Viewed from one angle, all this can be termed as historic. But from another angle, all this looks to be nothing more than an exercise in generalities in which UN conferences excel at. If the outcomes of similar conferences held in the past are any indication, the Bali road map may lead to no better than another mythical road on which the traveller moves two steps forward only to find that his destination has receded by four additional steps. Let me elaborate.

At a United Nations conference on environment held with much fanfare in 1972 at Stockholm, nations and UN agencies committed themselves to preservation, protection and improvement of the human environment. But what is the position today? The overall environment is much worse than in 1972. Every year, the world is losing 24 billion tonnes of top soil, damaging 100 million acres of farmland, destroying 44 million acres of forests, creating 15 million acres of new deserts, using 160 billion tonnes of more water than can be replenished, burning fossil fuels which took 10,000 years to attain their present form and pumping huge quantity of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The world’s top ten rivers are under threat. About 60 per cent of the ecosystems are on decline and about 2,000 species are perishing every month.

At the UN Conference on Human Settlement — Habitat I — held at Vancouver in 1976, it was agreed by the world community that habitats should be improved and civic amenities provided to them, so that human dignity was not undermined. But if we look around, we find that a large part of the developing world has been reduced to slums, semi-slums and super-slums.

The story of the Rio Conference (1992) is no different. Everyone present there sang the song of sustainable development. Agreement on important issues was arrived at. But how is sustainable development being carried out in practice? Currently, as against the Earth’s biocapacity of 11.2 billion global hectares, 14.1 billion global hectares are being used up annually, thereby creating an ecological deficit of about 2.9 billion global hectares per year. The modern man is consuming more natural resources than the planet can cope with. He is using more water than the rains and the rivers can replenish; he is cutting more forests than can be regrown; and he is depleting more top soil than can be recreated.

Clearly, long and deep shadows have been falling between declarations and deeds. All these conferences were hailed as historic. But today they seem like mere exercises in futility. The fundamental forces that propel the current global order and determine people’s life styles have pushed history in the opposite direction.

Take the case of Kyoto Protocol. Its objective was to achieve "stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Under the protocol, governments have been divided into two general categories: developed countries who have accepted greenhouse gas emission-reduction obligations; and developing countries who have no such obligations. The former have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a "collective average of 5 per cent below their 1990 level." In case of developing countries, it was recognised that, in order to remove poverty and backwardness, development was needed and this would involve the use of energy on a higher scale.

At the Bali Conference, no one seriously raised the question about what the developed countries have done since 1997 to reduce their carbon emissions. Had such a question been raised, it would have been found that, let alone reduction, carbon emissions have practically gone up in every country.

The follow-up of the "Bali road map" is not going to be easy. A fierce controversy is likely to arise on what the "burden-sharing architecture" of carbon emission should be: whether the obligation to reduce the emissions of carbon should be assigned to the countries on the basis of per capita emission or on the basis of total quantity emitted or on some other criterion.

A fair and equitable formula, in my opinion, can be worked out on two principles. First, the developed countries should agree to reduce their carbon emissions by 50 to 75 per cent by 2050. This they can do by evolving and using green and energy-efficient technologies. Second, the developing countries should agree to reduction to the tune of 10 to 25 per cent by 2050, subject to the condition that the newly evolved "green and energy efficient technologies" will be made available to them at reasonable cost to be determined by an independent authority.

In the last few years, significant headway has been made in developing technologies for tapping renewable sources and for producing clean energy. In Germany, rapid advance in the field of solar energy has been witnessed. A Canadian firm has fabricated a special turbine to generate electricity from ocean currents. This can provide as much as 450,000 megawatts of electricity. New nuclear reactor technologies can provide another massive quantity of clean energy.

But all the technologies of the above genre have been monopolised by a few multinationals who, taking advantage of the "Intellectual Property Rights" under the WTO regime, are unwilling to part with them except on a prohibitive price. Ways and means must be found to make these technologies available to the developing countries, particularly those who depend on poor quality coal to produce electricity. These countries could also be helped by provision of technologies which are able to sequester carbon from coal.

It should, however, be understood that for both developed and developing countries, levels of reduction in carbon emissions will be feasible only if, along with changes in technologies, changes in attitudes and life styles are brought about. And this will require vision and leadership of extraordinary high quality.