In his intervention at the Major Economies Meeting (MEM) comprising the G8, the five outreach countries (O-5) and others, on the issue of climate change, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pointed out that the developed countries had failed to show progress on the low levels of agreed greenhouse gases reductions and asked the G8 to take lead on the issue.

“The quicker you reduce your emissions, the greater the incentive for us to follow,” Singh told the MEM, also dubbed the major emitters meeting, attended by world leaders like US President George W Bush, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Climate change was a huge challenge for all, Singh said, but “it should not be used to add conditionalities to the already complex development challenge that the developing countries faced or retaining the economic status quo or attempting to introduce protectionism by another means.” The Prime Minister made it clear that developing countries cannot for the present even consider quantitivative restrictions on their emissions as sustained and accelerated economic growth is critical for them.

Explained

•What is the Kyoto Protocol?

Adopted by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on December 11, 1997, the Kyoto Protocol — effective December 16, 2005 — was grounded in the notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities based on respective capabilities”. What this oft-repeated principle amounts to is that although every nation plays a role in greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, developed nations have overwhelmingly contributed to the climate crisis, and thus, they ought to bear the burden of reducing emissions and aiding developing nations, at least in the short term, while developing nations strive to achieve an effective level of infrastructure and industry.

•How many ratified it?

Of the 182 ratifying nations, 36 are considered developed. Notably absent from the list of ratifying nations is the US, which continues to hold out on account of the lack of restrictions on developing nations, though this seems to be a logical fallacy, given the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol. 137 developing countries ratified the protocol, including Brazil, China and India, but have no obligation beyond monitoring emissions. The developed nations agreed to collectively cut average emissions from 2008-2012 by 5.2 per cent below the 1990 levels, and some of them also opted to provide technological and financial support to developing nations. The sources of Kyoto credits are the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.

•Where does the Protocol stand now?

The countries have failed to reach emission cut targets, and since then there have been other agreements like the non-binding ‘Washington Declaration’ of February 2007, where countries agreed on the outline of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. It envisaged a global cap-and-trade system by 2009. The June 2007 33rd G8 Summit agreed that the G8 nations would “aim to at least to halve global CO2 emissions”, in a process that would also include the major emerging economies. In December 2007, at a UN climate change conference in Bali, an agreement was reached to work out a final blueprint to fight global warming by 2009. The last signatory to the agreement was the US. However, experts warned that America had again got what it wanted. “They did not want hard targets. They didn’t get them.”

•What’s the debate about?

The current contention between the G8 and G5 nations hinges on whether greenhouse gas emissions should be measured in absolute or per capita terms. The G8 nations believe that the emissions must be calculated absolutely, while relatively more populous developing G5 nations, especially India, believe that it is only fair that this be done on a per capita basis since they have contributed relatively little to the problem.