaic solar cell electricity is roughly growing from 50-60% all over the world. The costs are falling dramatically at the rate of 20% per year all over the world. 

Third, about 1 lakh of India’s villages still have no electricity. 500 million population does not have access to electricity. The government can provide them with home lighting systems based on solar cells, which are already competitive, which are in many ways superior to grid based centralised generation system. 

India can adopt climate adaptation agendas without spending excessive amount, which it can also integrate into its existing employment programmes like MGNREGA, under which the government can use extensive methods to prevent soil erosion, build cyclone shelters, among the coastline, to have better drainage, to built percolation tanks, small micro and mini hydro plants and biogas production. The government doesn’t have the imagination on all the perspective and that is one reason climate policy in this country is controlled by tiny, handful of people who don’t even know about climate change. Without any consultation with the stakeholders, they formulated the National Action Plan on Climate Change with eight missions without any real consultations of the civil society groups and above all, the victims.